By James Heinz
Current news media accounts tell of the recent use of kamikaze drone boats to sink ships. A warship built in Michigan was sunk by one of these boats…in 1945.
At the start of World War II, the U.S. Navy felt the need for small vessels to be used to hunt enemy submarines. The Navy then ordered 403 ships of the PC-461 class submarine chaser, of which 343 were completed before war’s end.
Photo at top of page: Defoe Shipbuilding courtesy of Navsource.org
The PC-461 class were made of steel. They displaced 450 long tons full and were 173 feet long and 23 feet wide with a draft of six feet. They were driven by two 1,440 hp diesel engines driving two propellers. They had a top speed of 20 knots (23 mph) and a range of 3,000 miles. They had a crew of 5 officers and 60 enlisted men.
Defoe Shipbuilding in 1944 courtesy of Wikipedia
Their armament varied but usually consisted of one 3”/76mm deck gun forward, one 3”/76mm or one 40mm Bofors gun aft, between three and five 20mm guns next to the bridge and amidships, either two or four K-gun depth charge launchers, and two depth charge racks on the stern.,
One of their sailors described them as “unkind to those who sailed them.” They had the incredible ability to roll 110 degrees and recover. Their ability to roll 20 degrees past horizontal and come back was proven many times in stormy waters.
PC 1129 courtesy of Navsource.org
PC 1129 was launched December 7, 1942, at the Defoe Shipbuilding Company near Saginaw, Mich., a year to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. PC 1129 then sailed across Lake Michigan, through the Chicago waterways into the Illinois River and then down the Mississippi River to New Orleans in the same manner as the submarines built at Manitowoc did described here previously https://wmhs.org/wisconsin-shipbuilders-navy-commissioned-submarines-battled-in-world-war-ii-pacific-theater/ .
Assigned to the Pacific theater of operations, she performed escort duties until January 31, 1945, when she was assigned to shepherd the amphibious landing at Nasugbu on the Philippine Island of Luzon. She served as a landing craft control vessel just like the Sturgeon Bay built PC 1261 did at D-Day as profiled in our blog page https://wmhs.org/on-this-day-a-ship-built-in-wisconsin-led-the-normandy-invasion/
Today kamikaze drone boats are called that because the drone destroys itself and its target. The Japanese kamikaze boats were called that because not only the boat and target was destroyed, the boat’s human pilot also died. The pilots were teenagers recruited because their small size meant they could fit into the boats.
Kamikaze drone boat courtesy of Wikipedia
The kamikaze boats were the seaborne version of the Japanese suicide aircraft, known as “kamikaze”, or “Divine Wind.” The name Shin’yo means “Sea Quake”. The boats were made of plywood, weighed 1.3 tons, and ironically were propelled by a Chevrolet straight 6 cylinder auto engine that could drive them at 30 knots/35 mph. They were armed with a 300 kg/660 lb explosive warhead.
After dark on the night of January 31, 1945, PC 1129 moved offshore with other vessels to guard against attack by the Japanese suicide drone boats. At 9:20 pm, a full moon rose. At 1030 pm, PC 1129 reported multiple fast moving targets in the area. The drone boats in action were described by the History of US Naval Operations in World War II: “They showed no wake, looked like a swarm of water bugs in the moonlight, and being built of wood, did not register on…radar screens.”
Kamikaze drone boat courtesy of Wikipedia
At about 11 pm, PC 1129 found herself surrounded by a swarm of over 20 of the suicide boats. She destroyed two of them, but one of them crashed into her aft starboard side and detonated.
The explosion blew a huge hole in her side and blew some of the crew overboard. It knocked out her propellers and steering, and ignited several fires both on the ship and on her diesel fuel that had leaked out onto the surface of the sea. The fires illuminated her to the other suicide boats, and so at 11 pm her captain, R. A. Matthews, ordered her crew to abandon her. She then rolled over, broke in half, and sank stern first, with one or two lives lost.
PC 1129 was one of nine U.S. ships sunk by the over 9,000 suicide boats built.
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James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
