Patrol boat No. 105
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The patrol boat No. 105 ( Japanese 第 105 号 哨 戒 艇 , Dai-105-gō shōkaitei ) was a patrol boat of the Imperial Japanese Navy , which was used in World War II ( Pacific War ). Originally 1931 as Philippine customs ship Arayat put into service, it was captured in 1942 by Japan and converted for patrol boat.
The ship manufactured in the Schichau works was owned by the Bureau of Insular Affairs , the US administrative authority of the Philippines, which in turn was subordinate to the War Department . It was manned by sailors from the Philippine Merchant Navy and used for customs duties. The ship is often confused with the gunboat of the same name from the Spanish-American War .
During the Japanese invasion of the Philippines , the ship lying in the port of Manila was damaged by an air raid on December 12, 1941 and set on fire. On January 2, 1942, Manila, and with it the Arayat , fell to the Japanese. The ship was later taken to the Cavite Naval Base , where it was repaired and converted to a patrol boat. In the Imperial Japanese Navy "patrol boat" (was shōkaitei ) primarily a classification for obsolete to landing craft - mother ships upgraded destroyer ; why the non-military arayat was added to this category is unknown. In September 1943, more than a year and a half after the capture, the ship, now renamed No. 105 , was put into Japanese service. Formally it was registered in the Sasebo Marine District and belonged to the 3rd South Expeditionary Fleet.
From now on, the ship was used almost non-stop for patrols and escorts between the Philippine islands, as the Japanese supply lines were in great distress due to Allied submarine attacks. The convoys escorted by patrol boat No. 105 were attacked several times by submarines, for example on February 16, 1944 (presumably) by Crevalle , on April 15 and 16 by Redfin , on June 28 by Pargo , on August 29 Jack , October 9th by Becuna and Hawkbill , October 12th by Darter, and October 14th by Dace . The patrol boat was not very effective against the submarine attacks. The ship, which is not even 60 meters long, was able to take 1,609 survivors on board on August 29, 1944, when the transport ship Mexico Maru was sunk with over 4,000 soldiers on board, a masterpiece of rescue technology (over 800 men still died).
In October 1944, American landing forces began to retake the Philippines . On November 28, 1944, No. 105 accompanied a convoy to Ormoc on the embattled island of Leyte and monitored the unloading of the transport ships in the bay . Around midnight, the formation was attacked by the PT speed boats PT-127 and PT-331 . The submarine Ch-53 was hit and sunk, and patrol boat No. 105 was also badly damaged and began to sink. The crew put it aground in shallow water and abandoned the ship. Ten days later the wreck was reached by American ground forces. On January 10, 1945, No. 105 was finally deleted from the ship register of the Japanese Navy.
Web links
- Bob Hackett, Sander Kingsepp and Peter Cundall (combinedfleet.com): Ex-United States Vessels in IJN Service as Patrol Boats , and IJN Patrol Boat No. 105: Tabular Record of Movement , accessed March 2015