USS Herring (SS-233)

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USS Herring (October 1943)
USS Herring (October 1943)
Overview
Shipyard

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard , Kittery , Maine

Keel laying July 14, 1941
Launch January 15, 1942
1. Period of service flag
Commissioning May 4, 1942
Whereabouts Sunk near Matua on June 1, 1944 (84 dead)
Technical specifications
displacement

Surface: 1,525 ts.
Submerged: 2,424 ts

length

95.33 m

width

8.30 m

Draft

4.65 m

Diving depth 90 m test
depth 140 m maximum depth
crew

84 men (1944)

drive

4 × 990 kW Fairbanks Morse -9- cylinder - Diesel engine
4 × 500 kW Elliott -electric
2 waves

speed

Surface: 20.25 kn.
Submerged: 8.75 kn

Range

11,000 nm at 10 kn
75 days patrol
duration Maximum dive time: 48 hours (at 2 kn)

Armament

6 × 53.3 cm torpedo tubes front
4 × 53.3 cm torpedo tubes rear
24 torpedoes
1 × 7.62 cm deck gun (L / 50 Mark 18)
2 × 20 mm flak
2 × 7.62 -mm- machine guns

The USS Herring (SS-233) was a submarine of the United States Navy , which was used temporarily in the Atlantic during World War II , but mainly in the Pacific theater of war , and was sunk in 1944. The submarine belonged to the Gato class and was named after the fish herring . The submarine was on 14 July 1941 as a 22 boat of its class at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery in the US state of Maine paid to Kiel and ran on 15 January 1942 by the stack. The Herring was finally put into service on May 4, 1942. First in command was Lieutenant Commander Raymond Wilber Johnson.

Second World War

1942/43: First war missions in the Atlantic

After commissioning and the completion of the test drives in autumn 1942, the Herring relocated at the end of October 1942, as part of the so-called Task Group (TG) 34.9 and together with the submarine Gunnel , from the American east coast to the coast of French Morocco and took part there in November 1942 as a backup submarine during the Allied landing ( Operation Torch ). During this operation, the Herring succeeded on November 8th in the torpedoing and sinking of the Vichy-French freighter Ville du Havre (5,083 GRT) northwest of Casablanca .

On November 25, 1942, the submarine arrived in Rosneath, Scotland, and ended the first patrol there. In the following seven months, until July 1943, the Herring operated from Rosneath and undertook five patrol trips, which led the submarine, among other things, into the sea area around Iceland . Sinkings were not achieved during these missions, even if it was temporarily suspected that the Herring could have been responsible for the sinking of the German submarine U 163 on March 21, 1943 in the Bay of Biscay ; however, this boat was sunk by the Canadian corvette Prescott on March 13, 1943.

At the end of July 1943, the Herring was ordered back to the United States due to the lack of sinking , as a mission in the Pacific theater of war seemed to promise greater success. After a brief overhaul of the shipyard, the Herring left New London on August 9, 1943 and in the same month laid through the Panama Canal to join the American Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor .

1943/44: Operations in the Pacific

In November 1943, the Herring ran from Pearl Harbor on her first patrol in the Pacific. In the following seven months, the submarine undertook a total of three patrols, and from February 6, 1944, it was under the command of a new commander, Lieutenant Commander David Zabriskie Jr. During this time, the Herring operated mostly in the East China Sea , the Yellow Sea , the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Kuril Islands . In total, the submarine was sunk six times:

  • December 14, 1943: The Japanese cargo ship Hakozaki Maru (3,948 GRT) is torpedoed and sunk about 200 nautical miles northeast of Shanghai .
  • January 2, 1944: The Japanese passenger ship Nagoya Maru (6,071 GRT) is torpedoed and sunk off Aogashima . The ship, used as a submarine tender and traveling in a convoy, was torpedoed on January 1, but sank a day later as a result of stormy weather and inadequate leak protection measures . 121 people were killed in the sinking, most of them perished when the torpedo hit.
  • May 31, 1944: The Japanese destroyer escort Ishigaki (860 ts) and the freighter Hakuyo Maru (1,590 GRT) are torpedoed and sunk about 70 nautical miles west of Matua . Both ships were part of the convoy HE. The security vehicle was hit by a torpedo in the forecastle and sank with the loss of 167 crew members.
  • June 1, 1944: Torpedoing and sinking of the two Japanese troop transporters Iwaki Maru (3,124 GRT) and Hiburi Maru (4,366 GRT) anchored off Matua, near Point Tagan . When the two steamers went down, a total of 180 people, 63 sailors and 117 soldiers died.

Downfall of the Herring

Immediately after the sinking of the two transporters, the Herring , standing almost 1.3 nautical miles from the coast of Matua, was surprisingly positioned at about 7.55 a.m. by a Japanese coastal battery (52nd Guard Division) that was near Point Tagan and consisting of three 14 cm guns . taken under fire. Before the submarine could submerge, two 14 cm grenades hit the tower of the Herring , which was about to start an alarm diving maneuver . The boat slid under the surface of the water with its tower perforated; a short time later, large air bubbles rose and a film of oil floated up. From this point on, the Herring stopped reporting and it is now very likely that the submarine was sunk by the two direct hits by the coastal artillery. The commandant, Lieutenant Commander David Zabriskie Jr., and all 83 crew members went down with the boat. There were no survivors.

After the Herring had not responded to radio messages on June 3, 1944, the American submarine Barb , the only other US submarine still in the sea area of ​​the central Kuril Islands at the time, was entrusted with the attempt to contact the Herring . At the end of June 1944 this undertaking was also discontinued without success. On July 13, 1944, the Herring was finally classified as lost.

In 2016, the wreck was found near Matua Island . A joint expedition of the Russian Geographical Society and the Ministry of Defense discovered the submarine at a depth of 104 m. The Herring was the only American submarine in World War II that was sunk by fire from coastal guns.

Awards and Achievements

The Herring received five Battle Stars for missions in World War II . In total, the submarine had been able to sink six freighters (with a total of 24,182 GRT) and a destroyer escort on eight patrols.

literature

  • Heden, Karl E .: Sunken Ships World War II: US Naval Chronology. Including submarine losses of the United States, England, Germany, Japan, Italy . Branden Publishing Company, Wellesley 2006, p. 215.
  • Holwitt, Joel I .: Execute against Japan: The US decision to conduct unrestricted submarine warfare . Texas University Press, Austin 1999.
  • Kurowski, Franz: War under water . Dortmund-Oespel 1978, new edition 1999.
  • Padfield, Peter: The Submarine War 1939–1945 . Original edition: War beneath the Sea , London 1995.
  • Peillard, Léonce : History of the Submarine War 1939–1945 . Original edition: Histoire Generale de la Guerre Sousmarine 1939–1945 . Paris, 1970.
  • Roscoe, Theodore / Voge, Richard G .: United States submarine operations in World War II . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1950.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Type IXC U-boat U-163 - German U-boats of WWII - uboat.net. Retrieved March 21, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Japanese Auxiliary Submarine Tenders. Retrieved March 21, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Japanese Escorts. Retrieved March 21, 2020 .
  4. ^ Heden, Karl E .: Sunken Ships World War II: US Naval Chronology. Including submarine losses of the United States, England, Germany, Japan, Italy . Branden Publishing Company, Wellesley 2006, p. 215.
  5. ↑ US submarine sunk by Japan in WWII found by Russian expedition. Retrieved March 21, 2020 .