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Divers in SE Asia May Have Found US WWII Sub |
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Bob ![]() Rickover ![]() Joined: 06 Jan 2016 Status: Offline Points: 904 |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Posted: 17 Sep 2020 at 8:52am |
Divers in Southeast Asia May Have Found US Submarine Lost in WWII An
image on a sonar screen shows a silhouette shape of a submarine lying on the
ocean floor somewhere in the Strait of Malacca on Oct. 21, 2019. Divers have
found what they believe is the wreck of a U.S. Navy submarine lost 77 years ago
in Southeast Asia, providing a coda to a stirring but little-known tale from
World War II. (Jean Luc Rivoire via AP) 17
Sep 2020 The
Associated Press | By Grant
Peck BANGKOK — Divers have found what they believe is
the wreck of a U.S. Navy submarine
lost 77 years ago in Southeast Asia, providing a coda to a stirring but
little-known tale from World War II. The divers have sent photos and other evidence
from six dives they made from October 2019 to March this year to the United
States Naval History and Heritage Command for verification that they have found
the USS Grenadier, one of 52 American submarines lost during the conflict. The 1,475-ton, 307-foot long Grenadier was
scuttled by its crew after bombs from a Japanese plane almost sent them to a
watery grave. All 76 of its personnel survived the bombing and sinking, but
their agony to follow would be prolonged. After being taken prisoner, they were
tortured, beaten and nearly starved by their Japanese captors for more than two
years, and four did not survive that ordeal. The wreck lies 82 meters (270 feet) underwater
somewhere in the Strait of Malacca, about 150 kilometers (92 miles) south of
Phuket, Thailand. It was discovered by Singapore-based Jean Luc Rivoire and
Benoit Laborie of France, and Australian Lance Horowitz and Belgian Ben
Reymenants, who live in Phuket, Thailand. Reymenants was one of the divers who took part in
the dramatic rescue of a dozen boys and their soccer coach who got trapped in a
cave in northern Thailand two years ago. The Belgian has been researching possible
locations for shipwrecks for many years, Horowitz said in an interview with The
Associated Press, and Rivoire had a suitable boat to explore the leads he
found. Reymenants would ask fishermen if there were any odd spots where they’d
lost nets, and then the team would use side-looking sonar to scan the sea floor
for distinct shapes. When they dived to look at one promising object,
it was a lot bigger than expected, so they dug back into the archives to try to
figure out which lost vessel it could be, and then dived again. “And so we went back looking for clues,
nameplate, but we couldn’t find any of those,” recalled Horowitz. “And in the
end, we took very precise measurements of the submarine and compared those with
the naval records. And they’re exactly, as per the drawings, the exact same
size. So we’re pretty confident that it is the USS Grenadier.” The Navy command’s Underwater Archaeology Branch
on average receives two to three such requests a year from searchers like the
Grenadier divers, said its head, Dr. Robert Neyland, in an email to The
Associated Press. “A complete review, analysis, and documentation
may take two months to a year to complete,” he said, adding that it will likely
take a few months in the case of this potential discovery. The Grenadier left Pearl Harbor on Feb. 4, 1942,
on its initial war patrol. Its first five missions took it to Japanese home
waters, the Formosa shipping lanes, the southwest Pacific, the South China Sea
and the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). It sank six ships
and damaged two. It sailed on March 20, 1943, from Fremantle,
Australia, on its sixth patrol, to the Malacca Strait and north into the
Andaman Sea. The commanding officer, Lt. Cdr. John A.
Fitzgerald, recorded what happened there in a report written after being freed
from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1945. On the night of April 20, the submarine glimpsed
two small freighters and set course to intercept them the next morning, sailing
on the surface for speed. In the morning, a plane was sighted; an immediate
crash dive was ordered, but the ship did not descend far enough, fast enough.
Blasts from two bombs battered the sub; key parts of the vessel were mangled;
power and lights were lost and a fire broke out. All hands desperately worked
to fix what they could as Fitzgerald ordered the ship to stay on the sea floor. When it surfaced after 13 hours it was clear the
Grenadier was too crippled to flee or fight. An effort was made to rig
makeshift sails on a periscope to reach shore before blowing up the vessel, but
there was dead calm. As dawn broke, two ships on the horizon were
closing in. Codebooks and sensitive equipment were destroyed as preparations
were made to scuttle the submarine. A Japanese plane made a run at the ship,
but was fought off with small arms, dropping a bomb harmlessly about 200 meters
(yards) away. The crew abandoned ship at 0830 and an hour later were hauled
aboard an armed merchant ship, which took them to Penang, a major port town on
the Malayan Peninsula. At a Catholic school requisitioned by the
Japanese for use as a prison, events took an even darker turn. “The rough treatment started the first afternoon,
particularly with the (enlisted) men. They were forced to sit or stand in
silence in an attention attitude," wrote Fitzgerald. "Any divergence
resulted in a gun butt, kick, slug in the face or a bayonet prick. In the
questioning room, persuasive measures, such as clubs, about the size of indoor
ball bats, pencils between the fingers and pushing of the blade of a pen knife
under the finger nails, trying to get us to talk about our submarine and the
location of other submarines.” After a few months, all the crew were transferred
to camps in Japan, where the abuse continued. Four died from a lack of medical
attention. “This
was an important ship during the war and it was very important to all the crew
that served on her,” diver Horowitz said last week. “When you read the book of
the survivors, that was, you know, quite an ordeal they went through and to
know where she finally lies and rests, I’m sure it’s very satisfying for them
and their families to be able to have some closure.” |
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SaltiDawg ![]() Rickover ![]() ![]() Joined: 03 Jan 2016 Location: Rockville, MD Status: Offline Points: 2865 |
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Per Admiral Lockwood:
Admiration for their skipper was universal among the crew of the Grenadier. The statement of William C. Withrow, CTM, said: “I think as much of Commander Fitzgerald, our skipper, almost as I do of my father. He went through hell for us. They beat him, jumped on his stomach and tortured him by burning splints under his nails. He never talked. They even had him working in the mines for telling the Jap Commander just what he thought of him.” |
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