P-3s are still out there busting subs everyday…just in a different livery and with no Mk46s
A Customs and Border Patrol Air and Marine Office P-3 Orion Long Range Tracker found a self-propelled semi-submersible vessel (SPSS/dope sub) in the Eastern Pacific Ocean that led to the arrest of four smugglers and the boat being lost at sea with 6 tons of blow on board. Street value was $193 milly.
As noted by CBP in their presser:
The crew aboard a P-3 Long Range Tracker detected a self-propelled semi-submersible vessel Mar. 2, while conducting counter-narcotics operations with Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) South.
The task force coordinated an interdiction of the semi-submersible with a U.S. Coast Guard vessel in the area while the AMO crew maintained constant visual surveillance. Upon interdiction, the U.S. Coast Guard arrested four individuals operating the vessel. The semi-submersible became unstable and sank.
“This type of cooperation and teamwork produces these kinds of results where suspects are arrested and narcotics prevented from reaching U.S. shores,” said Director John Wassong at the National Air Security Operations Center – Corpus Christi. “Our crews will continue to take every opportunity to disrupt this type of transnational criminal activity.”
CBP’s LRTs, called “slicks” by the service to differentiate them from the AN/APS 145 radar-equipped AEWs, are former USN P-3As that have landed most of their ASW and ASuW suite, replacing them with an electro-optic ball with night vision and FLIR capabilities, APG 66 air search and SeaVue marine search radars used for detecting and tracking targets of interest.
Over 40 years old, the 14 Orions flown by CBP have been extensively reworked in recent years and are expected to remain in service for another two decades.
Warship Wednesday: March 16, 2016, the Tale of the Photogenic Tyrant
All photos except where mentioned are from the IWM collection
Here we see the forward view from the conning tower of the British T (Triton)-class diesel electric submarine HMS Tribune (N76) of HMs Royal Navy running along the surface in Scottish waters, 1942. Though modern and relatively low mileage, this 275-foot fleet boat only served for a decade, but she will live on for eternity.
With the World War I era boats getting long in the tooth, the Admiralty commissioned twelve 275-foot Odin-class, six 289-foot Parthian-class, six 287-foot Rainbow-class, 62 much smaller 202-foot S-class, three huge and rather experimental 345-foot River-class and six 289-foot Grampus-class submarines in the 1920s and 30s. With lessons learned from these 95~ diesel boats, it seemed the brass liked the 275-foot range as a sweet spot for general sub size and pushed ahead with 53 new T-class boats to replace the 1920s era O, P and R class submersibles mentioned above.
HMS TRIBUNE in Scottish waters, possibly at Campbeltown
These sea monsters, designed in 1935, had an impressive armament of 10 torpedo tubes (6 bow, 4 aft) which was considered devastating at the time, room for 16 torpedoes, and mounted a QF 4-incher on deck. A crew of 48 manned the 1,500-ton smoke boat and twin diesel/electric engines/motors could drive them at nearly 16 knots on the surface and 9 when submerged. They weren’t flashy compared to the German, U.S. and Japanese fleet boats of the day, but they could sail 8,000 nautical miles and could operate at a 300 foot depth with no problem.
The hero of our tale, HMS Tribune, was the sixth and thus far last ship of the fleet to carry that name since 1796. Laid down 3 March 1937 at Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Greenock on the River Clyde in Scotland, she was commissioned into the fleet on 17 October 1939– just six weeks after the start of World War II.
While still working up Tribune may have brushed into U-21 thought neither ship exchanged fire.
Over the next three and a half years she would complete an impressive 18 war patrols, though cranky engines proved her undoing. Many of Tribune’s patrols were quiet, with nothing but neutral ships spotted. Covered in great detail over at Uboat.net (go read it!), she had a series of 15 skippers over this period, typically reserve lieutenants. She spent extensive time off the coast of Norway and in the Kattegat while operating from Rosyth but just couldn’t make the hits when needed.
Tribune made unsuccessful torpedo attacks on the German armed merchant cruiser Schiff 33 / Pinguin off Standlandet, Norway; U-56 in the Hebrides; U-138 with 5 torpedoes about 10 nautical miles South-West of Ile de Groix; the German tanker Karibisches Meer in the Bay of Biscay; and finally sighted the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and light cruiser Köln leaving the Gimsostrommen and steering towards Hval Fjord in Sept. 1942 but was unable to attack.
During 1942, Admiralty photographers who captured a number of images that endure in the IWM today toured her at Scapa Flow.
