Banco de dados da Segunda Guerra Mundial (WW2DB)

Contributor: David Stubblebine

ww2dbaseTambor-class submarine Thresher was laid down on 27 Apr 1939 at the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, United States and launched 27 Mar 1940. Thresher’s sponsor was Mrs. Margaret Cox Jones, wife of the Electric Boat Company’s superintendent of construction and Medal of Honor recipient, Captain Claud A. Jones. On 27 Aug 1940 across the river at New London, Connecticut, USS Thresher was commissioned with Lieutenant Commander William Anderson in command. After shakedown exercises in the Florida Keys, the Virgin Islands, the Panama Canal Zone, and a stop at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Thresher departed the east coast for the Panama Canal and the Pacific.

ww2dbaseThresher arrived in Hawaiʻi on 31 May 1941 as tensions were already rising in the Pacific. Thresher and submarine USS Tautog departed Pearl Harbor on 21 Oct 1941 for what was called a six-week simulated war patrol; both were armed with full compliments of live torpedoes. The assigned patrol area for both submarines was north of Midway; not far enough north, however, to have been in position to detect the Japanese fleet during their approach to the Hawaiian Islands.

ww2dbaseThresher and Tautog were due to return to Pearl Harbor on 5 Dec 1941 and while Tautog did, Thresher was delayed. On 6 Dec 1941 as Thresher was running on the surface toward Pearl Harbor, a lookout was badly injured when heavy seas nearly washed him overboard and threw him against the signal platform railing. Thresher radioed ahead to Pearl Harbor to request medical personnel meet them on arrival. As Thresher was approaching Oʻahu on the afternoon of 7 Dec 1941, she attempted a rendezvous with destroyer USS Litchfield, which had the requested medical officer on board. However, Thresher mistook USS Gamble for Litchfield and surfaced near Gamble instead. With the heightened levels of alertness following that morning’s Japanese air attack, Gamble fired one shot at Thresher’s conning tower but missed. Thresher quickly dove again and escaped damage. Thresher tried to approach Pearl Harbor again on the morning of 8 Dec 1941 but was kept down by American patrol planes dropping depth bombs. That afternoon, Thresher successfully met with USS Thornton and was escorted into Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, Thresher’s injured crewman died of his wounds just 15 minutes before the rendezvous with Thornton. This day-and-a-half between the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor and Thresher’s ultimate entrance into the harbor were considered Thresher’s first war patrol.

ww2dbaseOn 30 Dec 1941, Thresher departed on her second war patrol. She spent two weeks conducting close reconnaissance surveys of several atolls in the Marshall Islands before shifting to the Mariana Islands. Within hours of Thresher’s arrival off Guam on 4 Feb 1942, she fired her first shots of the war with a torpedo attack on a small cargo ship. Thresher was given credit for sinking the ship, but this was never confirmed in post-war records.

ww2dbaseHer next war patrol in Apr 1942 took Thresher to the approaches off southern Japan. While she was able to carry out some attacks on Japanese shipping, her primary mission was to transmit weather intelligence critically needed by the Doolittle raiding force who were then already at sea.

ww2dbaseThresher’s next war patrol was back to the Marshall Islands. She damaged one ship on 7 Jul 1942 and, two days later, sank the Japanese ship Shinsho Maru off Kwajalein. After this attack, Thresher encountered a most unusual Japanese countermeasure. After enduring a very usual depth charge attack, Thresher’s crew heard unfamiliar scraping noises on the outside of the hull followed by the submarine being lifted toward the surface, despite Thresher’s depth controls being set for diving. Thresher’s superstructure had been hooked by a surface craft dragging a grappling hook. Thresher spent ten minutes at full speed with a hard right rudder before she spun loose from the hook’s grasp and evaded. Topside damage was minor.

