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Last year while researching an article on great lakes shipwrecks, i visited the submarine memorial at Marquette, Michigan near the maritime museum and the Grunion was on the scroll of lost vessels. Very moving indeed.
I saw this in the paper this morning, the Navy confirms that the wreckage in the Aleutians is the Grunnion. In the last two years I have seen two memorials to the sub, one in Marquette, Michigan and one at Pearl Harbor near the Arizona Visitors Center. Both mention that she was lost and is on eternal patrol. Thank goodness she was confirmed found. The story of the Grunnion is one of perserverance on the part of the family, tenacity on the part of the searchers, and humanity on the part of the extended family of survivors and relatives. Before the story was widely circulated, many of the descendants of the families of those who served on board had only vague recollections or none at all of their connection to the crew and ship. That is changing.
The story relates about how an incident described in an obscure journal and posted to the internet led to identification of the USS Grunion, one of hundreds of stories in the Thousand Mile War.
I have been interested in WWII history for the last 30 years and in particulr US and german submarine operations.
This story bothers me as it highlights the costs of the failure of the US Navy's Bureau of Ordinance to investigate and address the depth keeping and exploder problems with the Mk 14 torpedo. If the Japanese officer's account is correct, the ship suffered two hits from dud Mk 14 torpedos. Had either exploded, it would most likely not have engaged the Grunion and the sub and crew would most likely not have been lost.
The records are full of accounts where Japanese ships survived due to torpedo failures, but this incident underscores that torpedo exploder failures also led directly to the loss of US submarines. (The Tang was lost to a circular run, but that was a different issue not related to gross negligence and denial on the part of BuOrd.)
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