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USS ''Spikefish'' (SS/AGSS-404), a ''Balao''-class submarine, was a ship of the United States Navy, named for the spikefish. She was the first United States submarine to record 10,000 dives. ==World War II Service== ''Spikefish'' was laid down on 29 January 1944 by the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine; launched on 26 April 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Harvey W. Moore, and commissioned on 30 June 1944, Commander Nicholas J. Nicholas in command. She outfitted there until 31 July when she moved to the Portsmouth-New London area for training. The submarine departed Portsmouth on 16 September and proceeded via the Panama Canal to the Hawaiian Islands. Upon arriving at Pearl Harbor on 23 October, she began preparation for her first war patrol. ''Spikefish'' got underway on 15 November 1944 for the Kuril Islands and the Sea of Okhotsk. She encountered no enemy shipping during the patrol which ended at Midway Island on 1 January 1945. On 26 January, she sailed for the Ryukyus and began patrolling westward of that group. On 24 February, the submarine made a submerged attack on a convoy of six cargo ships with four escorts. She fired six torpedoes at two of the freighters, three of which were heard to hit, but results were not observed as ''Spikefish'' was forced to go deep and weather out a four-hour attack of about 80 depth charges. She sighted another convoy on 5 March and expended six torpedoes in a fruitless attack which led to another pounding by escorts. ''Spikefish'' was ordered to terminate her patrol on 6 March, and she returned to Pearl Harbor on 19 March. One month later, ''Spikefish'', under Cdr. Robert R. Managhan, sailed with for Guam, topped off with fuel, and proceeded independently, on 3 May, toward an area off the east coast of Formosa where she assumed lifeguard station duties. She made no rescues during this period and sighted only one enemy ship. That occurred on the night of 14 May, and all four torpedoes that she fired missed the target. On 29 May, ''Spikefish'' was ordered to take station off Sakishima Gunto and act as lifeguard for carrier planes in the area. On 5 June, she bombarded Miyara airstrip on Ishigaki Jima with her gun. Two days later, the submarine rescued a downed pilot whose plane had crashed after taking off from escort carrier, . She returned to Guam on 13 June. ''Spikefish'' began her last war patrol on 8 July with an uneventful patrol in the Yellow Sea and lifeguard duty off Shanghai. On 24 July, she bombarded Surveyor Island, off the China coast, in an attempt to destroy an enemy radar station. Shortly after midnight on 11 August, she located a small Japanese cargo ship near her lifeguard station but could not make positive identification at night. The ship was dead in the water, so ''Spikefish'' waited until morning, identified it as enemy and sank it with gunfire. Three survivors were brought on board. On the night of 13 August about southeast of Shanghai, she made radar contact with a surfaced submarine. After tracking it for about an hour, the submarine submerged and disappeared from ''Spikefishs scope. At 00:07, contact was regained and the submarine was tracked until morning, when she was sighted on the surface. Her silhouette proved her to be Japanese. ''Spikefish'' fired six torpedoes. Two hit the target, which sank in a cloud of smoke at . The sole survivor who was taken prisoner identified the submarine as ''I-373''; she was the last Japanese submarine sunk in the war.〔Stille, Mark. ''Imperial Japanese Navy Submarines 1941-45'' (Osprey, 2007), p.40.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「USS Spikefish (SS-404)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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