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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a 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, May 7, 2025: Ray of Hope

Photo by CDR Gerald Durbin of Shangri-La (CVA-38) via Bob Canchola, via Navsource.

Above we see the Gato-class fleet boat turned submarine radar-picket USS Ray (SSR-271) in Hong Kong Harbor while on her way home from her 1956 6th Fleet deployment. During WWII, she was a menace to the emperor’s fleet, running up a tally of 155,171 tons across eight war patrols.

However, she was also one of the most impressive lifesavers of the conflict.

The Gatos

The 77 Gatos were cranked out by four shipyards from 1940 to 1944 for the U.S. Navy. They were impressive 311-foot-long fleet boats, diesel-electric submarines capable of extended operations in the far reaches of the Pacific. Able to swim an impressive 11,000 nautical miles on their economical power plant while still having room for 24 (often cranky) torpedoes.

A 3-inch deck gun served for surface action in poking holes in vessels deemed not worth a torpedo while a few .50 and .30-cal machine guns provided the illusion of an anti-aircraft armament. Developed from the Tambor-class submarines, they were the first fleet boats able to plumb to 300 feet test depth, then the deepest that U.S. Navy submersibles were rated.

Meet Ray

Our subject is the first U.S. Navy warship named for the flat-bodied, whip-tailed marine cousin of the shark. She was one of the “Manitowoc 28” submarines (10 “thin-skinned” Gatos with a test depth of 300 feet and 18 thicker follow-on Balaos) constructed by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company of (wait for it) Manitowoc, Wisconsin between 1942 and 1945.

With all 28, initial sea trials were done in Lake Michigan then the boats were sent down the Mississippi River (via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, then the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers to the “Mighty Miss”) to New Orleans, a freshwater trip of just over 2,000 miles, for completion and fitting out.

Gato-class submarine USS Peto (SS-265) side launched at Manitowoc

Laid down 20 July 1942, Ray launched 28 February 1943, just a month after sister USS Raton (SS-270) and a month before USS Redfin (SS-272). Ray’s sponsor was the wife of Capt. Sam Colby Loomis, Sr. (USNA ’02) and mother of then LCDR Sam Loomis, Jr. (USNA ’35), the latter one of the most decorated sub skippers of WWII.

Ray commissioned 27 July 1943 and her plank owner skipper was CDR Brooks Jared Harral (USNA ’32), a New Yorker by way of New Orleans who had learned his trade on the cramped “Sugar Boat” USS S-17 (SS-122) earlier in the war, carrying out seven short war patrols in the Panama and Caribbean area.

Ray on Great Lakes sea trials

After six weeks motoring around Lake Michigan in light conditions in the summer of 1943, she departed the Lakes on 15 August, bound for the Big Easy, where she arrived a short week later, propelled by the Mississippi. Loading stores and torpedoes there, she left for Coco Solo, Panama, on 26 August, then spent five weeks training in those tropical waters for her war in the Pacific.

Deemed ready for combat, she left Baltra Island in the Galapagos on 9 October, bound on a 7,800-mile direct trip for Brisbane.

War!

Arriving in Australia on 30 October 1943– just three months after her Manitowoc commissioning– a fortnight later, Ray departed from Milne Bay, New Guinea for her 1st War Patrol, ordered to stalk Japanese shipping north of the Bismarck Archipelago. For 60 percent of her crew, it was their first war patrol on any submarine.

On the early morning of 26 November, she sank the Japanese army Shinkyo Maru-class auxiliary transport Nikkai Maru (2562 GRT) south-west of Truk, with the vessel breaking apart into three pieces and sinking. For this, Ray suffered her first depth charging in return.

A few hours later, she pressed an attack on a ship of some 10,000 tons and reported a sinking. This could be the 2,700-ton auxiliary water carrier Wayo Maru, which was sailing with Nikkai Maru but arrived at Truk on 28 November with no damage.

In her attacks, Ray expended 10 torpedoes for seven claimed hits, which is rather good for American fish at this stage of the war. Recalled for operational reasons, Ray completed her 1st patrol on 7 December 1943, returning to Milne Bay after covering 7,479 miles in 24 days. She was credited with sinking two freighters of 9,800 tons and 4,500 tons, respectively.

