At 23:45 on October 24th, 1944, Commander Richard Okaane stood on the bridge of USS Tang in the Taiwan Strait, watching his radar operator track a Japanese convoy 1500 yardd ahead. 33 years old, five war patrols, 33 enemy ships destroyed. The convoy ahead held seven transports, three tankers, and five destroyer escorts, moving supplies toward Lee.

 Tang had already fired 22 torpedoes that night. 22 hits, two tankers burning, three transports dead in the water, one destroyer blown apart. Okaane had two torpedoes left, then home to Pearl Harbor, then a hero’s welcome, then promotion. The most successful submarine commander in the United States Navy was about to become a legend.

 But Tang was hunting with a weapon that had a fatal flaw. The Mark1 18 electric torpedo had revolutionized submarine warfare in 1943. Unlike the older Mark1, it ran silent. No wake of bubbles, no exhaust pointing back to the firing position. Japanese lookouts couldn’t see it coming. Japanese escorts couldn’t follow the trail.

 American submarines could attack from closer range, fire more torpedoes, kill more ships. The problem was inside the guidance system, a defect in the gyroscope. Less than 1% of Mark 18s malfunctioned, but when they did, the torpedo turned, curved, circled back toward the submarine that fired it. The Navy called them circular runs. Submariners called them boomerangs.

 Two American submarines had already been lost. USS Tully in March. Identity of the second still classified. Both sunk by their own torpedoes. Both crews dead except for one survivor from Tel who spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp. Okaane knew the risk. Every submarine commander in the Pacific knew.

But the Mark1 18’s advantages outweighed the danger. Silent approach, no visible track, higher kill rate. The statistics were clear. Mark1 18s had sunk several thousand tons of Japanese shipping. The circular run problem was rare, unpredictable, unavoidable. Tang had used Mark1 18s on all five patrols.

 Never a malfunction, never a circular run. 116,454 tons of enemy shipping sent to the bottom, more than any other American submarine. Okaane’s tactics were textbook perfect. Surface attacks at night, close range, multiple targets, escape at full speed. His third patrol into the Yellow Sea had sunk 10 ships, more than any other submarine patrol in the war.

 His crew called him the best skipper in the service. Admiral Lockwood called him the submarine force’s most outstanding officer. Now Tang was finishing her fifth patrol. 13 ships sunk in the last two days. Seven tonight alone. Okaane had maneuvered Tang through the middle of the convoy. Fired from both sides. Dodge two tankers that tried to ram him, watched them collide with each other instead, blown up a destroyer at less than 1,000 yards.

 The most devastating attack any American submarine had ever executed. Two torpedoes remained, tubes loaded, gyros checked, batteries charged. One transport still afloat, stopped dead, burning, listing to port. Okaane wanted to finish her. One torpedo would do it. Save the last one for the voyage home. Tang carried 24 torpedoes.

 She would return to Pearl Harbor with 24 kills. If you want to see how Okaane’s final attack turned out, please hit that like button. It helps us share more forgotten stories from World War II. Subscribe if you haven’t already. Back to Okaane. The crew loaded torpedo number 23 into the forward tubes. Okaane checked the setup.

Range 800 yd. Speed setting 29 knots. Depth 6 ft. Spread angle zero. Straight shot. The transport wasn’t moving. The Mark 18 would run hot, straight, and normal. 40 seconds to impact. Then one torpedo left, then home. Tang turned to firing position at 2352. The transport silhouette filled the periscope. Okaane gave the order.

 The forward torpedo room reported ready. The Mark1 18 slid from tube number three, ran straight. The crew counted seconds. 20 30 impact. The transport’s bow lifted, broke, settled. 34 ships destroyed. Okaane ordered the final torpedo loaded. Tube number four, the last Mark1 18 on board.

 The crew performed the standard check. Battery voltage normal, gyro spin proper, propeller free, depth setting verified, everything perfect, everything ready. At 2354 on October 25th, the final Mach 18 torpedo was locked in tube 4. Okaane studied the burning transport through his binoculars. The ship was settling by the stern, already dying.

 But submarine doctrine was clear. Finish every target. Leave nothing afloat. The Japanese had pulled survivors from seemingly dead ships before. Towed damaged vessels to port, repaired them, sent them back to sea. Tang’s torpedo officer reported final checks complete. The Mark1 18 was ready. Okaane calculated the solution.

