Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger
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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 22, 2024: Ghosts of Gagil Tomil
Via the U.S. Navy SEAL Museum.
Above we see UDT-10 swimmers (left to right) S1c Leonard Barnhill, SP(A)1c John MacMahon, LT M.R. Massey, SP(X)1c Bill Moore, and QM3c Warren Christensen on the cramped mess deck of the Balao-class fleet boat USS Burrfish (SS-312) on the early morning of 17 August 1944. Note the hearty “welcome home” breakfast of eggs, bacon, and coffee fortified with medicinal 6-year-old Overholt straight rye whiskey along with the diver’s working uniform of grease, grenades, knives, and swim trunks.
These men would mount the first and only submarine-launched reconnaissance operation accomplished by the Pacific UDTs during WWII, some 80 years ago this month.
Some of them are still missing.
The Balao Class
A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. Unlike those of many navies of the day, U.S. subs were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.
Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.
Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.
An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:
- Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
- Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
- Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
- Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
- Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)
We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Greenfish, rocket mail slinger USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, Spain’s “30-one-and-only,” and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories
Meet Burrfish
Our subject is the only U.S. Navy warship to carry the name of the tiny Atlantic swellfish. Built by the Portsmouth Navy Yard, she was laid down on 24 February 1943, launched that June, and commissioned on 14 September– her construction spanning just 202 days.
Officers and crewmen salute the colors as the Burrfish (SS-312) slides into the Atlantic at Portsmouth Navy Yard, Portsmouth, N.H., 18 June 1943 via Subvets
Her first skipper was 32-year-old LT (T/Cdr) William Beckwith Perkins, Jr., USN (USNA 1932), late of the Panama Canal Zone’s guardian submarine “Sugar Boat” USS S-11 (SS 116). A Keystoner born in Upper Turkeyfoot Township, Pennsylvania, he was the grandson of a swashbuckling horse soldier, Isaac Otey Perkins, who rode with the 5th Virginia Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War. Meanwhile, his uncle, Col. Nathaniel James Perkins, was head of the Fork Union Military Academy, which LT Perkins attended before his appointment to Annapolis.
After a four-month 8,000-mile shakedown cruise from New London to Key West– where she took part in two weeks of ASW exercises– through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor where Burrfish arrived on 6 January 1944, she prepped for her first war patrol. This included 11 underway exercises (four at night), degaussing, and sound listening tests.
1943-1944 USS Burrfish commanding officer William Beckwith Perkins, Jr. on the right in the second row.
War!
Getting into it, Burrfish departed Pearl Harbor on 2 February 1944 for her 1st War Patrol. She was ordered to patrol in the Caroline Islands area. She was a new boat with a green crew. It was the first war patrol for not only her skipper but also for 53 of her 83-member crew– some of which were added just a day before sailing. Her XO, LT Talbot Edward Harper (USNA 1937), had made five patrols already on the USS Greyback.
Burrfish met the enemy for the first time on 10 February– a Betty bomber while she was on the surface– and both left unharmed.
Sailing through a Japanese convoy on Valentine’s Day 1944 and firing off four unsuccessful Mark 14 torpedoes, she was depth charged for two hours, counting 22 strings of cans while she went deep– 500 feet– to avoid death. Keep in mind test depth on Balaos was listed as 400 feet.
She was depth charged again by a Japanese destroyer (8 cans) on 17 February.
This pace continued for the rest of the month, concluding on Leap Day when she fired three unsuccessful Mark 14s at a large Japanese freighter accompanied by two escorts and received 33 depth charges in return.
March likewise brought a three-torpedo attack on an escorted transport on the 3rd, which was unsuccessful.
Recalled, Burrfish ended her 1st War Patrol at Midway on 22 March, with several leaks from depth charge attacks and her unusable No. 1 torpedo tube which was jammed in two feet. She had counted 30 Japanese air contacts and 13 ship contacts in her 9,561-mile, 53-day sortie but failed to claim any.
A Combat Insignia for the patrol was not authorized by ComSubPac.
