Greatest U.S. submarine victories of WW2

[whitehall]

It seems that most celebrated U.S. submarine victories were relatively minor incursions that made little difference in the war effort but they were dramatic enough to become legendary. I might be wrong but it seems that U.S. submarines were conspicuously absent in major surface engagements. The four Japanese carriers in Midway would have been sitting ducks but submarines weren't around. Was there a disconnect between Halsey's surface command and the undersea agenda?

 

[DudleySmith]

The U.S. sub that sunk most of Japan's skilled oil industry technicians and engineers. The Japs put around a thousand of them on one ship, heading for the Dutch Indies and their oil field, when an American sub sunk it, killing about 800 of them.

 

[DudleySmith]

Early in the war a lot of the U.S.'s torpedoes were poorly made and not very reliable.

The Mark 14 torpedo was the United States Navy's standard submarine-launched anti-ship torpedo of World War II. This weapon was plagued with many problems which crippled its performance early in the war. It was supplemented by the Mark 18 electric torpedo in the last two years of the war. From December 1941 to November 1943 the Mark 14 and the destroyer-launched Mark 15 torpedo had numerous technical problems that took almost two years to fix.[3] After the fixes, the Mark 14 played a major role in the devastating blow U.S. Navy submarines dealt to the Japanese naval and merchant marine forces during the Pacific War.

By the end of World War II, the Mark 14 torpedo was a reliable weapon ultimately remaining in service for almost 40 years in the U.S. Navy, and even longer with other navies.

Mark 14 torpedo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[shockedcanadian]

I can't even imagine the stress of being in a sub when the barrel explosives are being dropped. The human species is demented.

 

[whitehall]

Early in the war a lot of the U.S.'s torpedoes were poorly made and not very reliable.

The Mark 14 torpedo was the United States Navy's standard submarine-launched anti-ship torpedo of World War II. This weapon was plagued with many problems which crippled its performance early in the war. It was supplemented by the Mark 18 electric torpedo in the last two years of the war. From December 1941 to November 1943 the Mark 14 and the destroyer-launched Mark 15 torpedo had numerous technical problems that took almost two years to fix.[3] After the fixes, the Mark 14 played a major role in the devastating blow U.S. Navy submarines dealt to the Japanese naval and merchant marine forces during the Pacific War.

By the end of World War II, the Mark 14 torpedo was a reliable weapon ultimately remaining in service for almost 40 years in the U.S. Navy, and even longer with other navies.

Mark 14 torpedo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The torpedos supplied to Subs and Dive Bombers were criminally deficient but that's a subject for another time. What I am talking about is the submarine force agenda and the surface navy. Was there a disconnect in the command structure? Was Halsey able to coordinate subs and surface ships in a engagement or were subs considered to be a separate entity of the Navy??

 

[1srelluc]

Subs worked with the surface fleet.

Due the long distances the carrier aircraft had to cover subs were stationed between the targets and the fleet. When a aircraft went down they picked them up. Navy aircrew were highly valued.

The most famous example.



They also worked with the US Army Air Force doing the same thing, picking-up aircrew that had to bail-out or ditch after attacks on the Japanese mainland.

US subs decimated the Japanese merchant fleet, they were far more valuable doing that than messing with the surface fleet. Report instead of engage.

The Japanese on the other hand used their attack subs for fleet to fleet engagements and were pretty successful early on.....Later that doctrine was a death sentence.

The IJN pursued the doctrine of guerre d'escadre (fleet vs fleet warfare), and consequently submarines were often used in offensive roles against warships.

Warships were more difficult to attack and sink than merchant ships, however, because naval vessels were faster, more maneuverable, and better defended.

The IJN submarine arm did have a number of notable successes against American warships, however. During the Battle of Midway, I-168 administered the final coup de grace that sank the fleet carrier USS Yorktown, as well as sinking the destroyer USS Hammann.

A few months later, on September 15, 1942, with a single salvo of torpedoes, Japanese submarine I-19 sank the fleet carrier USS Wasp and damaged both the battleship USS North Carolina and the destroyer USS O'Brien.

On November 13, 1942, the submarine I-26 torpedoed and sank the anti-aircraft cruiser USS Juneau, and a year later on November 23, 1943, the submarine I-175 torpedoed and sank the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay, both with heavy loss of life.

The I-176 had the distinction of both severely damaging the heavy cruiser USS Chester, knocking her out of the war for a year, on October 20, 1942, and of also sinking USS Corvina (the only American submarine to be sunk by a Japanese submarine in the entire war) on November 16, 1943.

