Left: USS Perch going down the ways on May 9th 1936 at the Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. Photo Groton Submarine Museum.

Descending down through exceptional visibility and a thick cloud of jellyfish to 100ft/30m, it was disappointing to find that the visibility soon deteriorated below the thermocline - as is often the case on many Java Sea wrecks - until on the bottom at approximately 190ft/58m visibility was only about 16ft/5m or less. Vidar had done exceptionally well on his first dive though, tying the downline to the top of the conning tower, right opposite the periscope shears on a perfectly upright wreck. From here divers could spread out fore and aft to explore and try to find something that would positively identify the wreck. It was a ghostly sight and an eerie feeling, fellow divers appeared as mere fleeting shadows in the low visibility and one could not help but wonder if what we had found was a tomb for the entire crew, a steel sarcophagus, as is the case with most submarines lost in action.

The first few dives proved inconsequential with regards identification though; a main gun aft of the fairwater (conning tower), a Radio Direction Finder antenna on the deck just forward of the fairwater and a flush deck (that is, level) from bow to stern were the predominate features, with lots of abandoned fishing trawler net ubiquitously snagged in several places. Now normally MV Empress’s library is well stocked with photographic and historical reference material, but all of these books had been removed during a recent overhaul and had inadvertently not been placed back aboard prior to our departure, so we had to find something on the wreck itself for positive identification. From previous Java Sea search expeditions we knew that the nearest geographical position in the historical record for an undiscovered sunken submarine was a German sub (U-183, one of the so-called Monsoon Boats) sunk approximately 90 miles to the east, with a US submarine, USS Perch, sunk - seemingly – up to 75 miles to the south.

On the next dive Vidar, Empress’s redoubtable owner/skipper, used a line to measure the overall length of the submarine while Mike took as many photos as he could from bow to stern in the low visibility conditions. Vidar’s measurement was 297ft (90.5m) and from prior research we knew this was substantially longer than the German submarine, so that ruled her out (U-183 was a Type IXC/40 boat at 252ft/77m overall), leaving it seemed only USS Perch. She was 300.6ft/91.5m overall, so allowing for a bend in the line due to the strong current on that dive, this was very close to what Vidar had measured. But what was the American submarine doing so far north when she was thought lost much nearer to the Java coast? The dive team had by now ascertained that the sub was basically intact, that is there was no discernable damage or catastrophic penetration to the pressure hull, and the only hatch found to be open was the one atop the conning tower, so how had she sunk? Unfortunately, although this was early days in the expedition – usually it seems that wrecks are found on the last day or so – our search mission in the Java Sea was for much bigger game than a submarine, so we had to move on. Hence the next couple of days were spent searching for our prime targets, but we were all tormented by not having been able to positively identify the sunken sub. So, of course, we decided to return to the site and try one more time! What else could we do?

Having flooded one of my digital camera strobes on the previous dive after only a few shots, I decided to use video on the next dive and document the wreck from bow to stern for historical reference, in the hope that if we couldn’t positively identify it then some historian could. Alighting next to the stern gun I first swam aft, around the net encased stern and then back forward past the conning tower to the bow, videoing as I went. They say silence is golden and I would have to agree!

Right: Looking like he could be going for a moonwalk, with full face mask and a ‘Boris’ CCR on his back, Mike Gadd prepares for another dive on USS Perch. Photo Kevin Denlay

The last fateful days of USS Perch SS-176

Launched May 9th 1936 by the Electric Boat Company of Groton, Connecticut, USS Perch was one of a new breed of American submarines, the precursor to the ‘fleet’ boat of WW11. She had many modifications over the old S Class subs, or ‘Pig boats’ as they were affectionately known, being the first submarine to incorporate an early form of air conditioning, a big plus given that many of the boats would soon be operating in the tropics. When war with the Japanese commenced in December 1941 USS Perch was under the command of Lieutenant Commander David Hurt and operating as part of the US Asiatic Fleet based out of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. After her first war patrol, with one ship sunk to her credit, and the subsequent loss of Manila to the Japanese, Perch was directed to Darwin - Australia - for repairs. She left there on her second, and as it turned out last war patrol in early February 1942. Towards the end of February, while patrolling in the eastern Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) she was directed to immediately leave her patrol area and attack an unopposed Japanese invasion force then approaching the coast of Java, north west of Surabaya. At the time Perch was one of less than a handful of allied vessels - all submarines - remaining in the entire Java Sea, as all allied surface forces had been thoroughly decimated in several naval engagements over the last few days of February and the morning of March 1st.

Lt Cmdr Hurt decided that his only option now was to exit the area and put as much distance between Perch and the Japanese as possible, all the while attempting running repairs while surfaced. Sometime before dawn on March 3rd the crew attempted a trim dive that almost proved fatal. Water quickly flooded the sub through the warped hatches and by the time the diving officer had regained control and surfaced the boat water in the engine room bilges was up to the generators. After eventually ‘stabilizing’ on the surface it was found that only the front half of the sub could be exposed above the waves while the stern remained well underwater, and Perch could now only struggle forward like a wounded whale. As the crew tried desperately to rectify the damage, if this wasn’t enough to contend with, Ushio again suddenly materialized out of the darkness, accompanied this time by another destroyer, Sazanami, and started shelling Perch.

With a crippled boat and no prospect for retaliation and realizing that discretion was the better part of valor with regards saving his crew, Lt Cmdr Hurt ordered “Abandon ship, scuttle the boat.” Fortunately all the crew managed to safely abandon ship and all were picked up by the circling Japanese destroyers. However six men were later to die in the merciless Japanese POW Camps, while Cmdr Hurt died tragically in a hunting accident only a couple of months after being repatriated to the USA at the end of the war. Perch of course slowly descended, unmanned, one last time beneath the waves of the Java Sea, where we found her proudly sitting upright some sixty four years later. One of fifty two US submarines lost during WW11, she remains forever ‘on eternal patrol’.
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