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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Builders: | Electric Boat Company, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company[1] |
| Operators: |  United States Navy |
| Preceded by: | Tambor class |
| Succeeded by: | Balao class |
| Built: | 1940–1944[2] |
| In commission: | 1943–1969[2] |
| Completed: | 77[1] |
| Active: | 0[1] |
| Lost: | 20[1] |
| Retired: | 57[1] |
| Preserved: | 6[1] |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Diesel-electric submarine |
| Displacement: | 1,525 tons (1,549 t) surfaced[1] 2,424 tons (2463 t) submerged[1] |
| Length: | 311 ft 8 in (95.00 m) – 311 ft 10 in (95.05 m)[1] |
| Beam: | 27 ft 3 in (8.31 m) [1] |
| Draft: | 17 ft (5.2 m) maximum[1] |
| Propulsion: |
4 × diesel engines driving electrical generators (Fairbanks-Morse, General Motors, or Hooven-Owens-Rentschler)[1] |
| Speed: | 21 knots (39 km/h) surfaced[3] 9 knots (17 km/h) submerged[3] |
| Range: | 11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) surfaced at 10 knots (19 km/h)[3] |
| Endurance: | 48 hours at 2 knots (3.7 km/h) submerged[3] 75 days on patrol |
| Test depth: | 300 ft (90 m)[3] |
| Complement: | 6 officers, 54 enlisted men[3] |
| Armament: | 10 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (six forward, four aft) 24 torpedoes [3] 1 × 3-inch (76 mm) / 50 caliber deck gun [3] Bofors 40 mm and Oerlikon 20 mm cannon |
The United States Navy Gato class submarine design was the forerunner of all US World War II submarine designs. Named after the first vessel of this design, USS Gato (SS-212), the Gato class and its successors, Balao and Tench, formed the majority of the United States Navy's WWII submarine fleet.[4] Gato's name comes from a species of small catshark. Like other U.S. Navy submarines of the period, the Gato class were all given the names of fish.
A typical Gato class submarine was armed with forward and aft torpedo tubes, a deck gun, and anti-aircraft cannon. Its propulsion system was diesel-electric; powered by diesel engines while surfaced and battery while submerged.
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History
New construction of the class began in 1941 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's proclamation of "limited emergency" in September 1939.[5] More than half the class was built at Electric Boat at Groton, Connecticut; three new slipways were added to the north yard to accommodate their production. The class was 77 strong and sunk more than 1,700,000 tons of Japanese shipping.
There is occaisionally some confusion as to the number of Gato class submarines built with some sources listing the total as 73. This is due to the transitional nature of the first four boats (SS-361 to SS-364) constructed under the second contract by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. These were orginally intended to be Balao class subs and were assigned numbers that fall in the middle of the range of numbers for the Balao subs (SS-285 to SS-426)[6]. They were built with the updated electical and mechanical design of the other Balao class boats, but were without the thicker hulls and resulting 400 ft test depth.
As with all of the US Navy's 288 submarines serving in WWII, of which 258 would fight exclusively in the Pacific,[7] Gato class submarines would conduct shakedown operations, and training in the Atlantic, if constructed on the east coast; prior to their deployment for the Pacific. While serving in the Atlantic for short periods, they would sometimes conduct special operations; most notably in support of Operation Torch, the allied landings in North Africa in 1942. The Gato class boats Flasher, Rasher, and Barb obtained the first three places in the league table of confirmed sinkings by US submarines in World War II. Gato class boats sank three Japanese submarines: I-29, I-168 and I-351; while only losing one in exchange, USS Corvina (SS-226) to I-176.
The Gato class was initially plagued by the problems with the Mark 14 torpedo in the early war years. These tended to run too deep, explode prematurely, run erratically or circularly, or fail to detonate. These problems were identified and were largely solved by late 1943, allowing the Gato class to sink enormous tonnage.
Several Gato class submarines were installed with new equipment. Herring used bathythermograph in covert operations, Haddock was fitted with the type SJ surface surveillance radar and Muskallunge was the first US submarine to be armed with electrically powered torpedoes. Barb became the first submarine to fire rockets while Grouper was fitted with a primitive combat information centre.
At the end of World War II, the Gato class were moved into the training roles and some of the class were converted into radar picket boats. Some of the class did see action with the US 7th fleet off Vietnam in 1966. Tunny was converted to carry the Regulus missile and served from 1953 to 1965 in this role. Redfin was used in trials of inertial guidance systems for the Polaris missile submarines after 1959.
