, a Balao-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to bear the generic name for any fish, such as gar or marlin, with bill-shaped jaws. During World War II, Billfish made eight war patrols between 12 August 1943 and 27 August 1945. During these patrols she sank three Japanese cargo ships totaling 4,074 gross register tons and five smaller craft. She spent part of her seventh and eighth war patrols on lifeguard duty off Japan during Allied airstrikes.
Construction and commissioning
Billfish was ordered on 15 December 1941. Her keel was laid down at Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine, on 23 July 1942. She was launched on 12 November 1942, sponsored by Mrs. Lewis Parks (wife of Lieutenant Commander Lewis Parks), and commissioned on 20 April 1943 with Lieutenant Commander Frederic C. Lucas, Jr., in command.
Service history
World War II
April–August 1943
After her commissioning, Billfish began shakedown training off the United States East Coast. She arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, from New London, Connecticut on 24 May 1943, then, after torpedo trials at Newport, moved from Newport back to New London on 28 May. After 12 continuous hours at his station as diving officer, Rush turned over control of the dive to a junior officer and assumed command. – he reversed course so precisely that Billfish was able to proceed back down her previous track, using the floating oil slick as cover and defeating its usefulness to the Japanese as a trail. At 13:37 on 24 April 1944, she detected an approaching Allied twin-engine bomber which mistook her for a Japanese submarine and responded to her recognition flare by strafing her with machine-gun fire as she crash-dived to . Billfish again crash-dived, submerging to .
Again departing Darwin, Billfish proceeded to a patrol area in waters between and around the Mariana Islands and Caroline Islands. On 2 May 1944, she almost closed within range of a Japanese cargo ship escorted by a destroyer and a minesweeper, but the Japanese ships made a sudden and radical change of course that prevented her from launching any torpedoes.
While running submerged on 21 May 1944, Billfish found herself in the path of a four-ship Japanese convoy escorted by four submarine chasers. Billfish worked into position to attack and fired six torpedoes at the two largest ships. According to Billfish′s patrol report, three torpedoes sent one ship to the bottom and one hit the second, severely damaging her, as depth charges forced Billfish deep, but postwar analysis of Japanese records failed to confirm the kill.
On 22 May 1943, Billfish sighted a large Japanese submarine and stalked her for six hours before reaching attack position. She then fired four torpedoes from her bow tubes. Three missed because the Japanese submarine made a last-minute course change. The fourth hung up in the tube and had to be jarred loose with a second, much heavier, blast of compressed air. The Japanese submarine submerged and escaped. Billfish′s target sometimes has been identified as , but I-43 still was under construction at the time.
Billfish spotted another Japanese submarine on 26 May 1944 but failed to gain a favorable attack position. Later, after surviving two Japanese air attacks, Billfish headed for Hawaii on 5 June and reached Pearl Harbor on 13 June 1944.
Fifth war patrol
Following a hasty overhaul, Billfish departed Pearl Harbor to begin her fifth war patrol as part of a coordinated attack group under the command of Commander Stanley P. Moseley – who was embarked aboard Billfish – which also included the submarines and . The submarines stopped at Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, then proceeded to their patrol area in the Luzon Strait. On 7 August 1944, after Sailfish reported her detection of a Japanese convoy, Billfish launched a spread of four torpedoes at a cargo ship from a range of . However, the cargo ship spotted the wakes of the torpedoes and evaded them. An immediate depth-charge attack by an escort forced Billfish to go deep and prevented her from making another attack against the convoy.
Later in the patrol, several Japanese aircraft attacked Billfish, but she escaped without damage or casualties. She departed her patrol area early in September 1944 and proceeded via Saipan in the Mariana Islands to Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where she arrived on 13 September 1944.
Sixth war patrol
After refitting at Majuro Atoll, Billfish got underway on 6 October 1944 for her sixth war patrol, bound for the Volcano Islands, where she performed lifeguard duty in support of raids on the Japanese Home Islands by United States Army Air Forces B-29 Superfortress bombers based in the Mariana Islands. On 21 October 1944, she shifted to the Ryukyu Islands, where she sighted a Japanese convoy of 10 ships on the night of 4–5 November 1944. Shoal water thwarted her efforts to approach the Japanese ships for an attack.
