Japanese Submarine I-25 - Fourth Patrol

Fourth Patrol

Following his successful observation flights on the second and third patrols, Warrant Officer Nubuo Fujita was specifically chosen for a special incendiary bombing mission to create forest fires in North America. I-25 left Yokosuka on 15 August 1942 carrying six 76 kg (168 lb) incendiary bombs. On 9 September, the crew again deployed the "Glen", which dropped two bombs over forest land near Brookings, Oregon. This attack by an enemy airplane was later called the "Lookout Air Raid", and was the only time that the continental United States was ever bombed by enemy aircraft during wartime.

Warrant Officer Fujita's mission had been to trigger wildfires across the coast; at the time, the Tillamook Burn incidents of 1933 and 1939 were well known, as was the destruction of the city of Bandon, Oregon by a smaller out-of-control wildfire in 1936. But light winds, wet weather conditions and two quick-acting Fire Lookouts kept the fires under control. In fact, had the winds been sufficiently brisk to stoke widespread forest fires, the lightweight Glen may have had difficulty navigating through the bad weather. Shortly after the Glen seaplane had landed and been disassembled for storage, I-25 was bombed at 42°22′N 125°12′W / 42.367°N 125.2°W / 42.367; -125.2 by a United States Army A-29 Hudson piloted by Captain Jean H. Daugherty from McChord Field near Tacoma, Washington. The Hudson carried 300-pound general purpose demolition bombs with delayed fuzes rather than depth charges. The bombs caused minor damage, but quick response by a Coast Guard cutter and three more aircraft caused I-25 to be more cautious on a second bombing raid on 29 September 1942. The Glen seaplane was assembled and launched in pre-dawn darkness using Cape Blanco Light as a reference. The plane was heard at 0522 by a work crew at the Grassy Knob Lookout 7 miles east of Port Orford, Oregon; but fire crews from the Gold Beach Ranger Station were unable to locate any evidence of the two incendiary bombs dropped.

The Glen seaplane was again recovered, but I-25 decided not to risk a third flight with the two remaining incendiary bombs.

At 0415 4 October 1942 I-25 torpedoed the 6600-ton tanker Camden en route from San Pedro, California, to Puget Sound with a cargo of 76,000 barrels (12,100 m3) of gasoline. The damaged tanker was towed to the mouth of the Columbia River. When its draft was discovered to be too great to reach repair facilities in Portland, Oregon, another tow was arranged to Puget Sound; but the tanker was destroyed on 10 October by a fire of unknown origin during the second tow.

On the evening of 5 October 1942 I-25 torpedoed and sank the Richfield Oil Company tanker Larry Doheny. The cargo of 66,000 barrels (10,500 m3) of oil was lost with 2 of the tanker's crew and 4 members of the United States Navy Armed Guard. Survivors reached Port Orford, Oregon on the evening of 6 October.

Two submarines were sighted on 11 October 1942 about 800 miles off the coast of Washington as I-25 was returning to Japan. I-25 fired its last torpedo at the lead submarine, which sank in 20 seconds with the loss of all hands. I-25 reported sinking an American submarine, but the submarine was actually Soviet L-16 which was sailing with L-15 en route from Vladivostok to the Panama Canal via Unalaska, Alaska and San Francisco. United States Navy Chief Photographer's Mate Sergi Andreevich Mihailoff of Arcadia, California, was aboard L-16 as a liaison officer and interpreter, and was killed with the remainder of the submarine crew. The United States Navy Western Sea Frontier denied loss of any submarine and withheld information about the Soviet loss because, at the time, the Soviet Union was officially neutral in the war between Japan and the United States.