Facts and Trivia

On 21 November, at 00:20, she made radar contact with an enemy formation moving through the Taiwan Strait at about 16 knots and not zig-zagging. By 00:48, the pips were made out to be two cruisers and two battleships. At 01:46, three additional ships, escorts—one on either beam of the formation and one on the starboard quarter—became visible. Sealion had in fact intercepted a powerful fleet consisting of the battleships Yamato and Nagato, the battlecruiser Kongo, the light cruiser Yahagi, the destroyers Hamakaze, Isokaze, Urakaze and Yukikaze of division 17, and the destroyers Kiri and Ume of division 43. At 02:45, Sealion, ahead of the task force, turned in and slowed for the attack. Eleven minutes later, she fired six torpedoes at the second ship in line, Kongo. At 02:59, she fired three at the second battleship, Nagato. At 03:00, her crew saw and heard three hits from the first salvo, flooding two of Kongo's boiler rooms and giving her a list to port. Nagato, alerted by the explosions, turned hard and the Sealion's second salvo missed ahead, running on to hit and sink the destroyer Urakaze. Sealion opened to the westward. The Japanese searched to the east. By 03:10, the submarine had reloaded and began tracking again with the thought that the torpedoes had only dented the battleship's armor belt. The Japanese formation, however, had begun zig-zagging and the sea and wind had increased; then, at 04:50, the enemy formation split into two groups. Sealion began tracking the slower group consisting of the damaged Kongo escorted by Isokaze and Hamakaze. At 05:24, a tremendous explosion lit the area and Kongo disappeared. It was customary in American submarines to mark a name on the head of each torpedo as it was loaded into the tube nest. They usually bore the names of the torpedo crews' wives or best girls. Some carried the names of the factory employee who had sold the most war bonds during a given period. That night, however, four of Sealion's fish, as they raced out of their tubes, were stamped with the names Foster, O'Connell, Paul and Ogilvie—the men who had been killed in the bombing of Sealion I nearly three years previous.


03/18/2006
	Submarine Facts and Trivia

	It was on her maiden patrol that Cavalla rendered the distinguished service that earned her a Presidential Unit Citation. En route to her station in the eastern Philippines, she made contact with a large Japanese task force 17 June 1944. Cavalla tracked the force for several hours, then relayed invaluable information which contributed heavily to the overwhelming United States victory scored in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the famous "Marianas Turkey Shoot" on 19 & 20 June 1944. With this great service completed, Cavalla continued her pursuit. On 19 June she caught the carrier Shokaku landing planes and quickly fired a spread of six torpedoes for three hits, enough to send Shokaku to the bottom in 11°50′N 137°57′E. After a severe depth charging by three destroyers, where over 100 depth charges were dropped, Cavalla escaped to continue her patrol. The sole landing by U.S. military forces on the Japanese homeland during World War II was when a landing party from the USS Barb went ashore to destroy a 16-car train by putting scuttling charges under the tracks. The Barb become the only boat in history to "sink a train" USS Bowfin traveled from Pearl Harbor to the Central Nansei Shoto area, then to Midway, then on to Pearl Harbor. On 10 August, a three-ship convoy was followed to Minami Daito Dock where Bowfin destroyed two ships, the dock, a crane and a bus which was being boarded by Japanese sailors. On her third war patrol in November, 1944 the USS Sealion SS 316 became the only submarine to sink a battleship. On 21 November, at 00:20, she made radar contact with an enemy formation moving through the Taiwan Strait at about 16 knots and not zig-zagging. By 00:48, the pips were made out to be two cruisers and two battleships. At 01:46, three additional ships, escorts—one on either beam of the formation and one on the starboard quarter—became visible. Sealion had in fact intercepted a powerful fleet consisting of the battleships Yamato and Nagato, the battlecruiser Kongo, the light cruiser Yahagi, the destroyers Hamakaze, Isokaze, Urakaze and Yukikaze of division 17, and the destroyers Kiri and Ume of division 43. At 02:45, Sealion, ahead of the task force, turned in and slowed for the attack. Eleven minutes later, she fired six torpedoes at the second ship in line, Kongo. At 02:59, she fired three at the second battleship, Nagato. At 03:00, her crew saw and heard three hits from the first salvo, flooding two of Kongo's boiler rooms and giving her a list to port. Nagato, alerted by the explosions, turned hard and the Sealion's second salvo missed ahead, running on to hit and sink the destroyer Urakaze. Sealion opened to the westward. The Japanese searched to the east. By 03:10, the submarine had reloaded and began tracking again with the thought that the torpedoes had only dented the battleship's armor belt. The Japanese formation, however, had begun zig-zagging and the sea and wind had increased; then, at 04:50, the enemy formation split into two groups. Sealion began tracking the slower group consisting of the damaged Kongo escorted by Isokaze and Hamakaze. At 05:24, a tremendous explosion lit the area and Kongo disappeared. It was customary in American submarines to mark a name on the head of each torpedo as it was loaded into the tube nest. They usually bore the names of the torpedo crews' wives or best girls. Some carried the names of the factory employee who had sold the most war bonds during a given period. That night, however, four of Sealion's fish, as they raced out of their tubes, were stamped with the names Foster, O'Connell, Paul and Ogilvie—the men who had been killed in the bombing of Sealion I nearly three years previous. The USS Ethan Allen, (SSBN-608) operating in the Pacific as a unit of Joint Task Force 8 Operation Frigate-Bird, fired the only nuclear-armed POLARIS missile ever launched on 6 May 1962. A POLARIS A1 missile was launched from the USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608) while submerged in the Pacific, and its nuclear warhead was detonated over the South Pacific at the end of its programmed flight. The shot was made during the 1962 atomic tests and hit "right in the pickle barrel." The captain of the 608 was Paul Lacy, and ADM Levering Smith was aboard. To date, this is the only complete proof test of a U.S. strategic missile.
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