Wreck of USS LST-342 | Second World War 1939-1945, military, shipwreck, Landing Ship Tank (LST), United States Navy

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, shipwreck, Landing Ship Tank (LST), United States Navy

Laid down at the Norfolk Navy Yard in August 1942 as the 342nd member of the LST-1 Class of Tank Landing Ships, LST-342 commissioned into US Navy service in December 1942 as a member of the US Atlantic Fleet.

Conducting extensive training exercises along the US East and Gulf Coasts in early 1943, LST-342 and her crew transited the Panama Canal and joined the US Pacific Fleet at San Diego, where she stopped briefly before loading cargo bound for Pearl Harbor. Following more training duties around the Hawaiian Islands through mid-1943, LST-342 joined a convoy bound for the Solomon Islands in late May 1943, arriving at Espiritu Santo Island around the same time as Allied Forces invaded New Georgia Island.

After loading her share of combat supplies at Espiritu Santo and Guadalcanal, LST-342 began her first combat assignment as a support craft for the Allied Occupation of New Georgia, Rendova and Vangunu. Conducting her first successful landing on July 2nd, LST-342 withdrew from New Georgia and reloaded supplies for a second mission which departed Guadalcanal on the 17th of July. Steaming in convoy Northward through the Blanche Channel under the cover of darkness the following morning as her convoy approached its destination, lookouts aboard LST-342 were unaware that their ship was being targeted by the patrolling Japanese Submarine HIJMS RO-106, which had been shadowing the American formation for several hours in the darkness.

With the rising sun silhouetting the convoy against the horizon, RO-106's Captain lined up his shot on the nearest ship to his Submarine, and sent a pair of torpedoes churning into the path of LST-342. Likely unaware they were in any danger until it was too late, LST-342's crew had little chance to react before both torpedoes slammed into her midship, easily penetrating her heavily-laden hull and detonating among the dozens of fully fueled vehicles and tons of munitions carried aboard ship. Wallowing from the force of the torpedo impacts, LST-342's hull was overcome by the sudden wrenching motion that the blasts and its cargo load exerted upon it, and seconds after the initial impact she split in two pieces, her Stern and the majority of the men stationed there rapidly flooding and sinking and her bow rearing up and spilling its contents into the sea.

As the convoy escorts carried out an attack on the RO-106, other craft closed in on LST-342's still-floating bow section to render aid to any survivors of the sudden attack. After initial rescue efforts recovered all of her survivors, LST-342's bow was boarded and determined to be in sound enough condition to be placed under tow to protected waters. Electing to move it all the way back to Guadalcanal for salvage, US Navy Tugs eventually brought LST-342's bow to its current location, where it was beached and stripped of usable materials. Formally struck from the US Naval Register on July 28th, 1943, the bow of LST-342 was abandoned and has remained onsite since, slowly rusting away.

www.navsource.org/archives/10/16/160342.htm