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USS GROWLER's (SS0215) first war patrol of WWII began 29 June 1942 as she cleared Pearl Harbor for her assigned patrol area around Dutch Harbor, Alaska; topping off at Midway on 24 June she entered her area on 30 June. Five days later she saw her first action; sighting three destroyers, GROWLER closed them for a submerged torpedo attack and then surfaced. Her torpedoes struck the first two targets amidships putting them out of action, and hit the third in the bow but not before she had fired two torpedoes at GROWLER. As the Japanese torpedoes "swished down each side" GROWLER, she dived deep. but no depth charges followed. One of the torpedoed destroyers, Arare, was sunk, and the other two were severely damaged. GROWLER completed her patrol without finding any more targets, and on 17 July berthed at Pearl Harbor.
On 5 August GROWLER began her second and most successful war patrol, entering her area near Taiwan on 21 August. Two days later she conducted a submerged night attack on a freighter, surfacing to give chase when both torpedoes ran under the target and failed to explode; the freighter's quick exit into shallow waters prevented GROWLER from gun attack. Patrolling amidst a large fishing fleet on 25 August, GROWLER sighted and fired at a large passenger freighter but all three torpedoes missed; after a 3-hour depth charge attack, in which some 53 ash cans were dropped, GROWLER surfaced and almost immediately spotted a convoy. After 2 hours of maneuvering, she failed to catch up with the main body of the convoy but did fire at and sink an ex-gunboat, the Senyo Maru. No more ships appeared in this immediate area for 3 days so GROWLER shifted to the east side of the island. First fall victim was Eifuku Maru, a 5,866-ton cargo ship GROWLER sank within 40 minutes after first sighting her 31 August. On 4 September GROWLER sank by gunfire the Kashino, a 4,000-ton supply ship; 3 days later she sent two torpedoes into the 2,204-ton cargo ship Taika Maru, which broke in half and sank in 2 minutes. On 15 September GROWLER cleared her patrol area, and arrived back at Pearl 30 September.
During refitting, new surface radar was installed, well as a new 20-mm. gun; thus equipped, GROWLER sailed from Hawaii for her new patrol area in the Solomon Islands across the key Truk-Rabaul shipping lines. Her patrol area in these days of bitter fighting over Guadalcanal was almost continually covered by enemy planes and only eight enemy ships were sighted with no chance for attack. GROWLER cleared the area 3 December and arrived in Brisbane, Australia, 10 December.
New Year's Day of 1943 saw GROWLER sail from Brisbane for
what was to prove one of the most gallant actions in naval history. Entering
her patrol area, again athwart the Truk-Rabaul shipping lanes, on 11 January,
she waited only 5 days before sighting an enemy convoy. Maneuvering inside
the escorts, GROWLER fired two torpedoes and saw them hit; then,
as her war diary reports she was in the unfortunate predicament of being
about 400 yards from the destroyer and had to dive without being able to
continue the attack. She was credited with sinking Chifuku Maru,
a passenger-cargo ship.
The patrol continued as normal with two further attacks, but no
sinkings until shortly after 0100, 7 February when GROWLER stealthily
approached a gunboat for a night surface attack. The small fast ship suddenly
turned to ram, Lcdr. Gilmore then took the only move to save his ship;
he brought GROWLER left full rudder and rammed the enemy amidships
at 17 knots. Machine gun fire raked the bridge at point blank range. The
courageous sub seemed lost. Lcdr. Gilmore cleared the bridge except for
himself. Desperately wounded, he realized that he could not get below in
time if his ship were to be saved "Take her down" he ordered; and,
as he floated in the sea, he wrote another stirring tale of inspirational
naval history. For his heroic sacrifice to ship and crew, Lcdr. Gilmore
was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, one of seven submariners
to receive this medal of valor.
Severely damaged but still under control, GROWLER returned to Brisbane under command of her exec., Lcdr. A. F. Schade; she docked 17 February for extensive repairs.
GROWLER's fifth, sixth, and seventh patrols, out of Brisbane to the Bismarck-Solomons area, were relatively uneventful, heavy enemy air cover and a lack of targets resulted in her coming home empty-handed from all but the fifth, on which she sank the passenger-cargo ship Miyadono Maru. The seventh patrol was marred by trouble with the storage battery and generators, and on 27 October 1943, only 11 days out of Brisbane, she was ordered to Pearl Harbor, arriving 7 November, and from there to the Navy Yard at Hunter's Point, Ca., for an extensive overhaul and refitting.
Returning to the Pacific, on 21 February 1944, GROWLER departed Pearl Harbor, and after refueling at Midway, headed for her patrol area. However, a week out of Midway a typhoon's high seas and wind delayed her arrival to the patrol area. Once there, GROWLER was again plagued by violent weather which made even periscope observation almost impossible.
GROWLER returned to Majuro 16 April, and departed there 14 May to take up patrol in the Marianas-Eastern Philippines-Luzon area, where the first stages of the attack on the Marianas and the Battle of the Philippine Sea were getting underway. Rendezvousing with USS BANG (SS385) and USS SEAHORSE I (SS304) to form a wolfpack, she continued the patrol closing several targets but achieving firing position only once, when she sank the cargo vessel Katori Maru.