HMS TRIBUNE lying alongside the submarine depot ship HMS FORTH at Holy Loch, Scotland at dawn
Second Coxswain of HMS TRIBUNE, Petty Officer Hedley Charles Woodley, at his diving station on the forward hydroplanes
A signaller with an Aldis lamp on board HMS TRIBUNE.
Lieutenant Commander G D A Gregory at the periscope of HMS TRIBUNE
Stokers playing cards on board HMS TRIBUNE.
Asdic rating, Leading Seaman Walker, on the bridge of HMS TRIBUNE keeping a watch out with a torpedo nightsight
Lt Bulkeley in the wardroom
Then came the Crown Film Unit who, with a barebones cast and director Jack Lee, cameraman Bill Chaston and cinematographer Jonah Jones with a few WRENs in-tow, filmed the Ministry of Information film “Close Quarters” aboard the vessel.
In the 75-minute film, she was referred to as HMS Tyrant and, while most of the scenes were fleshed out by a full production crew at Pinewood Studio in a superb full-sized model of the submarine, footage of the boat underway and her spaces were retained.
Actor operating a high pressure valve on board HMS TRIBUNE during the making of the film ‘Close Quarters
Note the greatly enhanced Jolly Roger of HMS Tyrant!
Transferring to Gibraltar in November 1942, Tribune began patrols in the Med with about the same success she had off Norway. Although she caught some depth charges from a RAF Wellington by mistake, and more from an Italian patrol boat, she did come in handy by landing SOE agents in Corsica in January 1943 and carried out close recon of the Copaiba Bay shoreline from just 1,000 yards or so offshore.
On 10 Jan 1943, Tribune finally drew blood by pumping torpedoes into the Nazi-flagged French merchant Dalny (6672 GRT, built 1914) 15 nautical miles from San Remo, Italy, which had to be beached in order to prevent sinking.
She followed this up later with damaging the German tanker Präsident Herrenschmidt (9103 GRT, built 1932) about five nautical miles South-West of San Lucido, Italy, in March.
Crew of the TRIBUNE pose around their Jolly Roger 6 June 1943 Portsmouth note the dagger for the Corsican commando landings
With her engines untrustworthy, Tribune was sent back to Portsmouth in April 1943 and spent the rest of the war as a training boat. Placed in reserve in June 1945 even before the war ended in the Pacific, she was transferred to Falmouth in November 1945 then sold to be broken up for scrap July 1947.
As such, Tribune was luckier than many of her sisterships, of whom 16 were destroyed, largely by mines and in scraps with Italian and German subs in the Med. After the war, some were modernized similar to the same program as the USN did with the GUPPY boats, but the last of these, HMS Tabard (P342), was discarded by 1974.
Displacement:
1,290 tons surfaced
1,560 tons submerged
Length: 276 ft. 6 in (84.28 m)
Beam: 25 ft. 6 in (7.77 m)
Draught:
12 ft. 9 in (3.89 m) forward
14 ft. 7 in (4.45 m) aft
Propulsion:
Two shafts
Twin diesel engines, 2,500 hp (1.86 MW) each
Twin electric motors 1,450 hp (1.08 MW) each
Speed:
15.5 kn (28.7 km/h; 17.8 mph) surfaced
9 kn (17 km/h; 10 mph) submerged
Range: 8,000 nmi (9,200 mi; 15,000 km) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph) surfaced with 131 tons of fuel[1]
Complement: 48
Armament:
6 bow torpedo tubes
4 external torpedo tubes
16 torpedoes
QF 4 inch (100 mm) deck gun
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Boeing’s massive 51-foot Echo Voyager, debuted yesterday, is an outgrowth of their 18-foot Echo Ranger and 32-foot Echo Seeker prototype testbed UUV’s– which were capable of 2-3 day operations– only Voyager would be capable of missions lasting months in theory.
Equipped with a hybrid rechargeable power system and modular payload bay, the midget sub sans crew, according to the video below, can do everything in theory from being a weapons platform, to launching and operating UAVs, to protecting infrastructure (read= smoking frogmen operating near sensitive bases), to submarine decoy, mine countermeasures, ASW search and barrier ops, and battlespace prep– though the video spends a lot of time talking about how it can help with oceanography and oil spills as well.
“Echo Voyager is a new approach to how UUVs will operate and be used in the future,” said Darryl Davis, president, Boeing Phantom Works. “Our investments in innovative technologies such as autonomous systems are helping our customers affordably meet mission requirements now and in the years to come.”
