Month: July 2025

Sighted Sub. Sank Same.

By the summer of 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s I-29 was no ordinary submarine. She was fast, long-ranged, and highly prized, not for the number of ships she had sunk, but for the secrets she carried. She had just returned from Nazi-occupied France, the only Japanese submarine to survive the perilous transoceanic “Yanagi” missions under the Tripartite Pact. These voyages were the Axis powers’ last hope at exchanging technology and critical war materials across submarine lanes, now that surface traffic had become suicidal.

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Tinosa’s Target

When people think of naval warfare in the Pacific during World War II, they picture submarine captains locking onto targets, launching their torpedoes, and sending enemy ships to the bottom in a column of smoke and steel. That image, as dramatic as it may be, wasn’t always the truth. At least not early in the war. For nearly two years, American submariners went into battle with a torpedo that refused to do its job. It wasn’t the enemy that nearly broke their spirits. It was the Mark 14.

On July 24, 1943, the submarine USS Tinosa SS-283 faced a golden opportunity and watched it slip away as torpedo after torpedo failed to explode.

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Under the Ice

She started life as a workhorse, not a wonder. USS O-12 was never meant to make history, only to do her duty. Built in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1916, this O-class submarine served briefly in the Panama Canal Zone after World War I. She was solid, if not spectacular. Compared to her Electric Boat sisters, she had her flaws. But for a few short years, she stood watch where it mattered. Then, in 1924, the Navy pulled her from service and parked her at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She was supposed to be scrapped. That would have been the end of it.

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