The transport had drifted 300 yards closer. Range now 500 yards. Point blank distance. The torpedo would cross the gap in 20 seconds. Okaane gave the order to fire. The Mark1 18 left the tube at 2355. The torpedo ran straight for 3 seconds. Then the propeller wash appeared at the surface. The Mark1 18 broached.

 Broke through the water. porpist. The weapon wasn’t running at 6 ft depth. It was running at zero, skipping across the surface like a stone. The gyroscope had failed. Okaane saw it immediately. The torpedo curved left, hard left, turning in a wide arc, coming back, a circular run. The 1% malfunction.

 The defect that had killed Tel and the classified boat now happening to Tang. Okaane shouted for emergency speed. Tang’s diesel engines roared to maximum power. The submarine began to turn. Full right rudder. The crew on the bridge saw the torpedoes wake. A white line in the black water curving toward them 300 yd away, then 200, then 100.

 Tang’s propellers bit deep. The submarine fishtailed. tried to swing her stern away from the incoming weapon, but a 312 ft submarine doesn’t turn like a destroyer. Tang needed time, distance. She had neither. The Mark1 18 completed its circle in 20 seconds. It struck Tang’s stern on the port side, detonated against the after torpedo room.

575 lbs of torpex explosive tore through the hole plating. The blast was catastrophic. The after torpedo room flooded instantly. Then the after engine room. Then the maneuvering room. Three compartments gone in 15 seconds. 23 men trapped aft died before they could react. The explosion threw Ocaine and eight other men from the bridge into the Taiwan Strait.

 The submarine stern dropped. Tang went down by the tail. Emergency alarms screamed through the remaining compartments. 60 men were still alive inside the submarine. Most were forward in the control room, the forward engine room, the forward torpedo room. They felt the deck tilt, heard the roar of water flooding aft, knew immediately what had happened.

 Their own torpedo had killed them. Tang settled on the bottom at 180 ft depth. The pressure hull held. The forward compartments stayed dry, but the men inside were trapped. No surface ship knew their position. No rescue was coming. The only way out was up through 180 ft of black water in the middle of a combat zone with Japanese destroyers overhead dropping depth charges.

 The crew had one option, the forward escape trunk. A small vertical chamber designed for exactly this situation. But escaping from 180 ft was beyond normal training. Submarine school taught escape procedures from 50 ft, maybe 75. 180 ft meant four times the pressure, four times the risk. Lungs could rupture, blood vessels could burst, men could black out during ascent, drown 10 ft from the surface.

 And Tang’s crew had to use a device that had never been tested in combat. A breathing apparatus invented 15 years earlier called the Momson lung. Named after the officer who designed it after watching submariners die trapped in USS4 in 1927. The device was a rubber bag filled with oxygen. Recycled exhaled air. Removed carbon dioxide with soda lime.

Gave a man maybe 10 minutes of breathing gas. Maybe enough to reach the surface from 180 ft. Maybe not. 30 men crowded into the forward torpedo room. Publications were burned. Classified documents destroyed. No information could reach the Japanese. The men waited for the death charging to stop. Waited for the electrical fire in the forward battery to die down.

 Waited for their chance to escape a tomb 180 ft below the Pacific. The forward battery fire started at 0 on October 25th. The Japanese destroyer escort overhead was dropping death charges. Not deep charges, shallow ones, harassing charges. The explosions rocked Tang’s hull, cracked battery cells, released chlorine gas, started an electrical fire that began heating the forward battery compartment.

 The 30 men in the forward torpedo room could smell the smoke, could feel the heat building through the bulkhead. Paint on the interior wall began to discolor, then bubble, then run down in melted streaks. The temperature inside the torpedo room climbed past 100° F, then 110, then 120. The crew removed their shirts, drank the last water, tried to breathe shallow.

The air was thick, hot, heavy with carbon dioxide from 30 men exhaling in a sealed space. Some men were already struggling, gasping. The weakest would die before the escape attempt even began, but they couldn’t leave yet. The Japanese destroyer was still overhead, still pinging with active sonar, still dropping occasional charges.

 Any man who reached the surface would be spotted immediately, captured or machine gunned in the water. The crew had to wait. Had to hope the destroyer would leave. Had to survive the heat and the smoke and the failing air long enough to make the attempt. The Mson lung equipment was stored in lockers along the torpedo room walls.