Elbit Systems has a new 40-foot unmanned surface vehicle, the Seagull, which is designed to operate in pairs for either mine sweeping or sub busting. The idea is the first vehicle will have surveillance gear to find the sub or mine, while the second will carry either clearance gear (an ROV) or a anti-submarine torpedo to shove right up the sneaky U-boat’s kisser.
From Elbit’s presser:
Drawing on world class know -how derived from generations of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) design, development and operation and its naval capabilities, Elbit Systems’ newest offering in the unmanned platform field is Seagull -an organic, modular, highly autonomous, multi-mission Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) system.
Seagull is a 12-meter USV with replaceable mission modules, with two vessels capable of being operated and controlled in concert using a single Mission Control System (MCS), from manned ships or from the shore.
The system provides unmanned end-to-end mine hunting operation taking the man out of the mine field. It provides mission planning, and on-line operation in known and unknown areas,including area survey, search, detection, classification, identification, neutralization and verification. It is equipped to search the entire water volume and operate underwater vehicles to identify and neutralize mines.
The idea is the two-boat pair can operate within 50-100 miles of the control station and remain at sea for 96 hours, covering a pretty large swath of littoral in the process while their operators sip coffee back in a trailer somewhere. A second set of boats can be kept ready to rotate out the first, making a persistent sea station a very possible endeavor.
This obviously has uses in a MIUWU or PSU augmentation or replacement.
Speaking of which, DARPA’s Sea Hunter–the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, or ACTUV is the U.S.’s version of this, and is mucho larger at some 132-feet long and is getting some love on social media as of late.
When SMS U-31 of the Kaiserliche Marine‘s IV Flotilla sailed from Wilhelmshaven on 13 January 1915, and disappeared shortly thereafter, it was assumed, she had struck a mine and sunk with all hands, somewhere in the North Sea.
Well, it turned out they were right.
Now, 101 years after her disappearance, her final resting place is known. In 2012 an engineering team plotting the site of a new offshore wind farm about 55 nautical miles off the coast of East Anglia found a wreck on the ocean floor.
Digital scan of the sunken U boat, which has been found off the East Anglian coast. The wreckage of a First World War German submarine has been found by divers 90km off the East Anglian coast. Video footage shows the sunken U-boat, which went missing 1915, on the sea bed under about 100 feet of water. The 58 metre long wreck was found by a survey team from energy companies Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall, who are currently drawing up plans for the new East Anglia ONE wind farm.
Initial investigation thought it to be a lost Dutch sub from the WWII-era, so the Dutch Lamlash wreck-diving team was called in last year and they have identified the vessel as U-31.
151218-N-QK571-984 VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. (Jan. 12, 2016) The last two U.S. Navy S-3B Viking aircraft soar over Laguna Peak at Naval Base Ventura County, California. In January, one aircraft left Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 30 and retired to the boneyard; the other went to start a new life with NASA. (U.S. Navy photo by Scott Dworkin/Released)
After over 40 years in service to the Navy, the humble and often unloved S-3 Viking has passed on. This neat little ASW bird was cooked up in the 1970s to replace the aging S-2 Tracker prop plane to give the Navy’s carriers persistent sub-busting and surface control capabilities without having to task a P-3 squadron to each flattop from shore.
While the S-3 never had to actually drop it hot on a Russki sub, they tracked hundreds of them and would have been one of the vital keys to keeping the Atlantic open if the Cold War ever went hot. Post-1989, they were increasingly used (as the P-3 was/is) in supporting overland operations, providing vital eyes and ears in EW recon roles as well as helping the fleet with light COD and aerial refueling (buddy stores).
An S-2 Turbo Tracker of VS-21 hands it off to the then-new S-3. The last Navy S-2 was withdrawn from service on 29 August 1976
During the Gulf War, Vikings nailed a number of Saddam’s small fast attack craft as well, proving their teeth worked just fine.
Now, retired from the main fleet in 2009, a number of S-3 aircraft joined Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 30 and continued to be used for range control duties out of Point Magu where they were appreciated.
“It’s got legs,” Capt. John Rousseau, who led the charge to bring the retired aircraft to VX-30. “It can go fast and long. The radar, even though it’s old, there’s not many better. We still spot schools of dolphins and patches of seaweed” when patrolling the range.
In November, VX-30 retired the first of its three Vikings, flying it to the military aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. The other two, each with 40 years of service on the airframe, were not far behind.
