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USS Grunion Found?


duarte1223
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I figured I'd share this article from World War II Magazine for those who don't get it, I thought it was pretty interesting that, 60+ years later, we're still searching for ships and submarines that were lost to the deep.

 

 

"The son of the former commander of USS Grunion, an American submarine reportedly lost after an encounter with a Japanese freighter in July 1943, believes he has located the sub's seemingly intact remains off the coast of Alaska.

 

John Abele, whose father, Mannert Abele, was Grunion's commander, says recently obtained underwater sonar images provide possible proof that the sub and its 70-man crew found their final resting place at the bottom of the Aleutian Sea.

 

A report written in the 1960s by a Japanese naval officer and recently translated by a Japanese model ship builder, described a confrontation between a US sub and Kano Maru, a supply freighter that had been separated from its convoy by thick fog.

 

The battle between the two vessels occurred on July 31, 1942, some 10 miles northeast of Kiska. The officer, the freighter's captain, wrote that Grunion launched six or seven torpedoes during the engagement. Most of the torpedoes either missed or bounced off the freighter, but one penetrated the ship's starboard machine room and disabled both the engine and communications system.

 

As the American submarine surfaced, the freighter's captain ordered return fire with the forecastle 8cm gun and the 13mm guns on the bridge. A shot from the 8cm gun apparently struck the sub's conning tower and, according to the freighter's captain, sank Grunion.

 

Various submarine aficionados say they doubt a shot from the Maru's deck gun sank Grunion, insisting instead that the sub probably sank after being flooded by a catastrophic accident of some sort. That theory explains why the submarine did not implode once it reached crush depth and appears intact on the ocean floor.

 

Last fall the Abele family hired Williamson and Associates , a marine survey firm based in Seattle. The company sent sonar experts and equipment to Dutch Harbor. Aboard a crab boat, the search team explored the frigid waters in the area mentioned in the Japanese officer's report.

 

In mid-August 2006, sonar identified a 290-foot long object wedged into a terrace on the slope of an underwater volcano. While Grunion measured 312 feet long, the sonar team believes the bow of the sub may be plowed into a thick layer of sediment as it settled. The vessel sits nearly 1,000 meters from the surface.

 

A second expedition is scheduled for this summer. A remote-controlled underwater camera will be deployed during that visit, with the hope that the object discovered last fall will be positively identified as Grunion."

 

 

 

 

Any comments on what you think the fate of the Grunion was?

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