USS Tigrone (SS 419) War Patrols

By John Q Greene EMC

By the time the Billfish reached Pearl Harbor I knew that I was going to new construction and that I would report into Mare Island Navy Yard for assignment. I received my R&R after the Billfish crew returned from theirs since I had to help refit the boat. After reporting back to the Sub Base, ten of us were put aboard the Manila Bay, a jeep aircraft carrier, for transportation to San Diego, Cal. That small carrier was a nervous experience. It popped and cracked and made noises like a 5- gallon tin can. I believe that one torpedo would have sent it on the bottom.

Our orders had a rider on them that stated that we were to report to Mare Island, not via receiving ship. ( It seems the receiving ships had been putting men where they wanted to regardless of what the orders were when they arrived, and qualified submariners were no exception). The problem with that was, the submarines going into commission had only fourteen or fifteen qualified people aboard and they were the nucleus of the training program that would let the new submarine go to sea safely. The Exec. of the “Manila Bay” was a bit puzzled about what to do with us. The Captain said, "turn them loose and let them get to Mare Island on their own". The torpedoman in charge had our orders and he made sure that we all had railroad tickets to Mare Island. Most of us did not get past L.A. that first day. After a night in L.A., a friend, the torpedoman, and I boarded the train (somewhat hung over) and made it to Mare Island. Personnel would not accept the orders until all ten reported in.( that was mighty white of them because it kept the tardy ones out of trouble). About ten days later the last man reported in and we got down to the business of getting our orders to our new assignments. My assignment was to the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine to put the Tigrone in commission with a thirty-day delay in reporting in. Little did I know how my whole life was going to change in the next few months?

The Tigrone was tied up to a fitting out pier, which means that she was still under construction. The crew was reporting in daily. We lived in a barracks and had a barge tied up next to the Tigrone where we took care of jobs that the yard workers would not take care of. Assembling spare parts was a big item.( There were no friendly hardware stores in the areas where we would be traveling). This was a good time for the crew to learn the systems of the boat. It was also a fine time to get acquainted with new shipmates.

The Tigrone (She was named after the tiger shark. We nicknamed her Tiger Fish) was of the Tench class submarines. The Billfish was a Gato class submarine, as were most of the fleet boats. The big difference was the propulsion system. The Tigrone was much quieter than the Gato class and quiet is the name of the game when you have somebody with good ears listening for you with one purpose in mind, and that is to keep you from making your next R&R period. Following is a bit of trivia that will probably put you to sleep. Test depth of the Tigrone was 400 ft. She would do 20 knots on the surface and 12 knots submerged. All the fleet boats were designed to do those speeds. The earlier fleet boats test depth was 350 ft.

Fleet boats were originally dreamed up to work with the fleet as scouts and on reconnaissance missions. That is the reason they were called fleet boats. They did a lot of the above missions but changed early. In the game of war their primary mission was to sink ships. The submarine basically worked alone behind enemy lines and came into friendly waters just long enough to take on fuel, supplies and enough upkeep to get her on station again. When you wake up after the nap brought on by the above trivia we will get back to the Tigrone.

Putting a ship in commission is a trying time for all hands. There is a lot of work to be done in each department before the ship is ready to turn over to the Navy. One fine thing is that the crew really bonds. They are all working for a common cause, to have the best submarine in the fleet. It seems that any ship you are on you come up with a best friend. The two of you hit it off and it seems that what happens to one basically effects the other. John Larrin was the gent that I teamed up with. We were both 2nd class electricians so we worked in the same department. John was of Italian decent and he answered to the name of Guinea. He eventually was my best man when I got married. I met Jackie in Portsmouth and was married there.(Another story).

Finally in October, of 1944 we put the Tigrone in commission. We began sea trials. Sea trials is a time of learning, a time when the crew is finding out the little quirks of this steel monster that they have breathed life into. The crew is the heart of the ship and how well they know the workings of that ship is how well it will perform. You can ask any sailor and they will tell you that a ship has a personality all its own, I suspect that it assumes the personality of the crew. We went into commission with 16 men qualified in submarines and some of them were qualified on the old "S" boats. About the only thing that the "S" boats and the Fleet Boats had in common was that you flooded tanks to submerge and blew the water out of the tanks to surface. With a crew of 82 men, you can understand the amount of work that had to done in education to get our crew ready to take the Tigrone into the war zone. We had three or four qualified controllermen (my job) and we needed a minimum of six. We had six good controllermen by the time sea trials were over. What they needed now was experience. When you are underway 24 hours a day for weeks at a time, you get experience.

Finally we headed out. We had stopped in Rhode Island to fire torpedoes. We had stopped in New London to show off our new submarine and put her through her paces for the submarine V.I.P.'s. We spent a few days in Panama, showed our boat off to the VIP's in Pearl Harbor and headed for the war zone via Guam. We took on fuel and provisions in Guam and headed out on our first war patrol. We were ready. We pulled so many drills on our way to Guam that our crew was in great shape and we felt that we could handle anything that came our way. Most of the crew had qualified or re-qualified on the way out and we were looking good.

1st War Patrol

"Now hear this, now hear this, this is the Captain speaking. I know that you have been wondering where our patrol area is going to be. My orders are to proceed to the South China Sea off Hainan." (We had been at sea for a couple of days and had been wondering when the skipper was going to let us know where we were going.) "Have you been there, Cobs?" asked Guinea "I sure have, Guinea. As a matter of fact, we got the crap kicked out of us in the South China Sea on my second patrol on Billfish." Most of the trip to our area was uneventful. We had seen some friendly bombers, which always made you nervous. The men on the bridge watched a B-24 zooming an area about fifteen miles from us. The submarine Seahorse was in that area. As soon as Seahorse surfaced they reported a B-24 had strafed and bombed them. We knew what our enemies were going to do. The big problem was, we never knew what our friends were going to do.