“They still have life in them,” Rousseau said, “but it was time for another depot-level maintenance period, and you have to weigh that cost against the little time you could still get out of them.”
And with that, the last two were pulled off line this month and are headed to the desert.
And maybe Taiwan who could use them to replace (wait for it) 1950s vintage S-2 Trackers.
Germany has spent something like 120~ years making top-notch submarines. In fact, other than the 80 or so Romeo/Ming class diesels operated by the Chinese and the Norks, the most numerous modern submersible operated in the world are the 61 German-made Type 209 class submarines built and commissioned between 1971 and 2008.
However, if it wasn’t for the earlier Type 206 design, there never would have been a 209.
Designed in 1964 by Ingenieur Kontor Lübeck (IKL), these cute little 159-foot diesel-electric boats weighed but 500-tons at full load when submerged. However, they could stay at sea, floating in as little as 16 feet of water when surfaced and hiding in 10 fathoms when submerged if needed, for over a month.
Further, they carried 8 modern 533mm torpedoes which could be delivered all at once, allowing them the capability to sink virtually any warship found at sea–to include a Soviet battlecruiser– with a single salvo.
Some 18 were built for the Bundesmarine (West German Navy), numbered U13-U30, commissioning between April 1973 and March 1975, just under two years, which isn’t bad. Had the balloon ever gone up in the Cold War, these hardy craft would likely have given the Soviets, East Germans and Poles a lot of hell in the Baltic.
They were so nice, in fact, that the Israelis ordered three slightly modded variants they termed the Gal-class as a follow-on, which were delivered in 1976-77.
Further, another 15 very similar (535-ton/155-foot) Type 207s were built as the Kobben class for the Royal Norwegian Navy by 1966 and have gone on to serve not only that fleet but the Danes and Poles as well (the latter of which still have five of these in service) proving the design still holds water after a half-century.
The Germans kept their 18 Type 206’s in service for over 30 years in some cases, decommissioning the last four in 2011 while the Israelis did more or less the same.
In all, the 36 boats of the Type 206/207/Gal design did what they were intended to for their respective users and have gone on to live a second life to a degree. Indonesia looked to pick up as many as five, but then backpedaled, while the Germans shopped both the Type 206s and the surplus Gal-class vessels for a while.
Gal herself is now on display at the Israeli Naval museum in Haifa while two (the recently retired U15 and U17) are laid up in Germany and four have gone on to Columbia. Two, ex-U16 and ex-U18, were sold as spare parts hulks while another pair, U23 and U24 were given length (2012-2015) refits in Germany and shipped to Colombia as the ARC Intrepido and ARC Indomable respectively to begin their new careers.
Two German Type-206 submarines outbound from Kiel to Columbia, 2015.
After all, even at age 40, they are still effective.
Warship Wednesday, Dec.23, 2015: The lost jewel from Bizerte
960×633
Here we see the French Émeraude-class diesel-electric submarine (Sous-Marin) Turquoise (Q46), captured by the Turks, in a dry dock undergoing repairs in Constantinople, 1916.
The French got into the submarine business about the same time as the Americans, launching Admiral Simeon Bourgois’s Plongeurin April 1863.
Before the turn of the century, the Republic had flirted with a half dozen one-off boats before they ordered the four boats of the Sirene class in 1901 followed quickly by another four of the Farfadet-class, the two Algerien-class boats, 20 Naiade-class craft in 1904, Submarines X, Y and Z (not making it up), the two ship Aigrette-class and the submarine Omega.
All told, between 1900-1905, the French coughed up 36 submersibles spread across nine very different classes.
After all that quick learning curve, they proceeded with the Emeraude (Emerald) class in 1903. These ships were an improvement of the Faradet (Sprite) class designed by Gabriel-Émile-Marie Maugas. The 135-foot long/200-ton Faradet quartet had everything a 20th Century smoke boat needed: it was a steel-hulled hybrid submersible that used diesel engines on the surface and electric below, had 4 torpedo tubes, could dive to 100~ feet, and could make a stately 6-knots.
Farfadet-class boat Lutin (Q10), leaving port in 1903.
While they weren’t successful (two sank, killing 30 men between them) Maugas learned from early mistakes and they were significantly improved in the Emeraudes. These later boats used two-shaft propulsion– rare in early submarines–and were 147 feet long with a 425-ton full load. Capable of making right at 12 knots for brief periods, they carried a half dozen torpedo tubes (four in the bow and two in the stern). They also could mount a machine gun and a light deck gun if needed.
