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From: Lt.Cdr Ronny Gundersen (USS Pogy, SS-266)
To: ComSubRon 4A
Cc: ComSubPac
Subject: Patrol Report (September 02 - Cycle 7)
Remarks: 2nd War Patrol, USS Pogy, SS-266
Date: 28 July 1943 Patrol
Area: Mariana Islands (NM-1)
Sub: SS-266, USS Pogy Class:
Gato
Crew: Veteran Status:
Operational
Hull Damage: Light (25%) System
Damage: None (0%)
Fuel Used: 64,478 Gallons (55%) Realism Rating: 115%
Ships Sunk: 5 Tonnage:
45,120 / 15,025
Pilots Saved: 0 Photo
Recons: 0
Weather: Clear Seas:
Moderate
Patrol Mileage: 1,086 Nautical Miles
Ordnance Remaining: 0 - MK 14 Torpedo’s, 38 – Deck Gun Rounds.
(Silent Hunter Awards – Navy Cross, Bronze Star)
Date Time Location Ship Type Tonnage
Status
1) 13 July 43 22:27 16-46N x 145-33E Std. Merchant 10,390 SUNK
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2) 14 July 43 17:43 16-52N x 145-30E Oil Tanker 14,780 SUNK
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3) 14 July 43 19:37 16-48N x 145-38E Large Freighter 3,520 SUNK
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4) 16 July 43 02:28 16-21N x 145-50E Large Freighter 6,950 SUNK
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4) 18 July 43 04:43 16-28N x 145-44E (CL) KUMA
N/A DAM
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5) 21 July 43 05:16 16-30N x 145-46E Troop Transport 9,480 SUNK
Total: 45,120 Raw / 15,025 Adjusted
Damage
Sustained:
1. Storage Room 1 - minor/moderate leaking
2. DC motor 4 - light damage
3. Storage Room 2 - minor leaking
4. Radio Room - minor leaking
5. Aft Engine Room - moderate leaking
6. Engine 2 - moderate damage
7. DC motor 2 - moderate damage
8. Fwd Torpedo Room - heavy leaking
9. Tube 3 outer doors - moderate damage
10. Aft Torpedo Room - minor leaking
11. DC Motor 1 - minor damage
12. Engine 1 - minor damage
Torpedo
Performance:
0 PREMATURE, 12 DUD, 10 RELIABLE, 2 MISS
Aircraft
Shot Down:
NONE
Aircraft
Spotted:
Depth
Charges:
174
Commanders
Comments:
We left Midway 2. July
1943 and arrived south of Guam 10. July 12:47.
At 12. July 02:40 we had
entered our designated patrol area NM-1. The sea is moderate and the
weather is clear.
12. July 1943
18:37
Radar detects surface
contacts. We turn and speed up to investigate the contact. The radar
shows multiple spikes, so
this is probably a small convoy with escorts.
18:48
Visual contact. A FUBUKI
DD at 8,300 yds, patrolling. Soon a second FUBUKI shows up. Then a
tanker at 9,100 yds
heading 323'T at 14,7 kts. We have no chance of pursuing this contact so
we sneak away and
continues patrol.
13. July 1943
19:05
Surface contact detected
by radar. Three spikes closing in fast. We speed up to meet the
contact, but before we
get a visual it changes course and increase distance. We give up and
continues patrol.
22:27
A new, single spike can
be seen on the radar. We turn towards the contact and speed up to
catch up with it. It is a
std. merchant heading 334'T at 16 kts, coming straight towards us.
Torpedo depth is set to
14 ft. We dive to stay out of sight until we have launched our
torpedoes. At 1,000 and
900 yds I order to fire torpedo 1 and 2. Both torpedoes hit and a fire
breaks out on the ship.
We surface to finish her off with the deck gun. 21 shells are fired,
3 of them misses the
target but the rest hits and sinks the std. merchant. Many of her crew
jumped off the ship and
saved themselves on small rafts and pieces from the ship. We leave
them as we have no space
to have them on board and they will certainly be rescued as we are
in the shipping lane not
far from Saipan.
14. July 1943
13:37
Sonar reports low-speed
screws bearing 60'R. A minute later hi-speed screws can also be heard.
I order periscope depth
(PD) to have a look at the contacts.
It's a CA group
consisting of 1 ASASHIO, 1 YUGUMO DD, 1 KAGERO DD, 1 AKIZUKI DD, 1 MOGAMI CA,
1 NAGARA CL, 1 AGANO CL
and 2 unidentified ships, probably destroyers. The group is 5,700 yds
away from us and is
increasing distance, heading 202'T at 25 kts. Unable to intercept we dive
to 160 ft. again and
continues patrol.