Three weeks later, repaired, rearmed, restored, and refueled, she left on her 2nd War Patrol on 14 April, ordered to stalk the Japanese Home Islands, east of Kyushu and south of Honshu. Her crew at this point was mostly made up of men who had earned their “dolphins” and she carried fish with updated warheads.
Logging 16 shipping contacts, mostly trawlers, Burrfish hit paydirt on the early morning of 7 May when she came across a tanker and, after stalking it for three hours, pumping three Mk 14-3As into its hull.
Post-war review boards confirmed she sank the German oiler Rossbach (5984 GRT) formerly the Norwegian A/S Norsk Rutefart-operated D/T Madrono, south of Murotosaki, Japan. She had been seized by the Hilfskreuzer Thor in June 1942.
The Britsh-built Madrono was caught by Thor while traveling in ballast from Melbourne to Abadan. While her Norwegian crew spent the rest of the war in Yokohama, Burrfish sent the tanker to the bottom with her German prize crew aboard.
Burrfish ended her second patrol at Pearl Harbor on 4 June, having covered 9,370 miles in 52 days, and was allowed her first Combat Insignia for her successful patrol. Her original XO, Talbot Harper, left the boat to receive command of USS Kingfish (SS 234), which he would take out on four war patrols and bag seven Japanese ships, earning the Silver Star in the process.
Then came the Yap operation
Frogman mission
With the need to map Axis-held beaches and clear obstacles for follow-on landings, the Navy began standing up what would become Navy Combat Demolition Units and later Underwater Demolition Teams in the early summer of 1943. Basic training was conducted in a nine-week program at Fort Pierce, Florida, later followed by six weeks of advanced training at the NCDT&E depot in Maui for Pacific-bound UDTs. The first teams to see combat were UDT-1 and UDT-2, which hit the beach during Operation Flintlock at Kwajalein and Roy-Namur in January 1944.
These “Demolitioneers” were primarily recruited from the Seabee dynamiting and demolition school but also included bluejackets from the fleet and the occasional Coast Guardsman. In the end, some 34 UDT teams were formed, 21 of which saw combat. Organized in four dive platoons and one HQ section, the units consisted of 13 officers (plus an Army and Navy liaison officer) and 70 (later 85) enlisted men. One team, UDT-10, absorbed five officers and 24 enlisted who had been trained as OSS Special Maritime Unit combat swimmers whose group, Operational Swimmer Group (OSG) II had been pushed into more mainstream use by Nimitz.
It was in early June that it was decided, by request of 3rd Amphibious Force Commander, VADM Teddy Wilkinson to ComSubPac, that a submarine make a reconnaissance of the Japanese-occupied Palau Islands so that Wilkinson and his staff knew what they were up against.
Burrfish drew the duty and was specially modified to carry a pared-down UDT platoon and its equipment. Two 7-man LCRS rubber rafts and several sets of oars were stored deflated in a pair of free-flooding, ventilated, 8-foot-long cylindrical tanks fitted to the sub’s deck abaft the conning tower. The boats were inflated topside through the use of a special valve fitted to her whistle line. Four torpedoes were landed from her forward torpedo room and the empty skids were arranged with mattresses for the 11-man team.
Special equipment, a German-made Bentzin Primarflex camera on a custom bracket, was rigged to allow the sub to take panoramic photos via her periscope while submerged. The trick had been learned on the USS Nautilus off Tarawa by her XO, LT Richard “Ozzie” Lynch who had tried and failed with three Navy-issued cameras before experimenting with his own personal Primarflex to outstanding results.
The Navy soon acquired a dozen of the German cameras, primarily second-hand via discreet classified ads in photography magazines, for submarine surveillance use.
Burrfish was also detailed to collect hydrographic data on the ocean currents in and around the islands.
