Author Topic: USS Grunion found?  (Read 478 times)

Offline Frodo

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USS Grunion found?
« on: October 05, 2006, 10:25:42 AM »


JG11 

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Offline Iron_Cross

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USS Grunion found?
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2006, 08:46:26 PM »
Um, no.  The superstructure looks all wrong for a submarine.  But I will reserve judgement untill they get a ROV down there and take some pictures.  

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Offline Mace2004

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USS Grunion found?
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2006, 09:54:20 PM »
The picture on the CNN site is pretty bad plus it's a sonar image which is similar to a "negative" photographic image.  In the CNN pic the white area to the left should be dark and is the sonar "shadow".  The ship is sitting upright, not on it's side as it appears.  Check out this site here  where they've produced the equivalent of a "positive" image which is much clearer.  Also there's a 3-d rendering based on the sonar data here  but I don't know how much "guesstimating" they did in generating the 3-D images.  There does appear to be quite a bit of "junk" on the deck and the the angle of the sonar produced a lengthy shadow that may make the "junk" appear larger than it was.  It may in fact be something else but it has the very narrow profile of a sub and shows the distinctive silhouette of the Grunions sail and periscope housing.  In any case it's interesting.

Mace

Edit:  I got real curious and studied the sonar image again.  The bow is at the bottom of the image.  Moving aft there's a large hump then the sail and periscope housing.  The upright image at the end of the hull is the 5" mount.  Looks like the stern is either broken off or buried just aft of the mount.  The forward hump could be torn up deckplating or perhaps the hull is ruptured there.  With the exception of this hump everything (size, proportions, etc.) looks correct.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2006, 10:09:32 PM by Mace2004 »
Mace
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Offline Frodo

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USS Grunion found?
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2006, 06:36:17 PM »
She went down fighting hard. Early in the war when Japan had the edge. Impressive, and I hope it is the Grunion.

Frodo



For decades, relatives of the USS Grunion's 70 lost crewmen had no information beyond fragmented U.S. Navy records, and a few rumors, about where and why the sub went down near the islands at the tip of Alaska's Aleutian chain.

They knew the Grunion had sunk two Japanese submarine chasers and heavily damaged a third in July 1942 near Kiska, one of two Aleutian islands occupied by the Japanese. They knew her last official radio message to the sub base at Dutch Harbor, on July 30, 1942, described heavy enemy activity. They knew Dutch Harbor responded with an order to return to the base, but they don't know if Grunion ever received it.

Until a few years ago, the clues were too sparse to justify a search, said Abele, whose father, Mannert Abele, was the Grunion's commander.

"We really didn't do anything about it because there was nothing, no information," Abele said. "What were we going to do?"

Four years ago, a man who had heard about the Grunion's disappearance e-mailed links to several Grunion Web sites to Bruce Abele, who lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

One site held an entirely new clue, a note from a Japanese model ship builder who said he thought he knew what had happened to the Grunion.

Abele's youngest brother, John, contacted the man, who translated and sent him a report written in the 1960s by a Japanese military officer who served in the Aleutians.

It described a confrontation between a U.S. submarine and the officer's freighter, the Kano Maru, on July 31, 1942, about 10 miles northeast of Kiska.

The sub dispatched several torpedoes. All but one bounced off the boat without exploding, or missed, the officer wrote, although the hit knocked out his engines and communications. He said he returned fire and believed he had sunk the sub.


JG11 

TEAMWORK IS ESSENTIAL....IT GIVES THE ENEMY SOMEONE ELSE TO SHOOT AT.