It’s June 2019. Tim Taylor and his team are on a mission to find a U.S. submarine that mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth. To assist them with their search, they are using a remotely controlled underwater vehicle. Unfortunately, as the machine travels through the dark depths of the water, it develops a serious fault.
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Consequently, Taylor brings it back to the surface and takes a look at the data recorded. He then spots two strange inconsistencies which prompt him to send down yet another probe. When you discover what the technology finally unearthed, it will send shivers down your spine.
U.S.S. Grayback
The submarine that the researchers and technicians were searching for was the U.S.S. Grayback, or S.S. – 208. The operation was carried out on behalf of the Lost 52 Project, dedicated to locating the 52 U.S. submarines that disappeared during the Second World War. The Grayback was reported as missing by the U.S. Navy in late March, 1944.
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On January 28, 1944, the Grayback had set out from Pearl Harbor on a combat patrol. This was the submarine’s tenth mission. It would, sadly, end up being her last. The submarine did have some success before its imminent disappearance, it managed to sink the Japanese freighters, Toshin Maru and Taikei Maru, and hit two others. We know this because the sub sent a message back to base on February 24 reporting this.
Lost At Sea
The sub also reported, on the following day, that the craft had done serious damage to the liner, Asama Maru – which the Japanese had pressed into military service as a troop carrier – and sunk the tanker, Nanpo Maru. These two attacks had left the Grayback with just two torpedoes, so she had to set sail to Midway Atoll in the North Pacific, in order to top up.
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The message sent on February 25, was the last radio message that anyone heard from the Grayback. She was supposed to dock at Midway Atoll around March 7, 1944, but did not turn up. Three weeks passed, and there was still no sign of her. On March 30, the authorities declared the Grayback and her crew of 80 as “lost at sea.”
A Real Asset
It was a complete tragedy. The crew’s devastated loved ones were left desperate for answers. There was no trace of the submarine that had proved to be a real asset to the U.S. Navy. She had been around since April 3, 1940, when shipbuilders laid her keel down at Groton, Connecticut’s Electric Boat Company.
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She was built by very skilled workers, who had been in the business since 1899. That same company, with the assistance of associated shipyards, had also built 85 submarines for both the U.S. Navy and the British Royal Navy during WW1.
The Greyback
During WWII, Electric Boat built another 74 submarines. The Grayback was one of them. She was a Tambor-class vessel. Seven of these were destroyed during the war and, as a result, Tambor submarines ended up being taken out of combat service in 1945.
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The Greyback measured a little over 300 feet from stem to stern and, when submerged, she displaced 2,410 tons. At her widest point, she measured just over 27 feet and, while her maximum surface speed was around 20 knots; underwater, she could travel at just under nine knots. At a lower speed, the sub could also be submerged for up to 48 hours, and her range was nearly over 12,500 miles.
Weaponry
The Greyback’s two propellers were driven by four electric motors, which were charged by four diesel engines. Officially, she was built to carry a crew of 54 enlisted men and six officers, though, as previously stated, the crew was made up of 80 men when she disappeared.
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The Grayback was well-equipped, with ten 21-inch torpedo tubes, six of which were set towards the bow and four at the stern. It also held a 50-caliber machine gun and Bofers 40mm and Oerlikon 20mm cannons, all of which were mounted on the deck. These weapons were really there to act as a defence against any attacks from the air, but they could also be used in attacks on enemy ships when the submarine was surfaced.
Testing The Waters
The Grayback was launched on January 31, 1941 by Rear Admiral Wilson Brown’s wife, some ten months after the Electric Boat Company had started her construction. The submarine was later commissioned into the U.S. Navy on June 30 – just five months or so before America became caught up in WWII.
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It was important that the crew had an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the vessel before officially setting off. They were able to do so on a shakedown cruise following her commissioning under the command of Lieutenant Willard A. Saunders on Long Island Sound. This was a great opportunity for them to test out the submarine’s systems. It was agreed that she was up to the task and she went on patrol to Chesapeake Bay and the Caribbean in September 1941.
Out Of Their Depth
Following this, further maintenance needed to be done on the vessel at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on the Maine coast. The Greyback finally made its way towards Pearl Harbor in February 1942 – the U.S. was now very much involved in the conflict. On February 15, the submarine set off on her first wartime patrol. She sailed into the Pacific and cruised along the coasts of the island of Guam, which Japan had attacked in December 1941.
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The Grayback also traveled in close proximity to the coast of Saipan, which at that time was also Japanese territory. During this patrol, which lasted three weeks, the boat spent four days in game of cat-and-mouse with a Japanese submarine. The enemy fired two torpedoes at the Grayback, and while she came away from the attack unharmed, she couldn’t get into the right position to return fire.