 Each device consisted of a rubberized canvas bag about the size of a small pillow. Inside was a canister of soda lime to scrub carbon dioxide, a valve to admit oxygen, two breathing tubes with one-way valves, one tube for inhaling, one for exhaling. The bag hung around the neck and strapped around the waist.

 When inflated, it provided flotation at the surface if the user reached the surface. The problem was training. Most of Tang’s crew had practiced with MSON lungs exactly once during submarine school in a training tank from 50 ft depth in calm water with instructors watching with medical personnel standing by. This would be nothing like training.

 This would be 180 ft in combat conditions in the dark with no help coming. The procedure was complex. Equalize pressure in the escape trunk. Flood the chamber slowly. Wait for pressure to match the outside water. Open the outer hatch. Enter the water. Breathe from the moms lung. Ascend slowly. Exhale continuously to prevent lung rupture. Don’t hold your breath.

Don’t ascend too fast. Don’t black out. Don’t panic. Reach the surface. Survive until rescue. Simple in theory. Nearly impossible in practice. The heat in the torpedo room continued to climb. 130° 140. Men were collapsing, passing out from heat exhaustion and bad air. The stronger crew members dragged them to the escape trunk area.

 Tried to keep them conscious. Tried to keep them ready. Because once the escape started, it couldn’t stop. The men who went first would use up the oxygen in the MSN lungs. The men who went last would have almost nothing left. Timing was everything. At 0530, the Japanese destroyer sonar pings faded. The depth charging stopped.

 The escort was leaving. Moving away to rejoin the convoy or searching for other submarines. The crew waited another 30 minutes, made certain, then began preparations for escape. 13 men were selected to go. The strongest, the youngest, the ones most likely to survive. The others were too weak, too injured, too unconscious.

 They would stay in the torpedo room, die when the air ran out, die when the battery fire burned through, die in the dark at the bottom of the Taiwan Strait. The first man entered the escape trunk at 0600. He wore his momson lung around his neck. The breathing bag was inflated. The soda lime canister was fresh.

 He carried nothing else. No survival gear, no rations, no signaling devices. Just the rubber bag and the hope it would work. The escape trunk hatch sealed behind him. Water began flooding the small chamber. Cold sea water rushing in from below. The pressure built 30 lb per square in. 40 50 60. The pressure at 180 ft depth is nearly 80 lb per square in.

 More than five times surface pressure. Enough to collapse lungs if a man breathed wrong. Enough to force nitrogen into the bloodstream. Cause the bends. Kill in minutes. The outer hatch opened at 06:15. The first man pushed himself out into the Taiwan straight, started ascending, breathing from the Mson lung, exhaling continuously through his nose, the rubber bag recycling his air, removing carbon dioxide, providing oxygen, keeping him alive as he rose through 180 ft of black water.

 The ascent took 3 minutes, maybe four. The man couldn’t see, couldn’t tell how fast he was rising, couldn’t judge distance, just kept breathing, kept exhaling, kept ascending. His ears screamed with pressure changes. His chest felt compressed. His head pounded, but he kept rising. The Momson lung kept working. At 0619, he broke the surface.

He was alive. The first man out, the first to prove it could be done. He inflated the flotation portion of the Mson lung, started treading water, looked around for other survivors, saw nothing but darkness and waves. The Japanese convoy was gone. The burning ships had sunk. No lights, no vessels, just empty ocean and the first hints of dawn on the eastern horizon.

 The second man left the escape trunk at 0622, then the third at 0625, then the fourth. The process was working. Men were reaching the surface. The Momson lung was functioning. The device that had never been used in combat was saving lives. By 0700, 13 men had exited the forward torpedo room. 13 had made the attempt.

 13 had entered the escape trunk. 13 had flooded the chamber. 13 had opened the outer hatch. 13 had started the ascent. Only eight reached the surface alive. Five died during the climb. The reasons varied. One man’s momson lung failed. The soda lime canister stopped scrubbing carbon dioxide. He breathed poison, lost consciousness, drowned at 60 ft depth.

Another man held his breath during a scent. His lungs ruptured from expanding air. He died 50 ft from the surface. A third panicked, ripped off his momson lung, tried to swim up without breathing apparatus, didn’t make it. The other two deaths remain unexplained. They left the submarine. They had working moms lungs.

