It is the night of October 30th, 1944, and the submarine USS Salmon is about to be in mortal danger. She has just launched four torpedoes at a stricken Japanese oil tanker. This is a worthy target, but in firing, Salmon has alerted the tanker’s four escorts to her location, and they are now charging toward the submarine.

With no time to lose, Salmon’s crew begin a crash dive, bracing themselves for an attack they know is coming. An attack that will push their boat to the brink of disaster. The USS Salmon was the lead ship of its class of six boats commissioned in the late 1930s. She displaced about 1,500 tons and featured four torpedo tubes for and aft.

With a maximum range of 14,000 nautical miles without refueling, Salmon could range deep into the ocean in search of targets, while a test depth of 250 ft gave her decent room to ride out any depth chargings from vengeful escorts. By October 1944, Salmon was on her 11th war patrol and skippered by Commander Harley Nman.

The previous 10 patrols had yielded just four ships sunk, so Nman and his crew were eager to add to that tally over the coming weeks. Along with the boat’s trigger and silver sides, salmon was assigned to patrol an area to the east of the Ryuku Islands on the lookout for any Japanese shipping on the busy route to and from Japan’s diminishing southern empire.

For a number of weeks, the patrol passed without incident with none of the three boats able to bag an enemy ship. But things got much busier at the end of the month as the battle of Lady Gulf unfolded over four dramatic days to the south. Salmon’s Wolfpack moved south to support the submarines operating there.

And on October 26th, Trigger had contact with the hybrid battleship carriers Issa and Hayuga, which were returning north to Japan. This sparked a several day long pursuit that was ultimately unsuccessful, but did bring all three boats close to Japan. It was there in the early morning of October 30th that both Salmon and Trigger detected a Japanese tanker on radar and moved to give chase.

The tanker in question was the Takane Maru. And due to its speed, this was a long and difficult pursuit, taking most of the day before Trigger managed to get into a good firing position and launch a salvo of torpedoes. One of these hit the stern of the tanker, wrecking its propulsion and leaving it dead in the water.

Were it not for the intervention of Trigger, Salmon may never have got in range of the Carne Maru, but at 5:40 p.m., the tanker came into view 24,000 yd south of the submarine’s position. Salmon skipper ordered his crew to close on the tanker for an attack run, despite the four escorts visibly patrolling back and forth around it.

Initially, Salmon closed in while running on the surface, taking advantage of the failing light [snorts] as sunset approached, but 623 Nman gave the order to dive with the tanker about 8,000 yd away. Salmon’s attack run now proceeded at the glacially slow pace permitted by the boat’s electric engines, with the diesel engine having to be shut down when submerged.

After an hour and a half of slow progress, Nman positioned his boat about 3,000 yd away from the tanker and prepared to fire. Normally, before attacking a submarine would aim to get to about 1,500 yd away from the target, but with four escorts to contend with, Nman was happy to shoot from a little further away.

After taking a moment to doublech checkck his aim, Nman ordered Salmon to fire and four torpedoes shot out of her bow tubes in quick succession. As soon as the last fish was clear, Nman ordered an about turn, intending to engage with Salmon’s stern tubes next. But before he could do so, two of the Japanese escorts altered course sharply towards him.

Firing torpedoes was a noisy activity, and the escorts were now steaming in at full speed to squash this new threat. At 8:12 p.m., as two of the four torpedoes found their target, Nman ordered Salmon into a crash dive and a hard turn to port. Desperate to get away from what he knew was about to be a vigorous counterattack.

The 59 sailors of the USS Salmon braced themselves as the submarine surged past its maximum test depth of 250 ft and continued to dive with the propeller noises of the Japanese escort getting louder all the time. After what must have seemed like an eternity at 8:13 p.m. salmon leveled out at 312 ft and then the depth charging began.

One by one, the Japanese ship steamed over the top of the salmon, dropping between six and eight charges in each pattern. The noise was deafening as depth charges exploded just feet away from the hull and salmon was shaken end to end, violently convulsing with each blast. Commander Nan remembered after the war, the conning tower vibrated up and down so violently that I thought the ship was going to shake herself apart.

But eventually the bombardment ended after around 30 death charges and Commander Nam was able to work out just what state his boat was in. News soon reached him and it was not good with flooding in several compartments across the middle and aft of the boat, including in both engine rooms and in the control room itself where water was coming in through the periscopes.