Again, improvements!
Profile of the Emeralds surfaced.
Class leader Emeraude was laid down at Arsenal de Cherbourg in 1903 followed by sisters Opale and Rubis at the same yard and another three, Saphir, Topase, and the hero of our story, Turquoise, at Arsenal de Toulon in the Med.
Launching 1908
Turquoise was commissioned on 10 December 1910 and, with her two Toulon-built sisters, served with the French Mediterranean Fleet from the Submarine Station at Bizerte.
She repeated the bad luck of the Farfadet-class predecessors and in 1913 lost an officer and several crew swept off her deck in rough seas.
When war erupted in 1914, the jewel boats soon found they had operational problems staying submerged due to issues with buoyancy and were plagued by troublesome diesels (hey, the manufacturer, Sautter-Harlé, was out of business by 1918 so what does that tell you).
To help with surface ops, Topase and Turquoise were fitted with a smallish deck gun in 1915.
Saphir probably would have been too, but she caught a Turkish mine in the Sea of Marma on 15 January trying to sneak through the straits, and went down.
Topase and Turquoise continued to operate against the Turks, with the latter running into trouble on 30 October 1915. Around the village of Orhaniye in the Dardanelles near Nagara there were six Ottoman Army artillerymen led by Corporal G Boaz Deepa who spotted a periscope moving past a nearby water tower.
Becoming tangled in a net, the submarine became a sitting duck. With their field piece, they were able to get a lucky shot on the mast, and, with the submarine filling with water, she made an emergency surface.
French submarine captured at Dardanelles by Charles Fouqueray
There, the six cannoneers took 28 French submariners captive and impounded the sub, sunk in shallow water.
Turquoise’s skipper, Lt. Leon Marie Ravenel, was in 1918 awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour as was his XO. These sailors suffered a great deal in Turkish captivity, with five deaths.
“Das frühere französische U-Boot Turquoise welches von den Türken gefangen genommen wurde und jetzt als Mustedjb oubaschi in türkischen Diensten steht.” (The former French submarine Turquoise which was captured by the Turks and is now in Turkish service as Mustedjb oubaschi.) Paul Hoffman & Co. postcard in the NYPL collection
The Turks later raised the batter French boat and, naming her Mustadieh Ombashi (or Müstecip Ombasi), planned to use her in the Ottoman fleet.
The news of her capture and use under new management flashed through the Central Powers. This is from the Austrian archives:
“Französische Unterseeboot Turquoise” via Osterreichisches Staatsarchiv
Ottoman Uniforms reports her conning tower was painted with a large rectangle (likely to be red), with the large white script during this time.
Via Ottoman Uniforms
However, as submariners were rare in WWI Constantinople, she never took to sea in an operational sense again and in 1919 the victorious French reclaimed their submarine, which they later scrapped in 1920.
Her wartime service for the Turks seems to have been limited to taking a few pictures for propaganda purposes and being used as a fixed battery charging station for German U-boats operating in the Black Sea.
As for the last Bizerte boat, Topase, she finished the war intact and was stricken on 12 November 1919 along with the three Emeraudes who served quietly in the Atlantic.
Turquoise/Mustadieh Ombashi has been preserved as a model, however.
If you have a further interest in the submarines of Gallipoli, go here.
Specs:
1884×1543
Displacement 392 tons (surfaced) / 427 (submerged)
Length, 147 feet
Bean 12 feet
Draft 12 feet
No of shafts 2
Machinery
2 Sautter-Harlé diesels, 600hp / electric motors (440kW)
Max speed, knots 11.5 surfaced / 9.2 submerged
Endurance, nm 2000 at 7.3kts surfaced / 100nm at 5kts submerged
Armament:
6×450 TT (4 bows, 2 sterns) for 450mm torpedoes with no reloads
1x M1902 Model 37mm deck gun, 1x8mm light Hotchkiss machine gun (fitted in 1915)
Complement 21-28
Diving depth operational, 130 feet.
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Text from All Hands magazine, May 1952 edition, courtesy of Stan Svec & . Official USN photo # NH 97019, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Image via Navsource
Here we see the Tench-class diesel-electric hunter killer submarine USS Pickerel (SS-524), surfacing at a 48 degree up angle, from a depth of 150 feet, during tests off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, 1 March 1952.
