In the early hours of July 31st 1944, the submarine USS Parche was tracking a Japanese
merchant convoy moving through the south china sea. The boats captain, Commander Lawson Ramage
had been stalking this particular group of ships for hours. Finally, not long before 4am,
Ramage decided it was time to make his attack. He readied the boat and steamed
into the heart of the convoy. What would later become known as ‘Ramage’s Rampage’
was about to begin. -
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- -
On June 17th 1944 the USS Parche departed midway island to begin its second war patrol.
It was the flagship of a three-boat wolfpack under Commander Lewis Parks consisting of Parche,
Hammerhead and Steelhead. The group was nicknamed ‘Parks Pirates’,
though Commander Ramage suggested they might also be known as ‘the headhunters’ since they
had Hammerhead, Steelhead and himself, a redhead. The wolfpack enjoyed a relatively incident free
journey to their patrol area between Luzon and Formosa- modern day Taiwan. They arrived on July
1st and settled into a rhythm, submerging during the day and surfacing at night while all the while
scouring the horizon for enemy ships. It was a quiet period, with the only drama coming on
July 3rd when Parche was spotted and closed down by a Japanese destroyer, which forced
the boat into a crash dive. From the middle of July the
weather worsened, with at times 60 knot winds blowing and the deck of Parche getting swamped
by waves when it was on the surface. There was a contact with a Japanese aircraft carrier on
July 19th that Ramage was able to get his boat close to, only for it to turn away and disappear.
A submerged submarine unfortunately did not have the speed to keep up with an aircraft carrier.
The days dragged on, with Park’s submarines doing little more than battling the weather.
It was deeply frustrating. When the scheduled end of the patrol came at the end of the month,
Commander Parks- aware that his boats still had lots of torpedoes left-
asked for permission to extend the patrol. This was granted,
and it almost immediately paid off. -
On July 30th, Hammerhead established contact with a Japanese convoy- designated MI-11.
It was steaming south from Formosa to Borneo, with 11 merchant ships and six military escorts.
Most notable were the troop transports Fuso Maru and Yoshino Maru, which were
carrying 5000 troops each, and the two oil tankers Koei Maru and Ogura Maru.
After some confusion when Hammerhead had initially given the wrong position for the
location of the convoy, eventually the other two boats were converging on it. Hammerhead herself
was detached to return to port, after having made an attack run on the convoy and claimed one ship
sunk. Through the evening of July 30th Parche closed in on the convoy, which by the early hours
was to its south east. The USS Steelhead was doing likewise, closing from the eastern side.
At 2.40am MI-11 popped onto Parche’s radar screen, at a range of 34,000 yards. An hour later,
with Parche still some distance away, Steelhead began its attack. Firing 10 torpedoes, it hit
the tankers Koei Maru and Ogura Maru before disengaging. The ships of the convoy began
to fire flares, trying to catch sight of their attacker. The escort vessels closest to Parche
began to fan out, searching for a submarine. Sensing the time for an attack, Commander
Ramage ordered his boat into a turn to starboard, wheeling all the way round
to take up an easterly course and attack the convoy. But by sheer coincidence, MI-11 also
turned to starboard at the same time, as part of its evasive manoeuvres after a submarine attack.
This inadvertently put the American submarine and Japanese convoy on a collision course.
Commander Ramage decided to press his attack regardless, steaming on the surface headlong
into more than a dozen enemy ships. Suddenly, the first merchant ship loomed out of the dark
less than 400 yards way. Parche had to turn hard to avoid being rammed by it,
passing down the side of the ship so close that the two crews could exchange insults.
Ramage jinked his boat around to starboard to make an attack run on the freighter.
Parche was at this point still on the surface and travelling at almost
20 knots. The balo class submarine began the attack with torpedoes loaded into all
of its tubes- 6 forward and 4 aft. This will be important as we go on.
Once the boat was in position Ramage fired two bow torpedoes. It was 3.56 am. The rampage had begun.
It did not take long after firing for Parche to observe that the target was taking avoiding
action, steering hard to port to successfully dodge the track of the two mark 14 torpedoes.
Ramage held fire on his other forward tubes and continued to steer northwards,
observing as the turning merchant vessel managed to inadvertently block an escort ship
that was trying to make its way towards Parche. Now between the two lines of merchant ships,
at 4.02 Ramage fired one torpedo from the stern tubes towards his initial prey. An explosion was
heard and a hit claimed, but the source of the noise was never able to be confirmed.
