Tweet
photos at http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles ... 18-sub.txt
Lost WWII submarine found in Bearing Sea
By LORNA THACKERAY
Of The Gazette Staff
A World War II submarine that carried a Billings radio operator and 69 others to their deaths in cold Alaska waters 65 years ago was found late Wednesday night near a wartime Japanese stronghold in the Aleutian Islands.
An expedition financed and organized by the sons of USS Grunion skipper Lt. Cdr. Mannert "Jim" Abele lowered an ROV - remotely operated vehicle, equipped with cameras and video equipment - into an area where an object thought to be the missing sub had been spotted by sonar in an August 2006 expedition.
In an e-mail posted from the search vessel Aquila early Thursday, John Abele jubilantly informed his brothers in Massachusetts and Vermont, "We found a submarine tonight. We have photographic documentation showing a prop guard of Grunion style."
The Grunion is the only World War II sub missing in that area.
"You can imagine the emotional impact," Bruce Abele, oldest of the three brothers organizing the search, said in a telephone call from his home in Newton, Mass. "It's quite emotional."
Bruce was 12 when his father was reported missing in action. His brother John, who founded Boston Scientific, was 5, and Brad was 9. Their father was 39 when the Grunion went down in late July 1942.
Under his command was Wesley Hope Blinston, a Billings man who graduated from Billings Senior High in 1936. He was about 23 years old.
Blinston, a radioman third class on the sub, may have sent the Grunion's last message July 30, 1942. A 1936 yearbook listed his only school activity as Radio Club, where he learned Morse code and was one of eight licensed radio operators at Billings High School.
An extensive Gazette search last summer turned up little about Blinston. His mother, the late Sophye Blinston Vinner, died in 1991. No relatives remain in the area, and only one classmate remembered him.
His nearest relations, distant cousins in Sparta, Wis., said although they were proud of Wesley and excited that his sub had been found, they had never met the young man who apparently left no footprint.
"Well that's great. It's kind of nice to know where he is," Shelby Blinston Starling said when reached Thursday at her home in Sparta. "It's still so sad."
Starling was just 5 when the Grunion was lost and three states away from relatives she had never met. She hadn't even heard of Wesley Blinston until a group of women searching for families of crew members contacted her last year.
Relatives of 69 of the 70 crew members have been located, Bruce Abele said. The search continues for relations of Seaman Second Class Byron Allen Traviss, who was from Detroit.
• • •
The wreckage appeared a mile down on an underwater terrace of Kiska Volcano on the north end of Kiska Island in the remote reaches of the chain that arcs across the Bering Sea toward Russia. The submarine, on her maiden voyage, was believed to have been sunk in waters heavily infested with enemy vessels, but her fate remained a mystery for six decades.
From the 2006 sonar image, which showed a clean outline of a vessel and what appeared to be a conning tower lying on its starboard side, the searchers expected the Grunion to be pretty much intact, Bruce Abele said. But John said pictures captured from high-definition cameras on the ROV showed it was not.
"It imploded dramatically and is a tangle of pipes," John Abele wrote in an e-mail message from the Aquila, a fishing vessel owned by Alaskan Kale Garcia that is being used in the search.
"That was a big surprise for us," Bruce Abele said.
It was also a big disappointment. Finding out why the sub went down was the second objective of the search.
"It will be difficult or impossible to identify the cause," John wrote in his e-mail.
They plan to scour the video over the next few months with marine experts to try to get a more definitive answer.
The crew of the Aquila worked through the night as an Arctic storm gathered. Images from their search may be posted online by today.
In telephone call Thursday afternoon, John told Bruce about a few other surprises the video provided.
"The hatch on deck was wide open," Bruce said. "That was strange, that was really strange."
The video also showed that the bow of the sub was nearly separated from the rest of its body. The conning tower was smashed by a Japanese shell that probably instantly killed the gun crew and disabled the control room, Bruce said.