Unfavourable Circumstances
After escaping the clutches of the Japanese submarine, Grayback succeeded in sinking her first ship: a cargo vessel of 3,291 tons. Contrastingly, the Grayback’s second patrol was a fairly uneventful affair that ended when she docked at Fremantle. For the remainder of her time in service, she would mainly reside at this Western Australian port.
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The Grayback’s next two patrols in the South China Sea were hindered by Axis patrol boats, moonlit nights and seas that were difficult to navigate. Despite the unfavourable circumstances, she managed to hit an enemy sub and some merchant ships during these stints in the ocean. Her fifth tour of duty began on December 7, 1942, when she set off from Australia.
Chaos
On Christmas Day 1942, the Grayback surfaced, catching four landing barges unawares and successfully sinking them all. Four days later, an enemy sub fired torpedoes at the American craft, but to no avail, since the Grayback’s crew were successful in their attempts to defend the vessel.
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The beginning of 1943 was also very eventful, as the U.S. sub attacked the Imperial Japanese Navy vessel l-18. While the l-18 managed to escape unharmed this time around, the destroyer U.S.S. Fletcher sank the Japanese boat with depth charges the following month. All 102 crewmen aboard the ship were killed.
Rescue Mission
During this tour, the Grayback carried out a bold rescue operation. Six Americans who had been aboard a wrecked Martin B-26 Marauder bomber were stranded at Munda Bay on the Solomon Islands. Two of the men from the submarine crew went ashore after dark to find and rescue them, while the Grayback went on to dive at dawn in order to avoid any unwanted attention from the Japanese planes.
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The mission was a success. The following night, the two submariners successfully ferried the six survivors back to the Grayback. The boat’s captain, Commander Edward C. Stephan – who had succeeded Saunders in September 1942 – won the Navy Cross for this action along with a U.S. Army Silver Star. Continuing on her mission, the submarine later torpedoed several Japanese crafts. She was later damaged, herself, by depth charges dropped from an enemy destroyer.
Victories
The weapons had damaged a hatch on the Greyback’s hull, and the resulting leakage forced her to return to port in Brisbane, Australia. Unfortunately, the submarine’s next patrol in February 1943 saw no successful attacks. This was, in part, due to a newly fitted but malfunctioning radar. Even so, the Grayback did survive her seventh tour, which began from Brisbane on April 25, 1943.
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On this cruise, the Grayback was met with a Japanese convoy and managed to hit the merchant ship, Yodogawa Maru, with two torpedoes, causing her to sink. Then, a few days later, the U.S. vessel torpedoed an enemy destroyer, causing extensive damage. This wasn’t the last of the American victories either; the following day, the Grayback successfully sank yet another cargo ship, the England Maru, and hit two more. Following these triumphs, they sailed back to Pearl Harbor and on to San Francisco, California, for a refit.
Wolfpack
By September 12, 1943, the Grayback was back at Pearl Harbor, preparing for its next mission in the Pacific. This would be the eighth of her war missions. Commander John Anderson was now in charge of the boat. Two weeks after returning to Pearl Harbor, the submarine set off for Midway Atoll alongside the U.S.S. Shad.
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At Midway Atoll, the Grayback and the Shad were joined by the U.S.S. Cero, with the three vessels constituting what was known as a “wolfpack.” This approach, of sending out groups of submarines as a force, had proved highly successful when used by German U-boats. This was the first time that the U.S. Navy had employed this tactic.
Success
This new strategy did prove to be effective. Between them, the three submarines were responsible for sinking 38,000 tons of Japanese shipping and damage to a further 3,300 tons. The trio were then forced to return to Midway Atoll, since they had used up all of their torpedoes at this point. They arrived there on November 10, 1943. After the success of this mission, Moore became the second on the Grayback’s skippers to win a Navy Cross.
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On December 2, 1943, the Grayback set off once again from Pearl Harbor in the direction of the East China Sea. During this ninth patrol, the submarine ran out of torpedo supplies within five days of attacks, but it was worth it. They successfully sank four Japanese ships before returning to Pearl Harbor. Commander Moore’s exploits on that tour earned him another Navy Cross.
Final Mission
Grayback remained at Pearl Harbor for just over three weeks. She then set off for her tenth, and what would end up being her last service mission on January 28, 1944. Her last radio contact with base was on February 25. She was officially declared by the Navy as lost on March 30.
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On that final mission, the Grayback had singlehandedly sunk an astonishing 21,594 tons of Japanese shipping craft. This was the third such trip led by Moore. The commander was posthumously handed a third Navy Cross for his achievements at sea. It turns out that vessels also receive awards. The Grayback herself ended up being awarded eight battle stars for her WWII service.
A Mystery
What exactly had happened to the Grayback and her 80-strong crew would remain a secret for decades following her mysterious disappearance. Initially, the U.S. Navy believed that she had sunk beneath the waves at around 100 miles to the southeast of the Japanese island of Okinawa. However, this assumption was based on some inaccurate data.
