Wreck of USS Sonoma (ATO-12)

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

Laid down in November 1911 as the lead ship in her class of Fleet Tugboats for the US Navy, USS Sonoma commissioned into service with the US Atlantic Fleet in September 1912. Operating primarily as a tender vessel for Minesweepers in her early years of service, Sonoma and her crew deployed to England during the First World War where she helped maintain an Allied Minesweeper Squadron through the duration of the War.

Returning stateside in early 1919 for a period of overhaul and upgrade, Sonoma was reassigned to the US Pacific Fleet and after patrolling along both coasts of Mexico en route called at San Diego where she began routine towing operations with the rapidly downsizing postwar fleet. Assigned to Training Squadron 2 of the San Diego Base Force in 1923, Sonoma and her crew spent much of the next fifteen years assisting with fleet exercises before gathering war clouds in Europe and the cooling of relations between the United States and Japan brought her orders to operate out of Pearl Harbor. At sea during the Surprise Attack on Pearl Harbor, Sonoma began her wartime service as a guard vessel for the entrance channel to the harbor, and once again served as a tender vessel to small patrol boats operating around Oahu.

Ordered to tow the floating drydock ARD-2 to the Allied base at New Caledonia, Sonoma departed American waters for the final time in October 1942 and began what would turn into a year of towing and salvage operations throughout the South Pacific based out of Noumea before she received her first official combat orders in September 1943. Assigned to support the Allied Invasion of Lae in New Guinea, Sonoma and her crew didn’t have to wait long before they met their enemy, with a Japanese bomber near-missing the Tug with four bombs shortly after she arrived off the landing beaches. Lightly damaged by this attack, Sonoma remained heavily involved with New Guinea operations and frequently clashed with Japanese shore and air defenses as she provided assistance to damaged Allied vessels moving Northward along the disputed island's East coast.

Calling briefly at Brisbane, Australia for a much-needed period of repairs and R&R for her crew, Sonoma returned to action in the former Dutch East Indies in September 1944 before being called upon by the US 7th Fleet to join Force Echelon LI, Task Unit 78.2.9 bound for Leyte Gulf. Assigned to the 7th Fleet's Salvage, Fire Fighting, and Rescue Unit for the upcoming Invasion of the Philippines, Sonoma's crew prepared themselves for what was guaranteed to be a pitched fight for the islands but like much of the American Invasion Force found little resistance to the initial landings and subsequent build up of the beachhead through October 23rd.

Morning on October 24th found the Sonoma rafted with the commercial steamship SS Augustus Thomas when word raced across the assembled ships in Leyte Gulf that a large formation of Japanese aircraft were inbound. With her crew piped to their General Quarters posts, Sonoma had barely slipped her lines and got underway when the first Japanese aircraft came within range of her AA guns. Barely seconds after her gunners opened fire on several low-flying bombers closing on their position, a burning dual-engine aircraft streaked out of the low clouds and slammed into Sonoma's Starboard side, its fuselage disintegrating on impact but its heavy engines and bombload punching into the Tug's hull before its fuel load coated the ship in a mass of flame. Reeling from the impact and fire, Sonoma's dazed crew were barely able to get back to their feet before two heavy detonations rocked their ship, which immediately began listing heavily to Starboard as tons of seawater began to flood the ship. Assisted by a fellow tug and a Landing Craft despite the presence of enemy aircraft eager to finish off the wounded ship, Sonoma's damage control party eventually succeeded in extinguishing her onboard fires and checking her flooding, which allowed her casualties to be removed as an attempt was made to beach the ship in shallow water. Despite the efforts of her crew, Sonoma's battered and waterlogged hull couldn’t support the force of being dragged towards the shallows and after a internal bulkhead gave way she was ordered abandoned and sank at this location on October 24th, 1944.

For her actions on the date of her loss, USS Sonoma earned her fifth and final Battle Star for World War Two Service, adding to her Navy Unit Commendation for operations with the 7th Fleet's Service Force.

www.navsource.org/archives/09/64/64012.htm