The UDT Special-Mission Group assigned to Burrfish comprised Lt. Charles Kirkpatrick as commander, an unnamed support member, and nine assorted swimmers. Five of these divers– QM1c Robert A. Black, Jr. (8114404); SP(A)1c John MacMahon (4027186); SP(X)1c William Moore (6339607); S1c Leonard Barnhill (8903302); and QM3c Warren Christensen (8697250)– were OSS OSG II men from the newly formed UDT-10 which had only arrived from Fort Pierce that June and was just wrapping up its advanced training in Maui. Two (LT M.R. Massey and CGM Howard “Red” Roeder) were instructors tapped from UDT-1’s battle-hardened Maui training cadre. While two senior men (CBM John E. Ball and CM3c Emmet L. Carpenter) were drawn from the staff of Sub Base, Pearl Harbor.
This 11-member UDT det was carried in addition to Burrfish’s 72-member crew, 53 of which had already earned their dolphins on prior patrols.
Burrfish departed from Pearl Harbor for her 3rd War Patrol with her frogmen on 11 July, topping off her tanks at Midway on the 15th before continuing West. Starting on the 22nd, she began experiencing severe Japanese air activity whenever she surfaced and observed the patrol planes to be DF-ing her radar so she secured her SD and SJ sets and relied on her primitive APR-1 radar warning receiver and SPA-1 pulse analyzer equipment for the rest of the mission.
Closing with Angaur and Yap Islands by 29 July, she spent the next three weeks inspecting the beaches each morning and conducting submerged pericope photography– filling 16 rolls of 35mm film– and closely verifying and updating the pre-war Admiralty charts she had on hand for the islands. Bathythermograph cards were scrutinized and carefully logged to note thermoclines.
Night drifting on the surface with the UDT recon team posted as topside lookouts while the radar gang listened to the APR/SPA gear allowing Burrfish to effectively discover and map out the four Japanese search radars in the area.
On 9 August, Burrfish rendezvoused with sister USS Balao some 20 miles offshore. After challenging and confirming each other from 30,000 yards via quick SJ radar blips, a rubber boat was sent over at 2300 to transfer the film and data collected thus far so that, should Burrfish be lost in her subsequent inshore beach recon via swimmer, at least the collected intel would get back to VADM Wilkinson’s staff.
Between 11 and 18 August, Burrfish closed in close enough (3,000 yards) to send recon swimmers ashore three times via their man-powered rubber rafts, swimming the final 500 yards to deploy two pairs of swimmers while a fifth man remained behind with the raft. The UDT men visited the southeast tip of Peleliu Island and Yap on the first two trips, saving the northeast coast or Gagil Tomil for the third mission.
It was at Gagil Tomil on the night of 18/19 August that three men– Black, Roeder, and MacMahon– failed to return to Burrfish before dawn forced the sub to withdraw and submerge.
As noted by the DPAA on the three missing men:
After setting out, one team returned to the boat after one of the swimmers became exhausted in the surf. His partner then returned to the island. The two men now in the boat waited until past the appointed rendezvous time for the swimmers to return. With no sign of the others, the men in the boat rowed closer to shore to investigate. They risked discovery by using flashlights to attempt to make contact, but received no response. Finally, the two men were forced to abandon the search and return to the submarine.
Scouting the shoreline the next day from dangerously close in, Burrfish failed to catch sight of the trio.
They repeated the same forlorn wait on the 20th.
Ordered to leave, LCDR Perkins regretfully complied. All three of the missing swimmers eventually received the Silver Star, posthumously.
Crew members of UDT 10 on submarine Burrfish at Peliliu. L-R Chief Ball, John MacMahon (MIA), Bob Black (MIA), Emmet L. Carpenter, Chief Howard Roeder. Via the U.S. Navy SEAL Museum.
Perkins noted in his report, “In this officer’s experience, this group of men was outstanding – both professionally and as shipmates. They have had a long and difficult cruise in the submarine but have acquitted themselves admirably. It is a tragedy that Roeder, MacMahon, and Black are not on board.”