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The information that the Navy had access to came from records that had been kept by the Japanese. It transpired that a single digit in a map reference had been wrongly transcribed when the relevant document was being translated.
Lost 52 Project
The case of the Grayback’s disappearance was left unexamined until 2018, when American, Tim Taylor, decided to do some investigating. Taylor is the founder of the Lost 52 Project – a private enterprise whose mission it is to find the remains of the 52 submarines that disappeared without a trace during the Second World War.
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We will further examine the details of Taylor’s investigation into the whereabouts of the Grayback, after first giving some more detail with regard to Tim Taylor and his organisation. The Lost 52 Project was founded following a successful search for the U.S. submarine R-12, which had been lost in 1943, along with 42 of her crew. Otherwise known as the SS-89, the vessel sank during a training exercise off the coast of Florida.
U.S.S. R-12
First launched in 1919, the U.S.S. R-12 was something of a veteran, as she had actually been decommissioned from the U.S. Navy in 1932 and assigned to the reserve fleet. With the looming threat of war, however, the Navy brought her back into service in July 1940. The R-12 then sailed to Naval Submarine Base New London at Groton, Connecticut, where she underwent a comprehensive overhaul.
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In October 1940, the R-12 was ready for active duty. Her first mission was to patrol the waters around the Panama Canal. A year later, the Navy ordered the submarine to return to New London. From here, she cruised along the shores of New England. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the R-12 returned to the Panama Canal.
Disaster Strikes
After nearly a year in Panama, the R-12 then went on various cruises until May 1943, when she was reassigned as a training submarine based at Key West, Florida. Disaster struck a month later. As she was sailing on an exercise, a section at the front of the vessel began to take on water. Within seconds, the submarine sunk to a depth of 600 feet.
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As the R-12 began to plunge below the waves, five of her crew who had been above deck on the conning tower – including skipper Lieutenant Commander E.E. Shelby – were thrown overboard into the sea. They turned out to be the only survivors. The remaining 42 crew members, tragically, all lost their lives. The cause of the accident was never fully explained, and the submarine remained undiscovered for nearly seven decades.
Searching The Depths
In the fall of 2010, Taylor and his crew aboard Research Vessel Tiburon discovered the remains of the R-12 using a high-tech remotely controlled robot. The team went on a few visits following this, in order to map the site and take pictures of the wreckage. They also attempted to get in contact with any surviving relatives of those who had died in the accident.
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This was the search that resulted in the founding of the Lost 52 Project. The 52 in its name is a reference to the 52 submarines which were sunk without trace during World War II. These tragedies came with a huge loss of human life. 3,505 submariners in total lost their lives.
Closure
As you may have gathered, the Lost 52 Project is intending to discover the location of all of the U.S. Navy submarines sunk during the war. While this may seem like a lot, the crew are off to a good start, having discovered a total of five submarines whose whereabouts were previously unknown. Their mission goes much further than that.
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Taylor wants to uncover these lost submarines, not only for posterity, but also to give family members of the lost seamen some closure. Along with locating the craft, Lost 52 works to create comprehensive surveys of the wreckage found, collects artefacts and makes material available for educational purposes.
Radio Files
In addition to the R-12 and the Grayback, the Lost 52 Project has discovered two other WWII submarines. The U.S.S. Grunion was located off the coast of Alaska, while the U.S.S. S-28 was discovered in Hawaiian waters. A Cold War-era vessel, the U.S.S. Stickleback was also found off the coast of Hawaii.
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Now, back to the search for the Grayback. During the quest for the sub, they contacted Japanese researcher, Yutaka Iwasaki, and requested that he examine the files of the Sasebo base that had been used by the Japanese Imperial Navy during WWII. Amongst the records, they found daily radio updates from Naha on Okinawa Island, which had been the site of a Japanese naval air facility.
Nakajima B5N Bomber Attack
Iwasaki set to work. It was at this point that he spotted the crucial single-digit error. The mistake had been made in the transcribed version of a report that had been radioed into Sasebo from Naha on February 27, 1944. This was just a couple of days after the Grayback had reported back to base for the last time. The Japanese message in question contained information regarding an attack by a Nakajima B5N bomber that had taken off from an aircraft carrier.
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The Nakajima B5N was a Japanese torpedo bomber, and this particular example, flying on February 27, had apparently discharged a 500-pound bomb onto a submarine traveling above the waves. The report also described how the device had hit the sub just to the rear of the conning tower. Immediately afterwards, the vessel had blown up and then sunk, apparently leaving no survivors.
Locating The Sub
During a conversation with The New York Times in November 2019, Iwasaki described what he had found in the Japanese wartime files. “In that radio record, thee [are] a longitude and a latitude of the attack, very clearly,” he explained. Extraordinarily, these coordinates marked a location that was more than 100 miles away from the one the U.S. Navy had assumed to be correct since 1949.