Hatches separating compartments of the sub were probably closed because the sub was in battle status, he continued. It may prove that water pressure at that depth crushed the Grunion, Bruce said.
• • •
The Grunion was on a mission to contest the first enemy occupation of American soil since the British invaded in 1812.
In an attempt to divert attention from plans to attack Midway Atoll in the mid-Pacific, the Japanese had captured two American-owned islands at the west end of the chain - Attus and Kiska.
The Grunion sailed north from Midway on her first mission. She scored kills on July 15 when she sank two 300-ton patrol boats and damaged a third.
Those boats are thought to rest in a more sheltered area around Kiska Harbor, and the 2007 expedition hopes to get video of them today because weather will likely prevent them from going back to the Grunion for a few days. Bruce Abele said it was a grateful gesture to the Japanese who have been so helpful and interested in their search. They also hope to get video of the Japanese destroyer Arare, which was sunk later by another American sub, the Growler.
Waters around Kiska were thick with Japanese ships in 1942. On July 28, the Grunion fired two torpedoes at an enemy vessel but missed its target. The Japanese launched a depth charge that probably shook the crew, but did no damage.
A final message from the Grunion was sent July 30 noting heavy antisubmarine activity and that she had just 10 torpedoes left. She was ordered back to Dutch Harbor, the American base of operations in the Aleutians. But the crew saw one last chance for a kill when the Kano Maru crossed its path.
The Grunion was confirmed lost on Aug. 16, 1942.
Captured Japanese records did not report the sinking of a sub, and aerial reconnaissance found no sign of the Grunion. The Navy could offer families little information on the fate of their loved ones.
In an article he wrote about his father, Brad Abele remembered the day his family got the news that the Grunion was presumed lost.
"It was an early fall, sunny afternoon and my brothers and I were playing football in the road in front of our house in Newton Highlands, Mass.," he wrote. "My mother came to the door and called us all in, and while we stood in a sunbeam by her desk in the front of the living room, she read us the first telegram."
The Abele brothers embarked on their quest to find the sub their father commanded in 2002 when Yutaka Iwasaki, a Japanese Navy buff, discovered an article in a Japanese publication written by the captain of World War II freighter Kano Maru.
The captain described a death struggle with a submarine July 31, 1942, in the sea north of Kiska.
The captain wrote that the Kano Maru was drifting in bad weather near Kiska early that morning when a torpedo from the Grunion smashed into her starboard side, disabling her engine and generator. Two more torpedoes smacked into the freighter, but both were duds.
One well-directed torpedo was enough. The Kano Maru had taken a fatal hit. The Grunion started to surface about 400 meters from the sinking freighter. Gunners on the Kano Maru fired at the submarine's periscope. Before she surfaced completely, another shot blasted the Grunion's conning tower.
That final shot probably sent her to the bottom. But it might not be that simple, Bruce Abele said.
"It's possible, but extremely unlikely that a shell from an 8-centimeter deck gun could have penetrated the conning tower under the surface," he said. "It would have ricocheted off."
However, it is possible that the Grunion was hit by an "extremely secret" flat-nosed projectile the Japanese had developed, he said. It would have crashed into the submarine at 60 mph, he said.
Sonar images from last summer's sonar search showed what appeared to be skid marks three quarters of a mile long down a submerged slope. Video taken Wednesday also showed the slide trail, John said in his e-mail to Bruce.
The crew on the Aquila started looking for the Grunion Wednesday night almost immediately after arriving in the vicinity of the sonar image from last year. They decided to put the ROV in the water instead of waiting until Thursday because a storm with gale-force winds was heading their way.
On Thursday, the Aquila's crew was safely anchored in Kiska Harbor. If seas are too rough to video the nearby Japanese vessels on Friday, the search team may unload some all-terrain vehicles and explore the island.
Although Kiska was a beehive of activity 60 years ago, it is deserted now. The island is littered with the debris of war, including unexploded land mines, Bruce said.
