The Last Patrol: USS Tang in the Formosa Strait and the Circular Run, October 1944

At about 02:30 on the morning of 25 October 1944, local time, USS Tang lay stopped on a calm sea a few miles off the China coast near Turnabout Island, at the northern end of the Formosa Strait. Around her burned the wreckage of a Japanese convoy she had attacked an hour before. Commander Richard H. O’Kane had two torpedoes left, the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of the patrol, and one target: a transport, dead in the water and listing, about 900 yards away. The first torpedo ran straight. The second broached, turned hard to the left, and came back. Twenty seconds after it left the tube it struck Tang near her stern. Of the 87 men aboard, nine would live to see the end of the war.

Why it mattered

By the autumn of 1944 the American submarine force had become the most effective weapon against Japan’s merchant fleet, and Tang was among its most successful boats. In four patrols since January she had rescued 22 downed aviators off Truk and set the record for ships sunk on a single patrol (Chapter 4; Chapter 5). Her fifth patrol took her into the narrow, shallow, heavily patrolled Formosa Strait at the moment Japan was pushing everything it could toward the Philippines, where American troops had landed on Leyte on 20 October. The two convoys she attacked on 23 and 24–25 October were carrying soldiers, aircraft, fuel and supplies south, and the second was attacked in the same hours that the Battle of Leyte Gulf was being fought hundreds of miles away (Chapter 6).

The patrol also ended in one of the strangest and most studied losses of the war. Tang was sunk not by the enemy but by a malfunction of her own weapon, the Mark 18 electric torpedo, which made a circular run and hit her. Because nine men survived, and because they told what happened after liberation, the loss became the only one in U.S. Navy history in which men escaped individually from a sunken submarine, and the Navy’s own War Damage Report called it the only account it had of events inside a war-damaged submarine during and after its sinking (Bureau of Ships, War Damage Report No. 58, 1949). Their escape is the subject of Chapter 8, their captivity of Chapter 9.

One caution runs through everything below. Tang’s patrol report went down with her. What we know of the fifth patrol comes from O’Kane’s reconstruction, written from memory after his release and dated September 1945, from the recollections of the other survivors, and from Japanese shipping records examined after the war. The reconstruction gives few exact times and positions, and it does not always agree with the Japanese records about what was sunk. Where they differ, both are given here.

Pearl Harbor, Midway and a decision to go alone

Tang came back from her fourth patrol, off the south coast of Honshu, in early September 1944 and went through a refit at Pearl Harbor. Several officers and men left after four patrols, as was normal, and new men came aboard. Among them was Lt. Lawrence Savadkin, a destroyer officer who had volunteered for submarines and who joined after the fourth patrol; he served as a department head and, at battle stations, ran the torpedo data computer at the after end of the conning tower, though he had not yet qualified in submarines (Savadkin, oral history; Lafayette College). The executive officer was Lt. Frank H. Springer. Chief Boatswain’s Mate William R. Leibold, who had made all four patrols, stood his battle station on the bridge beside the captain as an extra pair of eyes (Leibold, oral history, National WWII Museum).

Tang sailed from Pearl Harbor on the afternoon of 24 September 1944. On 27 September she topped off her fuel at Midway, 1,300 miles to the northwest, and left the same day for an area off the northwest coast of Formosa and the China coast (United States Submarine Losses, World War II, 1949). After Midway, no base and no other submarine heard from her again.

The route to the Formosa Strait ran past the Nansei Shoto, the Ryukyu chain, and northeast of Formosa the Japanese had laid an extensive minefield. O’Kane was given a choice: he could pass through the dangerous waters north of Formosa alone, or join a coordinated attack group of three submarines, Silversides, Trigger and Salmon, under Cmdr. John S. Coye Jr. in Silversides. He chose to go alone (Submarine Losses, 1949; Blair, Silent Victory). The choice was in character. O’Kane had learned his trade under Dudley Morton in Wahoo, where a boat operating alone and attacking aggressively on the surface at night had become the model, and Tang’s record had been made the same way (Chapter 2).