Twice in the first year of the war, Japanese submarines torpedoed the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, and, while not sinking her, put her in the repair yard at a time when the US Navy could ill afford to do without her.

Saratoga was torpedoed by submarine I-6 on January 11, 1942, putting her out of action and unavailable to participate in the desperate carrier battles and raids of the next five months, and then hit again three months after her return on September 1, 1942, by I-26, which put her out of action for another eleven weeks in the middle of the intensely engaged land-air-sea battles of the Guadalcanal Campaign.

Submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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[mamooth]

One submarine played a critical role at Midway.

SS-168 USS Nautilus (a WW2 V-boat, and not the later first-nuclear-sub) ran across the Japanese carrier task force. She couldn't get in position to take a shot at a carrier. The Japanese destroyer IJN Arashi was assigned to leave the carrier convoy and drive off the sub.

So Arashi did that. When Nautilus surfaced later, the Japanese carriers were long gone. Arashi headed at flank speed back to the carriers.

At the same time, Wade McClusky and his dive bombers from Enterprise were _not_ finding the Japanese carriers. Spotting Arashi heading back, McCluskey had a hunch it was heading for the carriers, and changed course to follow it.

So, had Nautilus not been there, McClusky never would have found the Japanese carriers.

After US dive bombers wrecked the carriers, Nautilus was able to line up a shot on the burning carrier IJN Kaga. One torpedo failed to run at all, two ran erratically, and one hit and was a dud.

 

[mamooth]

Basically, the policy was to _not_ tie submarines to the surface fleet. That restricted the movements of the submarines, and made them less effective. Surface ships couldn't go raiding deep into Japanese-held waters like the submarines could.

Sub commanders were told to get out there and attack, attack, attack. Any sub commander who wouldn't put his boat in harm's way was relieved of command and replaced by someone who would.

 

[DudleySmith]

The torpedos supplied to Subs and Dive Bombers were criminally deficient but that's a subject for another time. What I am talking about is the submarine force agenda and the surface navy. Was there a disconnect in the command structure? Was Halsey able to coordinate subs and surface ships in a engagement or were subs considered to be a separate entity of the Navy??

I already pointed out why subs were ineffective that early in the war and Midway. Sorry the reasons don't fit any of your weird conspiracy theories, but it's not my job to go along with those. They belong in the conspiracy theory forum, not the history forum.

 

[DudleySmith]

US subs decimated the Japanese merchant fleet, they were far more valuable doing that than messing with the surface fleet. Report instead of engage.

Yes, they did indeed do a lot of damage to their supply lines and shipping. If they hadn't had so many crappy torpedoes they could have shut them down entirely.

 

[1srelluc]

Yes, they did indeed do a lot of damage to their supply lines and shipping. If they hadn't had so many crappy torpedoes they could have shut them down entirely.

LOL.....Toward the end some skippers were told not to waste a torpedo on merchant vessels under a certain tonnage as the bean counters (evidently they had them back then too) thought they were not worth the price of a torpedo.....I believe it was generally ignored.

 

[alang1216]

It seems that most celebrated U.S. submarine victories were relatively minor incursions that made little difference in the war effort but they were dramatic enough to become legendary. I might be wrong but it seems that U.S. submarines were conspicuously absent in major surface engagements. The four Japanese carriers in Midway would have been sitting ducks but submarines weren't around. Was there a disconnect between Halsey's surface command and the undersea agenda?

My favorite WWII sub story was the one where a sub landed some Americans on a remote part of Japan and blew up a train. Probably have the details wrong but it did happen.

 

[AZrailwhale]

LOL.....Toward the end some skippers were told not to waste a torpedo on merchant vessels under a certain tonnage as the bean counters (evidently they had them back then too) thought they were not worth the price of a torpedo.....I believe it was generally ignored.

When you are talking about a hundred-ton sampan, it's better to sink it with a deck gun than waste a torpedo. Especially since the nearest torpedo reloads were in Australia weeks of commute away. When a sub ran out of torpedoes, it had to return to base unless it was tasked with "lifeguard" duties for air strikes.

 

[whitehall]

Nazi submarines preyed on mostly unarmed civilian shipping early in the war and they were called "wolf packs" for good reason. There wasn't much opportunity for American subs in the Atlantic so most of the operations centered in the Pacific. The problem was that they were slow underwater and needed battery charging on the surface and they weren't really as effective as legend would have it.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Nazi submarines preyed on mostly unarmed civilian shipping early in the war and they were called "wolf packs" for good reason. There wasn't much opportunity for American subs in the Atlantic so most of the operations centered in the Pacific. The problem was that they were slow underwater and needed battery charging on the surface and they weren't really as effective as legend would have it.