ww2dbaseAfter shifting to the approaches southwest of Truk Lagoon, Thresher had another unusual encounter. While running on the surface in thick fog shortly after midnight, a large Japanese patrol vessel suddenly loomed out of the darkness on a 90-degree collision course. Thresher’s commanding officer was certain the submarine would be rammed but both vessels made emergency turns that brought them onto parallel courses less than 50 yards apart. Thresher’s topside personnel could hear orders being shouted in Japanese and could see the ship readying its guns, but Thresher was able to dive before the patrol boat could fire.

ww2dbaseThresher ended her fourth war patrol at Fremantle, Australia and would operate from Australia on her next four patrols. Before her fifth war patrol, Thresher offloaded sixteen of her twenty-four torpedoes and took aboard thirty-two mines. After a week patrolling off Cape Padaran in French Indochina (now Vietnam), Thresher shifted to the Gulf of Siam (now Gulf of Thailand). On 16 Oct 1942, Thresher deployed two strings of sixteen mines deep in the northern reaches of the gulf southeast of Bangkok, Thailand. This was the first operational use of a United States submarine as a minelayer.

ww2dbaseAs Thresher made her way back toward Fremantle, she came across a small tanker hung up on a reef in the southeast portion of Makassar Strait. The ship was nearly free of the rocks so Thresher shelled it with her deck gun until the tanker was left burning and sinking.

ww2dbaseBeginning with her next patrol, Thresher began experiencing problems with the Mark 14 torpedoes similar to those being widely reported during this period. On 14 Feb 1943 in the Sunda Strait, Thresher observed Japanese submarine I-162 running on the surface. Thresher fired three torpedoes with one solid hit, but the torpedo did not explode. Dented but otherwise undamaged, I-162 sailed on and Thresher resumed her patrol. A week later, Thresher attacked a Japanese convoy of three large transport ships. The 7,000-ton Kuwayama Maru was severely damaged and another transport was possibly damaged. The following morning, Thresher circled back to the same area and found that Kuwayama Maru had settled deep in the water. Thresher’s commanding officer estimated the transport ship was drawing 26 feet. Thresher set up for a coup-de-gras with one torpedo set at 18 feet, but it ran under the target. A second torpedo made a solid hit but did not explode. A third torpedo was also a dud. A fourth torpedo exploded with great force, broke the ship in two, and Kuwayama Maru sank in under three minutes. Ten days later, Thresher had one more dud hit before another torpedo sank that ship.

ww2dbaseOn her next patrol, Thresher had one torpedo explode prematurely during its run, which allowed the target ship to turn away and avoid the other torpedoes in the same spread. This completed Thresher’s trifecta of all three prevailing problems with the Mark 14 torpedo: running too deep, dud hits, and premature explosions.

ww2dbaseHer next patrol, her ninth, was to the Makassar Strait where on 30 Jun 1943 Thresher detected a small convoy of cargo ships. Over the course of two days, Thresher made four different attacks on this convoy. There was another prematurely exploding torpedo but the Japanese destroyer Hokaze was hit with two torpedoes and damaged so badly she had to be beached. Transport ship Yoneyama Maru and two tankers were sunk.

ww2dbaseThree days later while running submerged north of the Makassar Strait, Thresher ran up on a reef that brought her to the surface. She was hard aground for 20 minutes before she could free herself. Damage was minimal.

ww2dbaseOn 9 Jul 1943, Thresher landed a group of Philippine commandos on the west coast of Negros Island in the Philippines along with 500 pounds of stores and 40,000 rounds of ammunition. After another week patrolling the Philippines, Thresher left the area bound for Pearl Harbor, Hawaiʻi. After touching Pearl Harbor, Thresher continued on to San Francisco, California and entered Mare Island Naval Shipyard for her first major overhaul.

ww2dbaseBack in action on 13 Nov 1943, Thresher attacked a convoy northeast of Truk Atoll. Within one minute, she fired six torpedoes at two different ships. One ship was sunk and results of the other attack were not observed before Thresher was subjected to a “mild” depth charge attack. Thresher was thought to be undamaged but she developed many salt-water leaks into different ship-board components and lubricating systems. Her crew fought the leaks for several days before Thresher was forced to withdraw to Midway for more thorough repairs.

