This Fallen Navy Profile is not currently maintained by any Member.
If you would like to take responsibility for researching and maintaining this Fallen profile please click
HERE
Casualty Info
Home Town Foley, MN
Last Address Philadelphia, PA
Casualty Date Oct 07, 1943
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Pacific Ocean
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial - Honolulu, Hawaii
Wall/Plot Coordinates Court 5 (cenotaph)
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
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.
Comments/Citation:
Service number: 6392276
Submarine war patrols: USS S-44 (SS-155) - 5th
The information contained in this profile was compiled from various interner sources.
