USS Tench (SS-417) - Third War Patrol

Third War Patrol

Following refit, she put to sea on her third and final war patrol. On 29 July, she once again passed through Colnett Strait and entered the East China Sea. On 30 July, she found another motor lugger and punched holes in her with her 40 millimeter gun. She then proceeded to round up the lugger's nine-man Korean crew, all of whom had taken to the water at the first hint of trouble. Between 2 August and 4 August, she rode out an East China Sea typhoon and on 6 August, released her prisoners in a small boat near the Korean coast. That afternoon, she headed in toward the harbor of Osei To, a small island near the western coast of Korea, to conduct a shore bombardment. During that escapade, her guns destroyed four schooners and severely damaged another five, along with a sea truck, a motor trawler, and some warehouses and other dockside installations. Tench then shifted north to the Gulf of Pohai, between the Kwantung Peninsula of Manchuria and the Shantung Promontory of China. Her last encounter of the war occurred on 9 August when she surfaced in fog to torpedo and sink a seagoing tug towing two large barges. While the submarine retired from that attack, two Japanese "Betty" medium bombers dropped a bomb apiece some 500 yards (460 m) off her port beam and retired themselves. (These craft were all too small to be recorded by JANAC, and her credited score for the patrol was zero.) That ended her hostile actions. On 15 August, the Japanese Empire capitulated, and hostilities ceased.

Tench remained on station until 28 August and then headed for Guam where she arrived on 2 September. After a brief stop at Apra harbor, she headed back toward the United States. Following stops at Pearl Harbor and Balboa, Canal Zone, Tench moored at New London, Connecticut, on 6 October 1945 – a year to the day since she had entered commission. In March 1946, she was placed in reserve at New London.