SUBMARINES SUNK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1943, Page 4

SUBMARINES SUNK

GERMAN AND JAPANESE AMERICAN CARGO BOAT TRAPS ■ ENEMY'CRAFT. SUCCESS WITH ONLY FOUR SHELLS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.55 a.m.) WASHINGTON, February 23. The sinking of a German submarine in the Atlantic and of a Japanese submarine in the Pacific is announced by the Navy Department. Colonel Knox said the two sinkings were not isolated cases but a percentage of other successful attacks which must be classified as probables only. He explained that the Navy did not publish the total of submarines destroyed or probably destroyed for security reasons and added that, generally speaking, shipping losses in the Atlantic were much lower during the last three months. Nevertheless most emphatically the submarine was still the gravest menace. The Associated Press of America says the German U-boat was sunk by a destroyer and the Japanese submarine was destroyed by a merchantman. Without warning the Japanese submarine torpedoed a cargo ship at night. The crew and 35 passengers were prepared to abandon the ship amid flames, smoke and debris, but the Japanese submarine commander made the fatal mistake of coming to the surface, immediately after firing the torpedo, and shelled the merchantman with a heavy deck gun, at a range of only 200 yards. The Japanese shells missed and the cargo ship’s crew opened fire with two guns. They had only four shells available, as the torpedo had jammed the ship’s ammunition boxes. However, the four shells proved enough as two direct hits were scored and the submarine slowly sank, spreading oil and debris over the water. The merchantman then opened fire with machineguns and poured 400 rounds into the sinking submarine. Next morning the cargo ship, still afloat, was recovered and towed into an Allied port. Both the ship and its cargo were saved.