“The purpose of this operation was to enable the Navy’s submarine experts to evaluate the sub’s capabilities and characteristics of the GUPPY-snorkel type sub.
This picture was taken from Sabalo (SS-302). Her sonarmen kept Pickerel under observation while she was submerged and preparing to surface. During Pickerel’s maneuvering the sonar gear delivered the constantly changing relative bearing which enabled the photographers to make this shot as she broke the surface.”
Note: The official record of the “surfacing” pictured above is that it started at 150 feet and reached a 48 degree up-angle. From a crew-member manning the helm during this evolution:
“We started at 250 feet, flank speed. The surfacing order included ‘use 60 degrees’ (the highest reading on the -bubble-type’ angle indicator).
“We overshot, and lost the bubble at 65 degrees. The maximum angle (72 degrees) was calculated later by the highwater marks in the Pump Room bilges. Thinking back, even with the bow sticking above water up to the bridge fairwater, the screws wouldn’t have been much above where we started, still pushing us upward.
“First message from the Queenfish (SS-393) which was accompanying us: ‘What is the specific gravity of your Torpedo Room bilges?’
“As you may imagine, the C.O. was something of a competitive wildman, pushing to find out what the limits were for these new GUPPY boats, after putting up with the older WW2 boats. And, we had to beat the Amberjack’s (SS-522) record of 43 degrees.”
Decommissioned 18 August 1972 after 23 years in the fleet which included wartime service in both Korean and Vietnamese waters and a circumnavigation of South America. She was transferred to Italy the same day as Primo Longobardo (S-501) who retained her in NATO service in the Med for another decade, though likely did not surface with such gusto as her 1952 crew.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, Dec.2, 2015: The Brass Tiger Fish of the Lifeguard Service
Photo via Navsource. Courtesy of John Hummel.
Here we see the Tench-class diesel-electric submarine USS Tigrone (SS-419/SSR-419/AGSS-419), at the Philadelphia Navy Yard sometime circa 1964 as she is preparing for her next role in the fleet after her first two had proved remarkably different.
With the brilliant success of the Gato-class fleet boats in the first part of the war in the Pacific, the Navy soon ordered 84 follow-on Tench-class boats to an improved design starting in 1944. The same 311-feet long overall as the Gatos, the Tenches were slightly heavier and had longer legs, being able to cover 16,000 nautical miles over their predecessor’s paltry 11,000. This meant they could roam further and stay away longer if needed.
While the Gatos were finished in time to bloody the Japanese fleet, few craft worthy of a torpedo were still around when the Tench class began to reach the Pacific. In fact, just 10 of the class were completed during the war and a further 55 were canceled just after.
Of the 10 that made it to the fight, one is the hero of our little tale.
Named after a species of the tiger shark, USS Tigrone (SS-419) was laid down at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine just a month before D-Day. Her crew nicknamed her the Tiger Fish and she is the only ship on the Naval List to have carried the moniker.
Commissioned on 25 October 1944, she got her first combat patrol underway from Guam on March 21, 1945, with three other U.S. fleet boats in a Yankee wolf pack. Although they spent the better part of two months in Japanese waters, they found few targets and her only brush with combat was to bombard a reef with her rear 5″/25 deck gun (she had a 40mm Bofors single forward).
Her second patrol was more exciting.
On May 25, she took up a lifeguard station off the coast of Honshu, Japan, and by end of the week had a full house, picking up the crews of two B-29s that had ditched as well as three fighter pilots. U.S. submarines rescued 504 downed airmen– to include future President George Bush– during WWII lifeguard duty.
“TIGRONE has saved the Air Force and is now returning to Iwo Jima with 28 rescued zoomies,” radioed her skipper, CDR. Hiram Cassedy, USN.
Back on station by June 26 and then soon had to set course for Guam, arriving on 3 July to disembark another 23 waterlogged aircrews plucked from the water. These 52 airmen Tigrone returned to land throughout the patrol constituted a new submarine-force record.
The Commander Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet extended his congratulations to, “the commanding officer, officers, and crew for this outstanding patrol” and commended them for “the excellent judgment, splendid navigation, and determination displayed by the TIGRONE in effecting these rescues….”
The Tigrone‘s lifeguard service patrol was so inspiring that she received her own episode of the 1950’s documentary series The Silent Service (season 1, episode 8) “Tigrone Sets a Record” which aired on 06 May 1957 and is below in its entirety.
