Stories From the US Submarine Force
She slipped away from Midway on May 28, 1944, her steel hull slicing through the Pacific with quiet determination. Her crew, 82 strong, knew their mission and accepted the risks. They had trained, bonded, and believed in the purpose that had brought them to this point. The boat was USS Golet, SS-361, a Gato-class submarine barely six months into her career. No one who waved her off that day could know they were saying goodbye forever.
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By mid-1944, American submarines were extending their patrols into the northern Pacific, including the Kurile Islands chain, to interdict Japanese shipping and isolate enemy garrisons. Following the Aleutian Islands campaign (1942–43), Japan’s remaining bases in the Kuriles (stretching from Hokkaido to Kamchatka) were targets for periodic U.S. air raids and naval harassment. Older S-class submarines had prowled these cold northern waters early in the war, and notably the USS S-44 was sunk off Paramushiro by a Japanese escort in October 1943. By 1944, fleet submarines from Pearl Harbor and Midway took up patrols in the area. The USS Barb (SS-220) and USS Herring (SS-233) were among the U.S. subs assigned to the Sea of Okhotsk and Kuriles, hunting convoys that supplied isolated outposts. Barb was now under the command of Commander Eugene B. “Lucky” Fluckey (who had taken command in May 1944), while Herring was on her eighth war patrol under Lieutenant Commander David Zabriskie, Jr.. These two submarines would rendezvous in late May 1944 to coordinate their efforts against Japanese shipping in the region.
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She was born in the final stretch of World War II, commissioned in March 1945 at Mare Island. Like many boats of her generation, she came too late to fire a shot in anger, but the USS Stickleback (SS-415) still made her presence known. She served with quiet distinction in the Pacific, patrolling the waters between Japan and Korea, offering aid to shipwrecked Japanese survivors in the war’s waning days, and returning home in time to parade in Admiral Halsey’s victory fleet. Then she went to sleep in the reserve fleet, waiting, like many others, for a second act.
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Patrol Reports 