Since 06-06-02
Since 06-06-02
If 7 December 1941, "a date which will live in infamy", is etched in the hearts and minds of Americans, then surely 20 December 1942 must be engraved in the hearts and minds of the Japanese. After al, on this date the USS Rasher (SS269), a Gato Class submarine built to Electric Boat Company plans and specifications was launched at the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
Commissioned on 8 June 1943, the hard-hitting Rasher soon made he presence known to the Empire of Japan. On the night of 9 October 1943, a Japanese cargo-passenger vessel felt the sting of the Red Scorpion: to the bottom of the Banda Sea off Ambon went the 3,132 ton Kogane Maru. The Rasher had arrived.
Operating mainly out of Fremantle, Australia, the Rasher conducted eight war patrols under five skippers. During that period, according to he Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC), she sank eighteen Japanese ships totaling 99,901 tons, and damage 64,481 tons.
She also earned numerous citations and awards including the Presidential Unit Citation for patrols 1, 4, 4, and 5: seven Battle Stars for patrols 1 through 5, and for her participation in the Iwo Jima and Okinawa Gunto Operations. The Rasher's officers and men won four Navy Crosses, twelve Silver Stars, sixteen Bronze Stars, one Navy-Marine Corps Medal, one Legion of Merit, and sixteen Letters of Commendation.
Most impressive of all was Rasher's legendary Fifth War Patrol wen, in a single night's surface action off the Philippines, Cdr. Henry G Munson sank the 20,00-ton escort aircraft carrier Taiyo and three marus. During this same patrol the Rasher also sank the 4,739-ton Shiroganesan Maru. With 52,667 tons sunk, 22,000 tons damaged Munson and the Rasher had participated in one of the most successful war patrols ever conducted.
Like all hard-hitting submarines, a few of Rasher's war patrols and training exercises were marked by unforeseen or unusual events. One such event occurred just six days after LCdr. Willard R. Laughon, Rasher's second skipper, had assumed command.
Prior to commencing her second war patrol, and while conducting training exercises with Dutch and Australian forces in the Indian Ocean, Rasher made a routine dive accidentally leaving a lookout topside. Recovered after two hours from a storm and win lashed sea, the man succumbed on deck from heart failure and exposure.
Another unforeseen event occurred during the Rasher's fourth war patrol. After depleting his supply of forward room torpedoes, LCdr. Laughon laid on the surface on a calm night in a secluded cove while crewman transferred two torpedoes from the after torpedo room to the forward room. Hauled out through the after room loading hatch using block and tackle and the boom, the 3000-lb fish were lowered over the side, then walked forward by the crew using nose and tail lines snubbed around deck cleats and wrapped around the capstans. Once forward, the torpedoes were hauled back on deck, turned around, and lowered down through the loading hatch. This five-hour operation was marked by the notable actions of the Gunnery Officer, Lt. Arthur W. Newlon. Lt. Newlon dove into the shark -infested waters to secure a guideline, which had slipped thereby salvaging a torpedo, which might otherwise have been lost. He then remained in the water to guide the torpedoes forward. For his actions, Lt. Newlon received the Navy-Marine Corps Medal.
This torpedo transfer is believed to be the only such transfer ever conducted by a United States submarine during wartime conditions. (Editor's note: The USS Sculpin (SS-191) transferred three torpedoes in two hours on June 21, 1942 during her 4th war patrol. Source: Submarine Diary, Radm. Corwin Mendenhall USN Ret.)
At war's end, with the Japanese merchant Fleet and the Imperial navy sunk, the Rasher sailed for home. LCdr. Charles D. Nace, who had skippered the Rasher during war patrols 7 and 8, would be the one to decommission the boat and place her in "mothballs" at New London, Connecticut on 26 June 1946. LCdr. Nace would later become Radm. Nace and, at the time for his retirement in 1971, was Commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Southern Command Panama. He had also served as the second senior member on the Court of Inquire into the loss of USS Scorpion (SSN-589).
A Fremantle boat, the Rasher's accomplishments (and those of her sister subs operating out of Australia) were not widely publicized.