Burrfish concluded her 3rd Patrol at Majuro in the Marshall Islands after 47 days at sea on 27 August, logging 10,600 miles. It was deemed a successful patrol due to the quantity and quality of information obtained, with a Combat Insignia authorized by ComSubPac. However, all further UDT operations in the Pacific would be via littoral capable surface ships, typically APDs (converted destroyers, aka “Green Dragons”) and LCIs/LSTs.
On return to Hawaii, the three remaining OSS OSG II members of the UDT Special Mission Group (Christensen, Barnhill, and Moore) were put in for silver stars (all others recommended for bronze) and rolled into the Maui cadre to train incoming swimmers from the states.
With Station HYPO decoding subsequent enemy transmissions that the three missing UDT men were captured alive by the Japanese and interrogated by notoriously brutal Intelligence specialists who labeled them as members of a “Bakuha-tai” (demolition unit), the pending invasion of Yap was scrubbed, and the group was bypassed in line with the U.S. island-hopping strategy, her 6,000 man garrison surrendering post-war.
Meanwhile, the operation to capture Palau and Peleliu (Operation Stalemate II) would kick off in mid-September.
By that time, Burrfish was already on another war patrol.
Wolfpack Nights
Following a three-week turnaround alongside the sub tender USS Sperry, Burrfish departed from Majuro for her 4th War Patrol on 18 September 1944, bound for the Bonin Islands.
The patrol would be an extended operation in two parts, conducted as an element of a Yankee Wolfpack (Coordinated Attack Group 17.24) under the overall command of CDR Thomas “Burt” Klakring, commander of SubDiv 101, who would fly his flag on USS Silversides (SS 236) as afloat commodore.
The group, unofficially dubbed “Burt’s Brooms,” included not only Silversides and Burrfish but also USS Saury (SS 189), Tambor (SS 198), Trigger (SS 237), Sterlet (SS 392), and Ronquil (SS 396). While several of the boats were very seasoned– Saury, Silversides, and Trigger were on their 11th and 12th War Patrols (and would retire from combat service at the end of the patrol) — others were decidedly green, with Ronquil and Sterlet only on their second patrols.
The first phase, which lasted 48 days in the Nansei Shoto area, saw the Burrfish claim a pre-dawn 27 October kill (not confirmed by post-war boards) on an 8,500-ton cargo ship after she fired six torpedoes into a Japanese convoy and heard three explosions.
She also survived an encounter on 30 October in which an armed vessel fired a 6-round salvo at her before she submerged and another pack member sank her attacker. It is nice to have friends.
Then came a five-day diversion (5-10 November) to Saipan to tie up next to the tender USS Fulton (AS-11), during which Klakring and all of his pack’s skippers would plan their anti-patrol boat sweep between the Bonins and Japan proper. The reason for the sweep was to sterilize the zone ahead of Halsey’s Task Force 38 which was scheduled to raid the Home Islands so that the picket boats couldn’t alert Tokyo of the approaching carriers. However, as Halsey was forced to cancel the raid due to lingering fighting over Leyte at the last minute, the subs were left holding the bag and ran the sweep as more of a dress rehearsal.
Plagued by terrible surface conditions which made torpedo attacks all but useless and gun actions more dangerous to the crews than the enemy, the 15-day/7 submarine sweep only managed to bag just four Japanese pickets as a group (15 November: Silversides sank guard boat Nachiryu Maru No. 12 while Saury bagged the guard boat Kojo Maru. 16 November: Tambor sank Taikai Maru No. 3.).
The fourth came in a surface action on 17 November 1944 Burrfish and Ronquil got in a gunfight with what turned out to be the Japanese auxiliary patrol boat Fusa Maru (177 GRT) south of Hachiro Jima, Japan. In the fight, Burrfish was hit by Japanese gunfire. Two men, Cox. H.A. Foster and S1c R.D. Lopez, were wounded.
It was a close-up affair, with the trawler within 700 yards, and Burrfish received superficial small caliber hits to her after conning tower. Ammunition expended was 9 4-inch (2 Common, 7 HC), 720 rounds of 20mm, and 500 rounds of 30.06 from her M1919s.
