Last Call from GRUNION
30 JULY 1942
LAST CALL FROM GRUNION
On 30 June 1942, LCDR Mannert L. Abele conned the new Gato-class submarine USS GRUNION (SS-216) out of Pearl Harbor on her first war patrol. WWII was seven months old, and the first glimmers of success in the Pacific had been recorded weeks earlier at the battles of Coral Sea and Midway. Efforts to reverse Japanese gains were beginning, in particular, their annoying presence on American soil in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. GRUNION was to patrol in that area, assigned to the sea lanes north of enemy-held Kiska Island. Her first action came on 15 July when she fired three torpedoes unsuccessfully at a destroyer and was depth-charged for her efforts. Later that same day Abele’s crew battled three sub chasers, this time sinking Ch. 25 and Ch. 27 and damaging the third. She prowled the area for the next two weeks despite increasing Japanese wariness. On this day, GRUNION reported heavy anti-submarine activity at the approaches to Kiska Harbor, receiving a recall to Dutch Harbor as well. When nothing further was seen or heard from her thereafter, on 5 October GRUNION was officially listed as overdue and presumed lost.
Her demise remained a mystery, for Japanese records failed to report any sinking around the time of GRUNION’s disappearance. Then in March 1963 a sailor claiming to have been the superintendent aboard the 8572-ton freighter Kano Maru came forward with the story that on 31 July 1942, the day after GRUNION’s last report, the freighter was steaming in heavy fog off Kiska. Suddenly two torpedoes streaked toward her, one missing and the other penetrating without exploding aft of her starboard engine room. Her machinery flooded and her generator and radio were knocked out. Japanese merchant sailors sprang to their 8cm gun and began firing at a periscope wake to starboard. Another torpedo passed harmlessly under the keel, followed by three more, two of which struck but again failed to detonate. Kano Maru’s attacker then broke the surface to port in an apparent attempt to employ her deck gun. A lucky shot from the Japanese gun riddled her conning tower just as her main deck went dry. Then a tall spout of water erupted near the submarine, and she slipped beneath the waves.
If the above account truly describes GRUNION’s loss, modern navalists doubt that a single hit to her “sail” would have sunk the boat. It is theorized that one of her own errant torpedoes may have circled back to strike GRUNION, a dangerous defect of early WWII torpedoes. In any case, her 70 crewmen remain unaccounted for. LCDR Abele was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, and before the end of WWII he was further commemorated with the Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer USS MANNERT L. ABELE (DD-733).
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 5 AUG 25
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 170.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, p. 222.
Holmes, Harry. The Last Patrol. Shrewsbury, England: Airlife Publishing, Ltd., 1994, pp. 24-25.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol VII Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1951, pp. 7, 12.
“Search for the USS Grunion.” AT: http://ussgrunion.com/blog/2006/ 09/22/whitefish-engineer-returns-from-stormy-bering-sea-with-tale-of-discovery/, 5 October 2006.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: As illustrated above, the Mark 41 torpedo that was in use early in WWII was notoriously defective. It often deviated from its set depth, and the fusing mechanism failed when the torpedo made a directly perpendicular hit (the desired attack angle). Modern torpedoes do not arm until they have traveled a prescribed distance to prevent disaster if a torpedo accidentally circles back to its launch point.
In the years since WWII, surviving relatives of LCDR Abele conducted an intensive search for GRUNION. After months of privately funded, open-ocean searching with towed side-scanning sonar, in August 2006 they announced the discovery of a hard target appearing to be the wreckage of a WWII submarine 2700 feet down off Kiska, just north of McArthur Reef. This location supports the story of the Japanese sailor from 1963. The identity of GRUNION’s wreck was confirmed by the Navy in October 2008. Her 70 crewmen remain aboard.
USS MANNERT L. ABELE was also lost in WWII, falling victim to kamikazes off Okinawa 12 April 1945.