Tang carried a full load of 24 torpedoes, all of them Mark 18s. The Mark 18 was the American copy of the German G7e electric torpedo, built by Westinghouse and in service with the submarine force since the autumn of 1943. It left no wake of exhaust bubbles, which made it harder for a target to see and dodge, and by late 1944 it had largely escaped the depth-keeping and exploder failures that had plagued the steam-driven Mark 14. But it was slow, about 29 knots against the Mark 14’s 45 knots at high speed, its batteries needed constant attention, and like the Mark 14 it had no protection against a circular run (Wildenberg and Polmar, Ship Killer; U.S. Navy, Torpedo Mark 18 (Electric), 1943).

Into the strait: the first sinkings, 10–11 October

Tang entered the Formosa Strait on 10 October. The strait is about 100 miles wide and, over most of its length, less than 300 feet deep, with the Pescadores Islands (Penghu) in the middle and the Chinese coast to the west broken by islands, headlands and fishing grounds. It was one of Japan’s main shipping lanes between the home islands and the south. That evening, at about 21:00, Tang’s radar picked up a contact that turned out to be a patrol vessel, and she avoided it (uboat.net, summarizing the reconstructed patrol report).

At about 04:00 on 11 October, off the northwest coast of Formosa near Pakusa Point, radar picked up a ship moving up the coast. Tang tracked it at 14 knots, identified a large, loaded freighter, and fired three torpedoes from about 800 yards. Two hit and the ship sank quickly. When Tang surfaced in the wreckage she found no survivors, only debris and several half-swamped landing craft. That afternoon she sighted a northbound freighter, tracked it until dark, surfaced 4,000 yards astern, worked around stationary patrol boats, and at about 21:00 fired a single stern torpedo. It hit, and the ship sank rapidly (uboat.net; Submarine Losses).

Japanese records identify the two ships as the freighter Joshu Go, 1,658 tons, in which eight crewmen died, and the small passenger-cargo ship Oita Maru, 711 tons, in which 26 crewmen died (On Eternal Patrol, Japanese ship pages; JANAC, 1947). Some American sources date the sinkings to 10 October and some to 11 October; the difference is mostly the date line and the time zone. In the early hours of 12 October Tang sighted a properly lighted hospital ship moving north off Formosa and let it pass.

The waiting week: Halsey off Formosa and a cruiser that got away

Tang had been placed in the strait for a reason. From 12 to 14 October the fast carriers of Admiral William F. Halsey’s Third Fleet struck airfields and harbors on Formosa to destroy Japanese air power before the invasion of the Philippines, and Japan answered with the massed air attacks known as the Formosa air battle. American planners expected shipping to flee Formosa after the strikes and reinforcements to move south toward the Philippines after the Leyte landing, planned for 20 October, and Tang’s area was chosen to catch both (War Damage Report No. 58).

For the next week the hunting was poor. From 15 to 17 October Tang patrolled the Chinese coast south of Haitan Island and found nothing; on 18 and 19 October she saw only patrol craft in the strait. On the night of 19 October she moved to the Chinese coast to intercept warships expected to come north. At about 04:00 on 20 October radar found an enemy force coming south instead: a cruiser with two destroyers, making 19 knots and zigzagging at least every three minutes. Postwar researchers have identified the cruiser as the Katori-class training cruiser Kashima. Tang trailed and tried to reach a firing position, but each guess about the next zig was wrong, and her Mark 18s were too slow to make up the difference. At 800 yards she was detected and illuminated, and she dived north of the Pescadores. No depth charges followed (uboat.net, from the reconstructed report). On 21 October, near Turnabout Island, she tracked a patrol craft and nearly fired before it reversed course at 2,500 yards and left.

23 October: the first convoy

Shortly after midnight, at about 00:30 on 23 October, Tang’s SJ surface-search radar, recently repaired, detected a convoy. On the radar and then by eye in the darkness it appeared to be three large tankers in column with two freighters or transports, a destroyer ahead and smaller escorts on the bows and quarters. O’Kane chose a night surface attack, the method Tang had used since her first patrol, and took the boat inside the escort screen (DANFS; uboat.net).

