Category: World War II Patrol Reports

Not the Caine

The story of the submarine USS Billfish begins quietly enough, like so many others of her time. She was a Balao-class boat, built at Portsmouth Navy Yard and commissioned in April of 1943, one of the many sleek steel predators that would come to define the silent war beneath the Pacific. Her skipper was Commander Frederick Colby Lucas Jr., a 1930 graduate of the Naval Academy, seasoned by years in the service but untested in the chaos of combat. On paper, Lucas was the model officer of his generation, steady, methodical, and dutiful. In reality, he was about to face the one test that reveals more about a man than any résumé ever could.

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Greenling’s November 7, 1944

After refitting at Saipan, Greenling sailed north as part of the tightening U.S. submarine net around Japan’s home islands. Her mission was straightforward but perilous: interdict shipping along Japan’s coastal lanes and disrupt the remnants of enemy supply traffic fleeing the Philippine front.

The patrol began with quiet days of endurance and routine, constant radar sweeps, periscope observations, and the perpetual strain of aircraft alerts. Submariners of this late stage of the Pacific War lived in the shadows of their predecessors’ successes. Japan’s navy had learned, and anti-submarine air coverage was now relentless. Greenling frequently dived to avoid detection, her log marking dozens of aircraft contacts, many close enough to rattle the boat with their depth-charges.

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The Sorcerer Strikes – Aspro’s 5th War Patrol

When USS Aspro (SS-309) pushed away from USS Euryale at Fremantle on September 10, 1944, she was no stranger to the deadly chess game of the Pacific submarine campaign. She had already carried out four successful patrols, sending enemy ships to the bottom, and she bore the scars and the confidence of a seasoned hunter. Her crew, lean from the tropical heat and the endless diet of Navy rations, carried the rhythm of submarine life in their bones. They had endured the long refit—tuning machinery, testing torpedoes, restowing provisions, and saying goodbye to the brief comforts of liberty. Now they were heading back into the South China Sea, where enemy shipping still plied the waters in defiance of the American blockade.

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