Japanese Submarine I-25 - Third Patrol

Third Patrol

While outbound past the Aleutian Islands for a third war patrol off the west coast of North America, I-25s Glen seaplane overflew United States military installations on Kodiak Island. The surveillance on 21 May 1942 was in preparation for the northern diversion of the Battle of Midway.

Shortly after midnight on 20 June 1942, I-25 torpedoed the new, coal-burning Canadian freighter Fort Camosun off the coast of Washington. The freighter was bound for England with a cargo of war production materials including zinc, lead, and plywood. One torpedo struck the port side below the bridge and flooded the 2nd and 3rd cargo holds. Canadian corvettes Quesnel and Edmundston reached the stricken freighter after dawn and rescued the crew from lifeboats. Fort Camosun was towed back into Puget Sound for repairs, and later survived a second torpedo attack by I-27 in the Gulf of Aden in the fall of 1943.

On the evening of 21 June 1942, I-25 followed a fleet of fishing vessels to avoid minefields near the mouth of the Columbia River, in Oregon. I-25 fired seventeen 14-cm (5.5-inch) shells at Battery Russell, a small coastal army installation within Fort Stevens which was later decommissioned. Fort Stevens was equipped with two 10-inch disappearing guns, some 12-inch mortars, 75-mm field guns, .50-caliber machine guns, and associated searchlights, observation posts, and secret RADAR capability. Damage was minimal. In fact, the only items of significance damaged on the fort were a baseball backstop and some power and telephone lines.

The incoming shell fire had a highly stimulative effect on the personnel at Battery Russell. Men leaped out of bed, crashing into things in the dark—turning on a light would be unthinkable—as they scrambled to battle stations in their underwear.

“We looked like hell,” Capt. Jack R. Wood, commander of the battery, told historian Bert Webber later. “But we were ready to shoot back in a couple of minutes.”

But when gunners requested permission to open fire, they were firmly refused. In part, this was because the submarine's location remained uncertain because of difficulties evaluating reports from different observation points; it was, after all, 10 miles from shore. Furthermore, authorities later stated they wished to avoid revealing the locations of their guns to what they believed to be a reconnaissance mission. The sub may also have been out of range of Battery Russell's artillery; the mechanism used with the 10-inch disappearing guns limited their upward travel, which limited their effective range to less than 10 miles. If the guns opened fire, the sub would be able to report back to Toyko that a fleet of surface ships could simply heave to, 10 miles from shore, and pound Battery Russell with impunity, then sail right on into the Columbia—where, among other juicy targets, Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation, one of Henry Kaiser's shipyards, was cranking out Liberty ships at a rate of more than one a week. This, obviously, was not something the Navy could take a chance on.

So Battery Russell sat there and took it—a total of 17 shell hits—without a single shot in reply.

It was a turning point for American Coastal artillery, and the failure to respond caused re-evaluation of men and artillery allocated to coastal defense.