17:43
Sonar reports low-speed
screws again. This time from 356'R. Going to PD to have a look.
Wow! As far as I can see
there is 9 merchants in a convoy. No escorts to be seen. They are
8,100 yds away, heading
329'T at 6,5 kts.
Oh no! How long was Adam
in Eve? Behind the convoy a KAGERO DD shows up. Oh well, it's soon
night anyway. I guess a
second DD is escorting this convoy, but I haven't seen it yet.
In the convoy there is: 1
oil tanker, 2 troop transports, 4 large freighters, 1 supply ship
and 1 small freighter.
The tanker is my main target. Torpedo depth set to 15 ft.
Torpedo 1 is fired at
1,160 yds, torpedo 2 at 1,130 yds. Torpedo 1 & 2 are duds. Fired 3 & 4
and both hit the tanker
witch sinks in a big fireball. Torpedo 7 & 8 are fired at a converted
factory ship at 1,100
yds, but both torpedoes are duds.
The escort is now way
south of us and with the night I give it a shot and try to run away from
the DD on the surface.
The DD is now 4,760 yds from us. The merchant scatter in all directions
to avoid the sinking
tanker and another possible attack from us. Seems they don't know we've
surfaced. It also look
like the DD hasn't spotted us as they're turning away from us and slows
down. At 7,800 yds we
lose visual on the DD and we slow down to 2/3 speed. At 19:05 we resume
normal patrol.
19:37
A lookout report masts
bearing 288'R. It turns out to be a lonely large freighter, probably
one of the ships in the
convoy we attacked. They must have lost contact with the others and
decided to continue on
their own. Bad mistake. It looks like it's lightly loaded so I order
to set the torp depth to
7 ft.
When it's 4,500 yds away
I order PD to avoid detection. After all, she's armed with 2 3" guns.
We fire torpedo 1 at 960
yds. It's a dud. Torpedo 2 is fired from 800 yds. That one is also a
dud. Then we fire torpedo
7 at 980 yds with depth set to 9 ft. It missed. I order to surface
to give our deck gun a
chance since our torpedoes don't do any good anyway. Her crew fired
their deck guns at us,
but none of the shells hit us. After 36 fired shells, where 7 of them
missed, she starts to
sink. We could see no survivors in the water, so we resume patrol.
15. July 1943
23:06
Surface contacts detected
by radar bearing 270'R. Looks like a small convoy. We turn to close
in and attack. They are
now 11,400 yds away.
23:26
Got visual of a destroyer
at 8,100 yds. Shortly after a second and a third DD shows up, and at
last a troop transport
7,000 yds away. I decide to dive to PD, so we temporarily lose visual
of the troop transport.
The convoy is heading straight towards us, so we're just lying here
and wait for them to
come.
We regain visual of the
troop transport. It's now 7,050 yds away, heading 142'T at 7,3 kts.
So far no other merchants
can be seen. I can now count 5 DD's: 2 FUBUKI, 2 YUGUMO and 1
ASASHIO. An attack on the
troop transport now seems a bit risky, so I decide to dive deep and
avoid this well escorted
ship. After we lost visual of the convoy we continue patrol.
16. July 1943
01:49
Radar has detected a
contact 300'R at 14,290 yds. Now two spikes
shows on the radar and they
are closing fast. We turn
to meet them.
02:02
We got visual of a YUGUMO
DD at 9,050 yds. 3 minutes later we can see a large freighter 9,700
yds away, heading 322'T
at 6,4 kts. Soon we can see a supply ship and a small freighter too.
02:28
Fired torpedo 1 at the
large freighter from 1,305 yds and torpedo 2 from 1,100 yds. Torpedo
1 hit and sink the ship.
Torpedo 2 misses since the target no longer is there. The DD starts
pinging immediately so we
change course away from the convoy and dives to 325 ft. We escaped
the DD easily and later
surfaced. On the radar we could see that the convoy had split up, and
the DD is 9,000 yds
behind us.
We start to patrol again.
18. July 1943
04:43
Surface contact detected
by radar, bearing 330'R. 3 minutes later we got visual of a MUTSUKI
DD, a KUMA CL and a
KAGERO DD. The CL is 9,842 yds away, heading 255'T at 25,6 kts. The last
DD in the group (as far
as I can see) is a YUGUMO class.