 They should have survived, but they never reached the surface. Perhaps they ascended too fast. Perhaps they got nitrogen narcosis. Perhaps they simply gave up. Their bodies were never recovered. Of the eight who reached the surface, three were too injured to swim. They had made the ascent, survived 180 ft of water pressure, broken through to air and daylight, but they couldn’t hold on, couldn’t tread water, couldn’t stay afloat.

 They drifted away from the group, drowned within sight of the other survivors. Five men from the escape trunk remained. Five out of 13 who attempted, five out of 30 who had been alive in the forward torpedo room, five out of 87 who had been aboard Tang when the torpedo struck. Commander Okaane was already at the surface. He had been thrown from the bridge when the Mark 18 detonated, spent 8 hours in the water, swimming, treading, waiting.

 Three other men from the bridge were with him. They had seen Tang go down, seen the stern drop, seen the bow rise briefly, then slip under. They knew the submarine was lost. Knew most of the crew was dead. Didn’t know if anyone would escape. When the men from the forward torpedo room began surfacing, Okaane swam toward them. The group came together.

 Nine men total. Nine survivors. Nine Americans floating in the Taiwan Strait at dawn on October 25th. Nine submariners who had just experienced the only combat use of the Mson lung in World War II. At 0800, they spotted a ship on the horizon, moving toward them, getting closer. Hope surged. Rescue was coming.

 They waved, shouted, tried to signal. The vessel approached. 500 yd, 300, 200. Close enough to see the flag. It was a Japanese frigot. And on her deck were survivors from the ships Tang had sunk the night before. burned men, wounded men, angry men who had watched their vessels explode, who had seen their shipmates die, who had been pulled from burning oil and sinking transports, men who knew exactly what had killed their convoy.

 They were about to meet the submarine crew responsible. The Japanese frigot stopped engines 50 yards from the survivors. Crew members lowered cargo nets over the side, began pulling the Americans from the water. came aboard first, then the other eight. Exhausted, hypothermic, covered in fuel oil. They collapsed on the deck, expected medical treatment, expected to be taken below as prisoners of war, expected to survive.

 Then the Japanese merchant marine survivors saw them. These were the burned men from the tankers Tang had torpedoed, the wounded from the transports, the oil soaked sailors who had watched their ships explode and sink, who had spent hours in the water themselves, who had lost friends and shipmates. Some had thirdderee burns covering half their bodies.

 Some had broken bones from explosions. All of them knew these nine Americans had killed their convoy. The beating started immediately. Kicks to the ribs, punches to the face, rifle butts to the back. The Japanese merchant sailors were in a fury. Their ships were gone. Their cargo was lost. Their mission had failed. And here were the men responsible, lying helpless on the deck, unable to fight back, unable to escape. Okain took the worst of it.

 He was the commander, the man in charge, the one who had ordered the attacks. The merchant sailors focused their rage on him, kicked him repeatedly in the stomach, struck him across the head with a rifle stock, left him bleeding and semi-concious on the deck. The Japanese naval crew aboard the frigot eventually intervened, pulled the merchant survivors away, separated them from the Americans, but the damage was done.

Okaane had broken ribs, a fractured skull, internal bleeding. Two other Tang survivors had concussions. One had a broken jaw, another had lost teeth. All nine were injured beyond their initial wounds from the sinking. The frigot took them to Formosa, then to Kong, then by train to Taipei, then by ship to Japan.

The journey took 10 days. 10 days without adequate food, without medical care, without clean water. The nine Americans were kept in a cargo hold, given rice twice daily, given beatings when the guards felt like it, given nothing that resembled humane treatment under the Geneva Convention. On November 4th, they arrived at Ouna, a secret interrogation facility north of Tokyo.

 The Japanese Navy operated Ofuna outside the normal prisoner of war system. The Red Cross knew nothing about it. No records were kept. No notifications were sent. Men who entered Ouna simply disappeared from official existence. The conditions were designed to break prisoners psychologically. Solitary confinement, starvation rations, constant interrogation, sleep deprivation, beatings for any infraction.

 The goal was to extract intelligence about American submarine operations, tactics, technology, patrol areas, radio codes, anything that could help the Japanese Navy fight back against the submarine campaign that was strangling their empire. Okain gave them nothing. Neither did his crew. They provided name, rank, and serial number.

