In the war against Japan, our submarine patrols in the Pacific played a large part in
safeguarding troop and supply convoys. In the early days of the fighting, our position
was so critical that all submarines’ old and new, were rushed into duty. One of the old
models was the S-34 about which this account was written. Perhaps it proves that
when the going gets really rough, a sturdy hull and determined crew are more
important than having up-to-date equipment
BY MAXWELL HAWK
he last submarines
built by
our Navy to be
designated by
a combined
letter and
numeral
were the Sclass — the socalled S-Boats. We
started building
them way back in
1916 and, before the
program was completed,
51 of these sturdy craft
had slid down the ways.
Our later types of undersea
ships were given names of fish or
other aquatic dwellers. At the same time, we
were laying the keels for the S-Boats, we also built
27 R-Boats, but they were relatively small, and
useful mainly for coastal patrol.
Originally, there were 41 S-Boats 220-ft in
length, with a submerged displacement of 1093tons and a cruising range of about 5500-mi. They
cost only one-fifth as much as big wartime fleet
submarines. The other ten S-Boats were only
slightly larger, but had a cruising range of up
to 10,000-mi. All ships of this class normally
carried 38 men.
When the war with Japan broke out, the
S-Boats were regarded as antiques but, overage
though they were, these stout ships and their
resourceful and rugged crews gave the Navy one
of the happiest surprises of the war. They took an
almost unbelievable pounding from enemy depth
charges, aerial bombs, and gunfire, but, with few
exceptions, survived. They repeatedly caught fire,
broke down, and plunged to crushing ocean
depths. And yet the gallant men who
manned these ancient “barrels”
somehow managed to
keep them going, to
scout enemy positions
and bases, and to sink
a large number of
Japanese ships.
One squadron of our
S-Boats, pushed by
T
44 SEA CLASSICS/June 2017
determined crews, overcame hardships and
handicaps to make a 12,000-mi trip from the
Panama Canal to Australia. It was accomplished
without an escort and with only one stop, at an
isolated Pacific island where a base had been
hurriedly improvised. Once in the southwest
Pacific, this S-Boat squadron won undying fame
for the part it played in the blocking of the
Japanese drive to invade Australia.
Although their limited range placed the S-Boats
at a disadvantage in a war of vast distances, in one
section of our Pacific frontier it didn’t make so
much difference. That was in the desolate and fogdrenched Aleutian Islands, which extend
some 1200-mi west from the tip of the
Alaskan peninsula. The farthest
of the Aleutians is
S-34 (late SS-139) at Pearl Harbor where it
was getting a new battery. The new cells
can be seen on the rail cars to the right.
Also, S-34’s skeg has been cut away as
part of a safety and maintenance
modification during in April 1932.
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