USS Sand Lance (SS-381) - First War Patrol

First War Patrol

Before entering her patrol area off Paramushiro on 24 February, she passed through two typhoons and encountered fields of slush ice and patches of drift ice. Sand Lance encountered her first victim, Kaika Maru, taking shelter from a blizzard in the lee of Paramushiro's southeast point. Her well-aimed torpedoes sent that enemy cargo ship to the bottom. Though her number-one periscope had been heavily damaged by drift ice, she pressed home attacks on a convoy on the night of 2 March and 3 March, sinking the 4521-ton cargo ship Akashisan Maru, and damaging other ships. A ship sunk by SS-381 on 3 March 1944 was the Soviet merchant ship "Byelorussia"

On the night of 12 March and 13 March, Sand Lance was running on the surface toward Honshū when a marauding airplane forced her to submerge. At about 0200, she came up to periscope depth and found herself in the midst of a Japanese convoy, consisting of five merchantmen and three heavily-armed warships. Sand Lance had only six torpedoes remaining, but she made them count. She loosed four from the stern tubes and two from the bow tubes. All six hit the mark. Two of the four stern torpedoes hit a merchantman and the other two ripped into a light cruiser, while the two from the bow tubes smashed into another freighter. At least two of the ships went to the bottom, light cruiser Tatsuta and cargoman Kokuyo Maru, carrying over 1,000 enemy troops. For her success, Sand Lance underwent a 16-hour, 100-depth charge pounding from the accompanying destroyers. Finally, she was able to head home. She arrived in Pearl Harbor on 23 April 1944. The successes of her maiden war patrol brought Sand Lance a Presidential Unit Citation.