Lost WWII submarine found in Bearing Sea
By LORNA THACKERAY
Of The Gazette Staff
A World War II submarine that carried a Billings radio operator and 69 others to their deaths in cold Alaska waters 65 years ago was found late Wednesday night near a wartime Japanese stronghold in the Aleutian Islands.
An expedition financed and organized by the sons of USS Grunion skipper Lt. Cdr. Mannert "Jim" Abele lowered an ROV - remotely operated vehicle, equipped with cameras and video equipment - into an area where an object thought to be the missing sub had been spotted by sonar in an August 2006 expedition.
In an e-mail posted from the search vessel Aquila early Thursday, John Abele jubilantly informed his brothers in Massachusetts and Vermont, "We found a submarine tonight. We have photographic documentation showing a prop guard of Grunion style."
The Grunion is the only World War II sub missing in that area.
"You can imagine the emotional impact," Bruce Abele, oldest of the three brothers organizing the search, said in a telephone call from his home in Newton, Mass. "It's quite emotional."
Bruce was 12 when his father was reported missing in action. His brother John, who founded Boston Scientific, was 5, and Brad was 9. Their father was 39 when the Grunion went down in late July 1942.
Under his command was Wesley Hope Blinston, a Billings man who graduated from Billings Senior High in 1936. He was about 23 years old.
Blinston, a radioman third class on the sub, may have sent the Grunion's last message July 30, 1942. A 1936 yearbook listed his only school activity as Radio Club, where he learned Morse code and was one of eight licensed radio operators at Billings High School.
An extensive Gazette search last summer turned up little about Blinston. His mother, the late Sophye Blinston Vinner, died in 1991. No relatives remain in the area, and only one classmate remembered him.
His nearest relations, distant cousins in Sparta, Wis., said although they were proud of Wesley and excited that his sub had been found, they had never met the young man who apparently left no footprint.
"Well that's great. It's kind of nice to know where he is," Shelby Blinston Starling said when reached Thursday at her home in Sparta. "It's still so sad."
Starling was just 5 when the Grunion was lost and three states away from relatives she had never met. She hadn't even heard of Wesley Blinston until a group of women searching for families of crew members contacted her last year.
Relatives of 69 of the 70 crew members have been located, Bruce Abele said. The search continues for relations of Seaman Second Class Byron Allen Traviss, who was from Detroit.
• • •
The wreckage appeared a mile down on an underwater terrace of Kiska Volcano on the north end of Kiska Island in the remote reaches of the chain that arcs across the Bering Sea toward Russia. The submarine, on her maiden voyage, was believed to have been sunk in waters heavily infested with enemy vessels, but her fate remained a mystery for six decades.
From the 2006 sonar image, which showed a clean outline of a vessel and what appeared to be a conning tower lying on its starboard side, the searchers expected the Grunion to be pretty much intact, Bruce Abele said. But John said pictures captured from high-definition cameras on the ROV showed it was not.
"It imploded dramatically and is a tangle of pipes," John Abele wrote in an e-mail message from the Aquila, a fishing vessel owned by Alaskan Kale Garcia that is being used in the search.
"That was a big surprise for us," Bruce Abele said.
It was also a big disappointment. Finding out why the sub went down was the second objective of the search.
"It will be difficult or impossible to identify the cause," John wrote in his e-mail.
They plan to scour the video over the next few months with marine experts to try to get a more definitive answer.
The crew of the Aquila worked through the night as an Arctic storm gathered. Images from their search may be posted online by today.
In telephone call Thursday afternoon, John told Bruce about a few other surprises the video provided.
"The hatch on deck was wide open," Bruce said. "That was strange, that was really strange."
The video also showed that the bow of the sub was nearly separated from the rest of its body. The conning tower was smashed by a Japanese shell that probably instantly killed the gun crew and disabled the control room, Bruce said.
