Author: FTB1(SS)

Torpedoman’s Mate

The base commander’s voice carried over the assembled crew on the warm August day. “Torpedoman’s Mate First Class James H. Howard.” He stepped forward, eyes straight ahead, as the medal was pinned to his dress blues. The citation spoke of meritorious service on war patrols. The words were official, clipped, and neat, but they could never match the reality of the months spent in the torpedo room of a fighting boat. He had already been to sea before the war, qualifying on USS Pollack in 1938, but the first three patrols aboard USS Halibut had been his real test.

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SS Bluegill’s 2nd War Patrol: The August 13, 1944 Battle and the Mark 18 Torpedo’s Trial

USS Bluegill began her life on the ways at Groton, Connecticut, in December of 1942. She was a Gato-class boat, built for the long patrols and hard work the war in the Pacific demanded. When Mrs. W. Sterling Cole christened her on August 8, 1943, she slid into the Thames River looking every bit the part of a warship that would soon prowl far from home. Commissioned that November under Lt. Comdr. Eric L. Barr, Jr., she went through the usual shakedown, torpedo shoots, and workups before making the long transit to the war zone.

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USS Croaker’s First War Patrol: Deadly Strikes in the East China Sea, August 1944

In the summer of 1944, USS CROAKER SS-246, embarked on her first war patrol, leaving Pearl Harbor in July and pushing deep into the East China and Yellow Seas. The early days were a mix of training sharpened by caution, with sporadic contacts and long stretches of empty water. By mid-August, she had skirted mines, traded information with other submarines, and patrolled close enough to hostile shores to feel the reach of Japanese air and sea patrols. It was in this tense environment, between the fourteenth and seventeenth, that CROAKER struck two decisive blows, demonstrating both the skill of her crew and the deadly precision of a well-handled submarine.

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