This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Tommy Burgdorf (Birddog), FC2
to remember
Knops, Harry Theodore, CPO.
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Casualty Info
Last Address 855 Divisadero St San Francisco, CA (Daughter, Miss Leola Knops, c/o Mrs Pearl Jorgensen)
Casualty Date Feb 26, 1944
Cause MIA-Finding of Death
Reason Lost At Sea-Unrecovered
Location Pacific Ocean
Conflict World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Northern Solomon Islands Campaign (1943-44)/Sinking of the USS Grayback (SS-208)
Location of Interment Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial - Honolulu, Hawaii
Description The plan of the Pacific subseries was determined by the geography, strategy, and the military organization of a theater largely oceanic. Two independent, coordinate commands, one in the Southwest Pacific under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and the other in the Central, South, and North Pacific (Pacific Ocean Areas) under Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, were created early in the war. Except in the South and Southwest Pacific, each conducted its own operations with its own ground, air, and naval forces in widely separated areas. These operations required at first only a relatively small number of troops whose efforts often yielded strategic gains which cannot be measured by the size of the forces involved. Indeed, the nature of the objectivesùsmall islands, coral atolls, and jungle-bound harbors and airstrips, made the employment of large ground forces impossible and highlighted the importance of air and naval operations. Thus, until 1945, the war in the Pacific progressed by a double series of amphibious operations each of which fitted into a strategic pattern developed in Washington.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
January / 1943
To Month/Year
December / 1943
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories Arriving Pearl Harbor on 12 September 1943, Grayback prepared for her eighth war patrol. Sailing 26 September with Shad (SS-235), she rendezvoused with Cero (SS-225) at Midway Island to form the first of the Submarine Force's highly successful wolf packs. The three submarines under Captain "Swede" Momsen in Cero, cruised the China Sea and returned to base with claims of 38,000 tons sunk and 3300 damaged. Grayback accounted for two ships, a passenger-cargo vessel torpedoed 14 October and a former light cruiser, Awata Maru, torpedoed after an end-around run on a fast convoy 22 October. Wolf pack tactics came into play 2 October as Grayback closed a convoy already attacked by Shad and sunk a 9000-ton transport listing from two of Shadâ??s torpedoes. The submarines had now expended all torpedoes, and on 10 November they returned to Midway.