There was a difference in scale between the convoys run by the Allies and those run by the Japanese. Allied convoys were large with anything from non-existent to small numbers of escorts. I hate to use Hollywood for an example, but look at the Tom Hanks movie Greyhound for an example, two destroyers and a corvette escorting over thirty merchies. The Japanese ran very small convoys with similar-sized escorts.
in the early war years convoys of thirty or more ships would be lucky to have a converted trawler and maybe a superannuated destroyer for an escort. In lower threat areas like the South Atlantic, convoys might not have any escorts at all.

 

[SavannahMann]

Nazi submarines preyed on mostly unarmed civilian shipping early in the war and they were called "wolf packs" for good reason. There wasn't much opportunity for American subs in the Atlantic so most of the operations centered in the Pacific. The problem was that they were slow underwater and needed battery charging on the surface and they weren't really as effective as legend would have it.

I am not sure where to begin. First, you have to take into account combat multipliers. Let’s explain that.

Let’s say you destroy an oil tanker. Ok, that now restricts the amount of oil that the Japanese can move. That reduces the amount of Oil that they can use. It reduces the numbers of ships they can put out to sea to hunt the submarines. It’s a bit counter intuitive, but we saw it ourselves.

Patton was tearing across France. He had the momentum, and the Germans were unable to gather sufficient force to stop him. However, Patton ran out of Gas. His tanks couldn’t move. His attack stalled out because of supply. And that was just one well known example.

The same was true of the Japanese. Their ships needed fuel to move. And there was a shortage of Fuel when the war started. That shortage became even more pronounced as the war continued. The Sortie of the massed fleet for Midway for example, burned up a lot of fuel they could only risk if they could stop the raids the American Carriers were conducting. They needed to take the American Carriers off the board, because the Carriers were damaging and destroying ships and harbor facilities around the Pacific.

Take the raid at Truk. Yes, they destroyed some warships. But the biggest blow wasn’t the warships. It was the merchantmen. 32 Merchant hulls destroyed. That is thirty two ships that aren’t running supplies to the Japanese Forces on the islands. 32 ships that aren’t carrying fuel to the fleet at forward bases. Or reinforcements to better defend the islands the Japanese had taken.

Wars are fought by warships, soldiers, and Marines. Granted. However, wars are won or lost on supplies. Beans and Bullets may not be as sexy as planes and ships. But they are vital to the battle.

Even when we started to get the Battleships of Pearl Harbor repaired and back into the war, we didn’t use them. It wasn’t that we couldn’t risk them. It was that we couldn’t fuel them. We didn’t have the ships needed to transport the fuel for all the ships we did have. We could fuel either the Carrier task-forces, or the battleships, and we preferred the Carriers.

The same was true of the Japanese. Even damaging the hulls we attacked by Submarine, not sunk in other words. That damaged ship clogged up harbors, and took up resources the Japanese could ill afford to repair the ship. Like your example of warships alone, the Japanese focused on repairing their warships, and left the vital supply vessels to wait for repairs.

When Yamato set out on her suicide charge. She barely had enough fuel to reach Okinawa. She wouldn’t have enough fuel to return. From an Unsinkable ship in 1941, to a sacrificial glorious charge in 1945, impotent though it was.

Killing Merchant Hulls as they were, the Submarines were in fact having a greater effect on the war than if they had been focusing on warships alone. Because from our own experience, starving soldiers don’t fight as well as well fed and supplied troops.

Put it this way. When you destroy a supply vessel. You not only destroy the supplies on that ship right now. You prevent the next ten voyages already scheduled for that ship in the future.

 

[Deadstick]

There was a difference in scale between the convoys run by the Allies and those run by the Japanese. Allied convoys were large with anything from non-existent to small numbers of escorts. I hate to use Hollywood for an example, but look at the Tom Hanks movie Greyhound for an example, two destroyers and a corvette escorting over thirty merchies. The Japanese ran very small convoys with similar-sized escorts.
in the early war years convoys of thirty or more ships would be lucky to have a converted trawler and maybe a superannuated destroyer for an escort. In lower threat areas like the South Atlantic, convoys might not have any escorts at all.

