 USSBlenny (SS-324) on 31 March 1964, possibly atPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania. | |
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States | |
| Name | USSBlenny |
| Ordered | 9 July 1942 |
| Builder | Electric Boat Company,Groton, Connecticut[1] |
| Laid down | 8 July 1943[1] |
| Launched | 9 April 1944[1] |
| Commissioned | 27 June 1944[1] |
| Decommissioned | 7 November 1969[1] |
| Stricken | 15 August 1973[1] |
| Fate | Scuttled 7 June 1989[2] |
| General characteristics (As completed) | |
| Class and type | Balao-classdiesel-electricsubmarine[2] |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 311 ft 9 in (95.02 m)[2] |
| Beam | 27 ft 3 in (8.31 m)[2] |
| Draft | 16 ft 10 in (5.13 m) maximum[2] |
| Propulsion |
|
| Speed | |
| Range | 11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) surfaced at 10 knots (19 km/h)[3] |
| Endurance |
|
| Test depth | 400 ft (120 m)[3] |
| Complement | 10 officers, 70–71 enlisted[3] |
| Armament |
|
| General characteristics (Guppy IA) | |
| Class and type | none |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 307 ft 7 in (93.8 m)[6] |
| Beam | 27 ft 4 in (8.3 m)[6] |
| Draft | 17 ft (5.2 m)[6] |
| Propulsion | |
| Speed |
|
| Range | 17,000 nm (28,000 km) surfaced at 11 knots (20 km/h)[6] |
| Endurance | 36 hours at 3 knots (6 km/h) submerged[6] |
| Complement |
|
| Armament |
|
USSBlenny (SS/AGSS-324), aBalao-classsubmarine in commission from 1944 to 1969, was a ship of theUnited States Navy named for theblenny, a fish found along the rocky shores of theAtlantic Ocean. DuringWorld War II,Blenny conducted four war patrols in theJava Sea andSouth China Sea between 10 November 1944 and 14 August 1945 . She sank eightJapanese vessels totaling 18,262 tons. In addition, she is credited with destroying more than 62 miscellaneous Japanese small craft by gunfire.
After World War II,Blenny served in theUnited States Pacific Fleet along theUnited States West Coast. She also visitedAlaska,Hawaii,Canada,Japan andChina and conducted a war patrol during theKorean War. She later transferred to theUnited States Atlantic Fleet and served in theAtlantic Ocean and theMediterranean Sea. She wasscuttled as part of anartificial reef in 1989.
Blenny (SS-324) waslaid down on 8 July 1943 by theElectric Boat Company atGroton,Connecticut. She waslaunched on 9 April 1944,sponsored by Miss Florence King, daughter of theChief of Naval Operations,AdmiralErnest J. King, andcommissioned on 27 June 1944 withLieutenant Commander William H. Hazzard in command.
_21_August_1944.PNG)
Following training atNaval Submarine Base New London in Groton and atNewport,Rhode Island,Blenny got underway forKey West,Florida, on 29 August 1944. She arrived at Key West on 5 September 1944 and trained at the Fleet Sound School there. She then headed for thePanama Canal, transiting it on 19 September 1944, and departedBalboa,Panama Canal Zone, on 28 September 1944. She reachedPearl Harbor,Hawaii, on 15 October 1944.
On 10 November 1944,Blenny stood out of Pearl Harbor to begin her first war patrol. After fueling atSaipan in theMariana Islands on 22 November 1944, she departed on 23 November bound for a patrol area off the coast ofLuzon in thePhilippine Islands. On 1 December 1944, she fired a singletorpedo at a Japanese escort vessel but missed. The Japanese retaliated with a severe, but unsuccessful,depth-charge attack. On 6 December, she escaped unscathed from another close call when a low-flying Japanese plane dropped twobombs that near-missedBlenny.
On 14 December 1944,Blenny claimed her first two successes. In the morning, she made a surface gun attack on a Japanese 300-gross register ton "sea truck" — the U.S. term for a type of smallcargo ship — and sank it. Late that night, she sank the 800-displacement tonfrigateCoast Defense Vessel No. 28 with torpedoes in a surface attack. On 23 December,Blenny torpedoed and sank what she thought was a 10,000-tontransport which after the war was identified as the Japanese 4,156-gross register ton cargo shipKenzui Maru. Her parting shot of the patrol came on 27 December 1944 when she fired torpedoes at an unidentified cargo ship and claimed to have damaged her, although Japanese records did not substantiate the claim.Blenny set course forFremantle,Australia on 31 December 1944 and arrived there on 13 January 1945 to begin a refit, concluding her patrol.
