Екінші дүниежүзілік соғыстағы ең табысты американдық «Тамбор» кластық суасты қайығы

Tambor class submarine that was the most decorated U. S. submarine of WW 2. {|

submerged

Following training and sea trials, Thresher got underway from New London, Connecticut on 25 October 1940 for engineering trials in Gravesend Bay, New York, and shakedown off the Dry Tortugas. She operated along the United States East Coast into 1941. She departed on 1 May 1941 for the Caribbean Sea, transiting the Panama Canal on 9 May, stopping in San Diego, California, through 21 May, and arriving at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 31 May. She operated from the Hawaiian Islands into the fall of 1941, as tensions rose in the Far East and the United States prepared for war in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Thresher and her sister ship Tautog departed Submarine Base Pearl Harbor on 31 October 1941 on a simulated war patrol north of Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Both carried live torpedoes. Tautog returned first, and on 7 December 1941 Thresher neared the main Hawaiian Islands to end her cruise. Escorted by the destroyer Litchfield through Hawaiian waters lest she be mistaken for a hostile submarine, Thresher received word at 08:10 that Pearl Harbor was under attack by Japanese aircraft.

Litchfield promptly set off to join American light forces departing from the harbor, leaving Thresher alone to conduct her first real war patrol. However, the destroyer was ordered back to escort; radio contact was established, and a rendezvous arranged, with Thresher. At the pre appointed time, Thresher poked up her periscope to have a look, and noticed a destroyer—similar to Litchfield—approaching bows on. Instead of a warm reception from friends, she got a hot reception from the destroyer's forward gunners, who opened fire on her as soon as her black conning tower broke the surface. Thresher immediately went deep to avoid. She again tried to enter the harbor on 8 December, but was driven off by depth bombs from a patrol plane, before Thornton finally arrived to provide safe conduct for the boat at midday. Departing Pearl Harbor on 30 December 1941, Thresher headed for the Marshall and Mariana Islands. Reconnoitering Majuro, Arno, and Mili atolls from 9 to 13 January 1942, she shifted to waters off Japanese held Guam in the early morning darkness of 4 February. A little before daybreak, a small freighter was sighted 7 mile (11 km) north of Agana Harbor and Thresher closed for the attack. She loosed a three torpedo spread, holing the ship and sending it down by the bow and dead in the water. Thresher then fired another spread of torpedoes, but all missed. Upon returning to the scene one half hour later the ship was gone and Thresher thought she had scored a kill; postwar accounting did not substantiate it. While en route home to Pearl Harbor on 24 February, an overzealous Navy plane attacked Thresher but did no damage and the sub safely returned to port on 26 February.

After refit, Thresher departed 23 March 1942 for a patrol area near the Japanese home islands. There, she was to gather weather data off Honshū for use by Admiral William Halsey's task force (the carriers Enterprise and Hornet, then approaching Japan. Embarked in Hornet were 16 United States Army Air Forces B 25 Mitchell medium bombers, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, intended to attack Tokyo on 18 April. Warned by ULTRA of four Japanese submarines operating off Tokyo Bay, Thresher was detected by one of them and fired on, without damage. On the morning of 10 April, Thresher sighted a large Japanese freighter. A three torpedo spread was fired and all missed as the target escaped in the mist. When the target emerged from the murk, Thresher was not in a position to launch another attack and proceeded on her way. A second target was sighted later that day, and this time the hunting was better. One torpedo broke the back of freighter Sado Maru (3,000 tons) off Yokohama, sending it to the bottom in less than three minutes. The subsequent depth charge attack was delivered by three or four patrol vessels (one of the most severe of the war) caused Thresher to lose depth control and she plunged to 400 feet (122 m), which was below her test depth, before control was regained. She then disobeyed orders and remained to assist Halsey. After applying full right rudder, Thresher made a 10‑minute high speed run which shook her free from the giant hook. and the Q ship subjected Thresher to a salvo of eight depth charges before giving up the attack. Since she had been reassigned to the Southwest Pacific Submarine Force, Thresher sailed away from this encounter en route to Australian waters and terminated her fourth war patrol at Fremantle on 15 August.

After refit, Thresher loaded mines and departed Fremantle on 15 September 1942, bound for the Gulf of Siam. She fired torpedoes at two freighters north of Lombok Strait on 19 September but was unable to determine the results of her attacks. On the night of 25 September, luck again failed to smile on her as a single torpedo streaked beneath a large, high speed target in the Sulu Sea. Thresher later surfaced at 23:00 and proceeded on a course which took her north to Pearl Bank. There, in the northernmost reaches of the Gulf of Siam, she made one of the first mine plants by a submarine in the Pacific War. These strategic mine fields laid by Thresher and her sisters in subsequent patrols, covered Japanese shipping lanes in areas of the Southwest Pacific Command previously unpatrolled by submarines. Later, these minefields filled the gap between patrol zones along the coastal waters of Malaya, Siam, and Indochina, when many boats were diverted to participate in the Solomon Islands campaign. While reconnoitering off Balikpapan, Borneo, and the Celebes coast, Thresher sighted a tanker aground on a reef off Kapoposang Island in the Java Sea. She soon surfaced for a deck gun attack and left the enemy ship with decks awash. The boat then returned to Fremantle on 12 November for refit. Underway from Fremantle on 16 December 1942, she arrived off Soerabaya, Java, on 25 December. She intercepted a convoy of freighters, escorted by two destroyers, several subchasers, and two aircraft. Slipping past the escorts, Thresher sent five torpedoes towards the leading three ships. Two successive explosions followed. Rising to periscope depth, the boat observed the second ship in the column down by the bow, with her stern up in the air and her screws, still revolving, out of the water. A second ship lay dead in the water, enveloped in smoke. Escaping unscathed from this tangle with a coastal convoy, Thresher sighted an enemy aircraft carrier the next night, but was picked up by escorts and held at bay for more than an hour while the tempting target faded into the night. On the night of 29 December 1942, Thresher (now in the hands of William J. "Moke" Millican, Class of 1928) made contact with a 3,000 ton freighter. Just before midnight, she fired a spread of torpedoes at the cargo ship, but all missed or ran too deep. Undaunted, she waited for the moonrise and then surfaced to use her deck gun. Outmaneuvering the enemy, who tried to ram her, Thresher scored eight hits in succession with her main gun, where her target probably sank in the shallow water, one of the few sunk entirely by deck guns.