The last boat active in the US Navy was Rock which was decommissioned in September 1969 and sunk as a target.
Museum Boats
Six Gatos are on display in the United States.
- Cavalla (SS-244) is at Seawolf Park near Galveston, Texas
- Cobia (SS-245) is at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum
- Drum (SS-228) is at Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama
- Cod (SS-224) is on display in Cleveland. It does not have doors cut through its pressure hull nor stairwells added.
- Croaker (SS-246) is on display in Buffalo, New York
- Silversides (SS-236) is on display in Muskegon, Michigan
A few highlights
- Gato was the largest class of American submarines ever built, counting the Balao & Tench, which weren't substantially different.[2]
- Albacore sank the carrier Taiho. Taiho was the flagship of Ozawa's fleet during the Battle of the Philippine Sea
- Barb engaged in the only ground combat operation on the Japanese home islands. The Barb landed a crew of submariners who blew up a railroad train.
- Cavalla sank the carrier Shokaku. Shokaku had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
- Cobia sank Japanese tank reinforcements which were en route to Iwo Jima.
- Cod went to the rescue of a grounded Dutch submarine O-19, taking its crew on board and destroying the submarine when it could not be removed from the reef, the only international submarine-to-submarine rescue in history.
- Corvina was the only U.S. submarine sunk by a Japanese submarine (I-176) during the Second World War.
- Darter was the only U.S. boat in the Pacific War lost to grounding.
- Finback recovered downed pilot Lt.(jg) George H. W. Bush, future President of the United States, after his TBM Avenger bomber was damaged and eventually ditched during a bombing mission at Chichi-jima in the Pacific.
- Flasher was the top-scoring U.S. boat of the war, with 100,231 tons officially credited to her by the Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee JANAC.
- Growler's skipper, Howard W. Gilmore, earned the submarine force's first combat Medal of Honor for sacrificing his life to save his boat and his crew. Alone on the bridge after being wounded by enemy gunfire, and unable to reach the hatch after he had ordered the others below, he pressed his face to the phone and uttered the order that saved his boat and sealed his doom: "Take 'er down!"
- In Grunion, Mannert L. Abele earned the submarine force's first Navy Cross, when his boat vanished off Kiska in July 1942.
- Harder was commanded by Samuel D. Dealey, the only submarine commander of the war (perhaps the only one ever) to sink five enemy destroyers, four in a single patrol.
- Mingo was lent to the Japanese after the war, under the name Kuroshio.
- Trigger became famous in Edward L. "Ned" Beach's book Submarine! (which was a kind of eulogy to her).
- Wahoo, commanded by the submarine force's most famous skipper, Dudley W. "Mush" Morton, was one of the first U.S. subs into the Sea of Japan. She was sunk while exiting the Sea of Japan through the La Perouse Strait in October 1943 while on her seventh patrol.[8]
Medal of Honor awards
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 USS Drum (SS-228), at Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama. |
 USS Wahoo (SS-238), 1943. |
See also
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gato class submarines |
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Bauer, K. Jack; Roberts, Stephen S. (1991). Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 271–273. ISBN 0-313-26202-0.
- ^ a b c Friedman, Norman (1995). U.S. Submarines Through 1945: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Maryland: United States Naval Institute. pp. 285–304. ISBN 1-55750-263-3.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i U.S. Submarines Through 1945 pp. 305-311
- ^ Typical Gato Class Submarine Diagram, USS MacKinnon website
- ^ O'Kane, p. 2
- ^ http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/04idx.htm
- ^ O'Kane, p. 333
- ^ O'Kane, p. 301
- Submarines, War Beneath The Waves, From 1776 To The Present Day, By Robert Hutchinson
- O'Kane, Richard, Admiral (USN Ret). Wahoo-The Patrols of America's Most Famous WWII Submarine. 1987; Presidio Press. ISBN 0-89141-572-6.
External links
- Gato (SS-212) Class Line Drawings from NavSource Online: Submarine Photo Archive
- Gato (SS-212) Construction - Service Photos from NavSource Online: Submarine Photo Archive
- Fleet Type Submarine Training Manual San Francisco Maritime Museum (USS Perch (SS-313) a Balao-class submarine)
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