May 22nd, 1944. Southwest Pacific, north of the Admiral T Islands, 150 ft below the surface. The commander of Japanese submarine AO 106 has a problem he cannot explain. His hydrophone operator has been tracking a surface vessel for 11 minutes. A single destroyer type contact moving at 15 knots on a course that will bring it directly over his position.

This is not unusual. Destroyer escorts patrol these waters regularly. What is unusual is the report he received six hours ago from fleet command. Submarine I16 operating in this same area had failed to make her scheduled contact report. She was 3 days overdue. She was presumed sunk. The cause was listed as American anti-ubmarine forces.

A destroyer escort. He does not yet know it is the same ship. His doctrine tells him to go deep, go silent, and let the escort pass. An escort that does not have a firm sonar contact will continue on its patrol track. A submarine that holds position and hold silence will survive. He has used this tactic before.

He has survived before. He orders the crew to rig for silent running and takes RO106 down to 200 ft. The escort above him is USS England. She has had her sonar on RO106 since before RO106’s hydrophone operator detected her. Her sonar operator has been tracking the contact for 19 minutes. Her commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Walton Pendleton, has been watching the bearing drift on his plot and calculating the firing solution for the hedgehog mortar on her bow.

He does not need RO106 to stop moving. He needs her to hold her course for another 4 minutes. She does. England fires her hedgehog at 1423. The 24 projectiles enter the water in a circular pattern 275 yd ahead of the ship. 11 seconds later, three of them detonate against RO106’s pressure hull at 200 ft. The detonations are heard on England’s hydrophones as three distinct sharp reports followed by the sound of a submarine breaking apart.

That is the second Japanese submarine USS England has sunk in 4 days. That is the paradox at the heart of this story. How did a 1 2 5 3 ton destroyer escort, a ship the United States Navy had built in the hundreds precisely because he expected to lose them, sink six Japanese submarines in 12 days, produced the most remarkable anti-ubmarine record in the history of naval warfare and then quietly disappear from the active list.

While the promise made in her honor was forgotten by the institution that made it. The destroyer escort was not a prestige posting. The United States Navy built 565 of them between 1943 and 1945, and the volume of production was itself a statement about how the Navy expected to use them, not as vessels whose individual survival mattered strategically, but as replaceable components in a defense network that could absorb losses and continue functioning.

A fleet destroyer cost approximately $6 million and took 18 months to build. A destroyer escort cost $3.5 million and took 9 months. It was slower, 21 knots against the Fletcher’s 36.5, carried fewer weapons, had a smaller crew, and had a shorter range. It was designed for one mission, convoy escort in the Atlantic, where German Ubot were attempting to sever the supply lines between America and Britain.

By 1944, the Atlantic campaign had largely been decided. The combination of improved radar, improved sonar, the hedgehog headthrowing mortar, and the breaking of German naval codes had shifted the balance of the Battle of the Atlantic decisively in the Allies favor. Destroyer escorts were now available in numbers, and the Pacific Fleet, which had spent 2 years managing submarine threats with ships designed for other missions, began receiving them in quantity.

They were assigned to escort carrier task groups, convoy protection in the Philippine Sea, and anti-ubmarine patrol in the waters south and west of the main island chains, where Japanese submarines were attempting to interdict American supply lines to the forward operating areas. The Japanese submarine threat in the Pacific in mid 1944 was different in character from the German threat in the Atlantic.

Japan’s submarines were primarily oriented toward fleet operations, tracking American carrier groups, attacking warships, occasionally delivering supplies to besieged garrisons rather than the merchant warfare that had made German yubot strategically decisive. This doctrinal choice was a strategic miscalculation of the First Order, and it is discussed in the context of the submarine campaign elsewhere in this series.

What it meant in practice was that Japanese submarines in the Pacific in 1944 were operating in relatively defined areas on relatively predictable missions in waters where American anti-ubmarine forces could concentrate their effort. The specific context for England’s 12 days was operation ago, Japan’s attempt to resupply the garrison on Byak Island in New Guinea against the American landing that had begun on May 27th, 1944.

As part of the AGO preparations, the Imperial Japanese Navy deployed a picket line of submarines across the approaches to the Philippine Sea. Approximately a dozen submarines positioned in a scouting line designed to provide early warning of American fleet movements and to attack American ships approaching the operational area.

