They would be cautious, alert, ready to evade.
Williamson reviewed the crew assignments one final time.
Every man knew his position.
Every station had been drilled until the procedures became automatic.
England had proven the hedgehog could kill submarines.
Now they needed to prove they could do it consistently.
At 0350 on May 22nd, USS George’s radar detected a surface contact 11,000 yd north of the Admiral T Islands.
The contact submerged immediately when George illuminated it with search lights.
Commander Haynes ordered England to attack.
RO106 was waiting below.
England regained sonar contact on Row 106 at 4:25 a.
m.
on May 22nd.
Range 1,800 yards.
The submarine was running at periscope depth, trying to determine what had triggered the radar contact, whether the Americans knew its position.
Pendleton ordered the first hedgehog attack using Williamson’s modified procedure.
Fire earlier, tighter timing, less interval between sonar contact and weapon impact.
The hedgehog Salvo missed.
24 projectiles splashed into the Pacific and sank without detonating.
Row 106’s commander had changed course the moment the submarine submerged.
Standard evasion.
The pattern landed in empty water.
Pendleton ordered a second attack at 501.
England’s sonar operator called out the range.
Bearing depth estimate.
Williamson calculated the firing solution in his head.
adjusted for the submarine’s last known course change.
24 projectiles arked forward.
The pattern landed perfectly.
Three detonations, then four more.
Row 106’s pressure hole ruptured in seven places simultaneously.
The submarine imploded at 260 ft.
A massive underwater explosion followed 3 seconds later as the batteries shorted and ignited.
England had killed her second submarine.
Two attacks instead of five.
48 projectiles instead of 96.
Williamson’s procedure worked.
Oil and debris surfaced after sunrise.
A massive slick spread across three square miles.
USS George and USS Rabbi formed a search line with England 16,000 yards between ships, scanning for the next contact on the NA picket line.
Japanese submarine Row 104 was positioned 40 m northeast.
Lieutenant Commander Tekashi Hashimoto commanded the boat, 17 years in the Imperial Navy, eight war patrols.
He had survived depth charge attacks off Guadal Canal, evaded American destroyers near Rabbal.
He knew the Americans were hunting the NA line.
He knew row 106 had stopped transmitting.
Hashimoto kept RO 104 deep during daylight, 300 ft, running silent, minimal speed, listening for propeller noise, sonar pings, anything that indicated American warships approaching.
At 7:17 a.
m.
on May 23rd, USS George detected RO 104 on sonar.
Commander Haynes ordered George to attack.
The first Hedgehog Salvo missed.
George fired again at 7:30.
Missed.
Another attack at 7:45 missed.
Two more salvos by 810.
Both missed.
George had expended 120 hedgehog projectiles.
Five attacks.
Zero hits.
Hashimoto was good.
He changed depth and course unpredictably.
Stayed inside George’s sonar blind spot.
Evaded every pattern.
Commander Haynes ordered England to take over the attack.
Pendleton brought the destroyer escort around to the attack heading.
Williamson stood next to the sonar operator, tracking the contact, calculating the geometry.
Hashimoto had established a pattern.
Deep dive after each attack, level off, change course, wait for the water to settle, surface slightly to check for pursuers.
England’s first hedgehog attack missed.
Hashimoto went deep again.
But Williamson had predicted the evasion.
He knew where the submarine would level off, knew the approximate depth, knew the bearing Hashimoto would choose.
Pendleton ordered the second attack at 8:34.
The hedgehog fired.
24 projectiles dropped into the predicted zone.
10 detonations, then 12.
The sound echoed across the water like a string of firecrackers.
Underwater microphones picked up the noise of RO104’s hull breaking apart, bulkheads collapsing, pressure hole fracturing.
A major explosion followed 3 minutes later.
Debris appeared on the surface at 10:45.
oil, cork insulation, wooden fragments, personal items.
54 Japanese submariners gone.
England had killed three submarines in four days.
The new attack procedure was proving consistent, but Commander Haynes faced a problem.
USS George had failed five consecutive attacks against RO 104.
USS Rabby had not successfully prosecuted a single submarine contact since the operation began.
England was carrying the entire Hunter killer group.
The remaining submarines on the NA line would know the Americans were coming.
Radio silence had been broken.
RO 106 and RO 104 had missed their scheduled transmissions.
Japanese submarine headquarters at truck would assume the worst, would warn the surviving boats, would order them to abort the picket line and scatter.
But fleet radio unit Pacific intercepted another message on May 24th.
RO116 was maintaining position, still waiting to detect American carrier movements, still following orders despite the missing submarines.
The Japanese command either did not believe the Americans could roll up the entire line, or they considered the intelligence mission too important to abandon.
USS George detected RO116 on radar at 120 a.
m.
on May 24th.
Surface contact.
The submarine dove immediately.
Commander Haynes ordered England to attack.
Pendleton was already calculating the approach.
England made sonar contact on row 116 at 150 a.
m.
on May 24th.
Range 2,000 y.
The submarine was running shallow, trying to reach deeper water before the Americans could establish an attack pattern.
Pendleton ordered the first hedgehog attack at 214, the modified procedure Williamson had developed.
Early firing, tight timing, predicted evasion zone.
24 projectiles landed in a perfect circle.
Three detonations, then five more.
Row 116’s pressure hull fractured.
The submarine went down with all 56 crew.
Breaking up noises followed immediately, but no major explosion.
The battery compartment remained intact during the descent.
England had killed four Japanese submarines in six days.
Four successful hedgehog attacks out of eight attempts, 50% kill ratio.
Traditional depth charge operations achieved less than 2%.
A small oil slick appeared after sunrise at 702.
The slick expanded to several square miles by the following day.
Commander Haynes transmitted the results to Third Fleet headquarters.
Admiral William Holsey forwarded the report to Pearl Harbor, to Admiral Chester Nimttz, to the chief of naval operations in Washington.
The Navy had been skeptical of the Hedgehog since its introduction in 1942.
Most destroyer captains considered the weapon unreliable, preferred proven depth charge tactics.
But England’s performance was changing opinions rapidly.
Destroyer escort commanders throughout the Pacific began requesting hedgehog installation.
Ships that already carried the weapons started practicing the attack procedures Williamson had developed.
Fire control officers studied England’s attack geometry.
Sonar operators analyze the timing intervals.
The Bureau of Ordinance in Washington received requests for additional hedgehog projectile production.
Ammunition depots across the Pacific reported increased demand.
Ships that had ignored their hedgehog launchers for months suddenly wanted spare parts.
Training ammunition, technical manuals.
But England was not finished hunting.
Fleet radio unit Pacific had decoded another intercept.
RO 108 was maintaining position 110 nautical miles northeast of Seadler Harbor at Manis Island.
The submarine was following the original operational plan, waiting for American carriers.
Unaware that four submarines on the NA line had already been destroyed, USS Rabbi gained radar contact on RO 108 at 2303 on May 26th.
Surface contact at 15,000 yd.
The submarine dove before Ra could close the range.
England detected the submerged contact at 2320.
Commander Haynes decided to give Rabi the attack.
England had killed four submarines.
George and Rabby had killed none.
The crews were becoming demoralized, questioning their training, their equipment, their ability to prosecute contacts effectively.
Rabby fired the first hedgehog salvo.
Missed.
The submarine evaded the pattern.
Ra attacked again.
Missed.
Commander Haynes watched from USS George, counting the attacks.
Watching Rabies struggle with the same problems George had faced against RO 104.
After Rabby’s second miss, Haynes ordered England to finish the attack.
Pendleton brought the destroyer escort into position.
Williamson calculated the firing solution.
The crew executed the attack procedure they had practiced dozens of times.
England fired at 2323.
The hedgehog pattern landed precisely.
Four detonations, then six more.
RO 108 imploded at 300 ft.
53 Japanese submariners died.
England had killed five submarines in eight days.
The Japanese 6th Fleet intelligence section at Trrook intercepted American radio transmissions on May 27th.
The broadcasts described multiple submarine sinkings north of the Admiral T Islands.
The intelligence officers decoded enough fragments to understand what was happening.
American forces were systematically destroying the NA picket line.
Sixth Fleet Headquarters transmitted warnings to the surviving submarines.
Row 112 and row 109 received the message.
Both boats immediately abandoned their patrol sectors.
Row 112 moved west toward the Philippines.
Row 109 headed south.
Both submarines would survive until 1945 before being sunk by other American forces, but one submarine on the NA line did not receive the warning in time.
Row 105 had sorted from Saipan on May 14th under Lieutenant Junichi Ino.
The boat carried the commander of submarine division 51, Captain Rionoske Katoau.
A flag officer embarked for tactical oversight.
Row 105 was the most experienced submarine remaining on the NA line.
In no way had evaded American torpedoes in August 1943, had fired on USS Colombia without success in September.
had rescued down Japanese aviators on multiple occasions.
Captain Kado had commanded submarine operations throughout the Solomon Islands campaign.
The American radio transmissions described as increasingly jubilant by Japanese intelligence were accurate.
Admiral Hally sent a personal message to Commander Haynes.
Continue the sweep.
Find the remaining submarines.
Destroy them.
England had proven the hedgehog could kill consistently.
had demonstrated that destroyer escorts could hunt submarines as effectively as fleet destroyers, had shown that proper training and modified tactics could overcome equipment limitations.
But Row 105 was different.
Two senior officers aboard, 17 years combined submarine experience, a crew that had survived repeated American attacks, and a captain who knew the Americans were coming.
Row 105 surfaced at 3:10 a.
m.
on May 31st, 1944.
Lieutenant Inu brought the submarine up to periscope depth first.
Scan the horizon.
Listen for propeller noise.
The ocean appeared empty, dark, silent.
The submarine’s batteries needed recharging.
17 days at sea, constant submerged operations.
The electric motors had drained the battery banks to 30% capacity.
Inu needed at least four hours on the surface running diesel generators to restore full power.
Captain Katoau stood in the conning tower reviewing the intelligence warnings from Sixth Fleet.
Five submarines confirmed destroyed between May 19th and May 26th.
All killed by the same American weapon, something called a hedgehog, a forwardfiring mortar that detonated on contact with the hull.
Kato had studied American anti-ubmarine tactics throughout the war.
Depth charges required the attacking ship to pass over the submarine, created turbulence, gave the submarine time to evade between attacks.
But this hedgehog fired forward while the American ship still held sonar contact, landed in a pattern ahead of the submarine’s projected position.
If the submarine maintained course, the weapon killed it.
If the submarine evaded, the American ship could fire again immediately.
The tactical solution was simple.
Stay deep.
Change course randomly.
never surface in areas where American warships operated, but row 105 needed to recharge batteries, needed to transmit position reports, needed to maintain the patrol station despite the warnings.
USS Hazelwood detected row 105 on radar at 156 a.
m.
while the submarine was still on the surface.
The destroyer immediately radioed the contact to Commander Haynes aboard USS George.
Hannes ordered the Hunter killer group to intercept, but Haynes made a decision that would extend the hunt by 25 hours.
He ordered England to hold back, to remain in reserve.
USS Hazelwood would make the first attack, then USS Spangler, then USS Rabby, then USS George.
England would only attack if all four ships failed.
The reasoning was political.
England had killed five submarines.
The other ships in the task group had killed none.
Morale was collapsing.
Crews were questioning their abilities.
Officers were requesting transfers.
Hannes needed the other ships to prove they could execute successful attacks.
USS Hazelwood prosecuted the contact first, dropped depth charges in a standard pattern.
The explosions created massive turbulence, royd the water, destroyed sonar contact for 15 minutes.
When the water cleared, row 105 had vanished.
Inouay had used the turbulence to escape.
Dove to 400 ft, changed course 90°, reduced speed to two knots, let the submarine drift silently while the Americans searched the wrong sector.
USS Spangler gained contact 6 hours later.
Fired a hedgehog salvo missed.
The pattern landed 200 yd ahead of where row 105 had been 3 minutes earlier.
Inaway had changed depth and course again.
Spangler fired three more times.
All missed.
USS Raie attacked next.
Seven hedgehog salvos between noon and 1600 hours on May 30th.
Every attack missed.
Inaway was using every evasion technique the Imperial Navy had developed.
Random depth changes, unpredictable course alterations, speed variations, silent running between maneuvers.
USS George tried four attacks.
All failed.
Commander Haynes had now watched four American warships fire 21 hedgehog salvos and multiple depth charge patterns without scoring a single hit.
504 projectiles expended.
Zero kills.
The problem was predictability.
Every American attack followed the same sequence.
Gain sonar contact.
Calculate firing solution.
Launch hedgehog.
Wait for detonation.
When the attack missed, the ship repositioned and tried again.
in a way recognized the pattern, understood the timing, knew exactly when to maneuver, but England’s attack procedure was different.
Williamson had modified the timing, changed the firing intervals, predicted evasion zones instead of tracking current position.
Five successful kills and eight attacks proved the method worked.
At 0700 on May 31st, after 25 hours of failed attacks, Commander Haynes transmitted a message to USS England.
four words, direct, frustrated.
Born from watching his task group fail repeatedly while the smallest ship succeeded consistently.
The message became famous in Pacific fleet communications logs, widely quoted in postwar submarine warfare analysis, referenced in anti-ubmarine warfare training manuals for decades.
Commander Haynes sent, “Oh hell, go ahead, England.
” Pendleton ordered his crew to battle stations.
Williamson reviewed the attack geometry one final time.
The sonar operator began tracking row 105’s position.
The submarine was running at 320 ft, deeper than any previous contact, moving at four knots, changing course every 8 minutes.
Captain Ko knew England was coming.
Knew this destroyer escort had killed five submarines in 12 days.
Knew the American crew had perfected techniques the other ships could not execute.
He ordered Inoui to dive to maximum depth to use every evasion pattern simultaneously to survive the next 30 minutes.
England began the attack run at 7:35 a.
m.
Pendleton held steady course.
Williamson calculated the firing solution.
The hedgehog launcher rotated to the target bearing.
24 projectiles waited in their steel cradles.
England fired the Hedgehog at 7:36 a.
m.
on May 31st.
24 projectiles arked forward.
The pattern landed in the zone where Williamson predicted row 105 would be 8 seconds after launch.
Not where the submarine was when England fired, where it would be when the projectiles arrived.
Six detonations, then four more.
The sound echoed differently than previous attacks, deeper, more sustained.
Row 105 was at 320 ft.
The deepest kill England had attempted.
The pressure at that depth magnified the explosive force, breaking up noises followed immediately.
Bulkheads collapsing, hull plates fracturing, internal compartments flooding.
At 7:41, exactly 5 minutes after the hedgehog detonations, a massive underwater explosion erupted, the batteries had shorted.
The diesel fuel ignited.
Row 105 disintegrated.
Oil and debris surfaced within 30 minutes.
life jackets, wooden fragments, personal effects.
54 Japanese submariners and Captain Ryan Osuk Kato were dead.
USS England had killed six Japanese submarines in 12 days.
May 19th through May 31st, 1944.
No other warship in naval history had achieved that record.
Not in World War I, not in World War II, not in any conflict before or since.
Six confirmed submarine kills by a single ship in 12 days remained unmatched eight decades later.
The British Royal Navy’s HMS Starling had sunk six German Ubot in 19 days during February 1944, but Starling operated as part of a six ship Hunter killer group.
The kills were shared across multiple vessels.
England had operated with George and Ra, but England alone had scored every successful hedgehog attack.
Commander Haynes transmitted the results to Admiral Hally at third fleet headquarters.
Hollyy forwarded the report to Admiral Nimttz at Pearl Harbor.
Nimtt sent it to Washington to the chief of naval operations to Admiral Ernest King.
King had been skeptical of destroyer escorts since their introduction, considered them cheap substitutes for real destroyers, expendable convoy escorts without the speed or firepower for serious combat operations.
But England’s performance forced a reassessment.
Admiral King sent a personal message to USS England on June 2nd.
The message was brief, direct.
It became the most famous quote associated with destroyer escort operations in World War II.
King wrote, “There’ll always be an England in the United States Navy.
” The promise was sincere.
The Navy commissioned a second USS England in 1963, a Lehey class guided missile cruiser designated DLG22, later reclassified as CG22.
That ship served through Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm before decommissioning in 1994.
But no third USS England has been commissioned since 1994.
Admiral King’s promise remained unfulfilled 32 years later.
The name England disappeared from the active fleet roster.
The record remained.
The promise did not.
USS England received the presidential unit citation for the May 1944 operation.
One of only three destroyer escorts in World War II to earn that recognition.
Lieutenant Commander Pendleton received the Navy Cross.
Lieutenant Williamson received commenation for developing the modified attack procedures.
The Bureau of Ordinance increased hedgehog projectile production by 40% in June 1944.
Destroyer escorts throughout the Pacific requested installation priority.
Attack procedure manuals based on England’s tactics were distributed fleetwide.
Anti-ubmarine warfare training incorporated the lessons learned from the NA line operation.
The Japanese Sixth Fleet abandoned submarine picket line tactics after losing six boats in 12 days.
The Imperial Navy had deployed 25 submarines across the Pacific in May 1944.
By the end of June, 17 were destroyed.
American codereakers, hedgehog weapons, and aggressive hunterkiller tactics had eliminated Japan’s submarine early warning system.
The remaining Japanese submarines shifted to supply runs, transporting ammunition and food to isolated garrisons, evacuating wounded personnel, mining harbor approaches.
The offensive submarine warfare campaign effectively ended.
Japan’s submarine force spent the rest of the war avoiding contact rather than seeking it.
USS England continued anti-ubmarine patrols through the summer of 1944, escorted convoys between Manis and Uli, supported the invasions of Lee and Okinawa.
The ship never achieved another submarine kill.
Six submarines in 12 days remained the peak, but England’s war was not finished.
On May 9th, 1945, while on radar picket duty off Okinawa, three Japanese dive bombers attacked the ship.
England’s anti-aircraft guns shot down the first bomber.
The aircraft crashed in flames into England’s starboard side just below the bridge.
The plane’s bomb exploded on impact.
37 crew members were killed or missing.
25 were wounded.
England sailed to Lee for temporary repairs, then to Philadelphia for permanent reconstruction, but the war ended before the work was completed.
USS England was decommissioned on October 15th, 1945.
Sold for scrap on November 26th, 1946.
The most successful anti-ubmarine warship in history lasted less than two years in commission.
Lieutenant Commander Pendleton left England in September 1944 with a promotion to commander.
He commanded an escort division in Alaska until the war ended.
Retired in January 1947 with the rank of captain.
Died December 9th, 1972.
Buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Lieutenant Williamson took command of USS England in September 1944.
The best reward the Navy could offer, command of the ship he had helped make legendary.
The official recognition extended beyond Admiral King’s message and the presidential unit citation.
The Navy Department in Washington studied England’s attack reports in detail, analyzed every hedgehog firing sequence, examined every sonar track, reviewed every tactical decision Williamson and Pendleton had made.
The Bureau of Ships established new destroyer escort construction priorities.
In July 1944, all future Buckleyclass ships would receive hedgehog installations during initial fitting out.
Existing destroyer escorts without the weapon received retrofit priority.
Ships in Pacific anchorages, ships undergoing repairs, ships between deployments.
By September 1944, 214 destroyer escorts carried hedgehog systems.
By December, that number increased to 341.
The weapon England had validated became standard equipment across the anti-ubmarine warfare fleet.
The tactical procedures Williamson developed became doctrine.
The Pacific Fleet Anti-ubmarine Warfare School at Pearl Harbor incorporated England’s attack geometry into training curricula.
Sonar operators learned the modified timing intervals.
Fire control officers practiced the prediction calculations.
Commanding officers studied the attack reports.
Destroyer escort kill ratios improved immediately.
Ships that had struggled for months to achieve successful attacks began sinking submarines consistently.
The hedgehog success rate across the Pacific Fleet increased from 6% in April 1944 to 23% by October.
Still below England’s 50% performance, but substantially better than traditional depth charge operations.
The intelligence component received equal recognition.
Fleet Radio Unit Pacific had provided the operational intelligence that made England’s success possible.
The codereakers had identified I-16’s route, had decoded the NA picket line positions, had given Commander Haynes the exact coordinates where Japanese submarines would be waiting.
Admiral Nimtt’s authorized expansion of fruit operations in June 1944, additional crypt analysts, more radio intercept stations, faster decoding procedures.
The codereers had proven their value at Midway in 1942.
England’s operation in May 1944 demonstrated that tactical intelligence could enable small warships to achieve strategic results.
The Japanese submarine force never recovered from the May losses.
17 submarines destroyed in 6 weeks.
Nearly half the boats deployed across the Pacific.
The Imperial Navy had planned to use submarines for early warning and reconnaissance to detect American carrier movements to position the combined fleet for a decisive battle.
But the Americans knew Japanese submarine positions before the Japanese commanders did.
Code breakers intercepted the deployment orders.
Hunter killer groups prosecuted the contacts.
The hedgehog killed the submarines.
The entire Japanese submarine strategy collapsed.
By August 1944, Japanese submarines operated under strict defensive protocols, avoid American warships, minimize radio transmissions, abandon patrol stations if threatened, transport supplies to isolated garrisons.
The offensive submarine campaign was finished.
The impact extended to the broader Pacific strategy.
American carrier task forces operated with reduced submarine threat.
Admiral Hally could move the third fleet without concern for submarine picket lines.
The invasions of the Philippines, Euoima, and Okinawa proceeded with minimal submarine interference.
Destroyer escorts proved their worth beyond convoy protection.
These cheap warships designed for expendable missions, had demonstrated they could hunt and kill submarines as effectively as fleet destroyers, could operate independently, could execute complex tactical operations, could achieve strategic objectives.
The Navy’s construction priorities shifted accordingly.
Destroyer escort production accelerated.
More Buckley class ships, more Canonclass ships, more Edsel class ships.
By war’s end, the United States had commissioned 563 destroyer escorts, many equipped with hedgehog systems, many trained using procedures developed aboard USS England.
Lieutenant Commander Pendleton’s Navy cross citation specifically mentioned the tactical innovations England had pioneered, the modified attack timing, the prediction-based firing solutions, the aggressive prosecution of contacts despite equipment limitations.
The citation became required reading at the Naval War College, but recognition could not change certain realities.
37 men died when the kamicazi hit England on May 9th, 1945.
The crew members who had executed those six perfect hedgehog attacks, who had tracked submarines through blind spots, who had maintained equipment under combat conditions.
Many of them were gone.
The survivors carried the legacy forward, returned to civilian life with stories of 12 days in May 1944 when their small destroyer escort had achieved something no warship before or since had matched.
Six submarines, 12 days, a record that stood unbroken.
The hedgehog weapon itself evolved.
The Royal Navy developed the squid mortar in late 1943, a three-barreled system that fired larger depth charges with proximity fuses.
The United States developed the weapon Alpha in the 1950s, then the ASRock anti-ubmarine rocket.
Each generation built on lessons learned from England’s May 1944 operation.
Modern anti-ubmarine warfare relies on homing torpedoes, sonar arrays that detect submarines hundreds of miles away, helicopters that deploy acoustic sensors, nuclearpowered attack submarines that hunt their diesel electric counterparts.
The technology has advanced far beyond the hedgehog mortar.
But the fundamental principle remains unchanged.
Find the submarine.
Attack while still holding contact.
Kill before it can evade.
USS England proved that principle worked when executed with precision and courage.
The question that remained eight decades later was whether the Navy would honor Admiral King’s promise.
Whether a third USS England would join the fleet, whether the name that represented the most successful anti-ubmarine operation in naval history would return to active service, or whether the record would stand alone, unmatched, unforgotten, but without a ship to carry the legacy forward.
The physical artifacts of USS England’s 12-day operation are scattered across museums and archives.
The National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, preserves England’s action reports, the detailed attack logs, the sonar tracking charts, the hedgehog firing sequences that demonstrated how a small destroyer escort achieved what larger warships could not.
The Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington maintains England’s presidential unit citation.
The original document signed by Navy Secretary James Foresttol.
The citation text that describes six submarine kills in 12 days as an unmatched achievement in anti-ubmarine warfare history.
Arlington National Cemetery holds the grave of Captain Walton Barlay Pendleton.
Section 30, site 766A.
The headstone lists his service dates, his rank, his decorations, the Navy Cross, but nothing on the stone mentions the 12 days in May 1944 when his ship rewrote anti-ubmarine warfare doctrine.
Lieutenant John Williamson survived the war, commanded USS England until decommissioning, returned to civilian life.
The Navy records show his subsequent assignments, his promotions, his commenations.
But the trail goes cold in the 1950s.
No public records detail his later life.
No interviews preserve his perspective on those 12 days.
The crew members who survived England’s entire deployment scattered across America after demobilization.
Returned to farms in Iowa, machine shops in Michigan, fishing boats in Massachusetts.
Most never spoke publicly about their service, never gave interviews, never wrote memoirs.
The 12 days that made naval history became private memories held by men who had no interest in public recognition.
The Japanese submariners who died aboard I16, row 106, row 104, row 116, row 108, and row 105 are commemorated at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
328 men, 14 officers.
The Imperial Navy Submarine Service lost 77% of its personnel during World War II.
The highest casualty rate of any Japanese naval branch.
The hedgehog weapon that made England’s success possible exists in museum collections worldwide.
The Imperial War Museum in London displays a complete launcher assembly.
The National Museum of the United States Navy in Washington exhibits hedgehog projectiles.
The USS Slater Museum ship in Albany, New York, maintains a functional hedgehog installation on deck.
But no museum displays artifacts specifically from USS England’s May 1944 operation.
No hedgehog projectiles recovered from the submarine kills.
No equipment salvaged before the ship was scrapped.
The physical evidence of the most successful anti-ubmarine patrol in naval history was cut apart and melted down in 1946.
The second USS England served honorably for 31 years, deployed to Vietnam, participated in Operation Desert Storm, earned multiple commendations, but that ship never achieved the fame of the First England, never set records, never rewrote doctrine.
The name carried the legacy without matching the achievement.
Admiral King’s promise that there would always be an England in the United States Navy lasted until January 21st, 1994.
The second England decommissioned that day.
The name disappeared from the active fleet roster.
32 years passed.
No third England was commissioned.
The record stands unbroken.
Six submarines destroyed by a single warship in 12 days.
May 19th through May 31st, 1944.
No ship in any Navy has matched that achievement in the 82 years since.
Not in World War II, not in Korea, not in the Cold War, not in modern anti-ubmarine operations.
The tactical innovations USS England pioneered remain relevant.
Forward-firing weapons that maintain sonar contact during attack.
Predictionbased firing solutions that anticipate submarine evasion.
Aggressive prosecution of contacts despite initial failures.
Modern anti-ubmarine warfare incorporates these principles in systems far more sophisticated than the hedgehog mortar.
The intelligence methods that enabled England’s success evolved into the signals intelligence infrastructure that supported American naval operations through the Cold War and beyond.
Fleet radio unit Pacific became the foundation for modern cryptologic warfare.
The codereers who decoded Japanese submarine positions in May 1944 established procedures still used eight decades later.
But the human element cannot be replicated.
Pendleton’s leadership, Williamson’s tactical innovation, the crew’s discipline under combat conditions, the courage to attack when other ships failed, the precision to kill six times in eight attacks when the weapon was considered experimental.
That combination of factors occurred once in May 1944 aboard a 1,400 ton destroyer escort that the Navy considered expendable.
If this story moved you the way it moved us, do us 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 sailors and destroyer escorts who rewrote the rules of submarine warfare with courage and precision.
Real ships, 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.
You’re not just a viewer.
You’re part of keeping these memories alive.
Tell us your location.
Tell us if someone in your family served aboard destroyer escorts.
Tell us if you’ve heard of USS England before this video.
Just let us know you’re here.
Thank you for watching.
And thank you for making sure USS England and her crew don’t disappear into silence.
These sailors deserve to be remembered and you’re helping make that happen.
The destroyer escort returned to Manus Island on June 2nd, 1944, with empty hedgehog racks, exhausted sonar operators, and a reputation spreading through the Pacific Fleet faster than any official dispatch.
Sailors from other ships crowded the docks just to look at England as she tied up alongside the repair pier.
Men who had spent months escorting convoys through submarine waters without seeing a confirmed kill now stared at the small Buckleyclass ship that had destroyed six submarines in less than two weeks.
The crew of USS George watched from across the harbor as supply barges unloaded fresh hedgehog ammunition onto England’s forward deck.
Some of George’s sailors applauded.
Others remained silent.
They had fought the same submarines, fired the same weapons, followed the same operational orders, yet England alone had become legend.
Pendleton refused to let the attention affect discipline.
At 0600 the morning after arrival, England’s crew resumed drills exactly as before.
Damage control practice in the forward compartments.
Gunnery exercises with the 40mm mounts.
Sonar calibration tests.
Williamson supervised another full hedgehog loading sequence under tropical rain while photographers from Fleet Headquarters attempted to document the process.
He barely acknowledged them.
The lieutenant understood something the reporters did not.
England’s success had depended on precision so narrow that even small lapses could have turned victory into disaster.
The hedgehog launcher itself showed signs of strain after the operation.
The repeated firing sequences had warped several mounting brackets.
Saltwater corrosion affected the rotation gearing.
Ordnance technicians discovered hairline fractures in two of the spigot bases where recoil stress had accumulated beyond expected tolerances.
The Bureau of Ordnance had designed the system for occasional combat use, not continuous attacks across twelve consecutive days.
England had fired more hedgehog projectiles during the NA line operation than some destroyer escorts expended during their entire wartime service.
Fleet engineers interviewed the crew in detail.
How quickly could the launcher be reloaded? How often did firing circuits fail? Did the mortar blast interfere with sonar equipment? Did the projectiles maintain stable trajectories during heavy seas? Williamson answered every question carefully.
He explained how England’s crew had begun compensating for deck roll before firing, how helmsmen adjusted ship heading during attack runs to stabilize the pattern, how sonar operators learned to distinguish submarine maneuvers from thermal layer distortion beneath the Pacific surface.
The Pacific Ocean itself had shaped the battle.
Warm surface water near the Solomon Islands created acoustic layers that bent sonar pulses unpredictably.
Japanese submarine commanders used those layers as shields, hiding beneath them to distort range estimates.
England’s sonar operators gradually learned to interpret the false echoes, the delayed returns, the ghost contacts produced by temperature gradients.
Men barely out of high school had mastered a form of underwater physics while fighting a hidden enemy in darkness.
Intelligence officers from Fleet Radio Unit Pacific arrived at Manus three days later carrying classified reports.
They met Pendleton aboard England under armed guard.
The documents they carried remained among the most secret materials in the entire Pacific theater.
Ultra intercepts.
Decoded Japanese naval communications.
Submarine deployment schedules.
The officers wanted confirmation that England’s attack timings aligned with intercepted transmission gaps from the destroyed submarines.
The meeting lasted four hours.
Pendleton learned details he had never known during the operation itself.
American codebreakers had been reading portions of Japanese naval traffic for months.
Not perfectly, not continuously, but enough to identify submarine movement patterns.
Enough to know when picket lines were forming.
Enough to direct hunter killer groups into interception zones with terrifying accuracy.
One intelligence officer explained the broader significance.
Japan’s submarine force had already been weakened by industrial shortages, inexperienced crews, and radar inferiority.
But the destruction of the NA line created something worse than material loss.
It shattered confidence.
Japanese submarine commanders no longer trusted operational security.
They suspected spies, radio compromise, traitors, impossible American luck.
Some officers believed the Americans possessed technology capable of detecting submarines underwater across vast distances.
The truth was both simpler and more devastating.
Mathematics, radio intercepts, disciplined tactics, and a small escort ship with a weapon most admirals had dismissed as unreliable.
News of England’s achievement reached the United States weeks later through carefully censored newspaper articles.
Wartime secrecy prevented publication of operational details.
Journalists could not mention codebreaking or intelligence intercepts.
They described England instead as an aggressive escort vessel that had engaged enemy submarines during “a series of Pacific operations.
” Even then, the story captured public attention.
Americans had grown accustomed to hearing about aircraft carriers, Marines storming beaches, battleships bombarding islands.
Destroyer escorts rarely appeared in headlines.
Families of England’s crew members clipped those newspaper articles and mailed them across the country.
Mothers in Kansas showed neighbors the reports.
Shipyard workers in Maine discussed the submarine kills during lunch breaks.
In small towns across America, people who had never heard of a hedgehog mortar suddenly knew the name USS England.