Hatches separating compartments of the sub were probably closed because the sub was in battle status, he continued. It may prove that water pressure at that depth crushed the Grunion, Bruce said.
• • •
The Grunion was on a mission to contest the first enemy occupation of American soil since the British invaded in 1812.
In an attempt to divert attention from plans to attack Midway Atoll in the mid-Pacific, the Japanese had captured two American-owned islands at the west end of the chain - Attus and Kiska.
The Grunion sailed north from Midway on her first mission. She scored kills on July 15 when she sank two 300-ton patrol boats and damaged a third.
Those boats are thought to rest in a more sheltered area around Kiska Harbor, and the 2007 expedition hopes to get video of them today because weather will likely prevent them from going back to the Grunion for a few days. Bruce Abele said it was a grateful gesture to the Japanese who have been so helpful and interested in their search. They also hope to get video of the Japanese destroyer Arare, which was sunk later by another American sub, the Growler.
Waters around Kiska were thick with Japanese ships in 1942. On July 28, the Grunion fired two torpedoes at an enemy vessel but missed its target. The Japanese launched a depth charge that probably shook the crew, but did no damage.
A final message from the Grunion was sent July 30 noting heavy antisubmarine activity and that she had just 10 torpedoes left. She was ordered back to Dutch Harbor, the American base of operations in the Aleutians. But the crew saw one last chance for a kill when the Kano Maru crossed its path.
The Grunion was confirmed lost on Aug. 16, 1942.
Captured Japanese records did not report the sinking of a sub, and aerial reconnaissance found no sign of the Grunion. The Navy could offer families little information on the fate of their loved ones.
In an article he wrote about his father, Brad Abele remembered the day his family got the news that the Grunion was presumed lost.
"It was an early fall, sunny afternoon and my brothers and I were playing football in the road in front of our house in Newton Highlands, Mass.," he wrote. "My mother came to the door and called us all in, and while we stood in a sunbeam by her desk in the front of the living room, she read us the first telegram."
The Abele brothers embarked on their quest to find the sub their father commanded in 2002 when Yutaka Iwasaki, a Japanese Navy buff, discovered an article in a Japanese publication written by the captain of World War II freighter Kano Maru.
The captain described a death struggle with a submarine July 31, 1942, in the sea north of Kiska.
The captain wrote that the Kano Maru was drifting in bad weather near Kiska early that morning when a torpedo from the Grunion smashed into her starboard side, disabling her engine and generator. Two more torpedoes smacked into the freighter, but both were duds.
One well-directed torpedo was enough. The Kano Maru had taken a fatal hit. The Grunion started to surface about 400 meters from the sinking freighter. Gunners on the Kano Maru fired at the submarine's periscope. Before she surfaced completely, another shot blasted the Grunion's conning tower.
That final shot probably sent her to the bottom. But it might not be that simple, Bruce Abele said.
"It's possible, but extremely unlikely that a shell from an 8-centimeter deck gun could have penetrated the conning tower under the surface," he said. "It would have ricocheted off."
However, it is possible that the Grunion was hit by an "extremely secret" flat-nosed projectile the Japanese had developed, he said. It would have crashed into the submarine at 60 mph, he said.
Sonar images from last summer's sonar search showed what appeared to be skid marks three quarters of a mile long down a submerged slope. Video taken Wednesday also showed the slide trail, John said in his e-mail to Bruce.
The crew on the Aquila started looking for the Grunion Wednesday night almost immediately after arriving in the vicinity of the sonar image from last year. They decided to put the ROV in the water instead of waiting until Thursday because a storm with gale-force winds was heading their way.
On Thursday, the Aquila's crew was safely anchored in Kiska Harbor. If seas are too rough to video the nearby Japanese vessels on Friday, the search team may unload some all-terrain vehicles and explore the island.
Although Kiska was a beehive of activity 60 years ago, it is deserted now. The island is littered with the debris of war, including unexploded land mines, Bruce said.
Comment