Nothing more. The interrogators tried everything. threatened execution, promised better treatment, used torture, got nowhere. The tank survivors had been trained for this, had expected capture was possible, had prepared mentally for interrogation. They held out. After 2 months at Ofuna, the nine Americans were transferred to Omorei, a regular prisoner of war camp near Tokyo.

 The conditions improved slightly. More food, less torture, contact with other American prisoners. But Omorei was still a brutal place. Forced labor, inadequate shelter, disease, malnutrition, guards who beat prisoners for entertainment. The tank survivors learned they were special prisoners. The Japanese considered submarine crews to be war criminals.

 American submarines had attacked merchant shipping without restriction since December 1941, had sunk hundreds of cargo vessels, had killed thousands of Japanese merchant sailors. The submarine campaign violated Japanese interpretation of international law. Submariners were not legal combatants. They were pirates, murderers, subject to execution if Japan chose.

 Okain and his crew lived with that threat every day, wondering if this would be the day the Japanese decided to make an example. To execute American submariners as revenge for the merchant fleet losses, to show the world what happened to submarine crews who attack civilian vessels. Winter came to Japan.

 December, January, February. The cold was brutal. The prisoners had thin clothing, inadequate blankets, no heat in the barracks. Men died from pneumonia, from tuberculosis, from starvation complicated by freezing temperatures. The Tang survivors barely held on. Then in March 1945, the B-29 started coming.

 American bombers hitting Tokyo, hitting the industrial areas around Omorei. The prisoners could see the formations overhead, could see the fires spreading across the city, could hear the explosions. Liberation felt close, but it also felt dangerous. American bombs didn’t distinguish between Japanese factories and prisoner of war camps.

By August 1945, Omorei prisoner of war camp was surrounded by ruins. American firebombing had destroyed most of Tokyo. The raids came day and night. High explosive bombs, incendiaries. The city burned. The prisoners watched from behind wire fences, trapped between hoping for liberation and fearing an American bomb would kill them before the war ended.

 On August 6th, the guards at Omorei became agitated. Something had happened. Something significant. The prisoners heard rumors. A single bomb had destroyed an entire city. Hiroshima. Impossible. No bomb could do that. But the guards were frightened, distracted, less brutal than usual. 3 days later, another city, Nagasaki. Another impossible bomb.

 The guards stopped beating prisoners, stopped forcing work details, started preparing to abandon the camp. The war was ending. Everyone could feel it. On August 15th, Emperor Hirohito’s voice came through radio speakers across Japan. The surrender announcement. The war was over. Japan had lost. American forces would occupy the country.

 Prisoner of war camps would be liberated. The nine Tang survivors had made it, had survived the sinking, the beatings on the frigot, the interrogations at Ofuna, the starvation at Omorei, the bombing of Tokyo. 10 months as prisoners of war. They had outlasted the Japanese Empire. American forces reached Omorei on August 29th.

 Navy personnel, marine guards, medical teams. They came through the gates, started processing prisoners, started evacuation. The Tang survivors were identified immediately. Submarine crews were priority cases, high-v valueue intelligence sources, men who knew about Japanese interrogation techniques, men who needed debriefing. Okain weighed 112 lb.

 He had weighed 170 when Tang went down. The other survivors were similarly emaciated, sick, weak, barely functional. They were evacuated to hospital ships in Tokyo Bay, given medical care, given real food, given beds, given the first safety they had known in 10 months. The debriefings began in early September. Naval intelligence wanted everything.

 What happened to Tang? How many escaped? Why the torpedo malfunctioned? What the Japanese knew about American submarine operations, what they asked during interrogation, what they knew about the Mark 18, what they knew about patrol areas. Okaane provided detailed reports, described the fifth patrol, the convoy attacks, the circular run, the sinking, the escape, the MSON lung experience, the capture, the treatment, everything.

His account was the only comprehensive record of Tang’s final action, the only explanation for why America’s most successful submarine had disappeared. The story shocked the submarine force. Tang had sunk 34 ships. Number 33. The final transport hadn’t gone down, had been towed to port, repaired, put back in service.

 Tangs record stood at 33 confirmed kills. Still the highest total. Still the record. But the cost had been devastating. 78 men dead. The best submarine commander in the Pacific nearly killed by his own weapon. The Mark1 18 circular run problem became classified information. The Navy didn’t want the public knowing American torpedoes were sinking American submarines.

