USS Wahoo Found

[Captain Krunch]

News reports are coming out that the USS Wahoo, commanded by Mush Morton and sunk in October 1943 off the coast of Japan with all hands, has been found:

USS Wahoo found

Background information on the Wahoo can be found here.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Thanks for the link! I can't imagine what those fellows went through.

 

[mikepara]

At least its..

...deep and the current is fast enough to deter 'grave robbing treasure hunters'. I wonder if the navy will take the relatives out for a service?
USS Wahoo R.I.P

 

[Twitch]

Hot danm that's super news! I have always been a Mush Morton and Wahoofan since the early 1960s when I 1st read Forest J. Sterling'sWake of the Wahoo. Morton was a man amongst men and his outrageous valor in the face of the Imperial Japanese Navy is legendary.

Here's to one of the greatest sub skippers of all time Commander Dudley "Mush" Morton!:cheers1:

 

[Story]

Navy Says Wreck Found Off Japan is Legendary Sub USS Wahoo
Story Number: NNS061031-15
Release Date: 10/31/2006 7:01:00 PM
http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=26378

From Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (NNS) -- Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet declared Oct. 31 that the sunken submarine recently discovered by divers in the Western Pacific is, indeed, the World War II submarine USS Wahoo (SS 238).

"After reviewing the records and information, we are certain USS Wahoo has been located," said Adm. Gary Roughead, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander. “We are grateful for the support of the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park, and appreciate greatly the underwater video footage of the submarine provided by our Russian navy colleagues, which allowed us to make this determination. This brings closure to the families of the men of Wahoo - one of the greatest fighting submarines in the history of the U.S. Navy."

In July, the Russian dive team “Iskra” photographed wreckage lying in about 213 feet (65 meters) of water in the La Perouse (Soya) Strait between the Japanese island of Hokkaido and the Russian island of Sakhalin. The divers were working with The Wahoo Project Group, an international team of experts coordinated by Bryan MacKinnon, a relative of Wahoo’s famed skipper, Cmdr. Dudley W. “Mush” Morton.

 

[Story]

Another lost sub found

WWII Sub Likely Found 65 Years Later
By JEANNETTE J. LEE,
AP
Posted: 2007-08-25 10:14:13
Filed Under: Nation News, Science News
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Aug. 24) - The mangled remains of a vessel found in the Bering Sea are likely those of a World War II submarine that disappeared with a crew of 70 off the Aleutian Island of Kiska.

The discovery of the USS Grunion on Wednesday night culminates a five-year search led by the sons of its commander, Mannert Abele, and may finally shine a light on the mysterious last moments of the doomed vessel.

"Obviously, this is a very big thing," the oldest son, Bruce Abele, said Thursday from his home in Newton, Mass. "I told my wife about it when she was still in bed and she practically went up to the ceiling."

In North Carolina, relatives of Moore J. Ledford, a chief yeoman aboard, told the Asheville Citizen-Times the discovery would comfort their family. His niece, 66-year-old Haven Teague, was less than 2 years old when Ledford went missing. Her mother was Ledford's sister.

"She never really did know what happened to him, just that he was missing in action," Teague said of her mother. "This is all very exciting."

A remotely operated vehicle snapped pictures and captured three hours of video footage of the Grunion on a rocky underwater slope north of the volcanic island, according to another brother, John Abele, who was in Kiska Harbor with the search team on Thursday.

The submarine lies 1,000 feet below the surface and had been crushed by water pressure, said Abele. He is director and co-founder of the medical equipment company Boston Scientific Corp . and the youngest of the three brothers.

"The most surprising thing was the damage," he said. "It was much more than we or anyone else imagined. Initially it was very hard to recognize as a ship."

The hull had imploded so severely that the interior, including bunks and a dive wheel, were clearly visible, Abele said. No human remains were found.

The search team hired by the Abeles, Deep Sea Systems International, said no identifying markings or lettering could be seen, however, the location and appearance of the vessel indicate it is the missing sub.

"There's a 95 percent chance that this is the Grunion and a less than five percent chance that it's not," said Christopher J. Nicholson, general manager of the Cataumet, Mass.-based company. "The fact that they actually found this in an expanse of ocean is really pretty spectacular."

