USS Grunion (SS-216) - an American submarine of the Gato type from the Second World War . Named after a species of small fish of the atheriform family that lives off the west coast of North America. The Granion sank on July 30, 1942 off the island of Kyska , presumably as a result of the circulation of its own torpedo. The skeleton of the submarine was discovered in 2007.
| USS Grunion (SS-216) | |
|---|---|
 Submarine "Granion". March 20, 1942. | |
| Ship history | |
| Flag state |  USA |
| Launching | December 22, 1941 |
| Withdrawn from the fleet | November 2, 1942 |
| Current status | sunk July 30, 1942 near the island of Kyska |
| Main characteristics | |
| Type of ship | Cruising DPL |
| Project designation | "Gato class" |
| Speed (surface) | 21 knots [1] |
| Speed (underwater) | 9 knots [1] |
| Working depth | 90 m [1] |
| Autonomy of swimming | 48 hours at 2-knot speed (underwater) 75 days [1] |
| Crew | 60 people |
| Dimensions | |
| Surface displacement | 1525 t [1] |
| Underwater displacement | 2424 t [1] |
| The length is the greatest (on design basis) | 95.02 m |
| The width of the body naib. | 8.31 m |
| Average draft (on design basis) | 5.18 m |
| Power point | |
| 4 diesel engines General Motors 16-248 V16 at 1350 liters. from. 4 General Electric motors of 685 liters. from. two batteries of 126 cells two screws [1] | |
| Armament | |
| Artillery | 3 "deck gun (76 mm) |
| Torpedo mine weapons | 6 bow and 4 stern TA caliber 21 "(533 mm), 24 torpedoes |
| Air defense | automatic guns 40 mm " Bofors " and 20 mm " Oerlikon " |
Content
- 1 History of construction
- 2 The first campaign and the death of the submarine
- 3 Search for the place of death
- 4 notes
- 5 Literature
- 6 References
Building History
The submarine was laid down at the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton on March 1, 1941. The launch took place on December 22, 1941. The sponsor was the wife of Vice Admiral Stanford Hooper . The Granion entered service on April 11, 1942, under the command of Mannert Abele who graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1926.
After testing off the coast of New London , on May 24, the Granion entered the Pacific Ocean. A week later, when the boat was sailing through the Caribbean Sea to Panama , she picked up 16 people from a Jack torpedoed German U-558 submarine. There was information about 13 more survivors, but their searches were unsuccessful. On June 3, the boat delivered the rescued to Coco Solo and continued on to Pearl Harbor , where it arrived on June 20.
The first campaign and death of the submarine
On June 30, 1942, after ten days of training, the Granion left Hawaii , entered Midway , and then headed to the Aleutian Islands . The first radiogram from a boat transmitted while patrolling the area north of the island of Kiska reported a Japanese destroyer that had unsuccessfully fired several torpedoes at the submarine. During July, the boat operated in the area of the island of Kyska and sank two patrol ships . On July 30, the Granion announced the strengthening of the enemy’s anti-submarine defense and received orders to go to Dutch Harbor base.
All further attempts to contact the boat were unsuccessful. Searches from the air off the coast of Kyski were unsuccessful, and on October 5 the boat was declared lost along with the crew. "Granion" was removed from the lists of the fleet on November 2, 1942. No information was found in Japanese documents about attacks on submarines near the island of Kiska, and the fate of the Granion was established only after 65 years. In August 2007, a submarine hull was discovered at the bottom of the Bering Sea . In October 2008, representatives of the US Navy confirmed that the Granion submarine was found [2] .
For service during the Second World War, "Granion" received one battle star . Submarine commander Mannert Abele was posthumously awarded a naval cross . In honor of him, the destroyer USS Mannert L. Abele which went into operation in 1944 and sunk on April 12, 1945, during the battle of Okinawa , with the Japanese MXY7 Oka missile.
Finding the place of death
In 1998, Colonel-Lieutenant Richard Lane purchased for 1 dollar a document from the Japanese cargo ship Kano-maru. To verify the authenticity of the document, Lane posted it on a Japanese Navy history site. Yutaka Iwasaki, a Japanese maritime historian, contacted him and not only confirmed the authenticity, but said that he knew what had happened to Granion. Lane contacted COMSUBPAC (Pacific Fleet Submarine Command), and Darrell Ames, a public relations officer, posted this information on the Granion site [3] .
The commander of the Granion boat, Commander-Lieutenant Abele, had three sons: Bruce, Brad, and John. For many years, they tried to shed light on the cause of the death of the submarine, which was commanded by their father. When the brothers found information from Iwasaki on the site, they contacted him. Iwasaki sent the Abele brothers a translation of an article written by the captain of Kano-maru. The article spoke about the discovery of a submarine near the island of Kyska at about the same time that the Granion disappeared [3] .
Seven years later, John Abele, one of the co-founders of Boston Scientific , met with Robert Ballard , a well-known specialist in marine archeology, who discovered the Titanic in 1985. Ballard advised him on how to find the place of death of the submarine, after which Abele decided to finance a search expedition [3] .
In 2006, Williamson Associates using Scanning Sonar discovered an object that resembled a submarine in outline, almost in the same place, the coordinates of which were indicated by the captain of “Kano-maru” [3] .
In 2007, the object was investigated using a remote control device . The hull of the ship lay at a depth of 980 meters, about a kilometer from an extinct underwater volcano. The bow was absent. Marking, screw protection elements and scuppers corresponded to the Granion submarine. The following year, representatives of the US Navy officially confirmed the ownership of the ship’s skeleton [3] .
Specialists who have studied the skeleton call their own torpedo as the most likely reason for its death. During the attack on the Kano-Maru, the first torpedo went too deep under the keel of the ship, and its magnetic fuse did not work. The next two torpedoes hit the side and also did not explode. The fourth torpedo passed the Kano-maru and, describing the circulation, hit the hull of the boat at the base of the periscope [3] .
Damage caused by the torpedo and jammed horizontal rudder led to loss of control of the submersion of the boat. The maximum permissible depth for submarines of this type is 300 feet (91 meters). After the Granion fell to a depth of more than 300 meters, its sturdy building collapsed under the pressure of water. The wreckage of the boat sank to the bottom, the bow (about 15 meters) came off [3] .
In August 2019, the Lost52 project team for the search for sunken American boats discovered the bow of the Granion and made its three-dimensional photography. The nose of the submarine was 400 meters from the rest, rolling down the slope of the volcano [4] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Friedman, 1995 , pp. 285-304.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Stevens, 2012 .
- ↑ The Americans found the submarine USS Grunion . Warspot (August 7, 2019). Date accessed August 8, 2019.
Literature
- Peter F. Stevens. Fatal Dive: Solving the World War II Mystery of the USS Grunion . - Regnery History, 2012 .-- 352 p. - ISBN 978-1596987678 .
- Norman Friedman US Submarines Through 1945: An Illustrated Design History . - Naval Institute Press, 1995 .-- 379 p. - (Illustrated Design Histories Series). - ISBN 9781557502636 .
- Karl Jack Bauer, Stephen S. Roberts. Register of Ships of the US Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants . - Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1991 .-- 350 p. - ISBN 9780313262029 .