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Upon receiving this updated version, Taylor felt that there was now a realistic chance of locating the wreckage of the Grayback. He was right, the team soon found the lost submarine, whose hull was almost entirely in one piece, even after several decades had passed. The discovery triggered mixed emotions among the divers and researchers.
Discovery Of Remains
Speaking to The New York Times, Taylor recalled the feelings of the Lost 52 team. “We were elated. But it’s also sobering, because we just found 80 men,” he said. This was also a very significant event for the relatives of the submariners who had lost their lives aboard the Grayback.
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One of the people most affected by the news that the Grayback’s remains had been discovered was Gloria Hurney, whose uncle, Raymond Parks, had served aboard the submarine as an electrician’s mate, first class. In November 2019, she told ABC News: “There’s a book I read, and it says these ships are known only to God. But now we know where the Grayback is.”
Stories From Relatives
Hurney also spoke to CNN that same month, explaining to a reporter: “The discovery brings closure to the questions that surrounded the Grayback as far as its sinking and location. I believe it will allow healing as relatives of crew members come together to share their stories.” Hurney added that upon first hearing about the discovery, she had initially felt shock and grief, however, she later felt a sense of peace and comfort.
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Another relative of someone else who had lost his life aboard the Grayback, John Patrick King, who also served as an electrician’s mate, third class, spoke to ABC news: “I committed from the very beginning, from a little girl, that I was gonna find him or follow him or keep his memory alive – whatever I could do.” He had been both her uncle and godfather.
Continuing The Legacy
The loss of the Grayback didn’t mean the end of its legacy. A second Greyback submarine with the Navy designation of SSG-574 went into service in July 1957 – 14 years after the first craft had sunk. She was launched by Mrs. Virginia S. Moore, the widow of the original Grayback’s final skipper, Commander John A. Moore. How fitting!
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The new Grayback was built at California’s Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Her cutting-edge technology made her that little bit more impressive than her illustrious predecessor. The weaponry on the ’50s sub included guided missiles – something which was not available when the first Grayback was launched in 1941.
Well-equipped
This newer craft was the very first vessel to deploy a Regulus II sea-to-surface missile. The weapons programme was cancelled shortly after the launch of Grayback, so in reality, she actually carried four Regulus 1 missiles. This meant that she was able to hit targets on land. In February 1959, the submarine was based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
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The Grayback was initially 273 feet long and was later increased to 317 feet, and a little over 27 feet across her beam. In addition to being equipped to launch Regulus 1 missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, she possessed eight conventional torpedo tubes. Two of these were positioned towards the stern, while the other six were at the bow.
Difficult Circumstances
Sailing from her base at Pearl Harbor, the Greyback made a series of cruises as a deterrent, including through the waters off Alaska and Japan. In the years leading up to 1963, the submarine was on almost constant patrol. Much of this time was spent cruising underwater. This difficult schedule would ultimately have a negative impact on the Grayback’s systems.
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Then, in August 1963, those years of service ended up catching up with the Grayback. She was caught up in heavy seas as the sub cruised near the surface to recharge her batteries. The intensity and force of those big waves caused a main battery fault. Consequently, a fire broke out in the crew’s sleeping quarters. One submariner lost his life in the incident and five others were injured. A couple of weeks later, the Grayback was back in the water, after being repaired.
Back In Service
In spite of the damage caused, the submarine did have a long life after that. By 1964, a new generation of Polaris missiles and submarines had come online, so the Grayback ended up being decommissioned in May of that year. She came back into service in August 1968 filling the role of amphibious transport submarine, and with the new designation of LPSS-574. Now, her adapted missile silos were able to carry up to 67 people on board.
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Following this, in June 1972, the Grayback transported a unit of Navy SEALS to the coast of Vietnam. They had been deployed as part of Operation Thunderhead. This was an attempt to free two American airmen who were said to have fled a Viet Cong prisoner-of-war camp. However, unbeknown to the Navy, that dash of freedom had been aborted. One SEAL, Lieutenant Melvin Spence Dry, sadly lost his life parachuting from a helicopter in an attempt to find the men.
More Tragedy
In 1982, the Grayback was faced with more tragedy. She was involved in an accident which ultimately cost the lives of five Navy diners. After the men involved had been on a training dive, they returned to the craft, which had been cruising in Sibic Bay near the Philippines island of Luzon. The five perished inside a decompression chamber when a crucial ventilation valve malfunctioned.
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Shortly after this tragic event, the Navy finally decommissioned the second Grayback in January 1984. However, she still had one final role to play. She was painted in a bright shade of orange, then towed out to Subic Bay on April 13, 1986, before being used for target practice. That was the end of Grayback’s story.
