After tracing many unproductive search patterns in Ulithi's wind-swept lagoon on 6 April 2001, we were about 15 minutes from terminating our seven-day quest to locate the wreck of the 553-foot-long, 25,425-ton USS Mississinewa (AO-59). Our team, including Dr. Pat Scannon and my wife, Pam, had been watching for anything that might help reveal her location. Our extremely competent Ulithian crew, Mario Suk, Faustino Yalomai, and Kenneth Wur, and an acquaintance, Lisa Wallner, also did not provide the solution. We had only two more passes to complete before we would join the ranks of the many previous teams who could not find what naval historian James Delgado has described as the last great mystery shipwreck of World War II.
Prior to the trip, Mike Mair and Ron Fulleman (the ship's historians and sons of surviving crew members) provided me with crew interviews, ship's documents, and Simon "Sid" Harris's collection of 37 photographs. By computer enhancing these images, I was able to pull out an occasional island captured inadvertently in some of the shots. By triangulation and measuring sight lines, our research had reduced the search area to only 5 of the lagoon's more than 200 square miles.
On the last of our scheduled passes, the depth alarm sounded. The bottom-finder screen indicated an anomaly below. Mario reversed course. Kenneth hung over the gunwale with his mask. Something man-made caught his eye. As we dived toward the sea floor 135 feet below, a faint gray, rounded mound slowly transformed into a ship's massive inverted hull. We had found the Mississinewa.
In actions around Yap, Peleliu, Leyte, and Okinawa, the Miss, as her crew often called her, had accumulated four Battle Stars since her commissioning on 18 May 1944. This auxiliary oiler was manned by 278 enlisted sailors and 20 officers under the command of Captain Philip G. Beck. During the early morning of 20 November 1944, the Miss swung on her anchor in an area designated Berth 131 in the seemingly serene waters of Ulithi lagoon. The first and probably most successful attack against a U.S. Navy vessel by a new Japanese weapon soon disturbed the tranquility.
Based on the seemingly effective concept of "guided" weapons, two weapon systems—suicide aircraft (kamikaze) and submarines (kaiten)—were implemented by the Japanese in the fall of 1944. The Type-1 kaiten (literally translated, "turning of the heavens" or "heaven shaker"), a modification of the very effective Type 93 "Long Lance" fleet torpedo, was 48 feet long and displaced 8.3 tons. Its 3,418-pound high-explosive warhead was more than four times the size of the parent torpedo's successful armament. Launched from the deck of specially adapted I-class mother submarines, single pilots could guide their unwieldy craft toward targets as far as 30 miles away, usually at depths between 15 to 40 feet and at speeds up to 27 knots. Once released, there was no return.
On 9 November, three fleet submarines, each bearing four Type-1 kaiten, slipped out of Kure naval base headed for the U.S. Navy fleet units gathered in Ulithi lagoon and Kossol Passage, Palau. Based on observations from Truk-based surveillance flights, Japanese intelligence felt the U.S. ships would provide ideal targets. Not all went as planned. Surfacing early on 19 November in the Kossol Passage, the I-37, a Type B1 submarine, was detected by the USS Winterberry (AN-56) and sunk by the destroyer escorts Conklin (DE-439) and McCoy Reynolds (DE-440).
At the same time, 400 miles to the northeast, the mission's two remaining submarines moved undetected into place around Ulithi Atoll. The I-47, a Type C2 submarine under the command of Lieutenant Commander Zenji Orita, took up station three miles east of Lossau, a small island along the southeastern flank of the lagoon. Lieutenant Commander Iwao Teramoto guided the I-36, the mission's third submarine, 9.5 miles east of the tiny island of Mas. The I-47's records quote Sub Lieutenant Sekio Nishina, a kaiten pilot and co-inventor of the suicide sub, lamenting, "Daylight observation disclosed over a hundred ships at anchor in Ulithi. Though this provides a golden opportunity for the use of human torpedoes, there are but two submarines and eight human torpedoes—a regrettable matter."
Before dawn on 20 November, Orita launched all four of the I-47's kaitens. They were to enter the lagoon through Zau Channel, a shallow opening bordered by Lolang and Mangejang Islands. Their targets were among some of Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman's Task Group 38.3 and Commodore W. R. Carter's Service Squadron 10 ships occupying Urushi Anchorage's southern berthing areas within the lagoon.
Farther to the north, the I-36 could launch only one of her four kaitens. Piloted by Ensign Taichi Imanishi, the weapon's intended course was due west, according to Japanese Imperial Navy Sixth Fleet action reports. After avoiding the antisubmarine nets and by penetrating the lagoon just south of Mas Island, Imanishi was to enter an area where the U.S. carriers and battleships were to be concentrated.
Of the five suicide subs launched that morning, one hit the reef and exploded, while another appeared to have floundered outside the reef. Her disposition remains uncertain. The USS Case (DD-370) rammed and sank a third at the lagoon's entrance. Two kaitens entered the lagoon, where depth charges from the Rall (DE-304) finished the fourth. However, the fifth kaiten, most likely piloted by Sub Lieutenant Sekio Nishina, accelerated to full speed directly toward the starboard bow of the Mississinewa.