Ray departed Milne Bay on her 2nd War Patrol on 11 December after a three-day turnaround alongside the tender USS Fulton, ordered to patrol in the Banda Sea.

On the overnight of 26/27 December, she stalked, then torpedoed and sank the Japanese fleet tanker Kyoko Maru (5800 GRT, former Dutch Semiramis) in the Tioro Strait 14 miles northwest of Kabaena Island. She broke in two and sank, carrying 41 passengers and crew to the bottom along with 7,500 tons of crude oil cargo.

The six-torpedo attack left a “huge billowing column of orange flames” some 75 feet wide that “mushroomed out like a thunderhead as it rose hundreds of feet in the air.”

From Ray’s patrol report:

On New Year’s Day 1944, Ray celebrated by sinking the Japanese auxiliary gunboat Okuyo Maru (2904 GRT), towing a landing craft some five miles from the mouth of Ambon Bay, with three torpedoes, killing 135 passengers and crew.

Three days later, she attacked two Japanese cargo ships in the Savu Sea just off Timor with four torpedoes, reportedly damaging one of them.

On 12 January, Ray ended her 2nd war patrol at the big Allied sub base at Fremantle, completing 7,007 miles in 46 days. She was given credit for sinking a 10,020-ton AO (Sinkoku type) and a 7,886-ton auxiliary.

Having steamed over 25,000 miles since leaving her builders six months prior, Ray was allowed a full three-week turnaround time before she left on her 3rd War Patrol on 6 February 1944.

Ordered to patrol in the Java and South China Seas, she also carried a cargo of mines to sow off Japanese-occupied Saigon, French Indochina.

Working close to shore, she grounded in the shallows on 17 February but was able to float free with the tide and the next day shrugged off two near-miss bombs dropped from a Japanese Rufe (Nakajima A6M2-N) floatplane. She dodged three more on 24 February.

Coming across a nine-ship convoy on the night of 2/3 March in the South China Sea, she fired four torpedoes, claiming a damaging hit on a 10,000-ton tanker and suffering a “severe” depth-charging in the process.

She ended her patrol back at Fremantle on 27 March after 51 days, covering 10,688 miles.

Her 4th War Patrol started on 23 April, ordered to range south off the Davao Gulf in the Philippines.

Haunted by Japanese land-based Betty bombers (Ray logged 71 aircraft contacts on the patrol), she birddogged several small enemy convoys but couldn’t line up an attack– that was until she found a “well disciplined” large convoy (Convoy H-26) of six escorts (with some emitting radar signals) covering eight Marus and a tanker on the afternoon of 21 May. Just after midnight on 22 May, she had lined up on the largest targets, the Japanese army tanker Kenwa Maru (6384 GRT) and the cargo ship Tempei Maru (6097 GRT), firing six torpedoes that damaged the former and sank the latter. Tempei Maru blew up and went to the bottom with a cargo of rice and gasoline, along with 35 crew and passengers.

The next day, teaming up with sister USS Cero, she sank the freighter Taijun Maru (2825 GRT) carrying a cargo of Daihatsu landing barges.

She made four radar-assisted night attacks on the convoy in all, firing 18 torpedoes in two successful runs, and claimed six kills.

Then she came across a Japanese cruiser task force on the afternoon of 31 May that she continued to track but could not attack for the next two days. However, she did get ineffectively strafed by one of the cruiser’s floatplanes for her efforts.

Wrapping up her 4th War Patrol at Fremantle on 14 June, she was credited with 42,000 tons of shipping, roughly three times what she bagged, but hey, it’s war.

With that, LCDR Harral was pulled from Ray and bumped upstairs to COMSUBPAC staff. In his four patrols on our boat, he had earned the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, and two Bronze Stars, so it’s safe to say he deserved the promotion.

His replacement was Keystone stater LCDR William Thomas Kinsella (USNA 1935), late of the old (had been laid up in 1931) USS O-8 (SS-69), a training boat out of New London.