The Germans had a field day sinking our merchant shipping for a long time, they were ruthlessly efficient i knew a man who survived a attack on his ship but had to go over the side into the sea which must have been terrifying, but as the war went on our anti sub tactics were better, an Uncle of mine my Dads Brother served on a frigate HMS Stayner which i believe had been a US Coastguard ship, at first when he joined the Royal Navy, his ship was involved in the sinking of a U Boat in the English Channel at 0230hrs on the 4th August 1944 by depth charge, 47 dead and five survivors, the Commander went down with it, Kapitanleutnant Wolfgang Hegenwald, his U Boat left Kiel on 15th May 1944, later my Uncle served on HMS Victorious aircraft carrier as a Oerlikon Gunner in the battle of Okinawa alongside the US Navy.

 

[Dayton3]

Anyone mentioned the U.S submarine (Archerfish)that sank the converted to a carrier Yamato class battleship Shinano..? It was more than 30 times the tonnage of the submarine. The largest carrier in the world until the Forrestall class ships.

Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[whitehall]

I am not sure where to begin. First, you have to take into account combat multipliers. Let’s explain that.

Let’s say you destroy an oil tanker. Ok, that now restricts the amount of oil that the Japanese can move. That reduces the amount of Oil that they can use. It reduces the numbers of ships they can put out to sea to hunt the submarines. It’s a bit counter intuitive, but we saw it ourselves.

Patton was tearing across France. He had the momentum, and the Germans were unable to gather sufficient force to stop him. However, Patton ran out of Gas. His tanks couldn’t move. His attack stalled out because of supply. And that was just one well known example.

The same was true of the Japanese. Their ships needed fuel to move. And there was a shortage of Fuel when the war started. That shortage became even more pronounced as the war continued. The Sortie of the massed fleet for Midway for example, burned up a lot of fuel they could only risk if they could stop the raids the American Carriers were conducting. They needed to take the American Carriers off the board, because the Carriers were damaging and destroying ships and harbor facilities around the Pacific.

Take the raid at Truk. Yes, they destroyed some warships. But the biggest blow wasn’t the warships. It was the merchantmen. 32 Merchant hulls destroyed. That is thirty two ships that aren’t running supplies to the Japanese Forces on the islands. 32 ships that aren’t carrying fuel to the fleet at forward bases. Or reinforcements to better defend the islands the Japanese had taken.

Wars are fought by warships, soldiers, and Marines. Granted. However, wars are won or lost on supplies. Beans and Bullets may not be as sexy as planes and ships. But they are vital to the battle.

Even when we started to get the Battleships of Pearl Harbor repaired and back into the war, we didn’t use them. It wasn’t that we couldn’t risk them. It was that we couldn’t fuel them. We didn’t have the ships needed to transport the fuel for all the ships we did have. We could fuel either the Carrier task-forces, or the battleships, and we preferred the Carriers.

The same was true of the Japanese. Even damaging the hulls we attacked by Submarine, not sunk in other words. That damaged ship clogged up harbors, and took up resources the Japanese could ill afford to repair the ship. Like your example of warships alone, the Japanese focused on repairing their warships, and left the vital supply vessels to wait for repairs.

When Yamato set out on her suicide charge. She barely had enough fuel to reach Okinawa. She wouldn’t have enough fuel to return. From an Unsinkable ship in 1941, to a sacrificial glorious charge in 1945, impotent though it was.

Killing Merchant Hulls as they were, the Submarines were in fact having a greater effect on the war than if they had been focusing on warships alone. Because from our own experience, starving soldiers don’t fight as well as well fed and supplied troops.

Put it this way. When you destroy a supply vessel. You not only destroy the supplies on that ship right now. You prevent the next ten voyages already scheduled for that ship in the future.

Yeah right, a torpedo in fat oil tanker helped end the war.

 

[SavannahMann]

Yeah right, a torpedo in fat oil tanker helped end the war.

It does. Strategic bombing in Europe as one example. The Air Force didn’t try and bomb Military bases. They tried to take out ball bearing factories. Oil refineries. Anything making parts for the V-1 and V-2 missiles.

This had an effect on German war plans. The Battle of the Bulge. The Germans started the battle with minimal fuel. Part of their plan was to capture fuel from the Allies as they attacked.

A tanker full of oil is a great target to hit. Without that oil the big bad warship ain’t going anywhere.

An Army used to march on its stomach. That was a quote from Napoleon. From the Second World War on, an army floated on a sea of fuel.

Do the math. One Destroyer burns about 1,000 gallons of fuel an hour.

FYI: What Kind Of Gas Mileage Can You Get From A Naval Warship?

A hulking Arleigh Burke–class destroyer might typically burn a minimum of about 24 barrels (1,000 gallons) of fuel per hour, but this figure conceals so

www.popsci.com

Multiply that by fifty. And that is a lot of fuel for a fleet to go out and even offer a token fight.