Carrier, Patrick Anthony, EM3

The USS S-44 (SS-155) arrived at Dutch Harbor on 16 September 1943. On 26 September, she departed Attu on her last war patrol. One day out, while en route to her operating area in the northern Kuril Islands, she was spotted and attacked by a Japanese patrol plane. Suffering no damage, she continued west. On the night of 7 October, she made radar contact with what she thought was a "small merchantman" and closed for a surface attack. Several hundred yards from the target, her deck gun fired and was answered by a salvo. The "small merchantman" in fact was the Shimushu-class escort Ishigaki. An emergency dive was ordered, but the submarine failed to submerge. She then took several hits in the control room, below the waterline in the after battery room, and elsewhere.

Reluctantly, S-44 was ordered abandoned. A pillow case was raised from the forward battery room hatch as a flag of surrender, but the Japanese shelling continued. Only two men escaped the sinking vessel. They were taken first to Paramushiro, then to the Naval Interrogation Camp at Ofuna. The two men spent the last year of World War II working in the Ashio copper mines and survived to be repatriated by the Allies at the end of the war.

EM3 Carrier was among those listed as missing in action and, in December of 1945, presumed dead.

Service number: 6392276

Submarine war patrols: USS S-44 (SS-155) - 5th

The information contained in this profile was compiled from various interner sources.