Kinsella took the repaired Ray out on her 5th War Patrol (his first) from Fremantle on 9 July, headed to patrol in the South China Sea.

He proved a fast study and sank three Japanese tankers– Jambi Maru (a.k.a. Janbi Maru and Jinbi Maru) (5244 GRT, former Dutch Djambi), Nansei Maru (5878 GRT, former British Pleiodon), and Taketoyo Maru (6964 GRT)– as well as two cargo ships– Koshu Maru (2812 GRT) and Zuisho Maru (5286 GRT) over the next month. The Koshu Maru was a particularly sad footnote, as she was packed with 1,500 Javanese laborers destined to repair the Japanese airfield at Makassar, and 540 other passengers, with most perishing as she disappeared below the surface in just two minutes.

The chase for the unescorted Jambi Maru was almost pyrrhic, with Ray firing 22 torpedoes (!) in six attacks to get eight hits on the tanker– a move that forced the sub to return to Australia mid-patrol to quickly grab more fish and head out for more havoc.

She ended her extraordinarily successful 5th War Patrol at Fremantle on 31 August 1944, completely out of torpedoes (going through 46!), capping 14,237 miles underway in 67 days.

She was credited with four “kills” totaling 36,400 tons.

On 23 September 1944, Ray departed Fremantle to begin her 6th War Patrol, ordered again to the South China Sea where she had been so busy the month before. Setting off for the waters around the Japanese-occupied Philippines with 16 Mk 14-3A torpedoes loaded forward and eight newer Mk 18 electric fish loaded aft, it would be one of her most historic sorties.

On 12 October, she sank the Japanese troop transport Toko Maru (4180 GRT) near Cape Cavalite, Mindoro, and ate 30 depth charges in return.

Two days later, a hatch inadvertently left open while submerging ended up flooding two-thirds of the control room. While she suffered mechanically from this– and was forced to call on the services of the tender USS Orion at Mios Woendi for five days of emergency repairs– she had no casualties.

On 1 November, Ray sank the Japanese coastal tanker Horai Maru No.7 (834 GRT) west of Mindoro, then completed a “special mission,” typically code for landing agents or supplies to resistance groups. Post-war, it was known that this mission saw a landing party sent ashore on the west coast of Mindoro to recover two Naval Aviators that had been shot down during carrier raids and rescued by Filipino insurgents, along with two U.S. Army officers that had been fighting with the guerillas since 1942, and a local escaped political prisoner.

Three days later, operating in a Yankee wolf pack with USS Bream, Guitarro, and Raton, the pack came across Convoy TAMA-31A and shared in sending the big Japanese transport ship Kagu Maru (6806 GRT) to the bottom off Dasol Bay, Philippines, with Ray delivering the coup de grace by blowing off the damaged ship’s bow with two torpedoes.

On 5 November, lookouts from the submarine USS Batfish spotted Japanese Convoy MATA-31, some 15 ships with air cover, heading from Manila to Formosa. The convoy included six freighters, two kaibokan frigates, and five subchasers, while the heavy cruiser Aoba and famed Mogami-class heavy cruiser Kumano were riding along for good measure. Batfish tried to get in an attack on Aoba but came up short. She nonetheless passed on the contact, and Ray’s wolfpack made ready to receive.

Cruiser Kumano, circa Oct 1938, as seen in the U.S. Navy Division of Naval Intelligence’s A503 FM30-50 booklet for identification of ships

The next day, while off Cape Bolinao, Luzon, the four waiting American submarines concentrated on Kumano and would fire an amazing 23 fish at the big 14,000-ton bruiser.

Two hits– one blowing off her bow section and the second flooding her engine rooms– left Kumano dead in the water with an 11-degree list. However, with the swarm of aircraft keeping Ray deep during daylight hours, and the swarm of escorts too tight once she surfaced after dark, Kinsella found himself presented with a dream target– but one he could not claim. Kumano, towed to Dasol Bay by the freighter Doryo Maru, would be finished off in Santa Cruz harbor less than three weeks later by carrier aircraft from USS Ticonderoga.

