Гибель подводной лодки Robalo в 1944 году

Gato class submarine sunk in 1944
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submerged she sortied from Pearl Harbor, hunting Japanese ships west of the Philippines. On 12 February 1944, Armbruster reported seeing a large, two masted sailboat. There, en route to her new station in Fremantle submarine base, Western Australia, she had an encounter with enemy vessels; on 13 February 1944 east of the Verde Island Passage, the Robalo had come across a convoy of two large ships escorted by a minesweeper, which dropped 13 depth charges and fired twice at the submarine with a deck gun; in fact the attack was unsuccessful and no enemy vessels were damaged or sunk. She spent 36 of her 57 day mission submerged. When she arrived, her commanding officer was summarily relieved by Admiral Christie and replaced with Manning Kimmel (class of 1935). In March 1944, Christie (based on Ultra intelligence) feared surprise from a strong Japanese force. When Chester W. Nimitz, Jr. in Haddo, made contact on his SJ radar and reported "many large ships", Christie scrambled to respond. Robalo, along with Flasher, Hoe, Hake, and Redfin, all ran to intercept. No attack ever materialized.

For her second patrol, Robalo went to the South China Sea, assigned to interdict Japanese tanker traffic from French Indochina to the fleet anchorage at Tawi Tawi. On 24 April 1944 off Indochina, she was bombed by a Japanese antisubmarine aircraft, suffering shattered and flooded periscopes and loss of radar, while taking a harrowing plunge to 350 feet (107 m) after her main induction valve was improperly closed One of the ships that escaped damage from Robalo was the Mayasan Maru. On a "wildly aggressive patrol" Robalo fired 20 torpedoes in four attacks. She was credited with sinking a 7500 ton tanker, which was not confirmed postwar by JANAC. and Admiral Christie both considered relieving Robalos skipper for his own safety. she was scheduled to arrive on station about 6 July and remain until dark on 2 August 1944. On 2 July, a contact report stated Robalo had sighted a Fusō class battleship, with air cover and two destroyers for escort, just east of Borneo. No other messages were ever received from the submarine, and when she did not return from patrol, she was presumed lost. Robalo was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 16 September 1944.

Robalo earned two battle stars for World War II service.

On 2 August, a note was handed from the cell window of the Kempei Tai military prison on Palawan Island in the Philippines, to Ed Petry, an American prisoner of war from the Puerto Princesa Prison Camp who was passing by. The note was, in turn, given to Yeoman Second Class Hubert D. Hough, who was also a prisoner at the camp. He contacted Trinidad Mendoza (Red Hankie), wife of guerrilla leader Dr. Mendoza, who had the Coastwatchers radio General MacArthur and Admiral Ralph Christie in Australia. From these sources, it was concluded Robalo was sunk on 26 July 1944, off the western coast of Palawan Island from an explosion in the vicinity of her after battery, probably caused by an enemy mine. Four men swam ashore and made their way through the jungles to a small barrier northwest of the Puerto Princesa Prison Camp, where Japanese Military Police captured them and jailed them for guerrilla activities. On 15 August, they were evacuated by a Japanese destroyer and never heard from again. The exact fate of the survivors is unknown. Though Admiral Christie knew better, for morale reasons, all hands were reported as having gone down with the boat, but other prisoners on Palawan reported that the boat's skipper, Lieutenant Commander Manning Kimmel, son of Admiral Husband Kimmel, was one of the survivors. After an air strike on Palawan, the Japanese were so angered that they pushed Kimmel and the other prisoners into a ditch, poured in gasoline, and burned them alive. This incident was reported by Clay Blair Jr., a submarine veteran of the war and author of the definitive work Silent Victory: The US Submarine War Against Japan (see Volume 2, pp660–662 for details).

The wreckage of the Robalo was found by the Sea Scan Survey Team in May 2019 in the Balabac Strait off the east coast of Balabac Island at a depth of Her identity was confirmed by the U. S. Navy.