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to the USS Ray home page..... Early 1945
First rescue came when we (USS Ray SS271) were on patrol off the coast of Honshu (Japan)
when we were ordered to go on Lifeguard duty. Our contact was a B-29, code name
'Dumbo'. We were told a B-29 was going to ditch and we were given the approximate
location it would hit in the ocean. We ran at flank speed and blew all ballast tanks
to make us higher in the water for more speed. We made approximately 25 knots and it
took us a good half hour to locate the bomber. We arrived at the site of the crash
and the crew was scrambling out of the plane. The sad part was the pilot could not
get out of the cockpit and as she sank the pilot went down with the plane. We were
helpless to do anything but we did rescue the rest of the crew.
After that rescue we contacted Dumbo and he had another plane hit which was a
fighter pilot. We were told where he would ditch his plane. It was
approximately 1 hour before we spotted him, but he had gotten out of the plane and was
floating in his life jacket. We got him on board and proceeded to go on patrol and
we lucked out and got a 'Maru', approximately 3000 tons. Of course the escort kicked
the shit out of us with 50016 depth charges for about 4 hours before we got out of range
at 300 feet and silent running. The pilots we rescued were scared to death and swore
they never, hopefully ever have to be on a sub again. We used breaches buoy to
transfer flyers to surface craft so they could fight another day.
After patrolling along the coast of Japan and heading south we got a call one night that a
Navy PBM (not a PBY) was down in the sea of Japan close to Hiroshima, very close to land.
We had to wait for the dark of the moon to go through the straits to search for the
downed crew. Another PBM flew dangerously close to land to spot the crew for us.
Meanwhile searchlights from shore were looking for us. Scary as hell :(
We found the crew in their life raft and got them aboard, but we still had to run
the gauntlet through the straits with shore batteries firing at us, but we flooded down to
make a low profile and through the grace of God we made it out to the north Pacific Ocean.
A sigh of relief by the whole crew.
Much more to come,
Joe (Josephus) Welsh QM 2/C
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