Operating independently, on 14 November, Ray sank the Japanese corvette Kaibokan CD-7 (745 tons) about 65 nautical miles north-west of Cape Bolinao while the vessel was escorting Convoy MATA-32. She was sent to the bottom with 156 men. The sub followed up on this by sinking the transport Unkai Maru No. 5 (2,841 GRT) from the convoy seven minutes later.

On 19 November, Ray performed lifeguard missions, scooping up Lt. James Arthur Bryce, USNR, of VF-22, from the drink off Cape Bolinao. A young fighter pilot flying from USS Cowpens (CVL-25), his F6F-5 was damaged by anti-aircraft fire while attacking a Japanese convoy. Bryce would pick up a DFC for his actions that day, adding a second one to his salad bar in January 1945 for downing three enemy aircraft in the same sortie. Sadly, this ace (he ended up with 5.25 victories) was killed in an accident soon after.

Ending her 6th War Patrol on 8 December at Pearl Harbor via Midway with a waterlogged Lt. Bryce aboard, Ray covered a lucky 17,777 miles in an exceedingly long 98 days, firing all 16 of her Mk 14-3A torpedoes. She was given credit for 6.5 kills (sharing Kumano) for a total of 35,100 tons.

This brought her running tally sheet to 20.5 kills for 146,206 tons.

Following a much-needed refit and overhaul at Mare Island Navy Yard– which allowed her crew to spend Christmas stateside, Ray only made it back to “the line” in April 1945, at which point she was in a quite different war.

USS Ray, Mare Island 9 March 1945

With Japanese convoys no longer abundant on the high seas, her 7th War Patrol, off Kyushu in Japanese home waters and in the Yellow Sea, would be one of surface engagements against small craft that didn’t rate a torpedo.

Departing Guam on 30 April 1945, she capped this patrol at Midway on 16 June, having traveled 14,463 miles. In that interval, she had made 46 surface contacts in the Yellow Sea, with about a quarter of those being other American submarines patrolling the same area.

The rest were small coasters and trawlers– which she was determined to destroy.

Throughout 21 gun attacks, most at night, she expended 815 rounds of 40mm and 137 rounds of 5-inch, accounting for 19 small craft (two sea trucks, two small patrol boats, 15 four-masted rice schooners) carrying supplies between Japan and Korea for a total of 6,000 tons. She also encountered 24 mines, exploding or sinking most via gunfire.

However, her most important piece of work during this patrol was in two large rescues while spending 11 days on a lifeguard station off Japan. In one week, she pulled aboard 20 aviators, 10 from an Army B-29 and 10 from a Navy PBM Mariner. As noted by COMSUBDIV 141, “This second rescue was a particularly beautiful piece of work, being conducted at night in heavy seas and in close proximity to rocks and shoals.” Ray transferred the rescued crews to USS Lionfish and Pompon and continued her patrol.

In all, 86 American submarines spent 3,272 days on life guard duty during the war, with the bulk of that time (2,739 days) in 1945 when the conflict moved to the Japanese home islands. They rescued 504 men from the sea. Ray was the second most prolific life guard sub with 23 recoveries, just behind USS Tigrone, which had an impressive 52, the latter largely due to spending most of two patrols on such duty.

Ray’s 8th War Patrol, beginning on 11 July 1945, saw the boat leave Subic Bay headed south to the Gulf of Siam, one of the few areas that still had enemy shipping traffic, albeit of the shallow draft kind.

Arriving in the patrol zone, by 2 August, she fought her first surface action in the region– against two junks– with Kinsella noting in his log, “We now have 3 fathoms of water under us. This is indeed poor employment for as valuable a fighting unit as a U.S. submarine, but this is the way we must get our targets nowadays.”

She continued her rampage against the lilliputian shipping on an epic scale. It was a necessary war, as the craft, under Japanese orders, were carrying salt, fish, rice, and sugar to enemy units, all inside the 10-fathom curve.