Shortly after dawn on 7 November 1944, Billfish spotted a convoy of five Japanese merchant ships escorted by four warships and tracked them until just after 22:00 that night, when she fired three torpedoes from her bow tubes and hit two ships. Even before hearing the explosions of the torpedoes, Billfish turned around and launched four more torpedoes from her stern tubes. Her patrol report stated that two of these torpedoes exploded against the largest merchant ship in the convoy, but it was impossible for her to observe the results of the attack because the escorts struck back with depth charges and forced her down nearly to maximum depth. Postwar analysis of Japanese records failed to credit her with any sinkings on that day, although she may have severely damaged one or more ships in the convoy. Later that night, during the predawn hours of 8 November 1944, Billfish fired four more torpedoes at a 2,500-to-3,000-gross register ton two-masted ship, but the ship answered with machine-gun fire before escaping unharmed.
On 13 November 1944, Billfish sank a 40-gross register ton diesel-powered sampan with gunfire. She ended her patrol with her arrival at Pearl Harbor on 27 November 1944.
December 1944–March 1945
On 1 December 1944, Billfish got underway from Pearl Harbor and headed for San Francisco, California. She reached San Francisco on 9 December 1944 and began an overhaul. Upon its completion, she departed San Francisco Bay on 12 March 1945 and proceeded Pearl Harbor, from which she conducted refresher training in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands.
Seventh war patrol
After completion of refresher training, Billfish departed Pearl Harbor to begin her seventh war patrol. After a stop in the Mariana Islands, she headed for a patrol area in the East China Sea to provide lifeguard service for U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 Superfortress bombers during raids on Honshu. Late in May 1945, she shifted to the Tsushima Strait area where, on 26 May 1945, one of her torpedoes sank the Japanese 991-gross register ton cargo ship Kotobuki Maru No. 7. Following an unsuccessful torpedo attack on a small Japanese coastal cargo ship two days later, Billfish scored again when two of her torpedoes sank the 2,220-gross register ton cargo ship Taiu Maru on 4 June 1945 in the Yellow Sea about off the coast of the Korean Peninsula. A short time later, she surfaced and destroyed three coastal steamers with gunfire. During the action, rifle fire from the third and last schooner she attacked killed Quartermaster 1st Class Robert V. Oliver and wounded another Billfish crewman. At 12:00 on the 5 June 1945, Billfish launched a salvo of four torpedoes at a medium-sized cargo ship, but the ship's simultaneous, radical course change caused all of them to miss. As Billfish left her patrol area, a Japanese plane dove out of the sun and dropped two well-aimed depth charges that burst close aboard, violently shaking Billfish without inflicting any serious damage. She arrived safely at Midway Atoll on 17 June 1945 and began a refit there.
Eighth war patrol
Billfish got underway again on 12 July 1945, departing Midway Atoll for her eighth war patrol, which took her to Japan's home waters. Japanese shipping had become a rare commodity by this time in the war, and Billfish only achieved two significant successes during the entire patrol. On 5 August 1945, near the coast of Manchuria, three torpedoes from a salvo of four she fired hit and sank the 1,091-gross register ton cargo ship Kori Maru. On 7 August 1945, in practically the same area, she sent a considerably smaller cargo ship to the bottom with a single torpedo. She then escaped her victim's escort through skillful maneuvering in water scarcely deep enough to permit her to operate submerged. That night, while proceeding on the surface at high speed, she collided with and sank a small fishing junk.
Billfish then took up a lifeguard station off the coast of Kyushu in support of Allied airstrikes. On 15 August 1945, while on lifeguard duty, she received word of Japan's surrender that day and orders to proceed to Hawaii. She ended her wartime career with her arrival at Pearl Harbor on 27 August 1945.
Post-World War II
At Pearl Harbor, Billfish received orders to proceed to the United States Gulf Coast. After transiting the Panama Canal, she reached New Orleans, Louisiana, on 19 September 1945 and began several months of maneuvers and training in the Gulf of Mexico and in waters adjacent to the Panama Canal Zone in the Caribbean Sea.
By the late spring of 1946, Billfish was at New London. She moved to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at Kittery, Maine, in June 1946 for her inactivation overhaul, which was completed in October 1946. Towed back to New London by the rescue tug early in the autumn of 1946, she was decommissioned there on 1 November 1946.
From 1 January 1960 until 1 April 1968, Billfish served as a training vessel for the United States Naval Reserve, First Naval District, at the South Boston Annex of the Boston Naval Shipyard in Boston, Massachusetts, and during this duty was reclassified as an auxiliary submarine, AGSS-286, on 6 November 1962. She was struck from the Navy list on 1 April 1968 and sold on 17 March 1971 for scrapping.