Movies and books about submarines assigned to the storied Pearl Harbor sub base brought recognition to many of those boats with not nearly as impressive credentials as Rasher. Even after JANAC's official statistics became public, the original "thunder from down under" arrived too late to be heard. And with Germany and Japan defeated, the Navy turned its attention to fighting the Cold War. The SoWesPac boats would remain unknown.
Roused from retirement during the Korean War, the Rasher and several of her Manitowoc-built sister boats underwent conversion to Migraine-III radar picket submarines at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. There the Rasher was cut in two at the control room - forward battery frame and a 30-foot hull section installed. This addition increased her overall length to 341' 9 3/4". This added compartment, the radar room, would house the consoles and electronics necessary for Rasher to accomplish her Cold War tasking. The stern torpedo tubes were removed and the after room converted to a berthing space. This would accommodate the Radarmen and Electronics Technicians who reported aboard with the new equipment. A snorkel installed, her sail modified, and with the addition of numerous antennas, masts, and pods extending from her sail and mounted on her deck, Rasher no longer resembled the World War Two fleet boat that had sunk so many Japanese ships.
Nevertheless, on the afternoon of 22 July 1953, her new plank-owner crew at attention on deck, the USS Rasher was re-commissioned (SSR-269).
In October 1953, after outfitting and shakedown, Rasher departed Philadelphia for active duty with Submarine Squadron Six, New London, Connecticut. In November she underwent additional shakedown training with the Fleet Training group, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Her training completed, Rasher transited through the Panama Canal enroute to her new home, moored starboard side of the submarine tender USS Nereus (AS-17), attached to Submarine Squadron Five, Submarine Flotilla One, San Diego, California.
From 1953 to 1961, Rasher prowled the Pacific coast from Mexico to the Aleutian Islands performing her radar picket duties in an exemplary fashion. These duties included aircraft early warning, anti-submarine warfare exercises, and missile-guidance missions. It was not all work and no play however, and the Rasher crew was afforded some exceptional liberty ports from Acapulco to Kodiak.
A WesPac deployment marked Rasher's return to waters she had not seen since 1945 and it would be on this deployment that she would become a movie star.
Warner-Pathe News, whose black and white news clips were shown in movie theaters during the 1940's and '50's, filmed Rasher as she visited Bangkok, Thailand and tied up near three Japanese submarines. These boats had been given to Thailand by the Japanese, when both countries fought together in WWII.
Maneuvering up the klongs to Bangkok proved a formidable task for the boat's Enginmen who, every few minutes, had to remove small shrimp and debris, which clogged the main engine cooling water intake filters.
Unlike the original Rasher, the new Rasher would prepare for battle only once during her Cold War career. In late 1956, in response to the Suez Crisis, crewmembers on leave and those at schools were recalled to the boat, additional crew were assigned the boat, live warheads were taken onboard from the tender, and extra rations were laid in. The Suez situation was quickly defused and, as things cooled down, the warheads went back to the tender, the additional personnel dispersed, and the remainder of the crew, beneficiaries the extra rations, ate very, very well for a month.
In early 1957 the boat narrowly escaped disaster while operating with three guided missile submarines and two radar picket boats in a mock missile attack on the Northwestern United States and Canada. Serving as fire control for the missile boats, Rasher was operating 100 miles off the coast and was the only one of the SSR boats, which had not been detected and "sunk".
Forced to dive by a PC-3 contact, Rasher had been for nineteen hours. The batteries were very low and only one light was permitted in all workspaces. The air was bad to the point that there was not enough oxygen to sustain the flame of a match. CO2canisters had been broken out and their contents spread on the lower bunk flash covers. The bulkheads dripped ice cold condensate, evidence of the frigid North Pacific water against the hull.
At 0330 hours, just after the 4-8 watch had been wakened, the boat began to heave violently. Bodies and gear adrift crashed to the deck. As the collision alarm sounded through the boat, the room watched dogged watertight doors, manned their sound powered phones, checked for damage, and made their reports to the control room.