Case in point: On the morning of 7 August, while patrolling off Lem Chong Pra, she encountered a coaster and, stopping it by ramming, found the vessel with contraband and sank it via boarding party.

Pursuing another small coaster, which beached itself, Ray spotted seven two-masted cargo junks in a hidden cove as well as masts for another 16 vessels (six 250-ton schooners, a 180-ton schooner, 5 75-ton junks, a 50-ton junk, and three 30-ton junks) further down the anchorage. At 1950, on all four engines running on the surface and all deck guns loaded, “With range 2,000 yards and 1 fathom of water under keel, turned right to bring 5-inch gun to bear.” An hour later, after 64 rounds of 5-inch, all 16 of the vessels at the anchorage were sunk or sinking.

To destroy the junks in the hidden cove, just after dusk, a boarding party consisting of a JG and two gunners mates in the sub’s No. 1 rubber boat, loaded with small arms, covered No. 2 rubber boat with the ship’s XO and two torpedo mates with demo gear.

By midnight, all seven junks, floating in just four feet of water, were “burning furiously,” and the away team had been recovered with no casualties, with 40 rounds of 40mm pumped into the illuminated targets for good measure. The sub had destroyed 24 vessels in 24 hours.

On 9 August, having expended almost all of her 5-inch rounds in sinking 35 small craft (totaling 2,915 tons), she was ordered back to Subic Bay.

She covered 12,165 miles in what turned out to be her final war patrol. Ordered stateside with the outbreak of peace, she made Pearl Harbor on 15 September 1945, celebrating VJ Day underway, and left for New London five days later, arriving in Connecticut on 5 October.

She ended the war with an unofficial tally of 75.5 enemy ships sunk (including all the coastal vessels) for a sum of 155,171 claimed tons, later adjusted post-war to a more correct 49,185. She also rescued no less than 23 aviators, laid at least one minefield with unknown results, and conducted two special missions.

USS Ray earned eight Battle Stars across her WWII patrols, along with the Navy Unit Citation and the Philippine Republic Presidential Citation.

Her Jolly Roger, complete with eight battle stars under the submarine insignia, dozens of warships and maru tallies and parachutes for her 13 Naval aviators and 10 Army aircrew rescued

Ray served in a training capacity at New London until 12 February 1947, when she was placed out of commission in reserve.

SSR conversion

The Navy embarked on a series of radar picket conversions to fleet submarines starting just after WWII. This carried across three Project “Migraine” series conversions that saw 10 veteran boats land their guns and torpedoes in exchange for large surface search and height-finding radars.

Of course, this kneecapped the subs for operations as…subs… since they had to lock their radar arrays parallel with the axis of the boat before diving, and they were relegated to 6 knots or less while submerged.

Migraine I: (pre-SCB number) two Tench-class submarines, USS Requin (SS-481) and USS Spinax (SS-489), in which radar panels and electronics took up the space of the rear torpedo room, originally intended to serve in the invasion of Japan in 1946. They still had their forward torpedo room, and the stern tubes could be loaded/reloaded externally and retained their forward deck guns.

Migraine II (SCB 12): belowdecks radar equipment moved to aft battery room, radars moved to masts, and rear torpedo room and two forward torpedo tubes converted to berthing for operators. This limited these boats to just four forward tubes and eight torpedoes. Four subs were converted: Balao-class boat USS Burrfish (SS-312), Tench class USS Tigrone (SS-419), while Spinax and Requin were upgraded. These boats were all redesignated SSR (submarine, radar).

Migraine III (SCB 12A): All six of the boats in this program were “stretched” Manitowoc-built Gatos: USS Pompon (SSR-267), Rasher (SSR-269), Raton (SSR-270), Ray (SSR-271), Redfin (SSR-272), and Rock (SSR-274), with each given a 29-foot hull insert amidships ahead of the main control room to allow a dedicated CIC compartment for the radars. This grew these 312-footers to 341 feet oal and saw the entire sail replaced with an enlarged, more streamlined version. It was also the first SSR conversion to delete all installed deck guns. However, the addition of the CIC “plug” allowed these boats to retain all six of their forward torpedo tubes. They carried a sail-mounted BPS-2 search radar mounted aft of the periscopes, a BPS-3 height finding radar on a pedestal behind the sail, and an AN/URN-3 TACAN beacon on the afterdeck.

