Wreck of USS Cisco (SS-290)

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, shipwreck, submarine, United States Navy

Laid down at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at Kittery, Maine in October 1942 as the 6th member of the Balao Class of Submarines, USS Cisco commissioned into service with the US Navy in May 1943 and was assigned to the US Atlantic Fleet for training. After two months of exercises and type training in the Atlantic and Caribbean, the Cisco and her crew stood out of New London for the Panama Canal in August 1943 and upon completing their transit joined the US Pacific Fleet.

Steaming unescorted across the Pacific to Brisbane, Australia, the Cisco and her crew officially arrived in theatre on September 1st and spent the next seventeen days conducting further training before putting into Darwin to provision and prepare for their maiden war patrol against the Empire of Japan. Standing out of Darwin Harbor in the morning of September 20th, the Cisco shaped her course for her designated Philippine Islands operating area and after passing Bathurst Island dispatched her final message and submerged, never to be seen again.

Eight days later while operated submerged off Panay Gulf, it’s likely the Cisco suffered an engineering casualty or grounding which led to a significant leak of oil from one of her four main engines or fuel tanks, leaving a telltale slick on the surface which was spotted by lookouts aboard the patrolling Japanese Gunboat HIJMS Karatsu. Formerly the scuttled US Navy Gunboat USS Luzon (PG-47), the Karatsu was raised off the bottom of Manila Bay and placed into Imperial Japanese Navy service in October 1942, and on the morning of September 28th, 1943 she led efforts to verify the source of the mysterious oil slick her crew had spotted. Initially finding no evidence of enemy activity, Karatsu’s Captain requested assistance from nearby Naval Air Groups on Cebu after conducting a precautionary depth charge attack without result. Joined by two Nakajima B5N2 “Kates” shortly after 0900hrs, the Karatsu’s hydrophone crew soon established contact with a Submarine beneath them, but lost the trail before the gunboat could get into position to launch an attack.

For the next three hours Karatsu’s crew strained to find any sign of the American Submarine aside from the oil slick still coating the surface, and finally caught a break at 1215hrs when one of the aircrews sighted and attacked the Submarine with a single depth charge, followed by a second at roughly 1300hrs. These two attacks brought a larger oil slick to the surface, indicating that they enemy sub was likely bottomed and damaged. Conducting a heavy depth charge barrage around 1500hrs on a potential contact below, the Karatsu’s crew were rewarded for their efforts by bringing a large bloom of oil to the surface followed by a gradual dissipation of the slick. Remaining in the area until 1715hrs and finding no further contacts or indications of the enemy ship, the Karatsu departed the area and returned to Cebu where her crew took credit for sinking an American Submarine.

The fate of USS Cisco was not known to the Allies until postwar debriefings revealed the action off Panay Gulf on the 28th of September 1943. As Cisco was the only US Submarine ordered to be operating in that area at that time, it is assumed that HIJMS Karatsu and aircraft from the 954 Naval Air Squadron were responsible for the loss of the Submarine and all 76 of her crew.

www.navsource.org/archives/08/08290.htm