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Casualty Info
Home Town Jackson, TN
Last Address Jackson, TN
Casualty Date Oct 07, 1943
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Pacific Ocean
Conflict World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater
Location of Interment Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial - Honolulu, Hawaii
Wall/Plot Coordinates Court 3 (cenotaph)
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
The USS S-44 (SS-155) arrived at Dutch Harbor on 16 September. 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.
SC2 Glenn was listed as missing in action and later declared dead.
Comments/Citation:
Service number: 2954641
Submarine war patrols: USS S-44 (SS-155) - 1st through 5th
Navy Unit Commendation
For outstanding heroism in action against enemy Japanese surface forces during her First, Second, Third and Fourth War Patrols in the Solomon Sea Area from May 12 to August 10, 1942. During this period of crisis for Allied Naval vessels when Japanese air and sea power was at its height, the USS S-44 boldly sought out the enemy and struck with aggressiveness and determination, destroying the 5,644-ton Shoei on her First and following the Battle of Savo Island, she daringly gave battle to the Japanese heavy cruiser Kako as that vessel was returning in triumph to home waters after destroying four Allies cruisers. Fighting gallantly despite extreme limitations due to age and obsolescent design, she held relentlessly to her target and in a faultlessly conducted attack sank the 7,100-ton cruiser. This record of combat achievement reflects the highest credit upon the S-44, her courageous ship's company and the United States Naval Service.
The information contained in this profile was compiled from various internet sources.
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.