Meanwhile, Ronquil also suffered damage from the premature detonation of one of her 40mm Bofors shells which blew two holes in her pressure hull and required a risky topside underway repair (by her XO no less) to be able to dive again.
With Burt’s Brooms disbanded, Burrfish wrapped up her 4th War Patrol at Pearl Harbor on 2 December by tying up alongside USS Pelais, having logged some 15,700 miles across 75 days.
It was at Pearl that LCDR Perkins would depart his submarine, handing command over to LCDR M.H. Lytle, formerly of USS Sturgeon (SS 187) and with eight war patrols to his credit, just before Christmas.
USS Burrfish (SS-312) at Pearl Harbor, circa 1945. Courtesy of H. Leavitt Horton, Sr. NH 92322
Lifeguard Days
Following the Christmas and New Year holidays, Lytle took Burrfish out to sea on 3 January 1945 to begin her 5th War Patrol. She was ordered to take up station south of Japan’s Nanpo Shoto area to serve as a floating lifeguard and weather station to support B-29 raids on the Home Islands. Arriving at the station on the 23rd, she spotted her first incoming “aluminum overcast” wave that afternoon– with her SJ radar set picking up contacts as far off as 34,000 yards.
When USS Pogy (SS 266) and Ronquil entered the area the next day, Lytle, as senior officer afloat, assumed command of the three-boat wolfpack (TG 17.29) and parked astride the Hachija Shima-Chichi Jima shipping lane with the hopes of bagging something between B-29 sorties.
Unfortunately, shipping was slim and the only action Burrfish saw during the patrol was a trio of long-range (15,000 yards) Mark 18 torpedoes sent after a 300-ton Japanese patrol craft on the horizon on 11 February– for which she had to suffer a severe depth charging that required her to put in to Midway for three days of emergency repairs.
Burrfish ended her 5th War Patrol alongside USS Apollo at Guam on 24 February, having covered 8,130 miles in 52 days. ComSubPac did not authorize a Combat Insignia for the patrol.
With repairs pushing back her normal three-week turnaround cycle, Burrfish didn’t begin her 6th War Patrol until 25 March, with orders to patrol the Luzon Strait and off Formosa. A sleeper cruise, her war history notes “Thirty successive days were spent on lifeguard station for the 5th Air Force but no opportunity for rescue presented itself.”
The only “action” seen was in deep-sixing some floating mines and a derelict abandoned 40-foot sampan with her deck guns and in a pre-dawn gunfire raid on the Japanese radio station on Batan Island.
Burrfish ended her 6th war patrol at Saipan on 4 May 1945 after 65 days and 13,600 miles. ComSubPac, in its message not authorizing a Combat Insignia for the patrol, wished “better luck next time” but there would be no next time.
Sent back to her birthplace at Portsmouth Navy Yard at Kittery, Maine for a major overhaul, where she arrived in late June, she was still there when VJ Day hit.
She was decommissioned on 10 October 1946 at Sub Base New London and laid up there as part of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.
Burrfish is listed as one of the Balaos in Jane’s 1946 entry.
Burrfish received five battle stars for her World War II service and claimed 13,600 tons across her six (three successful) patrols.
Cold War SSR Days
Recommissioned on 2 November 1948 after just two years in mothballs, she went back home to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for conversion to a Radar Picket Submarine and was redesignated SSR-312 on 27 January 1949.
A total of ten old fleet boats were converted to SSRs under the Migraine I, II & III (SCB-12A) programs.
Burrfish Thames River, circa 1948, on the way to her SSR conversion, via Navsource. Note she has a snorkel and no guns.
Her “Migraine I” conversion included landing her 4-inch gun as well as half of her torpedo tubes and gaining a bunch of radar gear. She retained her open fairwater, with the bridge being shifted to the forward cigarette deck, and a 40 mm Bofors taking the place of her old gun in an instance of one of the final new installations of cannon on an American submarine. Only one other SSR received the Migraine I conversion, the Tench-class boat USS Tigrone (SS-419).
