USS Bowfin (SS-287) - Second Patrol

Second Patrol

Upon completion of refitting, Bowfin got underway on 1 November and headed for the South China Sea. From time to time during this patrol, she again cooperated with Billfish. On 8 November, Bowfin picked up the trail of a group of five schooners. When she pulled within range of them, she opened fire with her 4-inch gun and sank three before bombs from a Japanese plane forced the submarine to dive and thus allowed the two surviving vessels to slip away. After staying down until the return of darkness, Bowfin surfaced and resumed patrolling. Before long, she discovered and opened fire upon a large sailing ship which went down after suffering hits by two 4-inch shells. Two days later, she found her next victims, a pair of small steamers heading for Tawi-Tawi Bay, and set both afire with gunfire.

Her luck was even better on the morning of 26 November while she was approaching the coast of Indochina during a blinding rainstorm. Without prior knowledge that any other vessels were near, she unexpectedly found herself surrounded by Japanese shipping. After barely avoiding a collision with a tanker by backing all engines, she torpedoed and sank the 5,069-ton tanker Ogurasan Maru and then dispatched the 5,407-ton freighter Tainan Maru. A few hours later, her torpedoes ended the career of Van Vollenhoven, a 691-ton coastal cargo ship which the Japanese had taken from her French owners when they overran Indochina almost two years before. On 28 November, after having sent a small passenger-cargo ship to the bottom with a single torpedo, Bowfin joined Billfish in attacking a convoy and quickly sank Sydney Maru, a 5,425-ton freighter and Tonon Maru, a 9,866-ton tanker.

Meanwhile, one of the Japanese ships fired on Bowfin and scored hits which opened leaks in her starboard induction line which, while serious, did not prevent the submarine from getting off her last two torpedoes. Repair efforts upon the return of daylight slowed but did not completely stop the flooding, and Bowfin began her voyage back to Australia. En route to her base on 2 December, she came across a “two masted yacht...which...,” in Griffith’s words, “...looked like it might have been some planter’s yacht taken over by the Japs.” The submarine’s deck gun promptly destroyed this stranger; and, thereafter, Bowfin enjoyed an uneventful passage which brought her to Fremantle a week later. There, Rear Admiral Christie praised her performance as the “classic of all submarine patrols.”