Tang fired two torpedoes at the nearest “tanker,” one at the middle ship and two at the farthest. All appeared to hit, and all three ships caught fire. Then the transports reacted. One crossed Tang’s stern; the other turned to ram. O’Kane put on full speed and full left rudder, crossed the transport’s bow and got inside its turning circle. Leibold, beside him on the bridge, later recalled grabbing the captain as the ship bore down (Leibold, oral history). The two Japanese ships then collided, and Tang fired four stern torpedoes into them at short range, about 400 yards. By Tang’s account one ship went down bow first and the other rose to a steep angle; as Tang withdrew at high speed, with destroyers coming after her, another large explosion was seen at about 6,000 yards (DANFS; Wikipedia, citing O’Kane, Clear the Bridge!).

O’Kane’s reconstructed report claimed three tankers of about 10,000 tons each and two transports of about 7,500 tons each. The Japanese records tell a different and grimmer story. The ships were not tankers but small cargo ships and army transports of about 2,000 tons each, several of them carrying troops. Tatsuju Maru (1,944 tons) sank with seven dead. Wakatake Maru (1,920 tons) sank with 176 dead, most of them passengers and soldiers. Toun Maru (1,915 tons), an army transport, was torpedoed with heavy loss of life among the troops aboard, 131 soldiers, 12 gunners, 16 crewmen and five passengers by one count, and was towed to Takao and written off (On Eternal Patrol; uboat.net; Wikipedia list of shipwrecks in October 1944, citing Japanese sources). The tonnage was far smaller than claimed. The human cost was not.

24 October: the convoy off Turnabout Island

Tang had fired 13 of her 24 torpedoes. She spent the daylight hours of 24 October submerged, patrolling at periscope depth, and at dark surfaced and headed north for Turnabout Island, a small island with a lighthouse off the Fujian coast at the northern entrance to the strait, today called Niushan Dao. As she closed the coast her radar showed so many contacts that it was almost useless. It was a large convoy hugging the coast between Foochow (Fuzhou) and Amoy (Xiamen): at least fourteen large ships, with at least one destroyer and a dozen escorts, by O’Kane’s account (War Damage Report No. 58). Japanese records later listed tankers, transports, a survey ship and six kaibokan escort ships, among them the escort ship CD-34 (uboat.net).

The escort commander’s searchlight lit the convoy as the ships formed up, and O’Kane could see what they carried: tankers with aircraft on their decks and transports with crated planes stacked on bow and stern. The Medal of Honor citation later described them as “with crated planes piled high on each unit.” Two escorts turned toward Tang and opened fire, but she held her approach. In quick succession she fired two torpedoes each at a large three-deck transport, a smaller transport and a large tanker, at ranges of 900 to 1,400 yards, then swung and fired from the stern tubes at another tanker and a transport behind it at 600 to 700 yards. The tanker blew up. At least one torpedo hit the transport, which stopped. A destroyer charging at Tang exploded, either from one of Tang’s torpedoes or, as O’Kane later thought possible, from the fire of two escorts shooting at Tang across the convoy (DANFS; Wikipedia, citing O’Kane; War Damage Report No. 58).

The record afterward is again smaller than the claims. Japanese records show two ships sunk that night: the new tanker Ebara Maru, read in American records as Kogen Maru, 6,957 tons, with 11 crewmen lost, and Matsumoto Maru, a freighter converted to a tanker, 7,024 tons, with no losses reported. Both went down off the China coast at about 25°N, 119°30′E. No Japanese destroyer is recorded as lost (On Eternal Patrol; uboat.net; JANAC). Ebara Maru’s survivors were picked up by CD-34, the escort ship that would pick up Tang’s survivors the next morning.

The last two torpedoes

Tang now had two torpedoes left, both in the bow tubes. Rather than fire them in the confusion of the attack, O’Kane took the boat clear to about 10,000 yards, where the torpedomen pulled back and rechecked the last two Mark 18s and ventilated their batteries (uboat.net). Then he came back slowly, at about 6 knots, skirting two escorts on the seaward side, toward the transport that lay stopped and listing in the wreckage of the convoy. At about 900 yards he fired the twenty-third torpedo. Its wake was seen running hot, straight and normal toward the target, and he fired the twenty-fourth (War Damage Report No. 58; Wikipedia, citing O’Kane).