The previous afternoon, Captain Beck, concerned the work party would miss the evening movie, had rescinded the order to purge the No. 1 port and starboard and No. 3 centerline tanks that earlier had been emptied of aviation fuel. But that innocent decision was to have dire consequences. The aviation gas tanks normally were refilled with seawater to reduce explosive danger, but left as they were, the empty tanks were potential time bombs. At 0545, Nishina's kaiten struck the No. 3 starboard wing tank, fully loaded with 404,000 gallons of aviation fuel. It erupted in flames, killing many in the forward crew area and all 15 men sleeping on deck over the forward tanks. Then the empty No. 3 fume-filled centerline tank exploded, and the two blasts tore a gaping hole in the hull almost 78 feet long, extending to the keel on both sides. At 0605 the stern 5-inch/38-caliber ammunition magazine cooked off from the intense heat.
Fire and smoke drove the men toward the stern. Hot oil coated the water. Many of the sailors, including Fireman Second Class John Mair, assumed somebody had been smoking around the aviation gas tanks. Blinded by the acrid smoke, they groped desperately for life jackets, but Mair and many others made the 30-foot jump off the fantail without them. Seaman Second Class Eugene Cooley, asleep under the port side forecastle, awoke just in time to watch flames sweep over the starboard 3-inch gun and the ship's terrier mascot, Salvo. With his underwear burning, Cooley survived by diving into the water and swimming under the burning fuel.
Some of the men in aft crew quarters headed instinctively to their general quarters stations. Water Tender Second Class Ray Fulleman rushed to the fire room and lit off a boiler in a futile attempt to provide steam pressure for the inoperative firefighting pumps. He and the remainder of the fire room crew were almost trapped below, as flames blocked their escape. Machinist's Mate First Class Fred Shaufus was in the engineroom when he shouted through the fire room's only clear hatch, "You'd better get out. Everybody's gone!" Fulleman and the remainder of the crew all made it to safety.
The ship's remaining boats were jammed on their davits, the pumps inoperative and the fire hoses burning. Except for small patches below the fantail, burning oil and gas had surrounded the ship. Captain Beck, naked after discarding his burning pajama bottoms, ordered for anybody who could hear, "Abandon ship over the stern!" A few non-swimmers refused to take the life-saving plunge.
Lieutenant (junior grade) Milford Romanoff, officer of the deck on the Lackawanna (AO-40), had watched the kaiten's periscope converge and disintegrate in a ball of flame against the side of the Mississinewa. Disobeying his captain and risking threats of court-martial, Romanoff ordered the Lackawanna's boats launched to aid the men he could see jumping from the burning ship. These boat crews pulled 59 survivors from the lagoon that morning.
Probably the most unusual rescue was conducted by pilot Lieutenant (junior grade) Blase C. Zamucen, and Radioman Third Class Russell Evinrude. Flying their OS2U Kingfisher floatplane on submarine patrol from the Santa Fe (CL-60), they landed near the Mississinewa. Zamucen taxied the plane up to the flames, then turned his aircraft and used the prop wash to push back the burning oil. The men then jumped into the clear spot. In the meantime, Evinrude climbed onto the fuselage behind his seat and secured a line. He threw the line to the struggling sailors and collected as many as could hold. They then towed them to the waiting boats before returning to repeat the process.
The fleet tug Munsee (ATF-107) played a significant role in the firefighting and rescue efforts of the Miss. Called to general quarters at 0543, according to the ship's log, the tug went at flank speed to aid the stricken oiler. While observing the action from his station on the Munsee's bridge, Storekeeper Second Class Simon "Sid" Harris recorded the scene vividly in his many notes and dramatic photographs of the day's events.
The smoke belched perpendicularly from this cauldron, borne in the upward surge of tremendous heat to a height of several thousand feet before mushrooming out. Flames roared up the column of smoke as though up a chimney, trying to lick the top. We headed in amidships, water spurting from about twenty hoses. The sea around the ship was boiling with flaming oil. Drums of gasoline, 20-mm, 40-mm, and 5-inch shells were exploding in a cacophony of sound.
By 0830, the fires had been extinguished, but the Mississinewa had taken on too much water. As the foredeck dipped below the surface, the ship shuddered and started to roll. The Munsee's firefighters leaped off her decks as she twisted slowly to port. The stern rose, displaying the huge, twin, four-bladed screws, then disappeared, not to be seen again until 6 April 2001, when we arrived at the starboard bow rail of the long-lost Mississinewa.
Oriented with the bow pointing to the east, the majority of the ship is upside-down, her superstructure either crushed under the hull or buried in the soft sand. The bow, forward of the damage caused by the kaiten, rests on the port rail. As the ship had rolled to port all those years before, the drooping bow most likely reached the lagoon floor before the list reached 90°. Secure in place while the remainder of the ship twisted around the damaged area, the foredeck is now perpendicular to the bottom, so that the starboard 3-inch gun is readily accessible to divers. The twin screws now rise above the bottom as they did nearly 59 years ago. Home to thousands of species of marine life, the Mississinewa remains the final resting place for 50 brave U.S. sailors.