Wreck of USS PC-558

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

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Laid down in October 1941 at the Luders Marine Construction Co shipyard at Stamford, CT, USS PC-558 was a PC-461 Class Submarine Chaser that commissioned into US Navy service in November 1942 as a member of the US Atlantic Fleet.

Assigned to the dangerous work of escorting convoys and conducting anti-submarine patrols in the coastal waters of the US East Coast for the first year of her service life, PC-558 and her crew formed part of the Allied offensive in the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-Boats. Mid-1943 brought enough change in fortunes to warrant the release of PC-558 and many of her sisters for other duties, and by the end of 1944 PC-558 and her crew were reassigned to the Mediterranean Theatre where they resumed their convoy escort and anti-submarine duties in support of the Allied offensive in Italy.

Spring 1944 found PC-558 still engaged in her support duties as Allied forces fought their way up the Italian peninsula, and on the morning of May 9th she was patrolling the seas off Palermo in company with her sisterships USS PC-626 & PC-1235. Alert lookouts aboard the PC-558 sighted the first of two German one-man Submarines operating near their formation, and in two separate battles gunners aboard PC-558 were able to sink both "Negers" and capture their operators alive. Despite the success of these actions, all of the heavy gunfire, depth charges and high-speed propeller noises emitted by these two conflicts attracted the attention of sonar operators aboard the German Submarine U-230, which was shadowing the pair Negers as they carried out their missions.

Closing in on the American formation undetected, U-230 lined up her shot and sent two torpedoes into the path of the lead American ship at 0456hrs. Likely unaware they were under attack until their ship was struck by a single torpedo roughly abeam of her conning tower on her Port side, the dazed crew aboard PC-558 had little time to react before their ship began to rapidly capsize as huge amounts of water poured into her exposed engine rooms. With the ship rolling to beam ends and clearly in her death throes, surviving crew needed no instructions to abandon ship, however only 30 of her 65-man crew were able to get clear before USS PC-558 gave out and sank at this location at 0500hrs on May 9th, 1945.

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