Blenny departed Fremantle to embark upon her second war patrol on 5 February 1945. This time her patrol area was in theSouth China Sea off the coast of Japanese-occupiedFrench Indochina. On 20 February, she made an unsuccessful submerged attack on a Japaneseconvoy escorted by twodestroyers. The attack did not succeed, and she suffered through a series of depth-charge attacks from the convoy's escorts which also proved unsuccessful. On the night of 26 February 1945, she encountered the Japanese 10,238-gross register tontankerAmato Maru and sank her with a spread of torpedoes. ThoughBlenny also claimed to have damaged two similar ships, a postwar check of Japanese records failed to corroborate that claim.
On 28 February 1945,Blenny received orders to put intoSubic Bay on Luzon to reload torpedoes, and she arrived there on 2 March. She returned to her patrol area on 4 March. Sixteen days later, she had her most successful day of the war on 20 March 1945 when she sank three Japanese ships in one 24-hour period: the 500-gross register ton cargo shipYamakuni Maru, the 834-gross register tonNo. 21 Nanahin Maru, and the 1,039-gross register ton cargo shipHosen Maru. After receiving two rescued aircrewmen from the submarineUSS Blueback (SS-326) on 25 March 1945, she set a course for Subic Bay and a refit.
On 16 April 1945,Blenny put to sea for her third war patrol, assigned a patrol area in the South China Sea off French Indochina in which she was to perform lifeguard duty to rescueditchedUnited States Army Air Forces aircrews. She sighted no Japanese ships during her time in the South China Sea and returned to Subic Bay on 16 May 1945 to take on additional fuel. On 18 May she returned to sea to resume her patrol and shaped a course for a new patrol area in theJava Sea.
On 25 May 1945,Blenny encountered a small Japanesesubmarine chaser close inshore. She had to make her approach to an attack position in relatively shallow water, so she flooded down and backed awash toward the shore and the submarine chaser while a sailor on herfantail tookdepth soundings with alead line. She fired torpedoes from hersterntorpedo tubes and claimed to have sunk the submarine chaser, although she estimated the submarine chaser to be of only 170 tons displacement and the postwar survey counted only vessels of 500 tons or more, making her claim impossible to verify.
On 30 May 1945,Blenny sank a smalllugger with gunfire, then encountered the Japanese 520-gross register ton cargo shipHokoku Maru and sank her in a daylight attack. On 5 June 1945, she departed theJava area and set a course for Fremantle, Australia. She arrived at Fremantle on 9 June 1945 and commenced a refit.
Blenny embarked upon her fourth war patrol on 5 July 1945. Departing Fremantle, she shaped a course for a patrol area in the Java Sea and north from there to the eastern coast of Japanese-occupiedBritish Malaya. On 11 July 1945 she made her first kill of the patrol by sinking a "sea truck" by gunfire. On 16 July she torpedoed and sank the converted JapanesegunboatNankai in the Java Sea 150 nautical miles (278 km; 173 mi) west ofSurabaya,Java, at05°26′S110°33′E / 5.433°S 110.550°E /-5.433; 110.550.[7] She then engaged a small vessel that had been in company withNankai, but her gunfire failed to inflict much damage on the vessel because of extreme range andBlenny′s inability to close with the vessel.
For the remainder of the patrol,Blenny encountered onlysampans,junks, and the like, sinking a large number of them after ascertaining their nationality and seeing to the safety of their crews. On 3 August 1945, she stopped a sampan and rescued from it a boarding party of U.S. sailors from the submarineUSS Cod (SS-224) whichCod had been forced to abandon two days earlier when shecrash-dived to avoid beingstrafed by an approaching Japanese plane. On 7 August, a Japanese plane attackedBlenny, dropping a small bomb which missed, andBlenny dove to evade.
On 11 August 1945,Blenny left her patrol area and shaped a course for Subic Bay, which she reached on 14 August 1945, concluding her patrol. On 15 August 1945,World War II came to an end with thecessation of hostilities with Japan.