The last torpedo broached, porpoised, and curved sharply to the left. Those on the bridge saw it come round in a circle toward the boat. O’Kane ordered emergency speed ahead and full rudder to swing the stern away, a maneuver submariners called fishtailing, but there was no time and too little distance. The torpedo hit Tang on the port side aft, abreast the after torpedo room or the maneuvering room, about 20 seconds after it was fired (War Damage Report No. 58). O’Kane’s sworn statement of 1946 gives the time as about 2 a.m. on 25 October; most accounts give about 02:30. In Hawaii and Washington it was still 24 October, which is why the Navy’s records date the loss to that day.

The explosion whipped the hull so violently that men as far forward as the control room suffered broken bones. The after torpedo room, the maneuvering room and the after engine room flooded at once, and the propulsion plant was destroyed; in the forward torpedo room men watching the log saw the boat lose all way within seconds. Tang settled, then plunged by the stern, which the War Damage Report likened to a pendulum dropped from the horizontal, and the stern struck the bottom in about 180 feet of water while the bow, buoyed by the intact compartments forward, hung at an angle of about 40 degrees with some 25 feet above the surface (War Damage Report No. 58). The nine men on the bridge were thrown into the sea or carried down with the boat. Water poured through the open conning tower hatch before anyone could close it.

Inside the boat

What happened inside Tang over the next hours is the subject of the next chapter, and only its outline belongs here. In the control room, men closed the lower conning tower hatch, damaged and leaking, against the water pouring down from above; one man thrown down from the conning tower had a broken arm. About fifteen minutes after the hit, with no hydraulic power, they opened the vents of the No. 2 main ballast tanks by hand to flood them, bringing the bow down so the whole boat lay level on the bottom. They burned the secret publications. The survivors of the control room, the forward battery compartment, the forward engine room and the after battery made their way forward, carrying the injured in blankets, until about 45 men were crowded into the forward torpedo room, where the last intact escape trunk was (War Damage Report No. 58).

Above them, Japanese escorts were searching. Soon after the boat settled, depth charges shook her hard, and the men in the torpedo room stopped all preparations for escape until the enemy seemed to leave. During this time a fire, probably electrical, started in the forward battery compartment and grew. When escape attempts finally began, shortly after daylight, smoke, heat, rising air pressure and carbon dioxide were already working on the men. Thirteen left through the escape trunk; eight reached the surface; five lived (War Damage Report No. 58; Chapter 8).

On the surface, three of the nine men on the bridge survived the night in the water: O’Kane, Leibold and Radio Technician Floyd M. Caverly. Others who were on the bridge, among them Radioman Charles Andriolo, who could not swim, were lost (Tuohy, “Escape from Tang,” 2002). From the conning tower, Savadkin found an air pocket as the compartment flooded, worked his way out through the hatch and rose without breathing apparatus; he kept afloat through the night with his trousers tied into a float (Savadkin, oral history; War Damage Report No. 58). In daylight the survivors could see, about a thousand yards away, the bow of the transport they had last fired at sticking up out of the water.

What the last patrol sank: claims and the record

Tang fired 24 torpedoes in four attacks on her fifth patrol. In O’Kane’s reconstruction 22 hit enemy ships, one missed, and the last sank Tang. The 1949 Navy publication United States Submarine Losses credited the patrol with 13 ships of 107,324 tons, and those claims stood behind the Medal of Honor citation, which describes smashing hits on three tankers, two transports blasted on the first night and, on the second, a tanker exploded, a transport stopped and a destroyer blown up.

Postwar comparison with Japanese records shrank the totals, as it did for almost every submarine. It is important to see why. Night surface attacks were made at close range against darkened ships, often with several torpedoes in the water at once; a ship hit by one torpedo might be counted twice, a burning ship might be counted sunk, and the size of a dark silhouette at night was very hard to judge. Tang’s fifth-patrol report also had to be rebuilt from memory nearly a year after the events, by a man who had spent that year starving in Japanese camps. None of that makes the claims dishonest; it makes them claims. The table compares them with what Japanese records show.