The submarines were spaced roughly 60 to 80 mi apart along the line, each one holding a designated patrol area and reporting contact reports on a scheduled radio cycle. It was in conception a reasonable defensive measure. It had one critical vulnerability. The submarines were in fixed positions holding station to perform their scouting function, which meant they were not moving freely through open ocean, but were instead occupying predictable areas for extended periods. A surface hunter with good sonar and a hedgehog mortar, working systematically along the line, could attack each submarine in sequence while it was still attempting to hold its patrol position. That is exactly what England did. But to understand how she did it and why she did it better than any ship before or since, you need to understand the weapon she used. USS England was an Edsil class destroyer escort commissioned on December 10th,

1943 at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Yard in San Francisco. Her full load displacement was 1,253 tons. Her length was 306 ft. Her compliment was 186 officers and men, roughly half the crew of a Fletcher class destroyer and less than a fifth of a cruiser. Her top speed was 21 knots, achieved on two General Motors diesel electric engines producing 6,000 shaft horsepower.

She was in almost every physical parameter a small ship. She was built to be replaceable. The Navy was building them at a rate that implied it expected to replace them. Her armament was adequate for escort work and well suited as events demonstrated for the specific task of hunting submerged submarines in shallow Pacific waters.

Three 3in 50 caliber guns provided anti-aircraft and limited surface capability. One 1.1 in quad mount and eight 20mm Oelican cannon extended the anti-aircraft envelope. Eight torpedo tubes of standard 21-in configuration were fitted, but rarely used in the anti-ubmarine role. What mattered was the hedgehog on her bow and the depth charge racks on her stern.

The combination of a headthrowing contact weapon and trailing barrage weapon that represented the current state of American anti-ubmarine doctrine in 1944. The hedgehog mortar was covered in the context of the broader anti-ubmarine campaign in the squid discussion in the British naval history series from which this channel draws its analytical framework.

For this script’s purposes, the essential facts are these. The hedgehog fired 24 contactfused projectiles in a circular pattern roughly 40 yard in diameter, landing 275 yd ahead of the attacking ship. Each projectile weighed 65 lb and carried 35 lb of torpex explosive. The critical operational advantage over depth charges was the elimination of blind time.

The period during a depth charge attack when the submarine passed beneath the attacking ship and disappeared from sonar. The hedgehog attacked while the sonar contact was still held ahead of the ship rather than below it. A miss produced no explosion, which meant the sonar operator knew immediately that the attack had failed and could prosecute another pass without the confusion produced by depth charge detonations.

A hit produced an unmistakable explosion at depth, audible on the ship’s hydrophones, followed by the secondary sounds of flooding and structural failure. England’s sonar operator in May 1944 was Sonarman Firstclass John Gallagher. The records of the 12-day engagement do not give Gallagher the prominence his performance warrants because sonar operators appear in action reports as equipment operators rather than as individuals whose skill determined outcomes.

What the action reports do record in the precise language of naval documentation is that England obtained sonar contact on each of her six targets, maintained that contact through the approach, fired the hedgehog at a solution that Pendleton judged acceptable, and achieved at least one hit in each engagement. The fleetwide kill ratio for hedgehog attacks in 1944 was approximately one kill per 5.5 attacks.

England’s kill ratio across the 12-day period was six kills in eight hedgehog attacks. The ratio implies a standard of sonar operator skill and attack geometry that the fleet average did not approach. Pendleton’s approach to each engagement followed the same sequence. Contact established by sonar.

Range and bearing plotted continuously on the attack table. Course and speed of the target calculated from bearing drift. Approach run executed to place England ahead of the target’s track. Hedgehog fired at the optimal moment in the approach, the point at which the fire control solution was most accurate, and the target had least time to maneuver before the projectiles entered the water.

Each engagement lasted between 20 minutes and 2 hours from initial contact to confirmed kill. None of them lasted longer. None of them ended without a kill. The depth charges on England’s stern racks were largely unused across the 12 days. Depth charges were the backup weapon, the area denial tool for an attack that had not achieved a hedgehog solution, or the finishing weapon for a submarine already damaged and attempting to surface.

England did not need finishing weapons. Her hedgehog solutions were terminal. One additional detail that the action reports record and that bears stating precisely, England was not operating alone during the 12 days, she was part of a hunter killer group that included USS Rabby DE698 and USS George D 697.

Two other destroyer escorts operating in the same area on the same mission. Ra and George attacked contacts during the same period. They did not kill any. England, working from the same intelligence, the same sonar conditions, and the same weapons, killed six. The difference between England’s record and her companionship’s records was not equipment. It was execution.

May 19th, 1944. The first contact. England was operating with Rabian George northeast of the Admiral T Islands when her sonar operator obtained contact on a submerged submarine at 8:14. The contact was evaluated as definite. The bearing was steady. The Doppler shift consistent with a submarine moving at slow speed.