ww2dbaseOn 15, Jan 1944, Thresher attacked a Japanese convoy of four merchant ships in the Luzon Strait. One medium-sized freighter was sunk quickly before Thresher turned toward the large tanker Tatsuno Maru and her cargo of gasoline. The tanker took three, evenly spaced torpedoes along her starboard side and exploded in spectacular fashion. The Luzon Strait was lucrative grounds for Thresher as she sank two more ships and damaged a third in a single day before ending her eleventh war patrol.

ww2dbaseThresher’s next patrol was to the area off Truk Lagoon with primary responsibilities to serve as the lifeguard submarine during Allied bombing missions. Between raids, Thresher conducted close reconnaissance surveys of surrounding atolls. After one bombing raid on Oroluk Atoll, Thresher surfaced and used her deck gun to shell Oroluk Island.

ww2dbaseThresher’s next patrol was as part of a wolfpack with submarines USS Guardfish, USS Apogon, and USS Piranha on a return to the Luzon Strait. Over a nine-day span, the wolfpack attacked two convoys totaling 33 ships. They fired over 60 torpedoes, scored nearly 40 hits, and sank six merchant ships. For her part in these actions, Thresher received the Navy Unit Citation.

ww2dbaseThresher’s fourteenth war patrol was to the East China and Yellow Seas. She made four separate attacks, sinking three ships and damaging another. While on her way back to base, Thresher also sank a small guard boat with gunfire.

ww2dbaseAfter a refit at the Pearl Harbor submarine base, Thresher put out for her fifteenth and final war patrol on 31 Jan 1945. She was again sailing as part of a wolfpack returning to the Luzon Strait. After four weeks with no suitable targets, Thresher bombarded Basco Harbor in the Batan Islands, Philippines before departing for Saipan and then Pearl Harbor.

ww2dbaseWhile transiting to Pearl Harbor, Thresher was reassigned to join a wolfpack built around submarine USS Sea Owl that, as the result of MAGIC decrypts, was tracking Japanese supply submarine I-372 arriving at Wake Island. On 18 Apr 1945, Sea Owl attacked I-372 in the Wake Island anchorage. Believing the supply submarine had been sunk (it hadn’t), Sea Owl released Thresher to resume her course for Pearl Harbor.

ww2dbaseThresher completed her fifteenth war patrol at Pearl Harbor on 24 Apr 1945. At this point, Thresher’s combat career came to an end as she was reassigned to training duties that would occupy her for the rest of the war. Thresher shifted to Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands where she served as a target submarine for anti-submarine training. She was still at Eniwetok on 15 Aug 1945 when the war ended. Thresher departed Pearl Harbor on 26 Sep 1945 bound for San Francisco, the Panama Canal, and then the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine. After a decommissioning overhaul, Thresher was taken out of commission on 13 Dec 1945.

ww2dbaseLess than two months later, on 6 Feb 1946, Thresher was placed back in commission for the purpose of becoming a target vessel for the atomic bomb testing at Bikini Atoll, but preparations were halted when it became clear the submarine was beyond economical repair. Thresher was decommissioned for the final time on 12 Jul 1946 and sold for scrap in 1948.

ww2dbaseUSS Thresher served throughout World War II, she completed fifteen war patrols, was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation, and earned fifteen battle stars, the most of any United States submarine in World War II. Thresher’s commanding officers amassed six Navy Crosses, one Legion of Merit, and one Silver Star while serving aboard. With fifteen battle stars, a Navy Unit Citation, and six Navy Crosses for her captains, USS Thresher ranks among the most decorated United States warships of World War II.

ww2dbaseIt is common for the United States Navy to reuse names of prominent ships from earlier days and the Navy did so in 1961 with the commissioning of the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher (SSN-593). Tragically, this namesake submarine was lost with all hands in the Atlantic during a training dive on 10 Apr 1963.

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