On her third patrol, she came within sight of the Japanese home islands on lifeguard duty and saved an aviator as well as breaking out her big gun again on Aug. 13 when she bombarded Mikomoto Island (Pearl Island), scoring 11 hits on a radio station and lighthouse tower in one of the last exchanges of hate in the war as the Empire sued for peace on the 15th.
When peace came, she was part of the massive armada in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, and received two battle stars for her service.
There she is, all the way to the end…
Soon after, she found herself in red lead row in Philadelphia.
Dusted off in 1948, Tigrone was designated SSR-419 (radar picket submarine) and given the MIGRAINE I conversion that included AN/BPS-2 search radar sprouting from the after portion of the sail, and the height finder mounted on a freestanding tower just abaft it.
Tigrone, left, after refitting as SSR. Her sister ship USS Thornback has been GUPPY’d. Thornback would later serve 28 years in the Turkish Navy and is preserved there as a museum ship today.
This put the 15-foot search antenna some 40 feet above the water, with the height finder only a little below. Also came a below deck CIC for the radar, an extra generator to help push the volts needed to run it all, and guidance equipment for mid-course control of Regulus cruise missiles. In exchange, the boat sacrificed her stern tubes and surface armament.
Tigrone (SSR-419), underway in Grand Harbour, Valetta, Malta, c1952.
Between 1948-56 no less than 13 SSRs– including several Tench-class boats– were put into service, roughly split between Atlantic and Pacific with Tigrone spending her time as a picket boat with the Second Fleet in the Caribbean and North Atlantic, with regular participation in NATO exercises and periodic deployments to the Mediterranean as part of the Sixth Fleet.
By 1 November 1957, a decade as a radar boat had ended, replaced by more modern vessels, and Tigrone again found herself a member of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, Philadelphia.
However, the Navy wasn’t through with her by a long shot.
The Tigrone (AGSS-419) is underway in a channel, between conversions
Recommissioned 10 March 1962 and reclassified Auxiliary Research Submarine (AGSS-419), for the next decade Tigrone operated in conjunction with the Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory (part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Newport), conducting underwater systems tests, and evaluating new equipment. The information provided by these tests, utilizing experimental transducers, would prove invaluable in sonar development.
In late 1963, the Bottom Reflected Active Sonar System (BRASS) II Transducer and system were installed on Tigrone, and, after 1965, the much-upgraded BRASS III system was installed.
Note the unique side-facing rear sonar rack near the sail that came with the BRASS III conversion
While conducting her tests, she was often trailed by Soviet intelligence collection ships, which on at least one occasion felt the full force of the BRASS rig.
I cannot tell you how many watts the BRASS was capable of transmitting into the water, but suffice it to say it far exceeded anything else in anybody’s Navy at that time and maybe even today’s Navies for all I know. To give you an idea of the sound level it produced, all hands forward of the engine rooms were required to wear enginemen’s hearing protection when it was operating!
The overhead of that boat was festooned with enginemen’s earmuffs, hanging from every possible location to be readily available when the word was passed: “Now rig for BRASS Ops!” There were no torpedo tubes on the Tigrone at that time.
The after room had been turned into a bunkroom and held tier after tier of racks for the crew. The forward room was dedicated to the sonar system including its very own MG set to power that monster. The sonar men stood their watches on standard AN/BQR-2B passive sonar set which was in a little corner up forward where the tubes used to be. The Port half of the forward room was all the equipment the civilian USN/USL personnel used to operate the BRASS. It was a very sophisticated system, capable of varying both the amplitude and duration of the pulses it generated and if I can attach the picture, you will note a huge “shit can” mounted where the bow should be. Inside that huge and cumbersome protrusion was a transducer which looked like a huge log lying on it’s side atop a round table. The round table could be rotated, thereby presenting the horizontal length of the “log” in whatever direction was desired. In addition to the horizontal training, this transducer “log” was constructed in staves (like a barrel) and the operators could select which staves were to be used, giving them the ability to direct the transmitted beam in whatever direction they would like it to go.
We would go to test depth off the Azores and transmit a pulse in a South Westerly direction so that it could be received by the USS Baya [SS/AGSS-318, a Balao-class submarine modified in 1958 to accomidate LORAD, an experimental long-range sonar and 12 scientists] who would be operating off the Tongue of the Ocean in the Bahamas!!!!