After completing a refit,Blenny departed Subic Bay on 31 August 1945. She arrived atGuam in the Mariana Islands on 5 September 1945 and began a series of training exercises. She remained in the Marianas until 12 January 1946, when she got underway for theUnited States. She made a two-day stop at Pearl Harbor before arriving inSan Diego,California, on 30 January 1946. She stayed there for two months before shifting toSan Francisco, California, on 30 March 1946. During the summer of 1946, she operated along theUnited States West Coast.
On 2 August 1946,Blenny departed San Diego and headed, via Pearl Harbor, for theFar East. She arrived at Subic Bay late in August 1946 and remained there until 2 September, at which time she got underway forTsingtao,China. She served in Chinese waters, at Tsingtao andShanghai, until late October 1946. After operations in Japanese waters which lasted until 3 November 1946, she set a course for San Diego, which she reached in late November 1946.
Blenny remained at San Diego until 17 February 1947, when she got underway for Pearl Harbor. She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 10 March 1947 and stayed until 18 March, when she headed back to San Diego. She arrived at San Diego on 8 April 1947 and then operated along the coast of California through the end of July. On 30 July 1947, she got underway from San Diego on aUnited States Naval Reserve training cruise to thePacific Northwest, during which she visited ports inWashington andBritish Columbia inCanada. She resumed operations along the coast of California late in August 1947. She made two winter cruises inAlaskan waters in 1947–1948 and 1948–1949 and made amidshipman cruise to Canada. In July 1950, she began a voyage to Pearl Harbor, then, after participating in fleet maneuvers off Hawaii, returned to San Diego early in August 1950. When not otherwise engaged,Blenny conducted operations along the U.S. West Coast during these years.
In 1951,Blenny underwent conversion under theGreater Underwater Propulsion Power (GUPPY) Program to aGUPPY IA. After its completion, she operated along the U.S. West Coast until 30 April 1952, when she got underway for Pearl Harbor, then continued across the Pacific for a cruise in the Far East, arriving inYokosuka, Japan, on 24 May 1952. While in the Far East,Blenny conducted routineUnited States Seventh Fleet operations and made a 35-day reconnaissance war patrol off theKorean Peninsula during theKorean War. She departed Yokosuka to return to the United States on 18 October 1952. After stops atChichi Jima in theVolcano Islands and Pearl Harbor, she arrived at San Diego early in November 1952.
Blenny resumed operations along the U.S. West Coast until she was reassigned to theUnited States Atlantic Fleet in the spring of 1954. On 11 May 1954 she stood out of San Diego and shaped a course for the Panama Canal. She transited thecanal on 24 May 1954 and headed forNaval Submarine Base New London at Groton, Connecticut, which she reached on 9 June 1954.
Operating from Naval Submarine Base New London,Blenny participated from 1954 until the early 1960s in U.S. Atlantic Fleet,North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), andantisubmarine warfare exercises, in addition to operating with a U.S. Navy submarine development group engaged in evaluating new equipment. Her primary mission was the development ofattack submarine tactics and antisubmarine warfare tactics, but she also test-fired new types of torpedoes. During these years, her operations took her as far south as theBritish West Indies and as far north as the coast ofNewfoundland.
In the early 1960s,Blenny began making periodic deployments to theMediterranean Sea for duty with theUnited States Sixth Fleet, alternating between tours of duty with the Sixth Fleet and extended assignments in the westernAtlantic Ocean, where she conducted test and evaluation operations and took part in antisubmarine warfare training. Sometime in 1969, she was reclassified as anauxiliary submarine and given thehull classification symbolAGSS-324.
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In September 1969,Blenny was placed in commission, inreserve. She wasdecommissioned on 7 November 1969 and laid up in theAtlantic Reserve Fleet, berthed initially atPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania. Her name was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 15 August 1973.
Blenny subsequently was moved toPortsmouth,Virginia. She remained there until 3 July 1979, when she was moved toNaval Station Norfolk atNorfolk, Virginia. Plans made in 1984 to sink her as a target during an exercise were cancelled. Instead a decision was made in 1987 to donate her to theState of Maryland for use as anartificial reef. She wasscuttled on 7 June 1989 to form part of an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean about 15 nautical miles (28 km; 17 mi) offOcean City,Maryland.[2]
World War II Victory Medal
China Service Medal
This article incorporates text from thepublic domainDictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entries can be foundhere andhere.
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