In preparation for the retaking of Attu and Kiska, seven more S-boats (S-40, S-41, S-42, S-44, S-45, S-46, S-47) had been ordered north in the spring of 1943 and trickled into Dutch Harbor between May and December. Until August, the Dutch Harbor boats concentrated on the supply lines between Japan and the western Aleutians, but after the re-conquest of Attu and Kiska, the emphasis shifted to more general hunting expeditions in the northern Kuriles. Again, little was achieved. The 24 war patrols mounted from Dutch Harbor between May 1943 and the end of the year – generally about a month long but as much as 40 days – produced only four enemy victims totaling some 13,000 tons, all Japanese merchant ships sunk near Paramushiro. S-28, S-30, S-35, and S-41 (SS-146) were the lucky boats, but S-44 (SS-155), caught on the surface by a Japanese destroyer on 7 October during her first Alaskan patrol, was lost with all hands save two crewmembers, who survived to became prisoners of war for the duration.
U.S. Army troops land in force at Massacre Bay, Attu, on 12 May 1943. Defended with suicidal tenacity by the Japanese garrison, the island was not finally secured until the end of that month.
At the end of 1943 with the end of a credible Japanese threat to the Aleutians, COMSUBPAC RADM Charles Lockwood finally acknowledged the futility of sending the Dutch Harbor submarines into harm’s way for so little return, and he ordered the remaining S-boats withdrawn from Alaska and for the most part assigned to training duties in both the Southwest Pacific and home waters. In the very last war patrol mounted from Dutch Harbor, S-45 (SS-156) left the submarine base there on New Year’s Eve and returned to Attu at the end of January 1944, before departing for San Diego and a general overhaul. And thus ended the U.S. submarine campaign in the Aleutians.
In a quiet inlet of the Bering Sea, a YP boat gets a coat of paint and an S-boat ties up for fuel and provisions. The short Alaskan day is ending and lights may be seen in the barracks until total darkness requires a blackout.
It had to have been the worst duty in the world. The privation, hardship, and danger endured by the more than 1,000 U.S. submariners who served in the Aleutians during 1942 and 1943 – most of them in small, obsolete, and worn-out boats – were never repaid by the spectacular success later achieved by submarines in the wider Pacific conflict. Only nine confirmed kills were scored in over 80 war patrols conducted in the Alaskan theater in those years – and four of these were claimed by Pearl Harbor-based fleet boats, which accounted for only one eighth of the total sorties. On the negative side of the ledger, two S-boats – S-27 and S-44 – and one fleet boat – Grunion – were lost, two with virtually all hands. In retrospect it is an extraordinary tribute to the seamanship, dedication, and perseverance of the men who suffered and died there that an even larger toll of ships and men was not exacted by the many perils of the williwaw, the frozen and desolate islands, and those awful seas.
Additional Sources:
thesaltysailor.com
www.history.navy.mil
www.nps.gov/aleu
goatlocker.exis.net
www.ussjwweeks701.org
www.csp.navy.mil
www.sitnews.org