The men who were lost

Seventy-eight of Tang’s 87 officers and men died. No one survived from the three after compartments, which flooded at the moment of the hit. Six of the nine men on the bridge and all but one of the men in the conning tower were lost in the first minutes. Of the roughly 45 who reached the forward torpedo room, eight left the boat and reached the surface, and three of those died in the water; the fate of about 30 men who stayed in the torpedo room is not known, but the War Damage Report judged that smoke from the battery fire and carbon dioxide must soon have overcome them (War Damage Report No. 58). Among the dead were the executive officer, Lt. Frank Springer; the chief of the boat, Chief Torpedoman William F. Ballinger; Lt. (jg) F. M. Enos Jr.; Lt. (jg) Richard J. Kroth; Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Paul L. Larson; Radioman 2nd Class Charles L. Andriolo; Radioman 1st Class Edwin F. Bergman; Chief Electrician’s Mate James H. Culp; and Motor Machinist’s Mate 1st Class George Zofcin, who had told shipmates he could not swim and stayed behind in the torpedo room (Tuohy, 2002; National WWII Museum; Submarine Losses, crew list).

Their families heard nothing. The Navy announced on 5 February 1945 that Tang was overdue and presumed lost, and she was struck from the Navy list three days later. The nine survivors were held in a Japanese navy interrogation camp that was never reported to the International Red Cross, and no word of them reached the United States until they were freed at the end of August 1945 (WWII on Deadline, 2020; O’Kane, sworn statement, 1946). The first newspaper reports, filed from Tokyo Bay, did not even agree on how Tang had been lost: O’Kane, interviewed aboard a ship in the bay on 31 August, said he never knew what hit them and guessed a mine, while Savadkin told a reporter on Guam a few days later that she had been sunk by her own torpedo. The Navy confirmed the circular run in a press release of 6 October 1945 (WWII on Deadline, “Sinking of the USS Tang,” 2020, citing the Associated Press).

Timeline

Tang’s fifth war patrol, September–October 1944

1. 24 Sep 1944Tang departs Pearl Harbor in the afternoon for her fifth war patrol, bound for the Formosa Strait.
2. 27 SepTops off fuel at Midway and departs the same day; O’Kane chooses to pass north of Formosa alone rather than join Coye’s group. Nothing more is heard from Tang.
3. 10 OctEnters the Formosa Strait; evades a patrol vessel at about 21:00.
4. 11 Oct, about 04:00Sinks the freighter Joshu Go off Pakusa Point, northwest Formosa.
5. 11 Oct, about 21:00Sinks Oita Maru with a single stern torpedo.
6. 12 Oct, about 01:00Sights a lighted hospital ship and lets it pass.
7. 12–14 OctThird Fleet carriers strike Formosa; the Formosa air battle.
8. 15–19 OctPatrols the China coast south of Haitan Island and the strait; little traffic.
9. 20 Oct, about 04:00Tracks a cruiser, later identified as Kashima, and two destroyers; cannot reach a firing position; dives when illuminated. U.S. troops land on Leyte.
10. 21 OctTracks a patrol craft near Turnabout Island.
11. 23 Oct, from about 00:30Attacks a convoy in mid-strait; evades a ramming transport; two Japanese ships collide; Tatsuju Maru and Wakatake Maru sunk, Toun Maru wrecked.
12. 23–26 OctBattle of Leyte Gulf.
13. 24 Oct, after darkSurfaces near Turnabout Island and finds a large convoy carrying aircraft, fuel and troops along the China coast.
14. 24–25 Oct, nightAttacks the convoy; Ebara Maru (Kogen Maru) and Matsumoto Maru sunk; a transport left stopped.
15. 25 Oct, about 02:00–02:30After rechecking the last two torpedoes, fires at the stopped transport from about 900 yards; the 24th torpedo runs in a circle and hits Tang aft. She sinks in about 180 feet of water.
16. 25 Oct, from daylightEscape attempts from the forward torpedo room; Japanese escort CD-34 picks up nine survivors during the day.
17. 5 Feb 1945Navy announces Tang overdue and presumed lost; struck from the Navy list 8 February.
18. 6 Oct 1945Navy press release confirms Tang was sunk by her own torpedo.