As described by the Submarine Force Library and Museum Association:
In this modification, the space formerly used as the crew’s mess and galley was turned into a CIC, and the after torpedo tubes were removed to allow the entire after torpedo compartment to be used for berthing. Two of the forward tubes were also eliminated to make additional room for storage and equipment. More importantly, however, the two radar antennas were raised on masts, with an AN/BPS-2 search radar sprouting from the after portion of the sail, and the height finder mounted on a free-standing tower just abaft it. This put the 15-foot search antenna some 40 feet above the water, with the height finder only a little below.
Burrfish returned to duty with the active fleet on 7 February 1950 and was assigned to Submarine Squadron 6 at Norfolk.
Burrfish broadside view during her trials as an SSR, conducted on 27 January 1950, via Navsource
Burrfish as radar picket in Med. Note that her 40mm gun has been removed by this time.
Burrfish as radar picket in Europe, French postcard, 23 May 1952. She still has her Bofors.
Between February 1950 and June 1956, she completed three lengthy deployments with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean and “participated in several major type and inter-type exercises and operated along the eastern seaboard as a radar picket ship.” During this time she also earned an Occupation Clasp for service in the Med (29 Sep 50 – 23 Jan 51).
As part of SubDiv 62, all of the Atlantic-based radar pickets were collected including Burrfish’ old “Burt’s Brooms” buddy, Requin, two Migraine II conversions: Burrfish (SSR-312) and Tigrone (SSR-419), and the Migrane IIIs Pompon (SSR-267), Ray (SS-271), and Redfin (SSR-272) along with Sailfish.
USS Yellowstone (AD-27) in Augusta Bay, Sicily, during her Mediterranean cruise, May- October 1950. Alongside her are (l-r): USS Sea Robin (SS-407); USS Torsk ( SS-423); USS Sea Leopard (SS-483); USS Burrfish (SSR-312); USS John R. Pierce (DD-753); USS Barton (DD-722); USS Shea (DM-30). In the background is the USS Harry F. Bauer (DM-26). 80-G-428712
On 5 June 1956, with the SSR program winding down and new SSNs arriving in the fleet, Burrfish sailed from Norfolk to New London where she reported for inactivation.
She was placed out of commission, in reserve, on 17 December 1956.
Canadian Service
As we have covered prior, the Royal Canadian Navy had a series of fits and starts that included a pair of small (144-foot, 300-ton) American-built coastal boats, HMCS CC-1 and CC-2, which served in the Great War, another pair of American-made 435-ton H-class submarines (HMCS CH-14 and CH-15) which served briefly in the 1920s, and two ex-Kriegsmarine U-boats (HMCS U-190 and U-889) which served (or at least floated) for a couple years after WWII.
Looking to regrow their nascent submarine arm in 1960 after a 13-year break, the RCN inspected 10 American mothballed diesel boats and picked Burrfish with an initial five-year loan and the agreement that Ottawa would pay for the cost of reactivation and modification. It made sense as Burrfish had only been laid up at this point for three years and had already received both a snorkel and improved higher-capacity batteries in her 1949 SSR conversion.
The mission set for the new boat was to be one of an OPFOR for Canada’s very professional ASW force, with the RCN noting, “During and after the war it had been the custom of the RN to provide ‘tame’ submarines for anti-submarine training in Nova Scotia waters. By 1961, with a growing fleet of new anti-submarine ships based at Esquimalt, it had become desirable to have a submarine stationed there as well.”
She received the name HMCS Grilse (S 71) after a Great War era yacht turned fast torpedo boat and was commissioned into the RCN on 11 May 1961. Notably, while the Canadians had run six different subs prior, Grilse was the first to have an actual name rather than just a number.
HMCS Grilse. Note her “clean” appearance with SSR radars removed and no mounted guns.
H.M.C.S. Grilse – Esquimalt,BC – Aug. 22, 1966
HMCS Grilse
HMCS Grilse
HMCS Grilse
USS Burrfish SS-312 (Balao class) was loaned to Canada and commissioned as HMCS Grilse (71) on May 11th, 1961, seen here at Esquimalt with RCN WWII submarine vets aboard for a tour. Note the details of her snorkel and radar arrangement.