"Hey, Cobs, a plane reported a big convoy heading our way. It was spotted along the Indo China Coast." said Guinea. " Great, maybe we will get some shooting in, "I replied, "This diving for aircraft and getting a bomb every so often is getting rather monotonous. If we do get some shooting, things will get lively real quick. Those escorts have a nasty way of passing the ball back to you in a hurry." "NOT GOOD." To make a long story short, we never spotted the convoy. Maybe the next time.

I was laying in my bunk when I heard them fire up three engines and I could feel the ship pick up speed. Being curious I wandered into the crews mess to see what was happening. "What have they got up there, Stew?" I asked. (Stew is a ship's cook.) "Seems like they have a big ship and we are making an end around, about all they see is the smoke but radar says it is a big one." He replied. After about three hours we dove and went to battle stations torpedo. When this fellow got in close enough the Skipper could see a big red cross on the side. He was a hospital ship and we do not sink hospital ships.

We were on the surface and I was on watch when suddenly we heard the Officer of the Deck holler, "full left rudder, all ahead flank, dive, dive, rig ship for silent running." "Jim, go forward and find out what the hell is going on. Bring back some coffee when you come back." I said. (Jim was the third man in the maneuvering room.) Jim got back rather excited and said "the skipper was on the bridge and spotted an impulse bubble and then all the people on the bridge saw the torpedo. It passed us about 100 feet on the port side." (Impulse bubble is the air bubble that exits the torpedo tube when a torpedo is fired. Our subs rarely left an impulse bubble because of a valve designed to let the air vent into the ship.) The sub that fired at us was probably a Jap or it could have been a German. There were some German subs out there.

"Battle stations gun action, Battle stations gun action." " Be careful up there Guinea." "I will Cobs." Guinea was the pointer on the 5" gun and on a sub all hands that are topside during gun action are vulnerable. We were bombarding two towns on Batan Island. We then headed for Guam. This patrol lasted 34 days. We had to come in early because of the lack of fuel. We did not get a combat star for this patrol.

2nd Patrol

We left Guam 19 May 1945. Most of this patrol we would be on life guard duty. We picked up a total of 30 flyers that had been shot down. We buried one at sea. We left 28 flyers in Iwo Jima and picked up the 30th flyer later. This was a record rescue on any one patrol during WWII. We who rode Tigrone are proud of that accomplishment.

"Battle stations gun action." As I was hurrying to the maneuvering room I passed Guinea. "Watch it, buddy. The seas are rough and this dude we are after is going to shoot back." "OK Cobs, just keep the motors turning." I heard the 5" open up and then the 40mm's open up. Suddenly outside the hull we heard, BANG BANG BANG BANG "What in hell was that, chief?" " I am not sure Greene but I don't like the sound." "I know what that is, I bet that is machine gun bullets hitting the hull." One of the other fellows in the maneuvering room had come up with that theory, and we all agreed that that was what it had to be. We were all concerned for the people topside. The electrician in the control room come back and told us that three men topside had been wounded. It turned out that the rough sea had tossed them against the 5" gun and created contusions on their legs and arms. The ship we sank was a motor sailer called a lugger. He was armed with 25mm's and small machine guns plus he was carrying depth charges. One night while patrolling off a harbor that had been bombed earlier that day, (I was on watch in maneuvering) we got all stop and we heard the bridge holler full right rudder. In a few minutes we got underway again and a few minutes later we got the same order as before. We got underway again and directly we heard full left rudder and we got all stop. KERWHAM KERWHAM. The cork flew, the submarine shook, and we got the diving alarm and headed for a friendlier element. Seems a bomber had flown over three times. Each time we changed course and stopped. Apparently he was following the fluorescent wake of our ship and each time he would get closer to the water until he could see the submarine. The lookout told me that last pass the airplane made, felt like he could have touched it, it was so close. "Greene, when those bombs went off I leaned over and puked, it scared me so bad."

Just before heading for Guam we rendezvoused with three other submarines and took aboard 27 flyers to transport to Guam. This patrol was 46 days. We got a combat insignia for this patrol

3rd Patrol

We had a new Skipper for this patrol, His name, V.E. Schumacher. This patrol was rather slow. We bombarded Mikomoto Island and we claim the last shot fired on Japan. We picked up a P-51 pilot in Apra Harbor. Guinea and I had the watch in maneuvering when radar reported contacts making 25 to 30 knots. What a dilemma! Was it torpedo boats or perhaps suicide boats or possibly spit kits? Any one of them could be dangerous. We went to four engines and flank speed. The Officer of the Deck called down and asked for every thing we had. "How you doing Guinea?" "I got my side doing full power plus 10 percent. How are you doing, Cobs." "I am squeezing out 10 percent overload and I am going for 15%. See if you can squeeze in a bit more. Jim you keep an eye on the temperatures and let us know when they get to the mark." "I have 15%, Cobs. I bet this submarine has never moved so fast before." We ran full out like this for about thirty minutes when we heard radar say, "Bridge, these contacts could be birds." "Con," Captain speaking. "All stop." In the maneuvering room we got the stop signal and stopped, and the contact went right on by. I never felt so good about birds in all my life. Next morning World War #2 was over. Cease-fire order came through 16 August 1945 at 1300 hours. I Thanked God for seeing me through it all.

31 August 1945 Tigrone moored alongside U.S.S. Proteus in Tokyo Bay. World War 2 had lasted 3 years 9 months 10 days. That is a long trip from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo.