USS Cavalla (SS-244)

History of USS Cavalla (SS-244)

The naval battles of World War II (1939-1945) were as important in the West as they were in the East. For some time, the Pacific Theater remained under the control of the Japanese Empire, which began to threaten the Australian mainland and attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.

The U.S. response was swift and thorough, and within a few years the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) had become a shadow of itself, with the Gato class proving to be one of the more important contributors.

The Diesel-Electric class was organized into a force of 77 ships, built between 1940 and 1944. These ships served throughout the war until the 1960s, which is what they were worth at that time. About twenty people were killed in the fighting, six survived and fifty-seven were retired.

Their fabled number is USS Cavalla (SS-214), the subject of this article.

The Cavalla's keel was laid by the Electric Boat Company of Groton, Connecticut, on March 4, 1943, as World War II raged. She was launched on November 14, 1943, and officially commissioned on February 29, 1944just in time for the final year of the war.

At the time of construction, the vessel had a barrel length of 311.8 feet, a beam of 27.2 feet, and a draft of 17 feet. Power comes from 4 GM 16-248 V16 marine diesel engines with 4 GE electric motors and 2 126-section Sargo battery packs for powering the 2 stern shafts. This gives the boat a top speed of 21 knots on the water, dropping to 9 knots when cruising underwater.

The effective distance when surfaced is 20,000 km. The surface displacement reached 1,550 tons and the underwater displacement reached 2,465 tons.

There were about 60 crew members on board, including six officers, all lined up on duty to keep active crew members at the station at all times. The hull was tested at a depth of 300 feet and the boat was able to stay at sea for a full 75 days (up to 48 hours submerged) with food and fuel on board.

The ship is equipped with the usual Gato-class 10 x 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes, including six front and four rear. For work on the water, the boat may back down to 3 inches. (76mm)/50 caliber trainable deck gun for ranged attacks on unarmed merchants etc.

For anti-aircraft (AA) purposes, she carried 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon automatic guns mounted on a single gun mount. All in all, the ship was well equipped for the submarines of the day, able to respond to sea and air threats as needed.

While at sea, Kavala completed a total of six wartime patrols, the first of which was reconnaissance for troops engaged in the naval battle of the Philippine Sea. During this deployment, the ship claimed its greatest asset of the war - the IJN aircraft carrier Shokaku. Shokaku, a veteran of the December 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. military at Pearl Harbor, was spotted by Kavala on June 19, 1944, while retrieving her fighter jet.

Kavala's crew entered and released a wave of six torpedoes, three of which hit Shokaku, causing extensive damage and eventually sinking her. Kavala evaded the enemy's depth-charge response and fought another day, but the irreversible damage to IJN's sea power had already been done.

During the Japanese surrender, they appeared on the Sixth War Patrol. As such, she attended formal proceedings and Allied displays of force in Tokyo Bay. She arrived in the United States in early October 1945 and retired on March 16, 1946.

On April 10, 1951, the ship was recommissioned as part of U-boat Squadron 8 and sailed for some time in Atlantic waters off the east coast of the United States. She went into retirement again as she was to be modified into a hunter-killer role (hence "SSK-244" in the process).

In the early days of the Cold War, this proved to be a common method for extending the life of the U.S. submarine fleetespecially as the Soviet Union emerged as the new threat today. Changes to the ship's design included modifications to the sails and an entirely new bow structure, the latter of which was to better accommodate the equally new sonar setup of the BQR-4 series (although this required two forward-facing torpedo tubes). ).

After the work was completed, Kavala was returned to service as part of U-Boot Staffel 10 on July 15, 1953, before moving to U-Boot Development Team 2 in January 1954 to serve in several experimental roles. After a period of non-combat patrols and friendly stops in European waters and the east coast of the United States, her name was restored to "SS-214" in August 1959.

In an accident in November 1961, she assisted the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher in powering the ship in Puerto Rico waters.

In July 1963, in her heyday, she was assigned a ship named "AGSS-244" as her support ship. Her official retirement occurred on December 30, 1969, when she was removed from the Naval Register. In January 1971, she was handed over to the Texas Submarine Veterans of World War II to protect the ship for future demonstrations.

She was housed at Sea Wolf Park on Pelican Island near Galveston, Texas, where she lives today (since January 21, 1971).

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