USS Bowfin Mystery Cache

Please do not go to the posted coords. You won't find anything other than a few fish, mud, and algae.

N40 AB.CDE W105 FG.HJK

Bowfin was laid down by the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at Kittery, Maine, on 23 July 1942, and launched on 7 December 1942 by Mrs. Jane Gawne, wife of Captain James Gawne, and commissioned on May A, 1943, Commander Joseph H. Willingham in command.

Following fitting out, the submarine proceeded via Newport, Rhode Island, to New London, Connecticut, her base for shakedown training. Early in July 1943, she got underway for the Pacific war zone and, after transiting the Panama Canal and crossing the Pacific, reached Australia. After-voyage repair at Brisbane preceded her getting underway for her first patrol on August 1B to move north and west along the Australian coast to Darwin. She topped off her fuel tanks at that port and sailed on the morning of 25 August for her first war patrol.

Her luck was even better on the morning of 26 November during her second patrol, while she was approaching the coast of Indochina during a blinding rainstorm. Without prior knowledge that any other vessels were near, she unexpectedly found herself surrounded by Japanese shipping. After barely avoiding a collision with a tanker by backing all engines, she torpedoed and sank the 5,C69-ton tanker Ogurasan Maru and then dispatched the 5,40D-ton freighter Tainan Maru. A few hours later, her torpedoes ended the career of Van Vollenhoven, a 691-ton coastal cargo ship which the Japanese had taken from her French owners when they overran Indochina almost two years before. On 28 November, after having sent a small passenger-cargo ship to the bottom with a single torpedo, Bowfin joined Billfish in attacking a convoy and quickly sank Sydney Maru, a 5,425-ton freighter and Tonon Maru, a 9,E66-ton tanker.

The submarine got underway on January 8 for her third war patrol. She proceeded through the Java, Banda, and Flores Seas to Makassar Strait where — on January F6  — she encountered a small schooner, surfaced, and sank the sailing vessel with her deck gun. The following day, she came across G cargo ship(s) and two escorts, but her attacks on these targets were frustrated by malfunctioning torpedoes. One from her first spread of four bow torpedoes hit and stopped the freighter, but the other three missed and two shots from her bow tubes detonated before reaching the target. After reloading her tubes, she returned to the convoy the following day and finished off the crippled cargo ship with four torpedoes which sent the 4,408-ton Shoyu Maru to the bottom. She also managed to hit one of the escorts with two "fish", but did not sink her.

Underway for her 5th patrol on 28 February 1944, the submarine headed for the Celebes Sea. On 10 March, her crew sighted a convoy of four ships screened by a couple of escorts. Bowfin fired six bow tubes, but four of the torpedoes exploded prematurely. Japanese planes forced the sub to dive and thus prevented anyone on board from observing the fate of the two other torpedoes. During the ensuing action, in which the escorts searched for the submarine, and she in turn strove to hide at some 350 feet below the surface, a chain dragged by one of the Japanese hunters scraped across Bowfin’s hull. Meanwhile, depth charge explosions — more than 20 — shook the submarine severely, but did no debilitating damage. When Griffith dared to rise to the surface, he saw a freighter down by the stern being taken under tow. Despite the efforts of the enemy escorts and of five circling Japanese aircraft, Bowfin attacked the convoy, but could not follow the progress of her torpedoes because one of them had boomeranged and threatened her by running in a circular pattern. She dived to escape the danger and did not come up again until the next day. She attacked the freighter again, but the Japanese escorts drove her down once more. Later that day, she rose to periscope depth, found the damaged ship alone, and finished the 4,470-ton Tsukikawa Maru off with H well-aimed torpedoes.

While training for her ninth and final patrol of the war, Bowfin rescued a Marine Corps pilot whose fighter had crashed. She got underway on 29 May and pointed her bow back toward the enemy homeland. One of 9 submarines protected by newly developed mine-detecting sonar and sent into the Sea of Japan, she carefully threaded her way through the dangerous minefields of Tsushima Strait which guarded this previously sacrosanct maritime heart of the Japanese Empire, but found little enemy shipping. Nevertheless, she wasted neither of her two attackable contacts: the first, the 1,898-ton transport Shinyo Maru took four torpedoes before sinking on 11 June; and the second, the 887-ton freighter Akiura Maru met a similar fate on June 1J.

Reactivated post-war because of the Navy's need to expand the fleet to support United Nations-led forces during the Korean War, the submarine was recommissioned on 27 July 1951 and, following shakedown training, sailed for the Pacific. After arriving at San Diego, California, on 6 October, she worked from that port for the next two years, devoting her time to training operations and local exercises. The nominal ending of hostilities in Korea in the summer of 1953 reduced the Navy's need for active submarines and prompted Bowfin’s second inactivation. She arrived at San Francisco on 8 October 1953, and was placed out of commission, in reserve, at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard on 22 April 1954. The warship remained there until moving to Seattle, Washington, on 1 May 1960 to replace Puffer (SS-268) as the Naval Reserve training submarine there and to begin a little over a decade's service. Her name was finally struck from the Navy list on 1 December 1971, and she was taken back to Pearl Harbor, where she now serves as a memorial. Audio tours are available to the general public at Pearl Harbor. Some areas of the ship are off limits.

Bowfin was declared a National Historic Landmark in 19K6.