My Dad's photo of the crew on his submarine, the Blackfish

[Beringia]

I was going through old boxes and found this picture my Dad had of his submarine. He had it on foam board on his wall. He loved his time in the Navy




John Woltjen (19 years old in 1944). He is the one with the number 61 over his head

The submarine was the USS Blackfish, SS221. She was Captained by Commander John Davidson.

[marble falls]

1. I was a boomer. My hats off to all pigboat swabbies. See how crowded together they are in the photo ...

... that's about as crowded as they were beneath deck, too. Subs are the only boats where you can vote a man off it if he doesn't fit in.

Bless your WWII vet dad, bless you and thanks for the photo from times when the US military wasn't the plaything of an asshole in DC.

Heres another photo for you:

Blackfish being launched

?20230224022308



The crew of the Blackfish (SS-221) salute the colors as she is sliding down the launching ways at the Electric Boat Co.
The launch of USS Blackfish (SS-221) on 18 April 1942.


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History
United States
Builder General Dynamics Electric Boat, Groton, Connecticut[1]
Laid down 1 July 1941[1]
Launched 18 April 1942[1]
Sponsored by Mrs. Henry de F. Mel
Commissioned 22 July 1942[1]
Decommissioned 11 May 1946[1]
In service 5 May 1949 (non-commissioned)
Out of service 19 May 1955 (non-commissioned)
Stricken 1 September 1958[1]
Fate Sold for scrap 4 May 1959[2]
General characteristics
Class and type Gato-class diesel-electric submarine[2]
Displacement 1,525 long tons (1,549 t) surfaced,[2] 2,424 long tons (2,463 t) submerged[2]
Length 311 ft 9 in (95.02 m)[2]
Beam 27 ft 3 in (8.31 m)[2]
Draft 17 ft (5.2 m) maximum[2]
Propulsion

4 × General Motors Model 16-248 V16 Diesel engines driving electric generators[3][4]
2 × 126-cell Sargo batteries[5]
4 × high-speed General Electric electric motors with reduction gears[3]
two propellers [3]
5,400 shp (4.0 MW) surfaced[3]
2,740 shp (2.0 MW) submerged[3]

Speed 21 kn (39 km/h) surfaced,[6] 9 kn (17 km/h) submerged[6]
Range 11,000 nmi (20,000 km) surfaced @ 10 kn (19 km/h)[6]
Endurance 48 hours @ 2 kn (3.7 km/h) submerged,[6] 75 days on patrol
Test depth 300 ft (91 m)[6]
Complement 6 officers, 54 enlisted[6]
Armament

10 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
6 forward, 4 aft
24 torpedoes[5]
1 × 3-inch (76 mm) / 50 caliber deck gun[5]
Bofors 40 mm and Oerlikon 20 mm cannon

USS Blackfish (SS-221), a Gato-class submarine in commission from 1942 to 1946, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the blackfish. During World War II, she completed five war patrols in the Atlantic Ocean between October 1942 and July 1943 in waters extending from Dakar, Senegal, to the north of Iceland. She supported the Allied invasion of French North Africa in Operation Torch in November 1942, and is credited with sinking the German vorpostenboot V 408 Haltenbank off the north coast of Spain in February 1943.[7][8]

Later in 1943, Blackfish proceeded to the Southwest Pacific. Between 19 October 1943 and 14 August 1945, she completed seven war patrols in an area including the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Yellow Sea. She sank one Japanese cargo ship of 2,087 gross register tons during her Pacific patrols. She completed her twelfth and final war patrol on 14 August 1945.

Decommissioned in 1946, Blackfish later served as a non-commissioned training ship for United States Naval Reserve personnel from 1949 to 1955. She was sold for scrapping in 1959.

[Beringia]

3. Thanks!

[Martin68]

2. I read every WWII submarine book I could get my hands on in middle school.

They fought against really bad odds for two years because their torpedoes (the Mark 14 and Mark 15) were defective and often either missed their target or failed to explode. After exposing themselves and firing defective torpedoes they were then hunted by destroyers and pounded with depth charges. Brave men aboard those boats!

[marble falls]

5. Me, too. If you think they were exciting, try the dive tower to practice abandoning a sub and wearing a Steinke hood ...

... the sub I was on was an FBM, a nuclear powered, ballistic missile sub. The missile room had a 20 foot overhead, was about as big as a basketball court, the decks were asphalt tiled, the bulkheads had paneling in crew spaces and acoustic ceiling. The bridge made Starship Enterprise's look like the dark ages. It's like no diesel boat at all. We had personal bunks - no hot bunking. A nice galley and great chow.

We have a Navy that is beyond huge. The largest air force in the world is the US Air Force. The second largest air force is the US Navy. We have more nuclear aircraft carriers than than the rest of the world has aircraft carriers by a factor of four or five times.

Our military is obscenely powerful. Against first world militaries, anyways. Third world guerillas are a bigger challenge.

[Beringia]

6. He was a radioman

He wrote a story
Depth Charged for Seventeen Hours

https://www.angelfire.com/dragon2/leavesandtrees/dadsub2.html

My angelfire website won't load well for me when I checked just now, so going to paste his story here.

“Depth Charged for Seventeen Hours”.