It was very common in the chaos of a submarine attack for targets and torpedo hits to be the
subject of dispute, particularly at night- and particularly when you are
carrying out your attack from inside the convoy! Around the American boat, the Japanese ships were
firing flares and machine guns, while the escort vessels tried desperately to redeploy to engage.
It was dark and visibility was bad, so many of the Japanese crew could not see what they
were shooting at and plenty of gunfire was hitting other ships in the convoy.
Meanwhile, a lookout on Parche spotted the two oil tankers sailing line astern and
initially misidentified the long flat ships as aircraft carriers. Ramage decided to attack them-
steaming over and firing four bow torpedoes at Koei Maru at seven minutes past four. Four good
hits were confirmed and the tanker began to sink quickly. With the bow tubes empty Parche
then quickly hauled round to starboard, lining up its stern tubes on the second tanker. Three more
torpedoes were fired in quick succession, with two hits and a miss Ogura Maru to 2kts at 4.10am.
In Parche’s torpedo room work was now going on to frantically reload the empty torpedo tubes.
Normally the boat would submerge for this, but both forward and aft torpedo rooms
were rapidly reloading despite the submarine being buffeted by the sea on the surface. Two
forward tubes were ready again by 4.12 and Ramage ordered an attack on the Dakar Maru
four minutes later, which was conveniently sailing right across Parche’s bow at the time.
Two torpedoes slammed into the ship amidships, blowing a massive hole and cutting its power.
Commander Ramage now circled back, bringing his boats stern torpedoes to bear on the already
damaged Ogura maru. The Ogura was down by the bow, so its 4-inch gun on the aft of the ship
could not depress itself low enough to hit Parche as she steamed behind the stricken tanker.
Three torpedoes were fired at 4.21, smashing into the tanker and causing it to finally sink.
Next on the hit list was the troop transport Yoshino Maru. Ramage’s crew set about
calculating torpedo solutions while being raked by machine gun fire from escort ships to its north
to the point where Ramage cleared the bridge of all almost all personnel for their safety.
Suddenly the converted gunboat Kazan Maru appeared on the starboard side, clearly intending to ram.
So focused on setting up the next attack Ramage initially didn’t respond to the shouted warnings
of a ramming, before ordering full ahead just in time. Parche swung round, missing the oncoming
Japanese escort ship by as little as 50 yards. It would have been even closer had Chet Stanton,
the boats helmsman, not ordered full ahead a few seconds before Ramage himself had done so.
After this emergency turn Yoshino Maru was now dead ahead, coming straight toward Ramage’s boat.
On either side, escort vessels were circling, and Parche’s room for manoeuvre was running out.
At 4.29 three torpedoes were fired down the throat of the Japanese troop transport.
There were two hits, and the ship ground to a halt. Parche then swerved to port, firing
its last loaded torpedoes from the stern tubes at 4.33. There was a large explosion amidships
and Yoshino Maru began to sink. It took with it 2,442 soldiers – about half of those onboard.
With escort vessels closing in and the remainder of the convoy moving off,
Ramage now disengaged, managing to make it out of the area without further enemy contact.
It had been an extraordinary attack, with just 34 minutes passing between the first and last
torpedoes being fired. -
A couple of weeks later, Parche arrived at Pearl Harbour to complete her second war patrol.
In that time the story of what Ramage and his crew had got up to at the end of July was the talk of
the submarine force. Commander Ramage was greeted on the quayside by Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood,
the commander of the pacific submarine force, who credited Parche with 5 ships sunk for 34,300 tons,
and Steelhead with 2 ships sunk for 14,700. After the war the Joint Army-Navy Assessment
Committee reduced these estimates to 2 ships for each boat, and shared credit on Yoshino
Maru. Ramage felt this was harsh on Parche and perhaps gave Steelhead too much credit.
As a result of what was becoming known as ‘ramage’s rampage’, Commander Ramage was awarded
the medal of honor- the United States’ highest military award for valor. He was the first living
submariner to do so- both of the previous awards had been posthumous. Ramage dedicated the award to
his crew, and went so far as to issue a special certificate to every crew member to commemorate
their own part in the events of July 31st. Ramage’s Rampage was a remarkable moment
in the submarine campaign against Japan, but only one moment out of many. In 1944
American submarines would sink hundreds of ships, in a battle which would ultimately
bring Japan to its knees, and which you can learn about in another video of mine.