 Didn’t want the enemy knowing the defect existed. Didn’t want families of dead submariners knowing their sons had died from defective weapons rather than enemy action. The Tang story was buried, classified, restricted. But Okain’s heroism couldn’t be hidden. His fifth patrol had been extraordinary. 13 ships sunk, 24 torpedoes fired, 22 hits, aggressive tactics, perfect execution.

 The fact that the final torpedo had killed his boat didn’t change the achievement, didn’t diminish the record, didn’t reduce the impact on Japanese supply lines. In October, the Navy recommended Okaane for the Medal of Honor. The citation focused on the attacks of October 23rd and 24th, the maneuvering through the convoy, the close-range shots, the destruction of 13 enemy vessels, the escape after the submarine sank, the survival as a prisoner, the refusal to break under interrogation.

The highest decoration for valor would be awarded to the commander of the submarine that had been sunk by its own torpedo. The irony was not lost on anyone. the most successful submarine captain in American history. The man who had sunk more Japanese ships than any other commander. The officer who had survived the worst kind of submarine disaster would receive the Medal of Honor for the patrol that ended with his boat at the bottom of the Taiwan Strait.

On March 27th, 1946, President Harry Truman presented the medal to Oka at the White House, 8 months after liberation, 18 months after Tang went down. The citation made no mention of the circular run, no mention of the Mark1 18 defect, no mention that America’s deadliest submarine had been killed by American technology.

Okaane returned to active duty after receiving the Medal of Honor. The Navy assigned him to shore positions, training commands, administrative roles. The submarine force wanted his expertise, his tactical knowledge, his combat experience, but they didn’t want him commanding boats. The psychological toll was too obvious.

 The weight of losing 78 men. The guilt of surviving when so many died. The knowledge that his last order had killed his crew. He served on submarine tenders, testified at Japanese war crimes trials, commanded a submarine division, attended the armed forces staff college, taught at the submarine school in New London, rose to rear admiral before retiring in 1957.

lived another 37 years, died in 1994 at age 83. Pneumonia, the same disease that had nearly killed him at Amorei. The other eight Tang survivors scattered after the war. Some stayed in the Navy, some left. Most avoided talking about what happened. The memories were too painful. The escape from 180 ft, the moms lung ascent, the drowning shipmates, the beatings on the Japanese frigot, the starvation at Ofuna and Omorei, the helplessness of watching friends die in prison camp.

 Only one other Tang crew member survived the war separately from the nine. A radioman who had been transferred off the submarine at Midway before the fifth patrol. He had cut his thumb in a watertight door. The injury looked minor, but it got infected. He was left behind when Tang departed for the Taiwan Strait.

 The thumb injury saved his life. He was the 10th survivor, the only man who avoided both the sinking and the prison camp. 78 men died with Tang. Most died instantly when the Mark 18 detonated. Drowned when the after compartments flooded. Some survived initially, trapped in sealed spaces, breathing bad air, waiting for rescue that never came, dying slowly over hours.

 Their names are listed on the submarine memorial in Pearl Harbor. Remembered every year when the submarine force honors its lost boats, Tang herself remains on the bottom of the Taiwan Strait, 180 ft down, approximately 25 mi northwest of Turnabout Island. The exact coordinates were classified for decades. The Navy didn’t want salvage operations, didn’t want the wreck disturbed, didn’t want evidence of the circular run problem brought to the surface.

 The wreck has never been located by civilian researchers. The Taiwan Strait has heavy shipping traffic, strong currents, poor visibility. Searching for a 312 ft submarine in thousands of square miles of ocean floor is nearly impossible. Tang remains lost, a tomb for 78 Submariners, a classified grave site. The Mark1 18 torpedo continued in service through the end of the war.

 The circular run problem was never fully solved. The gyroscope defect remained. Submarines continued using the weapon. The advantages still outweighed the risks. Silent running, no visible wake, high kill rate. The statistics justified the danger. By war’s end, Mark1 18s had accounted for 30% of all torpedoes fired by American submarines.

 Several thousand tons of Japanese shipping sunk. But Tang wasn’t the only loss. USS Tully had been sunk by a circular run in March 1944. one survivor. The type of torpedo was confirmed as Mark 18. Other submarines reported near misses. Torpedoes that circled back, passed underneath the firing boat, missed by feet.