Watertight integrity held and only minor damage was reported to control where the phone talker provided all on-line with a "play-by-play" account of Rasher's rapidly changing depth fluctuations between the surface and 200'. Like riding a roller coaster, the entire incident lasted no more than a minute or two.
Thinking the boat had hit a whale, an uncharted seamount, or collided with another submarine, it would be three days later, war games over, and the boat in Portland, Oregon, that the crew would finally learn they had been caught in a tsunami which had coursed the Pacific from Hawaii to the Aleutian Islands.
In the 1960's, faced with defending against a growing Soviet military presence in the Pacific, the U.S. phased out the ill-devised and unsuccessful Migraine-III program (or 3rd class headache, as it was known). In 1961, the Rasher along with her sister SSR's was reconfigured and redesignated an AGSS. USS Rasher (AGSS-269) would prowl the same waters she had as an SSR and would even make some of the same liberty ports.
In the mid-1960's, during the Vietnam War, she served with distinction and won two battle stars. Her former crew remembers this period well and in particular a twenty-one day submerged run in the Tonkin Gulf on snorkel and batteries. When the boat eventually surfaced, it had the appearances of a "Chia Pet". Slow running (speeds not greater than 3 knots) in warm water had fostered heavy green algae growth which covered the entire boat.
Rasher remained active in the U.S. Pacific Fleet until decommissioned on 27 May 1967. She ended here career in Portland, Oregon, as a reserve training boat. Moved to the Bremerton, Washington "junk fleet" and stricken on 27 December 1971, Rasher would receive her final designator (IXSS-269). On 4 August 1974, she would be sold for scrap to the highest bidder, American Ship Dismantlers for the price of $266,666.
In service four decades, a veteran of WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam, the USS Rasher was driven to the breakers by her last CO. Cdr. Stuart L. "Stu" Taylor, USNR (Ret). This old girl who had served with such distinction, had made her final voyage.
Although Rasher is gone, her spirit lives on in the artifacts she left behind, and, more importantly, in the men who had the privilege of serving in her and who now form the nucleus of the USS Rasher Association.
The Rasher's periscopes and a portion of her conning tower and sail are on display at, but soon to be removed from, the Columbia River Maritime Museum, Astoria, Oregon. Her WWII bell hangs in the Manitowoc Maritime Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and her battle flag, handmade and one of the biggest of the war hangs proudly in the Sub Force Museum, Groton, Connecticut.
In addition, a 12-foot long metal sculpture of Rasher is on display in the Palm Springs, California Air Museum. This work is probably one of the finest, most detailed models of a Gato Class submarine ever built. From the cutaway view of torpedoes resting in their skids, to the shower head and faucets on the shower bulkheads and the dishes stacked on the galley shelves, it's the creation of Mrs. Donna Wachtendonk and her late husband Ed.
The USS Rasher Association, with over 275 members, is comprised of former crew, qualified or not, who served in the Rasher at any time; wives of family members of a departed crewman, and other family members and friends of crewmen and others interested in Rasher or submarining.
The non-dues paying membership ranges in age from 80 to 12 years, the latter being the grandson of a WWII crewmember to whom that crewman whishes to hand down the legacy of Rasher. Geographically, the association is scattered from Canada to the Marianas and is held together in common bond through the quarterly newsletter, "Through the Scope", and through annual reunions. The newsletter, web page, and other association projects are financed through member donations.
Rasher's next reunion is scheduled for 13/15 June 2000, in Bloomington, MN and we invite anyone residing in or visiting the area during that time period to drop by our hospitality room and share a coup with us.
Anyone desiring additional information about the USS Rasher may want to read Red Scorpion: War Patrols of the USS Rasher. The author, Peter T. Sasgen, a former Navy man, is the son of a WWII Rasher crewman, one of only two men to take the boat from commissioning to decommissioning.
Check us out and get in touch if interested, and we will make you a part of the USS Rasher, the "First Among Equals".
Point of Contact for the USS Rasher Association is: Dick Traser, 913 N. Sierra View St., Ridgecrest, Ca. 93555-3013. (760) 446-4659. Email:ussrasher269@usa.navy.org.