Like I said, BRASS put a LOT of power into the water. Needless to say our activities drew the attention of the Russians and one of those ‘fishing boats’ brisling with antenna, would follow us around, undoubtedly listening to and recording every transmission we made. Well one day we were pounding away with the BRASS when one of the civilians asked me where the Russian fishing boat was. I was standing a regular passive sonar watch and I need to explain that whenever the BRASS transmitted a relay in my sonar set would cut out my audio for the duration of the pulse and then cut back in. When the audio returned, I could hear the reverberations from the transmission bouncing off the bottom, off waves, off thermoclines and maybe off the Azores themselves for several minutes, it was deafening!
I reported that the ‘fishing boat’ was dead astern making 80 RPM’s, just enough to keep up with our three knot submerged speed. “Keep us posted if anything changes.” I was told and I sat up to pay closer attention. Pretty soon I noticed a decrease in the amplitude (power) of the transmitted pulses from the BRASS. The same was true of the pulses following that and so on, until the BRASS was barely making a ‘b-e-e-p’ for each transmission. “He’s picking up speed and closing,” I announced to the civilians who were twisting the dials on the BRASS equipment and watching me to see if their efforts were producing the desired results. “Tell us when he’s directly overhead,” was the request as the pulses became weaker still. Evidently, the Russian figured that we had sped up and were leaving him behind; as the very loud transmissions we had been making were now so weak, he could hardly hear them. “He’s making 220 turns and coming right up our stern,” I reported. The USN/USL boys made some more adjustments to their equipment, “Is he overhead yet?” they asked, “Almost”, I said, wondering what in hell they were going to do. Just then, he came out of our baffles and I could hear his diesel engine roaring above the sound of his cavitating propeller blades, as he picked up speed.
“HE’S OVERHEAD NOW NOW NOW!!” I shouted and just then, the relay in my audio circuit cut my sound. It didn’t matter, I could hear the prolonged blast of a BRASS transmission coming right through our hull, it seemed that it would never end. I didn’t realize they could extend the pulse length so long! The operators had turned the transducer table until the ‘log’ was crosswise to the length of our hull, then they had selected just the top staves so that all that transmitted energy went straight up to the Russian Trawler who listening equipment was undoubtedly turned up has far as it would go in an effort to hear our previously weaken signals over their own ships noise. You guys know what test depth was in those old boats, so you know just how far away his receiver was from probably a million or more watts being aimed directly at him. We fried his sonar system . . . cooked it . .. blew every transistor . . . toasted every tube . . . Probably rendered the operator deaf for life. You’ve heard the old saying, “That noise was ten dB above the threshold of pain” well can you imagine what sound level BRASS could produce at that short a distance? It was a wonder we didn’t blow a hole in his hull and sink him.
For the next week, the only time that ‘Fishing Trawler’ caught up with us was when we surfaced after a day’s work. He could still pick us up when we were on the surface with his radar, but he couldn’t find us when we were submerged and BRASS was transmitting. After about six or seven days, a second trawler showed up and relieved him. They would follow us, but never got real close to us. Once burned, twice shy….
USS Tigrone (AGSS-419) with experimental bow sonar, off Ponta Delgada, Azores, 1967
April 1970 USS Tigrone (419) leaving Halifax after Exercise Steel Ring
Tigrone continued her quiet Cold War service until 27 June 1975 when she was decommissioned after more than 30 years with the fleet– all but about six of those in active service.
She was the last active submarine in the Navy that had served in WWII, which is something of a record in and of its own right.
USS Tigrone by William H. RaVell III
While she was expended as a torpedo test target on 25 October 1976 in deep water off the North Carolina coast at 36deg. 05.2′ N x 71deg. 15.3′ w, she is remembered at Submarine Force Museum and the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum as well as by an active veterans group.
Of her sisters, 14 were transferred to 9 foreign navies and one, ex-USS Cutlass (SS-478) remains semi-active in Taiwan’s Republic of China Navy as Hai Shih (meaning “sea lion”) at age 70.
Three are maintained as museum ships:
USS Requin as a museum ship is about as close as you can get to Tigrone. Image via Wiki.
-USS Requin (SS-481) at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA. This ship was also converted to an SSR in the late 1940s and served with Tigrone in the Second and Sixth fleets during the 1950s.
-USS Torsk (SS-423), moored at Pier Three, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, (alongside the National Aquarium in Baltimore) in Maryland.
-TCG Uluçalireis (S 338) (ex-USS Thornback (SS-418)), on display at Rahmi M. Koç Museum, Golden Horn in Istanbul. She is shown above in the comparison shot next to sister Tigrone.
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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