The echo quality characteristic of a steel hull at 150 to 200 ft. Pendleton brought England onto the attack track and fired the hedgehog at 9:03. The pattern entered the water at 275 yd ahead of the ship. 14 seconds later, two detonations were heard at depth, followed by a sustained series of secondary explosions consistent with the submarine’s ammunition and fuel detonating as the hole failed.

Japanese submarine I-16 had been commissioned in 1939 and had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. One of the five type D submarines that I16 had carried to within launching range of the harbor before the strike. She had survived 5 years of Pacific warfare. She did not survive England’s first hedgehog attack.

The group continued its patrol. Fleet Command received England’s contact report and kill assessment and directed the three destroyer escorts to continue northeast along the projected position of the Japanese submarine picket line. The intelligence picture suggested at least seven submarines were holding positions across the line.

England had found the first. May 22nd, 3 days after the first kill. The scene described in The Hook occurred at 14:23. RO106 had been holding her patrol position for 4 days, making scheduled contact reports, unaware that the destroyer escort responsible for I-16’s disappearance was working up the line toward her.

England’s sonar picked her up at 1404. The approach was executed with the same precision as the first engagement. Three hedgehog hits at 200 ft. The secondary explosions were audible for 6 minutes after the initial detonations. Pendleton filed his second kill report. May 23rd, the day after RO106. RO104 was 11 mi north of RO106’s last reported position.

She had received no word of RO106’s failure to report. The scheduled contact cycle had not yet expired when England found her. England’s sonar obtained contact at 1117. Two hedgehog hits at 9:47 on the second attack pass. The first pass produced no detonations. Pendleton reset and attacked again within 22 minutes.

RO104 joined I16 and RO106 on the seafloor northeast of the Admiral Tees. Three submarines in 5 days. No ship in the history of naval warfare had done this. The record that England was building existed without precedent and therefore without a framework for understanding what was happening. Pendleton’s action reports were precise and accurate and entirely without drama.

Contact established, approach executed, attack fired, detonations heard, submarine assessed sunk. The language was the same for the third kill as it had been for the first. The language did not have a register for what the accumulating record represented because no such register had ever been needed.

Fleet command, reading the kill reports as they arrived, responded by directing Rab and George to concentrate their searches in areas England had not yet covered. The intention was to give the companionships opportunity to add to the group’s total. The companionships found contacts. They did not kill them.

England continued northeast. May 26th. R16. England obtained contact at 8:55 and fired at 10:12. Two hits. R O 116 had been on the surface charging her batteries when England’s radar picked her up at 15,000 yd an hour before the sonar contact. She crash dived when she detected the approaching escort, but the dive changed her position and depth rather than her presence.

The sonar held her through the dive. The hedgehog found her at the depth she had reached. Kill number four. May 27th, R108. One day after RO16, RO108 had heard the explosions from RO 116’s position. The sound of a submarine being killed travels considerable distances underwater, and the Japanese submarines on the picket line were now aware that something was working up through their positions from the south.

R108’s commander attempted to evade by moving north at best submerged speed, which was 8 knots in the direction away from the last known position of the American surface forces. England’s sonar found her at 14,000 yd during a wide search pattern at 1344. The approach took 90 minutes because RO108 was moving and the firing solution required more development time than the stationary targets had.

England fired at 1519. One hit. R108 sank in 800 ft of water. Five submarines, 9 days. The picket line that Japan had deployed to provide early warning of American fleet movements no longer existed as a functional force. The submarines that remained alive were aware that an American escort was hunting them.

They were attempting to evade. Evasion required movement and movement at slow submerged speed in waters where England’s sonar was operating produced the bearing drift that sonar operators used to classify contacts and develop solutions. May 31st. R105, the sixth engagement, was the most contested in the action reports.

England obtained contact and conducted the initial attack. Two other destroyer escorts were now operating in the area, and one of them, USS Hazelwood, also attacked the contact. The kill credit was disputed. The action reports from multiple ships claimed hits, and the subsequent analysis divided partial credit.

The standard historical account awards the primary kill to England, recognizing that her initial attack inflicted the damage that made RO105 non-operational before the second ship’s attack. The dispute is worth noting because it is the only engagement in the 12 days where England’s exclusive credit is not absolute.

It changes nothing about the record. Six Japanese submarines 12 days. I16 RO106 RO104 RO105. Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations, received the final kill report on June 1st, 1944. He had spent the war making precise assessments of ship performance and tactical capability. He had not previously seen a report like this.

One, he issued a message to the Pacific Fleet that day. It read in part, “There will always be an England in the United States Navy.” The comparison between England’s record and the expected performance of a destroyer escort in 1944 requires stating the baseline precisely because the deviation from that baseline is what makes the record comprehensible as an achievement rather than simply as a number.

