[BGB] USS Grunion

Fri Aug 24 19:38:50 EDT 2007

From the Billings (Montana) Gazette:

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/08/24/news/local/18-sub.prt

Story available at
Published on Friday, August 24, 2007.
Last modified on 8/24/2007 at 6:33 am
Lost WWII submarine found in Bering Sea

By LORNA THACKERAY
Of The Gazette Staff
A World War II submarine that carried a Billings 
radio operator and 69 others to their deaths in 
cold Alaska waters 65 years ago was found late 
Wednesday night near a wartime Japanese 
stronghold in the Aleutian Islands.
An expedition financed and organized by the sons 
of USS Grunion skipper Lt. Cdr. Mannert "Jim" 
Abele lowered an ROV - remotely operated vehicle, 
equipped with cameras and video equipment - into 
an area where an object thought to be the missing 
sub had been spotted by sonar in an August 2006 
expedition.
In an e-mail posted from the search vessel Aquila 
early Thursday, John Abele jubilantly informed 
his brothers in Massachusetts and Vermont, "We 
found a submarine tonight. We have photographic 
documentation showing a prop guard of Grunion 
style."
The Grunion is the only World War II sub missing in that area.
"You can imagine the emotional impact," Bruce 
Abele, oldest of the three brothers organizing 
the search, said in a telephone call from his 
home in Newton, Mass. "It's quite emotional."
Bruce was 12 when his father was reported missing 
in action. His brother John, who founded Boston 
Scientific, was 5, and Brad was 9. Their father 
was 39 when the Grunion went down in late July 
1942.
Under his command was Wesley Hope Blinston, a 
Billings man who graduated from Billings Senior 
High in 1936. He was about 23 years old.
Blinston, a radioman third class on the sub, may 
have sent the Grunion's last message July 30, 
1942. A 1936 yearbook listed his only school 
activity as Radio Club, where he learned Morse 
code and was one of eight licensed radio 
operators at Billings High School.
An extensive Gazette search last summer turned up 
little about Blinston. His mother, the late 
Sophye Blinston Vinner, died in 1991. No 
relatives remain in the area, and only one 
classmate remembered him.
His nearest relations, distant cousins in Sparta, 
Wis., said although they were proud of Wesley and 
excited that his sub had been found, they had 
never met the young man who apparently left no 
footprint.
"Well that's great. It's kind of nice to know 
where he is," Shelby Blinston Starling said when 
reached Thursday at her home in Sparta. "It's 
still so sad."
Starling was just 5 when the Grunion was lost and 
three states away from relatives she had never 
met. She hadn't even heard of Wesley Blinston 
until a group of women searching for families of 
crew members contacted her last year.
Relatives of 69 of the 70 crew members have been 
located, Bruce Abele said. The search continues 
for relations of Seaman Second Class Byron Allen 
Traviss, who was from Detroit.
The wreckage appeared a mile down on an 
underwater terrace of Kiska Volcano on the north 
end of Kiska Island in the remote reaches of the 
chain that arcs across the Bering Sea toward 
Russia. The submarine, on her maiden voyage, was 
believed to have been sunk in waters heavily 
infested with enemy vessels, but her fate 
remained a mystery for six decades.
From the 2006 sonar image, which showed a clean 
outline of a vessel and what appeared to be a 
conning tower lying on its starboard side, the 
searchers expected the Grunion to be pretty much 
intact, Bruce Abele said. But John said pictures 
captured from high-definition cameras on the ROV 
showed it was not.
"It imploded dramatically and is a tangle of 
pipes," John Abele wrote in an e-mail message 
from the Aquila, a fishing vessel owned by 
Alaskan Kale Garcia that is being used in the 
search.
"That was a big surprise for us," Bruce Abele said.
It was also a big disappointment. Finding out why 
the sub went down was the second objective of the 
search.
"It will be difficult or impossible to identify 
the cause," John wrote in his e-mail.
They plan to scour the video over the next few 
months with marine experts to try to get a more 
definitive answer.
The crew of the Aquila worked through the night 
as an Arctic storm gathered. Images from their 
search may be posted online by today.
In telephone call Thursday afternoon, John told 
Bruce about a few other surprises the video 
provided.
"The hatch on deck was wide open," Bruce said. 
"That was strange, that was really strange."
The video also showed that the bow of the sub was 
nearly separated from the rest of its body. The 
conning tower was smashed by a Japanese shell 
that probably instantly killed the gun crew and 
disabled the control room, Bruce said.
Hatches separating compartments of the sub were 