The Japanese Navy experienced the opposite reaction.
At Sixth Fleet Headquarters, surviving submarine officers reviewed the reports from the NA line disaster with disbelief.
The Imperial Navy had entered the war believing its submariners among the finest in the world.
Early successes seemed to confirm that belief.
Japanese submarines sank Allied warships from Pearl Harbor to the Indian Ocean.
They operated aggressively, often independently, sometimes with extraordinary courage.
But by mid1944 the balance had shifted irreversibly.
American radar could detect surfaced submarines at night.
Longrange patrol aircraft covered vast ocean sectors.
Escort carriers launched anti-submarine patrols around the clock.
And now destroyer escorts equipped with hedgehog mortars were achieving kill rates previously considered impossible.
Japanese submarine training doctrine began changing almost immediately after the NA line losses.
New orders emphasized survival over aggression.
Avoid unnecessary contact.
Dive immediately upon radar detection.
Limit radio transmissions to essential traffic only.
Abort patrol sectors if American hunter killer groups appeared nearby.
The psychological impact proved enormous.
Submarine crews understood what hedgehog attacks meant.
Depth charges terrified sailors because they exploded violently around the hull, but submariners often survived dozens of attacks.
Hedgehogs were different.
Silence meant survival.
Detonation meant direct contact.
One hit usually destroyed the boat outright.
Survivors from other Japanese submarines later described the dread associated with the new weapon.
There was no warning explosion pattern, no gradual escalation.
Only silence followed either by relief or instant death.
England sailed again less than two weeks after the final submarine kill.
The war did not pause for celebration.
Convoys still required escort.
Troops still moved between islands.
Japanese aircraft still attacked Allied positions across the Pacific.
Yet something had changed aboard the ship.
The crew now carried confidence bordering on superstition.
Sonar operators believed they could identify submarine maneuvers before they occurred.
Gunners joked that enemy aircraft avoided England out of fear.
Sailors from other ships requested transfers hoping to join the legendary destroyer escort.
Officers throughout the fleet studied England’s after-action reports searching for hidden secrets, some magical formula that explained six kills in twelve days.
But the truth remained stubbornly human.
Training.
Repetition.
Timing.
Calm decision-making under pressure.
Williamson later remarked to another officer that England succeeded because everyone aboard understood their role completely.
No hesitation during attacks.
No confusion in combat.
Sonar passed bearings instantly.
Fire control calculated solutions immediately.
Helmsmen held course precisely.
Hedgehog crews reloaded automatically.
Every action connected seamlessly to the next.
The Japanese submariners were skilled and courageous.
Several nearly escaped.
RO105 survived twenty-five hours against four attacking ships before England finally sank it.
One altered calculation, one delayed firing sequence, one incorrect bearing estimate could easily have changed the outcome.
By late summer 1944, American anti-submarine forces dominated much of the Pacific.
Convoy losses dropped sharply.
Japanese supply lines collapsed under combined pressure from submarines, aircraft, and surface escorts.
The Imperial Navy still possessed dangerous submarines, but no longer enough to influence the strategic balance.
England continued escort duties through increasingly violent operations.
Leyte Gulf.
Lingayen Gulf.
Okinawa.
The Pacific war grew bloodier as Japan resisted invasion with mounting desperation.
Kamikaze attacks transformed ordinary escort assignments into suicide defense missions.
Radar picket duty off Okinawa became among the most dangerous assignments in the entire war.
Destroyers and destroyer escorts operated miles ahead of the main fleet, isolated targets designed to provide early warning against incoming Japanese aircraft.
The duty was essential and deadly.
Japanese pilots concentrated attacks against radar picket ships because destroying them blinded American defenses.
England’s crew understood the danger immediately when assigned to picket station.
On May 9th, 1945, the sky over Okinawa filled with incoming aircraft shortly after noon.
Radar operators detected multiple contacts approaching from the north.
General quarters sounded throughout the ship.
Gunners rushed to stations.
Ammunition crews hauled shells upward from magazines deep below deck.
The first Japanese aircraft emerged from cloud cover at high speed.
England’s forward guns opened fire instantly.
Tracers crossed the sky.
The dive bomber burst into flames before reaching attack position and crashed into the sea off the port side.
Crewmen barely had time to celebrate before the second aircraft appeared.
Witnesses later described the kamikaze descending almost vertically through antiaircraft fire.
England’s guns struck the plane repeatedly.
Smoke poured from the engine.
Pieces of the wings broke away.
Yet the aircraft continued downward directly toward the bridge.
Impact came seconds later.
The explosion tore through the starboard side with catastrophic force.
Burning aviation fuel sprayed across the deck.
Fragments from the aircraft and bomb ripped through compartments packed with sailors.
Men who had survived submarine hunts, tropical storms, endless convoy duty, died instantly amid fire and twisted steel.
Damage control parties fought for hours to save the ship.
Smoke filled passageways.
Ammunition lockers threatened secondary explosions.
Corpsmen established emergency treatment stations beside the shattered wardroom where Williamson had once spread attack charts across the table planning submarine kills.
England survived because the same discipline that destroyed submarines now saved the ship itself.
Damage control teams isolated flooding.
Engineers maintained steam pressure despite ruptured lines.
Gun crews continued firing at additional aircraft while medical personnel carried wounded sailors through burning compartments.
When the attack finally ended, 37 crew members were dead or missing.
The surviving sailors gathered quietly on deck that evening as the destroyer escort limped away from Okinawa for repairs.
No speeches.
No ceremony.
Just exhausted men staring across dark water where friends had vanished hours earlier.
Some crewmen later admitted the losses affected them more deeply than the submarine campaign.
During the NA line operation, the enemy remained hidden beneath the ocean.
The submariners were unseen opponents detected only through sonar echoes and breaking noises underwater.
But the kamikaze attack happened face to face beneath daylight skies.
The Japanese pilot who crashed into England likely knew he would die before beginning the attack run.
The sailors defending the ship knew it too.
After the war, naval historians analyzed England’s submarine campaign repeatedly trying to explain why no other warship duplicated the achievement.
Technology alone could not account for it.
Hundreds of ships eventually carried hedgehog systems.
Thousands of sailors trained in anti-submarine tactics derived from England’s procedures.
Yet six kills in twelve days remained unmatched.
Part of the answer involved timing.
England operated during a brief moment when Allied intelligence superiority, improving sonar technology, and Japanese operational rigidity intersected perfectly.
The NA picket line placed submarines in predictable positions.
American codebreakers exposed those positions.
Hunter killer groups exploited the intelligence aggressively.
But opportunity alone never guarantees success.
Other ships received the same intelligence.
George and Raby attacked the same submarines.
Some encounters lasted hours without result.
England consistently succeeded because her officers adapted faster than their opponents.
Williamson’s modified attack timing changed everything.
Traditional anti-submarine doctrine focused on reacting to submarine movements.
England instead predicted where submarines would maneuver before they actually moved.
That subtle shift transformed hedgehog attacks from area bombardment into calculated interception.
Modern naval tacticians later compared the approach to aerial gunnery leading techniques.
Do not fire where the target is.
Fire where the target will be.
The concept sounds obvious afterward.
In combat against maneuvering submarines beneath dark ocean water, it required extraordinary confidence.
The Navy quietly incorporated those lessons into Cold War doctrine after 1945.
American destroyers hunting Soviet submarines studied attack geometry descended directly from England’s Pacific operations.
Sonar systems improved dramatically.
Weapons evolved into homing torpedoes and rocket-delivered payloads.
Nuclear submarines transformed undersea warfare completely.
Still, the core tactical logic remained recognizable.
Maintain contact.
Predict evasion.
Strike before the target escapes.
In the decades after the war, reunions of England’s surviving crew became smaller each year.
Veterans gathered in hotel banquet rooms wearing old destroyer escort pins on civilian jackets.
They told familiar stories about sonar contacts, tropical storms, midnight battle stations, and hedgehog launches that shook the forward deck.
Many rarely discussed fear directly.
Instead they remembered details.
Coffee spilled across plotting tables during attack runs.
The smell of cordite after firing drills.
The way sonar headphones pressed painfully against ears after hours tracking contacts.
The sudden silence following successful hedgehog detonations.
Several veterans admitted they did not fully understand the historical significance at the time.
During May 1944 they focused only on the next attack, the next sonar bearing, the next submarine.
Records and legends came later.
One former crewman recalled that after sinking RO105, England’s sailors were simply relieved the operation had ended.
Exhaustion mattered more than glory.
The Pacific Ocean swallowed the evidence quickly.
Oil slicks dispersed.
Debris sank.
The submarine wrecks disappeared into darkness thousands of feet below the surface.
Today those six Japanese submarines remain war graves scattered across remote Pacific waters north of the Solomon Islands.
Occasionally oceanographic surveys searching for wartime wrecks identify possible debris fields matching the submarine losses.
Sonar images reveal shattered hull sections resting on volcanic seabeds.
Broken pressure hulls.
Detached conning towers.
Debris trails stretching across underwater slopes.
But most remain undiscovered.
The sea kept them.
Historians sometimes debate whether England’s achievement could ever be repeated.
Modern anti-submarine warfare operates under completely different conditions.
Nuclear submarines travel faster underwater than destroyers move on the surface.
Guided torpedoes attack from beyond visual range.
Satellites, acoustic arrays, and maritime patrol aircraft create layered detection systems unimaginable in 1944.
Opportunities for one ship to sink six submarines in twelve days may never occur again.
Yet the record persists because it represents more than statistics.
It reflects a rare combination of intelligence, innovation, leadership, and crew performance executed perfectly under wartime pressure.
Small ship.
Experimental weapon.
Unproven tactics.
Extraordinary results.
The destroyer escort itself vanished long ago.
Scrapped steel.
Melted machinery.
Recycled metal scattered into other industries decades ago.
Nothing physical remains of the original USS England except photographs, paperwork, medals, and memory.
But naval officers still study the operation.
At modern anti-submarine warfare schools, instructors continue referencing England when teaching aggressive contact prosecution.
Tactical simulations recreate the NA line attacks.
Sonar trainees examine the original tracking charts.
Officers discuss Williamson’s modifications and Pendleton’s command decisions.
Not because the exact tactics remain usable.
Because the mindset does.
Adapt faster than the enemy.
Trust disciplined crews.
Refine procedures under combat conditions instead of waiting for perfect doctrine from distant headquarters.
The men aboard England accomplished something the Navy itself had not expected.
A ship considered expendable became historic.
Sailors assigned routine escort duty transformed naval warfare doctrine in less than two weeks.
And perhaps that explains why the story endures eight decades later.
Not because of technology.
Not because of statistics.
Because ordinary sailors aboard a small warship faced an invisible enemy beneath black Pacific water and mastered a form of combat no one had fully understood before them.
Six submarines.
Twelve days.
A record written in sonar echoes, underwater explosions, and the discipline of men who refused to believe their ship was too small to matter.
