USS Tambor (SS-198) - Twelfth Patrol

Twelfth Patrol

Tambor returned to Midway on 6 October and sailed the next day for the Tokyo Bay area. On 15 October, she fired four torpedoes at three radar pips and heard one explosion. She was forced to go deep to evade 26 depth charges. She emerged with no damage. Four days later, she attacked an escort with four torpedoes and heard four explosions, but no sinking was verified. The submarine returned to Saipan from 8 November to 10 November, then resumed her patrol, now one of six members of the wolfpack "Burt's Brooms" (named for Thomas B. Klakring, commanding SubDiv 101).

Shortly before midnight on 15 November, Tambor fired three torpedoes at a patrol boat, but scored no hits. Forty-five minutes later, three more missed. At 06:10, the submarine's commander decided to battle on the surface with his deck guns; the escort fired back, and a Tambor crewmen was severely wounded. Thirty minutes later, as the target began to sink, Tambor's crew took two prisoners from the water. She transferred them and the wounded crewman to Grayson (DD-435) on 18 November. {The sunken vessel was the guardship "Takashiro Maru"}Tambor ended her last war patrol at Pearl Harbor on 30 November, to be retired from combat.

Routed onward to the United States, Tambor arrived at San Francisco on 10 December 1944. After an extended overhaul, the submarine sailed for Puget Sound on 9 March 1945. Upon her arrival, Tambor began training operations with Navy patrol aircraft under Fleet Air Wing 6. On 17 September, she departed the West Coast for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Tambor was decommissioned there on 10 December 1945 and placed in reserve. In April 1947, the submarine was assigned to the Ninth Naval District to train naval reservists, and reported to the Naval Reserve Training Center, Detroit, Michigan, on 8 December. Tambor remained on this station until 1959 when a Board of Inspection and Survey found her unfit for further naval service. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 September and subsequently sold for scrap.

Tambor received 11 battle stars for World War II service.