|
SPEARFISH (SS-190) was laid down on 9
September 1937 by the Electric Boat Co., Groton, Conn.;
launched on 29 October 1938; sponsored by Mrs. Lawrence Y.
Spear; and commissioned on 17 July 1939, Lt. C. E. Tolman,
Jr., in command.
SPEARFISH conducted sea trials off
New London and then held her shakedown cruise in the
Guantanamo Bay area from 21 August to 3 October. She was
overhauled at the Portsmouth (N.H.) Navy Yard from 1
November 1939 to 2 February 1940. On 10 February, she set
sail for the west coast. After training operations in the
San Diego training area from 6 March to 1 April, the
submarine sailed to Pearl Harbor.
SPEARFISH operated between Hawaii
and the west coast until 23 October 1941 when she departed
Pearl Harbor and headed for Manila. She conducted training
operations there from 8 November until the outbreak of war
on 8 December (7 December west longitude time), when she
began her first war patrol. This mission took her into the
South China Sea, near Saigon and Camranh Bay, French
Indochina, and off Tarakan and Balikpapan, Borneo. On 20
December, SPEARFISH encountered a Japanese submarine and
made a submerged attack. She fired four torpedoes but all
missed the target. She put into Surabaja, Java, on 29
January 1942 for refitting.
On 7 February, she began her second
war patrol. SPEARFISH patrolled in the Java and Flores seas
and made unsuccessful torpedo attacks on two cruiser task
forces. On 2 March, she put into Tjilatjap, Java, and took
on board 12 members of the staff of the commander of the
submarines of the Asiatic Fleet, for transportation to
Australia. The patrol ended at Fremantle, Australia.
Her third war patrol, from 27 March
to 20 May, took her to the Sulu Sea and the Lingayen Gulf.
On 17 April, she sank an enemy cargo ship of approximately
4,000 tons, and, on the 25th, she sank TOBA MARU, a
6,995-ton freighter. On the night of 3 May, the submarine
slipped into Manila Bay and picked up 27 passengers from
Corregidor to be evacuated to Fremantle. She was the last
American submarine to visit that beleaguered fortress before
it surrendered.
SPEARFISH's 10th war patrol was
made south of Formosa from 17 January to 29 February 1944.
On 30 January, she made two torpedo attacks on a convoy of
three merchantmen and two escorts. She sank an escort and
the passenger-cargo ship, TOMASHIMA MARU. On 10 February,
her attack on a convoy of four ships and their escorts
damaged a freighter and sank a transport. The next day, she
damaged another freighter in an 11-ship convoy. On the 12th,
she crippled another freighter.
SPEARFISH's last war patrol took
place from 12 November 1944 to 24 January 1945. On the first
part of the patrol, she made photographic reconnaissance
surveys of Iwo Jima and of Minami Jima. The submarine spent
the second part in the Nanpo Shoto area on lifeguard duties
and offensive patrols. On 19 December 1944, she rescued
seven survivors of a crashed B-29. On 11 January 1945, her
guns sank a sampan. She took three Japanese on board as
prisoners, but one died several days later.
When she returned to Pearl Harbor
on 24 January, SPEARFISH was used as a training ship until
18 August. On the 19th, she got underway for the west coast
and arrived at Mare Island on 27 August. On 7 September, a
Board of Inspection and Survey recommended that she be
decommissioned immediately and possibly scrapped. It was
decided to retain her in an inactive status for experimental
explosive tests. The tests were cancelled, and SPEARFISH was
decommissioned at Mare Island on 22 June 1946. She was
struck from the Navy list on 19 July 1946; sold to the
Lerner Co., Oakland, Calif.; and scrapped in October 1947.
SPEARFISH received 10 battle stars
for World War II service. |