All we can do is watch
them as they speed away from us. We're not detected so we resume patrol.
No wait! They are
changing course and are now heading our way. Torpedo depth is set to 8 ft and
the KUMA is our target.
At 1,200 yds I order to fire torpedo 1 - 3 and dive deep.
Torpedo 1 & 2 hits,
but nr. 3 is a dud. We abort our dive and go to PD again to see if we can
sink her with more
torpedoes, but all I could do is watch her burn fiercly (but still floating)
before we must dive from
the surrounding DD's.
We got hit by some of the
depth charges (DCs) , resulting in only minor damage to the DC motor
4 and storage room 1.
Nothing that can't be fixed in 30-40 minutes.
They found us again, and
DCs are raining. Now the storage room 2 is hit, causing minor leaking.
Same situation in the
radio room. Moderate leaking in the aft engine room and engine 2 is
moderately damaged. Oh,
and not to forget that DC motor 2 is also moderate damaged. The motor
crew says this can be
fixed in about 2 hours. Sounds good to me.
We 'play dead' as our
motors do no good anyway, and this gives the enemy sonar guys a hard time
finding us. All engines
are shut down and nobody says a word. Only the repair crew works like
ghosts. If I'm not
mistaken, an aircraft is circling above. That will make it harder to finish
off the CL, if we get
another chance.
After another couple of
attacks from the escorts we finally got a chance to look around at PD.
I could see the four DDs
and an unidentified aircraft, but no signs of the KUMA.
07:53
Finally the escorts gave
up. 132 DCs was dropped on is, causing only minor damage and leaking.
We go to radar depth to
search for the damaged CL, but no luck. We didn't find it on our radar,
but we did find an
aircraft close by, so we dive to 160 ft. and start patrolling again.
09:38
Sonar reports low-speed
screws bearing 270'R. We go to PD to take a look. Maybe it's our
damaged CL?
It was of course not our
CL, but a convoy about 20,100 yds away heading 139'T at 11,5 kts.
We had to dive again
because the radar warned us about an incoming plane. When we come to PD
again, the convoy has
changed course and we're no longer in a position to attack. We dive and
resume patrol.
19. July 1943
19:08
Multiple surface contacts
detected by radar at 11,200 yds. We turn to intercept.
19:28
We got visual of two
armed merchant cruisers heading 318'T at 6,7 kts. The convoy is less than
4,000 yds away. This is
the darkest hour of the night so they haven't seen us yet.
Unfortunately, one of the
the two escorts (which I just detected now) has, and they open fire.
I order a crash dive
immediately.
One shell hit us and
caused heavy leaking in the fwd torpedo room. The outer doors of tube 3
were also damaged.
luckily no torpedo was in that tube. Naturally they dropped some DCs on us
too, and they hit us
again. This time causing moderate leaking in storage room 1 and minor
leaking in aft torpedo
room. DC motor 1 and engine 1 took minor damage.
After a while our pumps
could not keep up with the flooding, so I took her up from 250 ft to
150 ft. And then to 100
ft. Here the pumps could keep up as the minor leakings were repaired.
00:36
Finally we got rid of
those escorts. No further damage was done by the 42 DCs they dropped.
We surface to reload our
batteries and repair the damages tube.
21. July 1943
05:16
Contacts detected by
radar at 13,700 yds. We turn to intercept. We got visual of 1 troop
transport and 1 MUTSUKI
DD, later also 2 converted factory ships, 1 std. merchant and 2 large
freighters, heading 320'T
at 6 kts. My main target here is the troop transport.
Torpedo depth is set to
10 ft. Fired torpedo 1-3 at 1,800 yds, all three were duds. Fired
torpedo 7-10 from 1,500
yds. Torpedo 7 was a dud, while torpedo 8 hit the target and sink the
troop transport. Torpedo
9 & 10 also hits, and assures the sinking of the ship so to speak.
The escort did a lousy
job in finding us, and at 06:30 it gives up and leaves.
07:24
Sonar reports low-speed
screws bearing 043'R. At PD I can see 1 std. merchant and 2 troop
transports escorted by a
FUBUKI DD. I set torpedo depth to 9 ft, and at 1,800 yds I fire our
last torpedo at a troop transport, but it's a dud. We escape from the escort without any
problems. Not one DC is
dropped on us.
18:17
After some scary moments
on this patrol, and with the large share of bad torpedoes, we finally
can head home to get some
well deserved R&R.
CMDR Ronny Gundersen
CO: USS Pogy, SS-266
SubRon 4A
U.S. Navy
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