Lost Boats
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died...rather we should thank God that such men lived...
~ George S. Patton
Lost on 12 OCT 1943 with the 77 officers and men when she was sunk by unknown causes in the western Atlantic near Cuba.
Newly commissioned, she had departed New London and was enroute to Panama.
She may have been sunk by a U.S. patrol plane that received faulty instructions regarding bombing restriction areas or a German U-boat that was in the vicinity.
Missing, presumed sunk, on or after 16 NOV 1943 with the loss of 82 men.
USS CORVINA topped off with fuel at Johnston Island and was never heard from again.
She was on her first war patrol and it is likely that she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine south of Truk.
Sunk by scuttling in the Gilberts Archipelogo with the loss of 43 men following an attack near Truk.
On her ninth war patrol, severely damaged by depth charges after attacking an enemy convoy, USS SCULPIN continued to fight on the surface.
When Commanding Officer CDR Connaway was killed, the crew abandoned ship and scuttled her.
Forty-one survivors were taken prisoner but only twenty-one survived the war.
Among those not abandoning ship was CAPT Cromwell, aboard as a potential wolf-pack commander, and he rode the USS SCULPIN down, fearing that vital information in his possession might be compromised under torture.
For this, CAPT Cromwell was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Missing, presumed sunk, on or after 01 DEC 1943 with the loss of 76 officers and men.
She was on her first war patrol in the Celebes Sea, but her exact location, date and cause of loss remain a mystery.
She may have been lost to mines or an operational casualty.
Lost with a total of 77 officers and men in the East China Sea on her fourth war patrol.
It is assumed she was sunk by a mine.
Lost on 26 FEB 1944 with the loss of 80 officers and men on her tenth war patrol.
She appears to have been caught on the surface in the East China Sea by a Japanese carrier plane whose bombs made a direct hit.
During this patrol she sank 4 ships totaling 21,594 tons and was tied for eleventh in the number of ships sunk.
Lost on or after 29 FEB 1944 with the loss of 81 officers and men on her eleventh war patrol.
USS TROUT topped off with fuel at Midway and was never heard from again. She is presumed to have been sunk by escorts in the middle of the Philippines Basin after sinking a passenger-cargoman and damaging another in a convoy. Japanese records indicate that one of their convoys was attacked by a submarine on 29 FEB 1944 in the area assigned to USS TROUT. Possibly one of the convoy's escorts sank the USS TROUT.
She carried out several notable special missions, including carrying over two tons of gold bullion out of Corregidor in February of 1942.
Lost on 26 MAR 1944 with the loss of 79 officers and men on her fourth war patrol.
It's believed USS TULLIBEE was a victim of a circular run by one of her own torpedoes.
The lookout was the only survivor and he survived the war as a Japanese prisoner.
USS GUDGEON (SS 211) was probably lost on 18 APR 1944 with the loss of seventy-nine officers and men, southeast of Iwo Jima, but may have been sunk as late as 12 MAY 1944 in different attack on an unidentified submarine and heard by several other submarines in the area.
Winner of five Presidential Unit Citations, USS GUDGEON was on her twelfth war patrol and most likely the victim of a combined air and surface anti-submarine attack.
USS GUDGEON was the first US submarine to go on patrol from Pearl Harbor, HI, after the Japanese attack.
On her first patrol, she became the first US submarine to sink an enemy warship, picking off the Japanese submarine I-173.
Gudgeon was officially overdue and presumed lost on 07 JUN 1944.
Captured Japanese records shed no light on the manner of her loss, and it must remain one of the mysteries of the silent sea.
Lost on 01 JUN 1944 with the loss of 83 officers and men near Matsuwa Island.
USS HERRING was on her eight war patrol and was conducting a surface attack when a shore battery spotted her.
In a counter-attack, the enemy shore batteries scored two direct hits on USS HERRING's conning tower and "bubbles covered an area about 3 miles wide, and heavy oil covered an area of approximately 15 miles."
Before being sunk, she had sank a freighter and a passenger-cargoman.
USS HERRING was the only US submarine to be sunk by a land battery.