By John T. Woltjen (19 years old at the time)


The following is a true tale, written several days after the incident, which took place January 15, 1944. The locale was off the island of Truck in the Carolinas, southwest Pacific. The submarine was the USS Blackfish, SS221. She was Captained by Commander Davidson. The patrol was the second for the Blackfish, in the Pacific and besides the two marus sunk in this individual attack, she accounted for two Terutsuki tincans before she returned to port. The author was a radioman and soundman aboard the Blackfish and stayed with her until the war’s end, at which time she returned to new London for her decommissioning.

We were closing now. Range approximately thirty five hundred yards. We were closing and ready. This would be our fifth approach. Four times we had crept towards this convoy and four times our periscope was spotted. They apparently had many lookouts. Probably survivors off the eleven ships previously sunk on their way to Truk from Yokohama. We were tense now. Never in this close before. We were positioned in the mouth of Truk harbor and our hope was that those lookouts would be looking at that long awaited island and not at our periscope. The seconds ticked cautiously as my heart pounded within me, each beat tightening the knot in my stomach, each beat closing the gap between the living and the dead. The skipper wet his lips, mopped the sweat from his forehead and “upped scope” once more. Just a few inches, a very few inches, had to be careful, oh so careful for we were close now and the sea calm. “Down scope” he breathed. “Bearing 350 degrees, range 2600, prepare to fire”. I had them on sound gear. That steady, heavy whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, so typical of lumbering, heavily ladened merchantmen.

The skipper beamed now. We had a solution and would fire very shortly. They were four in number. Two fat marus and the remainder in sleek, new Terutsuki tincans. Everything was readiness. Both torpedo rooms were waiting for the bang of high pressure air and the release of four, maybe six of their tenderly coddled mark 18s. The lead tincan powered over us and into the harbor. The marus came slowly toward us. The clock seemed to stop as I awaited the Captain’s word. Fire 4, Fire 3, Fire 2, Fire 1.

The boat lurched and lunged and the “old man kept his eye glued” to the scope. I followed the first one out on sound gear, followed its virgin wake as it churned the sea towards its target, toward its rendezvous with death. Soon a dull throttled explosion, then three more in rapid succession and all the lookouts in the world would not be able to atone for the damage done. The skipper screamed something about one settling fast and one rolling over like a dog playing dead.

I spun the sound head around searching frantically for that destroyer and found her approaching our stern. The Captain spun the scope, screamed tin can and down we went. The angle was bad but no one cared. We wanted depth. The depth gage seemed to be standing still in a stage of shock. I rose to my feet to tap it when the first pattern went off. Three in succession and I had to be on my feet at the time. I felt the concussion whistle through my ears and found myself lying flat on my stomach with cork, black paint and an officer sprawled on top of me. I got to my knees and after a quick glance around, knew we were still in business. The Captain leveled off at four hundred, maintaining a direct course, putting us between the two sinking ships. It was sickening hearing those ships break up when sea pressure crushed their closed compartments. For a moment, I forgot those tincans topside and just sat there listening to steel grind into steel, like death.

Then a wham and a bam and a snarling of seams, more cork off the bulkhead, more pain off the beams. I was once again jolted back into the reality of the situation. The skipper kept calling for bearings and I gave them as fast and as accurately as I could. The soundman on the destroyer was busy pinging every inch of the ocean in search of us and once he’d find us, he’d stay right on us until a few more invitations to infinity were released. I felt apprehensive now. This seems to be the core of fear. It isn’t what is happening to you, it’s what might happen a second, a minute, an hour from now. It’s the next one, the one coming up, the one you’re waiting for. Will he be down the old drainpipe, will he give up and go home. Why doesn’t he give up and go home, please God, please make this guy give up and go home.

The minutes build into hours and it was hot, miserably hot and I wanted to douse my head in cold water, but I couldn’t cause he’d hear and I couldn’t let him hear. The sweat streaked down my body in rivulets, my stomach felt weak and my heart seemed intent on smashing its way through my ribs. He’d drop two and sometimes three, then slowly drift out of sound range. I’d hope a little, hope and try to grin and try to believe that he had gone home until I’d hear that pinging, then double pinging, then those high speed screws and I’d know he hadn’t quit. Kisella, the executive officer tried to convince the captain that a “battle surface” was our only alternative. We had been depth charged for ten hours now and each run by one of the destroyers chipped away at our morale. The skipper would have no part of it. He argued that we had made it this far and we could make it the rest of the way. I listened to their discussion and was giddy with delight when the Captain turned him down.

The destroyers would drop all of their charges, return to Truk, reload and come back pinging for our location. They were getting tired too though, because they weren’t jarring my teeth and clubbing my eardrums. Why, I could even hear their detonators. That was good, oh so good. Just stay tired, go home, go to bed, you’ve done your bit, now go home. I guess he couldn’t hear me because he stayed, stayed for seventeen ungodly long hours. By that time, I guess I didn’t really care one way or the other. I was washed out.

It was dark topside, it was dark and I could hear myself mumbling, “He’s going Captain, he’s increasing speed and moving away Captain.” The “old man” looked up and murmured something about this being a hell of a price to pay for a couple of damned scows as we slowly moved further away.

[marble falls]

7. Man oh man, that was good. Really good. I read it on the dupe you cut. I wish he'd a wrote the book!