Questions readers ask

Why did Tang sink on 24 October in some sources and 25 October in others?

Both are right for different clocks. The torpedo hit at about 02:00 to 02:30 on 25 October in the Formosa Strait. The Navy kept its records on its own calendar, and in Hawaii and the continental United States it was still 24 October, so official lists, DANFS and the Medal of Honor citation use 24 October.

Why did O’Kane recheck the last two torpedoes before firing them?

Mark 18 electric torpedoes needed their batteries ventilated and checked, and the last two had sat in the tubes through two convoy attacks. O’Kane pulled off to about 10,000 yards so the torpedomen could withdraw and check them before he went back for the stopped transport. The check found nothing wrong; the fault that caused the circular run did not show itself until the torpedo was in the water.

Was the transport Tang last fired at actually sunk?

Probably. Survivors in the water after daylight saw the bow of a ship standing up out of the sea about a thousand yards away, and O’Kane believed the twenty-third torpedo had hit. Which ship it was is not certain: Japanese records list two ships sunk in that convoy, Ebara Maru and Matsumoto Maru, and do not say which of them, if either, was the stopped transport.

How many men were aboard, and how many survived?

Eighty-seven officers and men sailed on the fifth patrol. Nine survived: three from the bridge, one from the conning tower and five who escaped from the forward torpedo room. Seventy-eight died. All nine survivors were picked up by the Japanese escort ship CD-34 and spent the rest of the war as prisoners.

Has Tang’s wreck been found?

No confirmed discovery has been published. Tang lies in shallow water off the Chinese coast in the Taiwan Strait, an area of heavy fishing and military sensitivity, and the published positions of her loss differ by several miles. Of the 52 U.S. submarines lost in the war, about 15 had been located by 2025, including Wahoo in 2006 (Lost 52 Project).

Was going into the strait alone a mistake?

It was a judgment call that O’Kane was entitled to make, and it did not cause the loss. Tang reached her area, sank seven ships in two weeks and was lost to a torpedo malfunction, not to the mines or patrols that made the passage dangerous. Coordinated groups were not obviously safer; boats were lost in groups as well as alone.

How it connects

Tang’s last patrol is the end of the story told in the four chapters before it: her building and first patrol (Chapter 3), the rescue of 22 airmen off Truk, among them the crew of a Kingfisher floatplane from the battleship USS North Carolina, now a museum ship at Wilmington (Chapter 4), and the record patrols of the summer of 1944 (Chapter 5). The convoys she attacked were part of Japan’s effort to reinforce the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, in which submarines Darter and Dace struck the first blows (Chapter 6). The escape of her men from 180 feet is told in Chapter 8, their captivity at Ofuna and Omori and O’Kane’s Medal of Honor in Chapter 9.

Many of the American soldiers who returned to the Philippines in October 1944 were avenging Bataan and Corregidor, told in the site’s Bataan & Corregidor collection. The Formosa Strait and the Fujian coast were also a front of the war that began at the Marco Polo Bridge in 1937: Japan had occupied much of the China coast, and the shipping Tang attacked ran along it. For the parallel story of submarines and escorts in the other ocean, see the Battle of the Atlantic; for the whole war, the World War II hub and the Special Units collection.

Remembering it today

The 78 men lost in Tang have no graves. Like all of the war’s missing, they are named on the memorials of the American Battle Monuments Commission, whose database can be searched by name, and their boat is listed at the memorials to all 52 lost submarines, among them the Waterfront Memorial at the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park at Pearl Harbor and the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans built its Final Mission: USS Tang Submarine Experience, an immersive recreation of the last patrol, around Tang’s final attack. Memorial plaques to Tang stand in Veterans Memorial Plaza at Palatka, Florida. Two later ships carried the story on: the postwar submarine USS Tang (SS-563), whose crew presented O’Kane with a replacement for the cribbage board he had lost with the first Tang, and the guided-missile destroyer USS O’Kane (DDG-77), named for him in 1998. The museum submarines USS Pampanito in San Francisco, USS Bowfin at Pearl Harbor and USS Cod in Cleveland, all of Tang’s generation, show what the inside of her hull was like.

