USS Pickerel (SS-177)
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| Missing image USS_Pickerel.jpg USS Pickerel (SS-177) | |
| Career | 
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|---|---|
| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | 25 March 1935 |
| Launched: | 7 July 1936 |
| Commissioned: | 26 January 1937 |
| Fate: | lost to unknown causes |
| Stricken: | 19 August 1943 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 1330 tons surfaced, 1997 tons submerged |
| Length: | 300 ft 7 in (92 m) |
| Beam: | 25 ft 1 in (7.6 m) |
| Draft: | 13 ft 10 in (4.2 m) |
| Speed: | 19.5 knots (36 km/h) surfaced, 9 knots (17 km/h) submerged |
| Complement: | 50 officers and men |
| Armament: | 1 x 3 in (76 mm) gun, 6 x 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes |
USS Pickerel (SS-177), a Porpoise-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the pickerel, a young or small pike. Her keel was laid down on 25 March 1935 by the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut. She was launched 7 July 1936 sponsored by Miss Evelyn Standley, and commissioned on 26 January 1937, Lieutenant L. J. Huffman in command.
After shakedown, the new submarine conducted training exercises out of New London, Connecticut until getting underway 26 October 1937 and heading, via Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to transit the Panama Canal 9 November. Joining the Pacific Fleet, Pickerel operated out of San Diego, California, along the West Coast and in Hawaiian waters. Subsequently transferred to the Asiatic Fleet, she prepared for war with a vigorous training schedule in the Philippines.
Upon receiving word of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Pickerel sped to the coast of Indo-China and conducted her first war patrol off Cam Ranh Bay and Tourane Harbor. She tracked a Japanese submarine and a destroyer but lost them in haze and rain squalls before they came in torpedo range. On 19 December, she also missed a small Japanese patrol craft with five torpedoes, before returning to Manila Bay on 29 December.
On her second patrol, from 31 December to 29 January 1942, conducted between Manila and Surabaya, the submarine sank the 2929-ton ex-gunboat Kanko Maru on 10 January 1942. On her third war patrol, from 7 February to 19 March, along the Malay Barrier and her fourth, from 15 April to 6 June, in the Philippines, she failed to score.
Pickerel's fifth war patrol, from 10 July to 26 August, was a voyage from Brisbane, Australia, to Pearl Harbor for refit, with a short patrol in the Mariana Islands, en-route. She damaged a freighter on this run.
On her sixth war patrol, from 22 January to 3 March 1943, she searched among the Kurile Islands on the Tokyo-Kiska traffic lanes. In sixteen attacks, she sank 1990 ton Japanese cargo ship Tateyama Maru and two 35-ton sampans.
She departed Pearl Harbor 18 March 1943 and, after topping off with fuel at Midway Island on 22 March, headed for the eastern coast of northern Honshu and was never heard from again. Pickerel was the first submarine to be lost in the Central Pacific area. Pickerel was struck from the Naval Vessel Register 19 August 1943.
Post-war analysis of Japanese records give conflicting suggestions about Pickerel's final days. The Japanese officially credit Pickerel with sinking 440-ton Submarine Chaser Number 13 on 3 April and 1113-ton cargo ship Fukuei Maru 7 April, and give no official report of her destruction. Those records also describe an action off Shiramuka Lighthouse on northern Honshu on 3 April 1943 in which naval aircraft first bombed an unidentified submarine, then directed minelayer Shiragami and auxiliary submarine chaser Bunzan Maru to the spot, where they dropped twenty-six depth charges. A large quantity of oil floated to the surface. Pickerel was the only American submarine in that area at the time, but she could not both have been sunk on the 3rd and also sunk the cargo ship on the 7th.
Pickerel received three battle stars for World War II service.
See USS Pickerel for other ships of the same name.
References
This article includes information collected from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
| Porpoise-class submarine |
| P-1 Type |
| Porpoise | Pike |
| P-3 Type |
| Shark | Tarpon |
| P-5 Type |
| Perch | Pickerel | Permit | Plunger | Pollack | Pompano |
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List of submarines of the United States Navy |