The profiles of the three Migraine project generations from the Navy’s ONI 31 sighting guide from 1955:

Redfin (SSR-272) as a radar picket submarine, Migraine III (aka SCB 12A)

In December 1950, Ray was towed from mothballs to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for her Migraine III conversion, and she was recommissioned on 13 August 1952.

She was one of ultimately eight SSR/SSRNs in the Atlantic fleet in the 1950s and made two deployments (1 March to 26 May 1954 and 5 March to 4 June 1956) to the Med under 6th Fleet orders, the rest of her short second career was occupied in a series of fleet exercises and type training.

30 April 1954. USS Ray (SSR-271) acting as a radar picket submarine for USS Randolph (CV-15) during operation “Italic Sky One” in the Mediterranean. 80-G-639551

The SSR was made obsolete by the one-two deployment of the new land-based EC-121 Warning Star in 1954 and the carrier-borne E-1 Tracer in 1958, which could operate from even older Essex-class flattops. 

USS Mauna Kea (AE-22) highlines ammunition to the USS Bennington (CVS-20) in the Gulf of Tonkin the 10 September 1968. Our carrier has nine S-2E Trackers, two E-1B Tracer “Stoof with a Roof” models, and at least four SH-3A Sea Kings on deck. This would be Bennington’s final deployment and would end on 9 November. USN 1137061

With the nature of their conversion rendering them less than ideal for retention as traditional fleet subs, the end of the road was reached.

Ray departed Norfolk on 30 June 1958 and entered the Charleston Navy Yard for inactivation. Placed out of commission in reserve on 30 September 1958, she was struck from the Navy list on 1 April 1960, stripped of anything useful to keep her sisters in service, and her hulk was sold for scrap.

Her unconverted sisters lingered on for a few more years as USNR training boats.

Gato-class submarines Jane’s, 1960

The salvage price for most of the WWII fleet subs sold for scrap during this period was about $35,000 per hull, versus a $4.6 million construction cost.

Epilogue

Ray has a detailed marker as part of the Manitowoc “28 Boat Memorial Walk” at USS Cobia.

U.S.S. Ray (SS 271) Marker

She also has her war history, war patrols, and 1950s deck logs in the National Archives.

As for her two wartime skippers, plank owner Brooks Harral was a submarine division and squadron commander in Panama, Key West, and San Diego before returning to Annapolis, where he served as head of English, history, and government until 1957. Retiring as a rear admiral in 1959, he later penned “Service Etiquette” for all military academies.

He passed in 1999 and is buried in the Naval Academy Cemetery.

Ray’s second wartime skipper, Bill Kinsella, also retired from the Navy as a rear admiral after a stint teaching at the Naval Academy. During his time on SS-271, he earned two Navy Crosses and the Legion of Merit. He passed in 2003 at age 89.

In the early 1980s, he wrote a pamphlet about the boat, “The History of a Fighting Ship U.S.S. RAY (SS271)” by Rear Admiral William T. Kinsella, USN (Ret.), which is long since out of publication.

The Navy soon recycled Ray’s fine name for a Sturgeon-class submarine (SSN-653) commissioned in 1967. Notably, she was the first of her class to become Tomahawk certified in 1985, capable of shooting both TLAM and TLAM-N cruise missiles through her torpedo tubes, a game changer for SSN ops.

A port bow view of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Ray (SSN-653) underway near Naval Station, Norfolk, Virginia, February 1991. DNST9105698

This latter Ray earned five Navy Unit Commendations, six Meritorious Unit Commendations, six Navy Expeditionary Medals, and at least three Arctic Service ribbons across her 26-year career.

USS Ray (SSN-653), USS Hawkbill (SSN-666) USS Archerfish (SSN-678) surfaced at geographic North Pole, 6 May 1986 330-CFD-DN-SC-86-07408

Tell me again why we aren’t recycling these great old submarine names?

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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