Sources

• U.S. Navy, Bureau of Ships. War Damage Report No. 58: Submarine War Damage Reports, section on USS Tang (SS-306). Washington, 1949. HyperWar transcription.
• U.S. Navy. United States Submarine Losses, World War II (NAVPERS 15,784), 1949 edition: “Tang (SS-306).” Naval History and Heritage Command.
• Naval History and Heritage Command. “Tang I (SS-306),” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and “USS Tang (SS-306)” photo page. DANFS; NHHC.
• Joint Army–Navy Assessment Committee. Japanese Naval and Merchant Shipping Losses during World War II by All Causes. Washington: GPO, 1947. HyperWar transcription.
• O’Kane, Richard H. Clear the Bridge! The War Patrols of the U.S.S. Tang. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1977; reprinted Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1989.
• O’Kane, Richard H. Sworn statement concerning maltreatment at Ofuna, 1 August 1946, International Prosecution Section Document No. 3224 (National Diet Library, NDL12923130). Scan via Wikimedia Commons.
• Blair, Clay, Jr. Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War against Japan. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975.
• Kershaw, Alex. Escape from the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2008; and “In the Grip of Black Water,” World War II, April 2013. HistoryNet.
• Tuohy, William. “Escape from Tang.” The Submarine Review, Naval Submarine League, April 2002. NSL archive; and The Bravest Man: Richard O’Kane and the Amazing Submarine Adventures of the USS Tang. Stroud: Sutton, 2001.
• Wildenberg, Thomas, and Norman Polmar. Ship Killer: A History of the American Torpedo. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010.
• U.S. Navy, Bureau of Ordnance. Torpedo Mark 18 (Electric): Description, Adjustment, Care, and Operation. April 1943.
• Roscoe, Theodore. United States Submarine Operations in World War II. Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1949.
• Leibold, William R. Oral history interview. The National WWII Museum, Digital Collections. ww2online.org.
• Savadkin, Lawrence. Oral history, “Imprisoned by the Japanese: CAPT Lawrence Savadkin,” Warriors in Their Own Words. Evergreen Podcasts; and Lafayette College news, “Notice of Online Archive.” Lafayette College.
• “Sinking of the USS Tang: ‘Like the world coming to an end.’” WWII on Deadline, 25 October 2020 (contemporary AP and newspaper reports). ww2ondeadline.com.
• Helgason, Guðmundur, ed. “USS Tang (SS-306)” and “Richard Hetherington O’Kane, USN.” uboat.net, Allied Warships. Tang; O’Kane.
• On Eternal Patrol. “USS Tang (SS-306)” loss page, Tang sinkings, and Japanese ship pages (Joshu Maru, Oita Maru, Tatsuju Maru, Wakatake Maru, Toun Maru, Ebara Maru, Matsumoto Maru). oneternalpatrol.com.
• Pacific Wrecks. “Richard H. O’Kane, Medal of Honor.” pacificwrecks.com.
• Wikipedia, “USS Tang (SS-306),” “Mark 18 torpedo” and “List of shipwrecks in October 1944,” used as pointers to the sources above.

Photographs: U.S. Navy photographs held by the National Archives and the Naval History and Heritage Command, a page from the Navy’s 1943 Mark 18 torpedo manual, Japanese naval photographs of the 1940s, and a modern photograph of the torpedo data computer aboard USS Pampanito by Samuel Wantman (CC BY-SA 3.0), all via Wikimedia Commons; U.S. government and pre-1946 Japanese photographs are in the public domain. No photographs of Tang’s fifth patrol exist; her own film was lost with her. Photographs of other ships and boats are labeled as such. The insignia drawn for this collection is an illustration, not an official emblem.