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Submarine spoil of war


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Hi everyone I'm a new member here and have an interesting item my grandfather rescued from the scrap pile and gave to my father around 60 years ago. It's a lifeboat compass binnacle, taken from a lifeboat off a Japanese oil tanker sunk during battle and has a hand written not from the captain and crew presenting the compass to their admiral. I was researching information on the submarine about 10 years ago and found records for the battle, captain and crew and information on the tanker they retrieved the compass from. I also found a book during the google search on submarine warfare and in the book in one of the chapters there are a few pages about the battles and a specific paragraph that talks about the submarine taking my exact compass and giving it to the admiral.

 

The files were to large to download so here is a link;

https://ibb.co/kWdPWw

https://ibb.co/gjJrBw

https://ibb.co/dCN7jG

https://ibb.co/fYo2Jb

https://ibb.co/fJ8PWw

post-176478-0-66990900-1517113110.jpg

post-176478-0-68934100-1517113143_thumb.jpg

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Grandpa was a frugal man lived through the Great Depression and saved a lot of stuff while operating a small transit and freight company in San Francisco. He had a garage on sutter st he shared with a small auction company, the Butterfields, they were good friends. I don't know exactly how he came on this, but he did a lot of estate moves and he was always bringing home crates of stuff that no body wanted at auction or wherever, back then stuff we consider as treasure was junk no one wanted and he got first pick. Every week we drove up to see my grand parents and every trip home the car was loaded with stuff...sometimes good, sometimes not so great, didn't matter you had to take the good with the bad. This was just one of those things he sent us home with. Geez not to get side tracked but I remember as a kid going to an actual army surplus whearhouse down by Morgan hill, CA with my dad back around 1959 and the place was literally filled to the brim with anything you could imagine, disabled weapons, flame throwers and tons of machinery for almost nothing, pocket change, ok I've digressed enough...I'm getting old.

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USCapturephotos

That is a great piece especially with all of the history you were able to locate on it. I really enjoyed reading about your memories of going to your grandads. I credit going to my grandparents old Victorian house filled with family artifacts in the mid 70's to my passion for history and collecting too.

Thanks for sharing with us!

Paul

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Great save! The sinking is mentioned on Wikipedia: Second war patrol[edit]

Bluefish departed Fremantle in October 1943 for a 32-day patrol of the South China Sea.[8] On 8 November Bluefish torpedoed and sank the Japanese tanker Kyokuei Maru (10570 GRT) in the South China Sea. On 18 November Bluefish torpedoed and sank the old escorting destroyer IJN Sanae and damaged the Japanese fleet oiler Ondo (14050 GRT) in the Celebes Sea about 90 nmi (170 km; 100 mi) south of Basilan Island.[9]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bluefish_(SS-222)

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Great save! The sinking is mentioned on Wikipedia: Second war patrol[edit]

Bluefish departed Fremantle in October 1943 for a 32-day patrol of the South China Sea.[8] On 8 November Bluefish torpedoed and sank the Japanese tanker Kyokuei Maru (10570 GRT) in the South China Sea. On 18 November Bluefish torpedoed and sank the old escorting destroyer IJN Sanae and damaged the Japanese fleet oiler Ondo (14050 GRT) in the Celebes Sea about 90 nmi (170 km; 100 mi) south of Basilan Island.[9]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bluefish_(SS-222)

Thanks Matt, It was really surprising just how much information is out on the web about the submarine and captain and crew, their admiral "Christie" he sounded like an interesting guy, the battle and as I scanned the book silent victory hoping for some clue about my compass, I had no idea I'd find a passage in the book I could only dream of. Still everytime I read those paragraphs I feel instantly transported, holding the binnacle I can almost smell the burning fuel and feel heat waves from flames of the burning tanker. Kind of cool too, although generic and the book cover art could have been any of the battles... it is very much the scene I'd imagine of the submarine and crew uss bluefish and the kyokuei maru.

 

And thank you everyone for letting me show my little prize, most of the time it sits unseen and under appreciated my friends have seen it too many times...

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