 Those crew survived by luck. Tangs crew had no luck. The submarine force learned tactical lessons from Tang’s loss. Fire torpedoes from greater range when possible. Maneuver away from the firing solution immediately after launch. Watch for surface running. Be ready to crash dive if a torpedo circles. Train crews on emergency procedures.

 Install better gyroscopes when available, but mostly accept the risk. The Mark1 18 was too valuable to abandon. Postwar analysis revised tanks kill total multiple times. Initial credit was 31 ships, then 24, then back to 33. After comparing American records with captured Japanese documents, the final confirmed total is 33 ships totaling 116,454 tons.

 First place for number of ships, first place for tonnage. The record still stands. No American submarine in any war has exceeded Tang’s score. Her third patrol into the Yellow Sea in June 1944 remains the most successful single patrol. 10 ships sunk 39,160 tons. No other submarine patrol achieved those numbers. Okaane’s tactics that patrol became textbook doctrine.

 Surface attacks at night, multiple targets, close range, aggressive maneuvering. The moms lung became famous because of Tang. Before October 1944, the device had been used in one real emergency. USS Squalas in 1939. 33 men rescued from 240 ft using a rescue chamber. The Momson lung was backup equipment untested in actual sinking conditions.

 Tang proved it worked. Eight men reached the surface from 180 ft using only the rubber bag and soda lime. The only combat use of the Mson lung in World War II. The only proof the device could save lives under the worst possible conditions. The Navy kept the MSON lung in service until 1962, 23 years after Tang.

 The device was eventually replaced by the Stany Hood, a simpler system, an inflatable life jacket with an air bubble hood, easier to use, less training required, but the Momson Lung remained in Submarine Legend, the device that saved eight Tang survivors, the device that almost worked for 13.

 Tang received four battle stars for her five war patrols, two presidential unit citations. The only other submarine to receive two presidential unit citations was USS Flasher. Tang’s record of 33 ships sunk has never been broken. Her third patrol record of 10 ships in one patrol has never been equaled. Her name remains at the top of every list of most successful American submarines.

 A second USS Tang was commissioned in 1951. SS563, a diesel electric submarine that served until 1980. She carried the name with honor, never forgot the original Tang, never forgot the 78 men who died. The second Tang’s crew maintained traditions, honored the memory, kept the story alive. In 2001, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans opened an exhibit called Final Mission, a recreation of Tang’s Last Patrol.

Visitors enter a simulated submarine, receive cards with names of actual Tang crew members. Experience the events of October 24th and 25th. Feel the torpedo hit. Watch the submarine sink. Understand what the crew faced. The exhibit has introduced hundreds of thousands of people to Tang’s story, kept the memory alive for new generations.

Okaane wrote two books after retirement. Clear the bridge about his service on Tang. Wahoo about his earlier service under Dudley Morton. Both books became required reading at the Naval Academy. Tang’s tactics are still taught at submarine school. Her patrol reports are still studied.

 Her record is still the standard. The nine survivors stayed in contact after the war. Reunions every few years, letters, phone calls, shared memories that nobody else could understand. What it felt like to escape from 180 ft. What it felt like to watch shipmates drown. What it felt like to survive when 78 didn’t. By 2014, all nine were gone.

 The last survivor died at age 91. Tang’s story now belongs to history. The 78 men who died deserve to be remembered, not as statistics, not as casualties of a defective weapon, but as submariners who served on the most successful boat in the Pacific, who sank 33 enemy ships, who cut Japanese supply lines, who contributed to victory, who died doing exactly what they had volunteered to do.

 Tang was more than a submarine. She was a legend. The deadliest boat in the fleet, the most aggressive, the most successful. Commander Okaane was more than a captain. He was the best submarine officer America ever produced. The man who proved that aggressive tactics and careful planning could sink more ships than any other approach.

 The circular run that killed Tang was a tragedy. But it doesn’t diminish what she accomplished. 33 ships, 116,454 tons, five patrols, 8 months of combat, a record that still stands 80 years later. If this story moved you the way it moved us, do me a favor, hit that like button. Every single like tells YouTube to show this story to more people.

 Hit subscribe and turn on notifications. We’re rescuing forgotten stories from dusty archives every single day. stories about submariners who sank 33 ships with 24 torpedoes. Real people, real heroism. Drop a comment right now and tell us where you’re watching from. Are you watching from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia? Our community stretches across the entire world.

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