To make matters worse, fuel tank 7 had ruptured, spilling thousands of gallons of fuel oil into the ocean and allowing heavier seawater in to replace it. The stern dive planes were jammed into the dive position and the boat’s power steering had broken. The effect of all of this was when Commander Nman looked over at his boat’s depth gauge, he would have seen that it was going down.

Salmon, already well below its test depth, was sinking. Realizing there was no time to lose, Narwin ordered emergency speed on the submarine’s electrical engines, which mercifully were still working, and had the bow dive plane set to the maximum up angle they could get to, yanking the front of Salmon upwards.

It gradually bottomed out at about 400 ft and then began to move upwards. The captain weighed up his next move. His first priority was to give the crew the chance to carry out damage control. And to do that, he needed to stay well submerged to give them the best chance of avoiding another attack. So when Salmon reached 300 ft, he ordered the boat leveled off and cut the engines back.

But no sooner did this happen than they began to sink again with water still flooding in despite the crew’s furious damage control efforts. Nman ordered full power and an up angle again, but Salmon passed 300, then 400, and finally 500 ft before its descent was halted. To try and get back up to a safe depth much more quickly this time, Nan ordered one ballast tank to be blown, lightening the boat and sending it surging up to a depth of 150 ft.

Once there, he tried again to stabilize Salmon. He leveled her off and cut the engines back. The submarine lingered in place for a moment and then plunged downwards. Despite Nan once again ordering emergency speed and a 20° up angle, Salmon continued to fall this time past 400 ft, 500 ft, and all the way down to 578 ft below the surface at the bow and more than 600 ft at the stern.

This was well over twice salmon’s test depth and more than 100 ft below its theoretical crush depth of 450 ft. Somehow, miraculously, they were still alive, but in acute danger. The depth gauge was still gradually falling, and every second exposed to the pressure at this depth increased the chance that the hull could suddenly implode.

Salmon’s batteries were empty, and the water level in the engine rooms was rising fast. Commander Nman decided he had only one course of action available, to blow all of his boats remaining ballast tanks, surface, and fight it out with the Japanese escorts. The time was 8:30 p.m., 17 minutes after Salmon’s initial crash dive.

She burst through the surface, listing 15° to starboard with her decks a wash with water. The Americans had no idea what to expect, but to their relief, all four escorts were about 7,000 yd away, clustered around an oil slick that Salmon’s escaping fuel oil had created. For the time being, in the darkness, they hadn’t noticed the submarine’s reappearance on the surface.

This gave Nman and his crew some vital breathing space to carry out damage control. The list was corrected. Flooding brought under control and number two engine brought back online, leaving Salmon with only one inoperable engine. By 9:30 p.m., the boat’s deck guns were manned, her power steering was back, and she was ready for action.

Radio messages were sent out to Silver Science and Trigger to advise them of what had happened. By this time, the Japanese had spotted Salmon, but they did not immediately press any kind of attack. With the closest escort preferring to keep its distance and fire the odd potshot, the Americans largely held their fire. The deck gun sights were broken, making aiming difficult, and they only had a limited amount of ammunition.

After a few hours of cat and mouse, eventually one of the escorts decided to come in for a closer look. Visibility by the light of the moon was fairly good, and Salmon’s crew were able to clock the escort as it came into perhaps 2,000 yd away and opened up. The two vessels exchanged a few minutes of ineffectual fire before Salmon turned and made for a small area of rain that offered some concealment.

The Japanese ship followed, but was then staggered to see the American boat charging back towards them, emerging out of the cloud just a few yards ahead. The two vessels passed by each other at point blank range with Salmon raking the Japanese ship from end to end with her deck gun, 20 and 40 mm anti-air guns.

Her opponent barely got a shot off with its upper works left in shambles and most of the crew on the deck killed. The escort came to a halt, its crew reeling. Salmon seized this opportunity to make good her escape, speeding away as quickly as possible, pursued by the odd shell from the other Japanese ships, which was still some distance away.

Salmon was now out of immediate danger, but was still badly exposed. She was unable to dive and remained severely damaged. With help from nearby submarines and continuous air cover in daylight, she eventually reached Saipan on November 3rd before heading to Pearl Harbor the following month. There, a full inspection in dry dock could be made of Salmon’s hull, and it became clear just how remarkable her survival was.

The damage to her hull from depth charges and then exposure to immense pressure while deep was visible everywhere. After the end of the war, the US Navy documented 110 instances where one of their submarines had suffered significant damage and survived. Right at the top of the list was Salmon, whose damage can be considered one of the most serious to have been survived by any US submarine during World War II.

Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you next time.

USS Salmon’s Desperate Fight Against Impossible Odds DD

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