The Grunion had a propeller guard, which was rare in subs of the day, Abele said. The vessel discovered yesterday also had the fence, which prevented docking lines from getting caught in the propeller.

The Grunion patrolled Alaska's Aleutian Islands during the early months of World War II. Her last official radio message to the submarine base at Dutch Harbor came on July 30, 1942 and described heavy enemy activity at Kiska Harbor.

Earlier that month, the Grunion had sunk two Japanese submarine chasers and heavily damaged a third near Kiska, one of two islands in the far west Aleutians captured by the Japanese. Until a few years ago, the clues to the Grunion's disappearance were too fragmented to justify a search.

After receiving more information from a model ship builder in Japan, the Abeles launched an initial expedition to Kiska in August 2006. Sonar images of a sub-shaped silhouette prompted a second journey this month.

As news of the search spread, several relatives of the Grunion's crew banded together to locate others with ties to the lost men. To date, the relatives of 69 men are following the progress of the search, said Mary Bentz of Bethesda, Md., whose uncle died on the Grunion.

Bentz said the news is a relief after decades of not knowing what happened. Her father's youngest brother, Carmine Anthony Parziale, of Weedville, Penn., was in his early 20s when he served as a torpedoman third class on Grunion.

"I know when my dad would talk about him, his eyes would well up with tears," said Bentz. "I was relieved to know that this is finally over, that now we can say, two and three generations later, that we know what happened."

A forensic engineer and other experts will use the footage to piece together the Grunion's final hours and figure out why it sank. The search crew of 17 plans to spend several more days looking for sunken Japanese ships in the area.

"Actually seeing the burial site was touching and in a way rewarding," John Abele said. "It provides a closing and hopefully an answer to the unknown."

 

[Diamondback]

This is a good start. How many others on Eternal Patrol are close to being found?

There's a certain cruel irony that a lot of the best sub skippers and crews never got to come home.

Good that two boats' families have closure at long last.

 

[dhermann1]

I met a few submariners when I was in the service. They're a particular kind of crazy that you just have to admire. In the days before the underwater luxury liners of today (relatively speaking), they must really have been men of steel. They didn't call them pig boats for nothing. I could NEVER NEVER NEVER do that!
Here are a couple of links on Mush Morton, probably our greatest submarine skipper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_W._Morton
http://www.csp.navy.mil/centennial/wahoo.htm

 

[Story]

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — The Navy has confirmed the wreckage of a sunken vessel found last year off the Aleutians Islands is that of the USS Grunion, which disappeared during World War II.

Underwater video footage and pictures captured by an expedition hired by sons of the commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Mannert L. Abele, allowed the Navy to confirm the discovery, Rear Adm. Douglas McAneny said Thursday in a news release.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-GZZ8lEIc_YbPRQFIidyzLDxyIgD93ISEC80

 

[June]

Story, thanks for posting this. What I find amazing is that, after the Grunion disappeared, Lt. Commander Abele's wife wrote to the families of each of the 70 missing crew members.

 

[Story]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JAPANESE_SUBS_HAWAII?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

Scuttled WWII Japanese subs found off Hawaii

HONOLULU (AP) -- Two captured Japanese submarines scuttled by the U.S. Navy just after World War II have been discovered in the Pacific Ocean south of Pearl Harbor.

The subs were found in February in 3,000 feet of water by the pilots of two Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory submersibles, according to an announcement made Thursday by the lab and the National Geographic Channel, which partly funded and documented the mission.

One of the subs was 400 feet long and carried planes as well as enough fuel to travel around the world, said Hans Van Tilburg, maritime heritage coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Sanctuaries in the Pacific Islands.

The second sub had a streamlined body, conning tower and retractable guns, making it look more like a Cold War-era submarine, he said.

National Geographic Channel is set to broadcast the special "Hunt for the Samurai Subs" on Nov. 17.

 

[dhermann1]

They were on TV a couple years ago, with full graphics. The idea was that Japan was going to try to bomb or torpedo some ships in the Panama Canal, enough to shut it down for a while. Japan hoped this would slow the American Naval juggernaut closing in on them. The project never . . . uhh . . . errr . . . got off the gound, so to speak. But an amazing idea!