Her 10th patrol, from Pearl Harbor 11 August, found her in a new wolfpack, nicknamed "Ben's Busters" after GROWLER's skipper Cdr. T. B. Oakley; in company with USS SEALION II (SS315) and USS PAMPANITO (SS383), she headed for the Formosa Straits area. Aided greatly by reconnaissance and guidance from planes, the wolfpack closed a convoy for night surface action 31 August; their torpedoes plunged the Japanese into chaos, with their own ships shooting at each other in the dark, but no sinkings were reported. Two weeks later, 12 September, the wolfpack sighted a second convoy and closed for torpedo action. A destroyer spotted GROWLER and attacked her, but the sub calmly fired a spread at the destroyer. Heavily damaged by the torpedoes, the flaming destroyer bore down on GROWLER and only adroit maneuvering took her out of the enemy's way; paint on the bridge was seared by the heat of the passing destroyer. Meantime GROWLER's other torpedoes and those of SEALION and PAMPANITO were hitting the convoy, and when Ben's Busters returned to Fremantle 26 September, they were credited with a total of six enemy ships. GROWLER had sunk the destroyer SHIKINAMI and the frigate HIRADO; and her companions had racked up two each. The submarines had also rescued over 150 Allied prisoners from one of the torpedoed ships which had served the Japanese as a prison ship. This difficult operation had been carried out despite rough seas caused by an approaching typhoon.
Early in November 1944, USS GROWLER I (SS-215), USS HAKE (SS-256) and USS HARDHEAD (SS-365) were operating together west of the Philippine group as a coordinated search and attack group under the command of Cdr. T.B. Oakley, Jr., commanding GROWLER. The patrol was GROWLER's eleventh. On 7 November, GROWLER reported having made temporary repairs to her SJ radar which made it usable, but that she urgently needed spare parts for it. A future rendezvous was arranged with USS BREAM (SS-243) for the purpose of delivering the parts.
In the early morning hours of 8 November, GROWLER, then in 13!-21'N;119-32'E, made SJ radar contact on an enemy target group, and reported it to HARDHEAD. Cdr. Oakley directed HARDHEAD to track and attack from the convoy's port bow. Shortly thereafter, HARDHEAD made contact with both the target group and GROWLER. After about an hour had passed HAKE heard two distant explosions of undetermined character, and HARDHEAD heard an explosion which sounded like a torpedo. At the same time, the targets zigged away from GROWLER. Shortly after, HARDHEAD heard three distant depth charges explode.
A little over an hour after these explosions, HARDHEAD attacked the target from the port bow, obtained three or four hits, and HAKE saw a tanker sink. HARDHEAD was subjected to a severe counterattack from which it emerged undamaged, while HAKE was worked over thoroughly later in the morning. All attempts to contact GROWLER after this attack were unsuccessful, and she was never heard from since. The rendezvous with BREAM for the delivery of SJ spare parts was not accomplished. Since GROWLER had tracked targets by radar for at least an hour, it appears that her temporary SJ repairs must have been satisfactory.
Although Japanese records mention no antisubmarine attacks at this time and place, it is evident that depth charges were dropped in the vicinity of GROWLER, but in the absence of more conclusive evidence the cause of her loss must be describe as unknown. The Japanese admit that a tanker was sunk that night which checks with HARDHEAD's sinking. HARDHEAD was heavily depth charged following her own attack and later that morning HAKE was expertly worked over presumably by the same escorts. This leads to the belief that if GROWLER was sunk by depth charging it was at the hands of a skillful antisubmarine group.
The explosion described by HARDHEAD as "possibly a torpedo" may have been a depth charge or a torpedo explosion. It is unlikely that a torpedo hit was made on the convoy at this time because if the tanker had been hit she probably would either have burst into flame, as she subsequently did when hit by HARDHEAD, or slowed down if hit in the engineroom. She did neither, nor was there any evidence that any of the three escorts were hit. However, since only three subsequent explosions were heard by HAKE, and a number of depth charges generally are dropped in an accurate or persistent antisubmarine attack, a number of possibilities exist as to GROWLER's end.
She could have been sunk as the result of a premature or circular run of her own torpedo, and the three depth charges heard by HAKE may have been only a token attack by the escort. Although there was a quarter moon, the night was somewhat misty, and she might have been rammed, thus making it unnecessary for the escort to drop many depth charges. She could have been caught at either radar or periscope depth and the antisubmarine group, evidently a good one, might have verified the results of their attack immediately. An escort could have hit her with a torpedo and only dropped a few depth charges to insure a kill. In any event, sinking by her own torpedoes is only a slight possibility. It is doubtful whether a report by the escorts of this convoy would help to decide this question. In the cases of USS TULLIBEE I (SS-284) and USS TANG I (SS-306), where survivors' statements leave little doubt that destruction was by their own torpedoes, the Japanese ships which picked up survivors claimed to have sunk the submarines themselves.
GROWLER received eight battle stars for her service in World War II.