The United States Navy’s own anti-ubmarine warfare analysis compiled from fleet performance data across 1943 and 1944 established that a destroyer escort conducting a standard patrol could expect to obtain sonar contact on a submerged submarine approximately once every 12 patrol days and to achieve a kill from that contact approximately once in 5 to six attacks.

A single patrol lasting 30 days might therefore be expected statistically to produce 2.5 contacts and 0.4 to 0.5 kills. A ship that returned from a 30-day patrol having sunk one submarine had exceeded the fleet average by a significant margin. A ship that sank 6 in 12 days had deviated from the expected performance curve by a factor that the statistical model did not have a category for.

The comparison against other notable anti-ubmarine records reinforces the scale of the deviation. HMS Starling, the most successful British anti-ubmarine vessel of the war, sank or shared in the sinking of 14 Ubot across multiple patrols spanning more than a year of sustained anti-ubmarine operations.

Her record is the highest total for any single vessel in the Battle of the Atlantic. England’s record of six in 12 days, while lower in total, was achieved in a single continuous operation with no relief period, no resupply between engagements, and no precedent from any navy for the pace of the kill sequence. The Japanese comparison is the one that most directly addresses the question of whether England’s record reflected exceptional skill or exceptional opportunity.

The six submarines she killed were not poorly handled ships. I-16 had been operational for 5 years and had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack. The Aroclass submarines were midsize fleet boats with experienced crews operating on a mission they understood. They employed standard Japanese doctrine for evading surface anti-ubmarine attack, deep, silent, holding position.

That doctrine failed against a ship whose sonar could hold them through silence and whose hedgehog could reach them at depth before they heard it fired. USS England was decommissioned on October 15th, 1945. The war had ended 2 months earlier. She was struck from the Navy list and sold for scrapping in 1946.

The record she held six submarines in 12 days, the most productive anti-ubmarine patrol ever conducted by a single vessel in any navy was documented in the official histories and then placed in the footnote tier of Pacific war narratives where it has remained. Admiral King’s promise was honored once.

USS England DLG22, a guided missile cruiser later redesated CG22, was commissioned on December 7th, 1963, Pearl Harbor Day, 22 years after the attack. She served for 47 years deployed to the Persian Gulf, the Western Pacific, and the Mediterranean, and accumulated a distinguished operational record entirely independent of her name’s origin.

She was decommissioned on December 10th, 2011, by coincidence, the anniversary of the original England’s commissioning, and sold for scrapping in 2014. There is currently no USS England in the United States Navy’s active fleet or reserve. The standard process by which ship names are allocated and reallocated does not distinguish between names that carry specific historical commitments and names that do not.

Names cycle back into availability when hulls are decommissioned and removed from the list. New hulls are assigned names from the available pool based on criteria that include geography, congressional preferences, and the names of deceased naval personnel. A name attached to a record that the institution has not actively maintained in public memory competes for reallocation against every other available name on the same terms.

England was not actively maintained in public memory. The name became available. Return to the waters northeast of the Admiral Tees. May 22nd, 1944. R106’s commander is listening to the sound of England’s screws receding to the south. The hedgehog projectiles are in the water.

He does not yet know that he has gone deep and silent and is waiting for the escort to pass. He has survived attacks before by doing exactly this. The doctrine works. It has worked for 4 years of Pacific warfare. It requires the attacking ship to lose contact during the approach to drop charges at an estimated position to hope the estimate is correct.

The doctrine was built around that requirement. England does not lose contact. Her sonar holds Ror 106. Through the dive, through the silence, through the depth, her hedgehog fires while the contact bearing is still updating on the plot. The projectiles take 11 seconds to reach 200 ft. R O 106’s commander has 11 seconds in which the doctrine that has kept him alive for 4 years is still technically in effect.

Then it isn’t. Admiral King wrote his promise on June 1st, 1944. There will always be an England in the United States Navy. He had spent the war reading performance reports. He knew what the numbers meant. He knew that six submarines in 12 days was not an incremental improvement on fleet performance.

It was a different category of outcome. He wanted that category remembered. The second England served for 47 years. She was scrapped in 2014. The record has not been broken. It has not been approached. No ship in any navy has sunk six submarines in 12 days before or since. King’s promise was the right instinct and the wrong instrument.

Institutional memory does not survive on promises. It survives on the continuous deliberate decision to keep the name alive to put it on a hull, commission it, send it to sea, and make the connection between the name and the record visible enough that the next generation of sailors knows what the name means.

That decision was made once, then it was not made again. Six submarines, 12 days. A promise that lasted 67 years before the last ship bearing the name was sold for scrap. England is still the record. England is no longer the