probably closed because the sub was in battle 
status, he continued. It may prove that water 
pressure at that depth crushed the Grunion, Bruce 
said.
The Grunion was on a mission to contest the first 
enemy occupation of American soil since the 
British invaded in 1812.
In an attempt to divert attention from plans to 
attack Midway Atoll in the mid-Pacific, the 
Japanese had captured two American-owned islands 
at the west end of the chain - Attus and Kiska.
The Grunion sailed north from Midway on her first 
mission. She scored kills on July 15 when she 
sank two 300-ton patrol boats and damaged a third.
Those boats are thought to rest in a more 
sheltered area around Kiska Harbor, and the 2007 
expedition hopes to get video of them today 
because weather will likely prevent them from 
going back to the Grunion for a few days. Bruce 
Abele said it was a grateful gesture to the 
Japanese who have been so helpful and interested 
in their search. They also hope to get video of 
the Japanese destroyer Arare, which was sunk 
later by another American sub, the Growler.
Waters around Kiska were thick with Japanese 
ships in 1942. On July 28, the Grunion fired two 
torpedoes at an enemy vessel but missed its 
target. The Japanese launched a depth charge that 
probably shook the crew, but did no damage.
A final message from the Grunion was sent July 30 
noting heavy antisubmarine activity and that she 
had just 10 torpedoes left. She was ordered back 
to Dutch Harbor, the American base of operations 
in the Aleutians. But the crew saw one last 
chance for a kill when the Kano Maru crossed its 
path.
The Grunion was confirmed lost on Aug. 16, 1942.
Captured Japanese records did not report the 
sinking of a sub, and aerial reconnaissance found 
no sign of the Grunion. The Navy could offer 
families little information on the fate of their 
loved ones.
In an article he wrote about his father, Brad 
Abele remembered the day his family got the news 
that the Grunion was presumed lost.
"It was an early fall, sunny afternoon and my 
brothers and I were playing football in the road 
in front of our house in Newton Highlands, 
Mass.," he wrote. "My mother came to the door and 
called us all in, and while we stood in a sunbeam 
by her desk in the front of the living room, she 
read us the first telegram."
The Abele brothers embarked on their quest to 
find the sub their father commanded in 2002 when 
Yutaka Iwasaki, a Japanese Navy buff, discovered 
an article in a Japanese publication written by 
the captain of World War II freighter Kano Maru.
The captain described a death struggle with a 
submarine July 31, 1942, in the sea north of 
Kiska.
The captain wrote that the Kano Maru was drifting 
in bad weather near Kiska early that morning when 
a torpedo from the Grunion smashed into her 
starboard side, disabling her engine and 
generator. Two more torpedoes smacked into the 
freighter, but both were duds.
One well-directed torpedo was enough. The Kano 
Maru had taken a fatal hit. The Grunion started 
to surface about 400 meters from the sinking 
freighter. Gunners on the Kano Maru fired at the 
submarine's periscope. Before she surfaced 
completely, another shot blasted the Grunion's 
conning tower.
That final shot probably sent her to the bottom. 
But it might not be that simple, Bruce Abele said.
"It's possible, but extremely unlikely that a 
shell from an 8-centimeter deck gun could have 
penetrated the conning tower under the surface," 
he said. "It would have ricocheted off."
However, it is possible that the Grunion was hit 
by an "extremely secret" flat-nosed projectile 
the Japanese had developed, he said. It would 
have crashed into the submarine at 60 mph, he 
said.
Sonar images from last summer's sonar search 
showed what appeared to be skid marks three 
quarters of a mile long down a submerged slope. 
Video taken Wednesday also showed the slide 
trail, John said in his e-mail to Bruce.
The crew on the Aquila started looking for the 
Grunion Wednesday night almost immediately after 
arriving in the vicinity of the sonar image from 
last year. They decided to put the ROV in the 
water instead of waiting until Thursday because a 
storm with gale-force winds was heading their way.
On Thursday, the Aquila's crew was safely 
anchored in Kiska Harbor. If seas are too rough 
to video the nearby Japanese vessels on Friday, 
the search team may unload some all-terrain 
vehicles and explore the island.
Although Kiska was a beehive of activity 60 years 
ago, it is deserted now. The island is littered 
with the debris of war, including unexploded land 
mines, Bruce said.
Contact Lorna Thackeray at lthackeray at billingsgazette.com or 657-1314.

Also the site for the Search Team of the USS 
Grunion:  http://www.ussgrunion.com/
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