At 1120 on 16 April 1945, a warm and sunny day, the submarine USS Bullhead (SS-332), on lifeguard station off the coast of China midway between Hong Kong and Swatow, picked up a message reporting a downed plane. The boat went to full speed on receipt; she was 30 miles inside the blind bombing zone—where American planes could attack any submarine they sighted—and in just 12 fathoms of water. At noon, the Bullhead reported her intentions to commander, Submarines Pacific. Given the proximity of the enemy, and the shallowness of the water, red-haired, mustachioed Commander Walter T. Griffith, the Bullhead’s commanding officer, ordered the boat’s coding machine destroyed. Sailors wielding sledgehammers made short work of the equipment, throwing the mangled wreckage over the side.
Shortly afterward, the Bullhead increased speed to flank, and a quarter of an hour later sighted a column of black smoke roughly north-northwest. After altering course, she closed two Chinese fishing junks, and within 30 minutes, within sight of shore, she brought on board Army Air Forces Second Lieutenants Harold V. Sturm and Irving Charnow and Sergeant Robert Tukel, whose B-25 Mitchell bomber had been shot down during an anti-shipping strike. Sturm, the downed plane’s pilot and the lone member of the trio who was conscious, initially was nervous as the Bullhead approached, fearing she was the enemy. But he breathed easier when he spied the submarine’s commanding officer—he had never heard of a redheaded Japanese.
The Bullhead, authorized by Congress on 13 May 1942 and laid down on 21 October 1943 at Groton, Connecticut, by the Electric Boat Company, slid down the ways on 16 July 1944. Built at a cost of $3,297,000, she was commissioned at the Submarine Base, New London, Connecticut, on 4 December 1944, with Griffith in command. An “able and experienced” officer, he had received the Navy Cross, as well as a Silver Star and a gold star in lieu of a second Navy Cross, while commanding the Bowfin (SS-287). Under his leadership, that sub received a Presidential Unit Citation. A former enlisted man, “Griff” Griffith had graduated with the U.S. Naval Academy class of 1934, qualifying in submarines two years later. The Bullhead was his third command.
“Bad winter weather, shallow water, and restricted areas” limited what training the new boat could conduct from New London, and the uneventful passage to Key West, Florida, in company with the Lionfish (SS-298) had provided equally limited opportunities for practice. Following her shakedown the Bullhead proceeded to the Canal Zone, where “ideal weather, clear area[s], deep water, ample targets . . . and highly simplified procedures” enabled Griffith to enjoy what he deemed “the most valuable [training] that I have ever experienced.” Proceeding thence for Pearl Harbor—and weathering a near-catastrophe when low hydraulic pressure caused the main induction valve to close too slowly, allowing tons of seawater to flood the boat—the Bullhead reached Pearl on 26 February after a 15-day passage from Balboa. She sailed for Guam on 19 March.
With voyage repairs completed the Bullhead cleared Guam an hour before the end of the afternoon watch on 21 March “to wage unrestricted submarine warfare and perform lifeguard services in the northern part of the South China Sea.” She sailed in company with the USS Tigrone (SS-419) and Blackfish (SS-221), the group commander riding in the Tigrone. Of the nine officers in the Bullhead’s tiny wardroom, only four had conducted war patrols, while eight of the nine chief petty officers had seen extensive service at sea. In addition, the Bullhead embarked war correspondent Martin Sheridan of The Boston Daily Globe, who had boarded shortly before the boat sailed.
By the time the Bullhead entered the war, the campaign of attrition against Japanese shipping meant fewer targets existed for her torpedoes. She could, however, perform a vital function retrieving pilots and aircrew after their planes had been downed. She operated on lifeguard station off southwestern Formosa for several days at the start of that first patrol, then bombarded a radio station on Pratas Island, as Griffith reported, “to let my men feel that at least, in a small way, they were fighting the war.”
The Bullhead continued patrolling off St. John’s Island and Hong Kong, and was mistakenly attacked by a “probable B-24” on 8 April, its first bombs exploding almost coincidentally with the diving alarm. “His bombing accuracy was lamentable,” Griffith sniffed in his patrol report. “He had us cold on the surface and yet missed by at least 75 yards; and he neglected to strafe us as he went by.” The rescue of the Army aviators on 16 April highlighted the patrol, and the boat reprised her bombardment of Pratas Island on the return voyage. She ultimately reached Subic Bay on 28 April, transferring her grateful and recovering patients ashore. Griffith lauded his crew as “a credit to the submarine service,” but lamented “that their devotion to duty [was] not rewarded with an opportunity to engage the enemy.”
That was not the case during the boat’s second war patrol (21 May–2 July), during which she saw considerable surface gun action in the Java Sea. The Bullhead accounted for an estimated 1,850 tons of shipping sunk and 1,300 damaged. On 28 June, four days out of Fremantle, Australia, Griffith radioed ahead requesting that in the boat’s upcoming refit a second 5-inch/25-caliber and a second 40-mm Bofors forward replace the two 20-mm guns. Consequently, the boat’s voyage repairs included that armament upgrade. Lieutenant Commander Edward R. Holt Jr., who had commanded the boat’s relief crew after her first war patrol, relieved Griffith as commanding officer. The now more heavily gunned Bullhead departed Fremantle on 31 July for her third war patrol.
Soon after Holt had written a letter saying he felt as if they “were in port . . . still eating fresh vegetables and fruit,” the Bullhead transferred a sack of mail to the Fremantle-bound Dutch submarine O-21 on 2 August, and continued on toward her assigned area. She reported transiting Lombok Strait on 6 August, but six days later an order from the USS Capitaine (SS-336) went unanswered. Three days after that, the Capitaine boat reported she had “been unable to contact [her sister ship] by any means” since arriving in the area.
Postwar investigation yielded the most likely reason for the ominous silence: A plane from the Japanese army’s 67th Squadron reported scoring two direct hits on a submarine on 6 August off Bali, near the northern end of Lombok Strait. Considerable oil gushing to the surface and air bubbles marked the location for ten minutes’ time. Those who knew the area speculated that because of the proximity of nearby mountains on Bali the Bullhead’s radar had not detected the enemy’s approach until too late.
The Bullhead—listed on 24 August as “overdue . . . and presumed lost”—was the last U.S. Navy ship sunk by the Japanese in World War II. Newsman Marty Sheridan, nicknamed “Scoop” by his shipmates, had departed the boat after his first war patrol. He had the distinction of being the only war correspondent to make a patrol in a submarine, for when Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King heard of his passage in the Bullhead, an immediate ban on any member of the Fourth Estate making war patrols was put into place. Sheridan wrote an affectionate tribute—Overdue and Presumed Lost: The Story of the U.S.S. Bullhead—and carried fond memories of his experience and of the submariners with whom he had become acquainted for the rest of his life.
USS Bullhead (SS-332), Balao-class submarine
Displacement: 1,525 tons (surface)
2,415 tons (submerged)
Length: 311 feet, 9 inches
Beam: 27 feet, 3 inches
Draft: 15 feet, 3 inches
Speed: 20.25 knots (surface)
8.75 knots (submerged)
Armament (as commissioned):
One 5-inch/25-caliber single-purpose (wet-mount) gun
One 40-mm Bofors (Army model) antiaircraft machine gun
Two 20-mm Oerlikon antiaircraft machine guns
Two .50-caliber Browning machine guns
Ten 21-inch torpedo tubes (six Mk-32 forward, four Mk-33 aft)
Complement: 81 officers and men