U.S. Subs and the Aleutians Campaign

On October 7, 1943 the American submarine USS S-44 (SS-155) spotted the Japanese refrigerated cargo ship ‘Koko Maru’ off the northern Kurile Islands and attacked with the sub’s 4” deck gun. Unfortunately, S-44 did not detect the Japanese escort vessel Ishigaki, which illuminated the submarine and opened fire with its 120mm guns. The Americans attempt to shift fire to the escort, but the crew was blinded by the escort’s searchlight. Ishigaki scored hits on the submarine’s conning tower and aft battery section and then closed to within 55 yards and hit S-44 three more times, sinking the submarine. Eight men from S-44 make it into the frigid water, two of whom are rescued. All total, 55 Americans are lost.

USS S-44 (SS-155) after its last overhaul in 1943.

The Alaskan Theater in World War II is often referred to as the ‘Forgotten Theater’. Even if it isn’t completely forgotten, Alaska and the Aleutian Islands aren’t the first places that come to mind when talking about World War II in the Pacific.

The Aleutian Islands stretch 900 nautical miles westward from the Alaskan Peninsula to the outermost island of Attu, only 650 miles from what was then Japan’s northernmost naval base at Paramushiro in the Kurile Islands. The principal U.S. base was at Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska.

U.S. submarine deployments to the area started shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In accordance with the Rainbow Five war plan COMSUBPAC, Rear Admiral Thomas Withers, sent two older submarines, S-18 (SS-123) and S-23 (SS-128), to Alaska from the U.S. West Coast. The submarines arrived at Dutch Harbor on 27 January, 1942. Within two weeks, they had departed on their first war patrols, defensive sweeps south of the Aleutian chain and easterly toward Kodiak Island. Although no contact was made with the enemy, the two S-boats were the first to experience the full rigor of the weather and ocean conditions that characterized Alaskan submarine operations for two miserable years.

In June 1942, in conjunction with the Midway operation, the Japanese launched an operation to occupy the Aleutian Islands of Attu and, Kiska. This successful operation prompted an increased deployment of U.S. submarines to the theater.

The majority of submarines deployed to patrol the northern waters were S-class submarines. Built to a World War I design based on early submarine technology, the S-boats assigned to the Aleutians were 20 years old, largely worn out, and clearly regarded as “second-line” submarines. Powered by only two 600-horsepower diesel engines, they could make only 12-14 knots on the surface – perhaps 10 submerged on battery – and with a test depth of 200 feet, there was little margin for error. Additionally, their surface displacement of somewhat less than 1,000 tons and low freeboard made operating in the stormy, northern waters of the Aleutians and the Bering Sea a grueling, daily challenge. Despite the electric heaters that had been installed for the northern climate, life below decks was dispiriting, cold, and wet, not only from seawater sloshing down through the conning tower, but also from the condensation of atmospheric moisture on all the metal surfaces inside.

Engine breakdowns, battery trouble, and electrical shorts were continuing problems, exacerbated by the age and condition of the machinery. In December 1942 USS S-35 (SS-140) was nearly lost to a chain of events that began when she took several massive waves over the bridge during a storm near Amchitka, sending tons of water into the control room and injuring her captain, Lt. Henry Monroe. Shortly thereafter, electrical fires broke out in both the control room and forward battery and began to spread, filling the boat with acrid smoke and forcing the engines to be shut down and the control room sealed off. The crew fought back with every trick they could think of, including bucket brigades to lower the water level, eventually restarting the engines under local control, and the boat retreated toward Dutch Harbor, fighting recurrent fires so serious that twice the crew was driven up to the bridge. After three days, they reached Adak, where assistance was available, and finally, on 29 December, under escort, S-35 made it back to Dutch Harbor and eventually to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, where she was completely overhauled – only to return to the Aleutians again six months later.

In May 1943, American forces invaded Attu, then Kiska in August, and by the end of August all Alaskan territory was back in American hands. At the end of 1943 with the Japanese threat to the Aleutians removed, COMSUBPAC Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood finally acknowledged the futility of sending the Dutch Harbor submarines into harm’s way for so little return and he ordered the remaining S-boats withdrawn from Alaska. In the very last war patrol mounted from Dutch Harbor, S-45 (SS-156) left the submarine base there on New Year’s Eve and returned to Attu at the end of January 1944, before departing for San Diego and a general overhaul; thus ended the U.S. submarine campaign in the Aleutians.

It had to have been amongst the worst duty in the world. The privation, hardship, and danger endured by the more than 1,000 U.S. submariners who served in the Aleutians during 1942 and 1943 – most of them in small, obsolete, and worn-out boats – were never repaid by the spectacular success later achieved by submarines in the wider Pacific conflict. Only nine confirmed kills were scored in over 80 war patrols conducted in the Alaskan theater – and four of these were claimed by Pearl Harbor-based fleet boats, which accounted for only one eighth of the total sorties. On the negative side of the ledger, two S-boats – S-27 and S-44 – and one fleet boat – Grunion – were lost. In retrospect it is an extraordinary tribute to the seamanship, dedication, and perseverance of the men who suffered and died there that an even larger toll of ships and men was not exacted by the many perils of the williwaw, the frozen and desolate islands, and those awful seas.

Editor’s Note: Portions of this blog post were taken from the Undersea Warfare magazine article ‘The Forgotten Theater’ the full text of which can be found here.