Keeping her slightly longer than her five-year loan, Grilse was withdrawn in December 1968, returned to U.S. Navy custody at Bremerton, and was struck from the Naval Register on 19 July 1969.
Grilse proved such a good investment for the Canadians that they sought to purchase four new Barbel-class diesel boats from the U.S., giving them two boats each at Halifax and Esquimalt, but the ever-thrifty government instead opted for a trio of British Oberon-class boats ordered from HM Royal Dockyard Chatham. These three, HMCS Ojibwa (SS 72), Onondaga (SS 73), and Okanagan (SS 74), entered Canadian service between 1965 and 1968.
On 2 December 1968, the mothballed USS Argonaut (SS 475) was sold to the RCN for $150,000 and renamed HMCS Rainbow (SS 75), named after one of the first ships ever to enter service with the Canadians back in 1910, giving the Canadian a solid four boats until 1975 when the old Tench-class fleet boat was retired, opting for an all-Oberon force until 2000.
On 19 November 1969, ex-Burrfish/Grilse was expended in a SINKEX, destroyed on the surface while under remote control by the brand new Mk 46 ASW torpedo dropped by a SH-3 Sea King helicopter off San Clemente Island in an early test of that weapon system.
November 19, 1969: HMCS Grilse submarine was sunk by USN off California
Epilogue
Neither the Americans nor the Canadians have used the names Burrfish or Grilse since our SS/SSR-312/S-71 was disposed of.
Her bell, marked Burrfish on one side and Grisle on the other, is on display at CFB Esquimalt.
Burrfish’s war history, plans, deck logs, and patrol reports are in the National Archives.
Her Canadian vets have a For Postery’s Sake page for Grilse’s Cold War service.
Six Balao-class submarines are preserved (for now) as museum ships across the country.
Please visit one of these fine ships and keep the legacy alive:
-USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
–USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
–USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii.
–USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
– USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California, (which played the part of the fictional USS Stingray in the movie Down Periscope).
–USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
The three UDT swimmers left behind at Palau– Specialist First Class (Athletic Instructor) John Churchill MacMahon, Quartermaster First Class Robert A. Black Jr., and Chief Gunner’s Mate (Aviation) Howard Livingston Roeder, are among the 72,040 unaccounted for U.S. military personnel from WWII as tracked by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. They were memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines and at the UDT/SEAL Memorial Wall at Fort Pierce. The search for their remains continues, with their cases marked in the DPAA category of “Active Pursuit.”
Recent expeditions to Palau to help find more information about the trio were mounted by Project Recover in conjunction with the National Navy UDT -SEAL Museum. The case is personal for the Naval Special Warfare community, as it is the only combat mission ever accomplished by NSW operators where men were lost in action and their remains never recovered.
As for the rest of UDT-10, it went on to see much action in at Anguar Island, Palau, and in the Philippines before it was disestablished at Fort Pierce on 2 February 1946. It was not one of the four (UDT-11 and 12 at Coronado, 21 and 22 at Little Creek) downsized teams formed for post-war service. It was never stood back up.
Burrfish’s plank owner skipper, William Beckwith Perkins, who commanded her on her first four war patrols, and who was at her combat periscope when she sank the tanker Rossbach and fought off Fusa Maru, remained in the Navy after the war and retired as a rear admiral in 1959 after 26 years of service. Of the 465 American submarine skippers who pulled at least one war patrol, only about 60 ever managed to earn a star in the promotion-slim postwar sub force (a club he shared with Burrfish’s first XO, Talbot Harper).
Perkins passed in 1992, age 81, at Fork Union, Virginia, and is remembered as a distinguished alumni of the Fort Union Military Academy and Annapolis.
His son, who inherited his papers, has been influential in documenting the loss of the UDT men at Gagil Tomil.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
I’m a member, so should you be!
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