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Casualty Info
Home Town Brooklyn, NY
Last Address 1241 39th St Brooklyn, NY
Casualty Date Oct 24, 1944
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location East China Sea
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Manila American Cemetery and Memorial - Manila, Philippines
Wall/Plot Coordinates (cenotaph)
Military Service Number 2 245 636
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
The USS Shark (SS-314) was lost on her third patrol. She was last heard from on 24 October 1944 when she radioed the Submarine Seadragon that she was about to attack a Japanese freighter. She was presumed lost on 27 November 1944 and the cause of her loss in unknown.
TM1 Babig was among the men listed as missing in action and later declared dead.
Comments/Citation:
Submarine war patrols: USS Shark (SS-314) - 1st through 3rd
Joseph William Babig was born April 17, 1921 in Brooklyn, Kings county, New York, son of William and Anna Antonio Babig. His parents were both born in Poland. His father immigrated to the US in 1912 and became a naturalized citizen . The family lived in Brooklyn, where his father worked as a carpenter. Joseph had one brother, Stephen. He graduated from high school, and in 1940 was working as a printing press attendant for a lithograph company.
On January 5, 1942 he entered the Navy at New York. In May 1942 he completed Elementary Torpedo School at Norfolk, Virginia. He was attached, as TM3c to S-48, part of COMSUBRON 1, stationed in New London, Connecticut, later the USS Steelhead (SS-280). On May 10, 1943 he reported aboard the USS Cachalot (SS-170) as TM2c. He reported aboard the submarine USS Shark (SS-314) shortly at her commissioning in February 1944 as TM1c.
Following shakedown off New London, Connecticut, Shark transited the Panama Canal and arrived at Pearl Harbor on 24 April 1944 for final training in the Hawaiian area. Her first war patrol commenced on 16 May 1944 and was conducted in waters west of the Mariana Islands as part of a coordinated attack group with submarines USS Pintado and USS Pilotfish. After successfully torpedoing at least four enemy cargo ships, she returned to Midway Island for refit on 17 June. Shark put to sea on 10 July for her second war patrol, this time in the waters off the Volcano Islands and Bonin Islands. Later she went to Iwo Jima where she took up lifeguard station in support of carrier airstrikes. On the afternoon of 4 August, Shark rescued two airmen from a crashed USS Lexington. She terminated her lifeguard duties on 19 August and touched at Midway Island before arriving at Pearl Harbor ten days later.
The Shark left Pearl Harbor on 23 September 1944, and proceeded to Saipan to begin her third war patrol with the Seadragon and Blackfish. The three vessels left Saipan on 3 October to conduct a coordinated patrol in the vicinity of Luzon Strait. On 22 October, SHARK reported having contacted four large enemy vessels in Latitude 20° 28'N, Longitude 117° 50'E. She still had her full load of torpedoes aboard, so had not made an attack. SHARK addressed no further messages to bases, but on 24 October, SEADRAGON received a message from her stating that she had made radar contact with a single freighter, and that she was going in to attack. This was the last message received from SHARK.
On 13 November 1944, a dispatch originated by Commander Naval Unit, Fourteenth Air Force, stated that a Japanese ship enroute from Manila to Japan, with 1,800 American prisoners of war had been sunk on 24 October by an American submarine in a torpedo attack. No other submarine reported the attack, and since SHARK had given SEADRAGON a contact report only a few hours before the sinking, and could not be raised by radio after it, it can only be assumed that SHARK made the attack described and perished during or after it. Five prisoners who survived and subsequently reached China stated that conditions on the prison ship were so intolerable that the prisoners prayed for deliverance from their misery by a torpedo or bomb. Because many prisoners of war had been rescued from the water by submarines after sinking vessels in which they were being transported, U.S. submarines had been instructed to search for Allied survivors in the vicinity of all sinkings of Empire-bound Japanese ships. SHARK may well have been sunk trying to rescue American prisoners of war. All attempts to contact SHARK by radio failed and on 27 November she was reported as presumed lost.
A report from the Japanese received after the close of the war on anti-submarine attacks records the attack made by SHARK on 24 October 1944, in Latitude 20° 41'N, Longitude 118° 27'E. Depth charges were dropped 17 times, and the enemy reports having seen "bubbles, and heavy oil, clothes, cork, etc." Several American submarines report having been attacked on this date near the position given, but in view of the fact that none reported the attack on the convoy cited above, this attack is considered the most probable cause of SHARK's loss.
The 87 crew members, missing since October 24, 1944, were officially declared dead November 8, 1945. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.
The remains of TM1c Joseph W. Babig are unaccounted for. His name appears on the Tablets of the Missing, Manila American Cemetery, the Philippines.
This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.
If you noticed anything erroneous in this profile or have additional information to contribute to it, please contact me at sgould557@gmail.com
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.
