The Loss of the S.S. Corregidor

[fots2]

Will,

Thanks for that, I had not seen Col. Braly’s memoir before. A man of his rank and position should have reliable information on this subject.

Other accounts about that night do not mention any submarine coming into Manila Bay (let alone six of them) on their way to Mariveles.

The “control ship” is not named so perhaps it was a function carried out by several ships on a rotation of some sort. Could PT-41 have been the “control ship” that night? Strange it is not mentioned unless that was on purpose for some reason. i.e the Navy distancing itself from an Army mine disaster until later when the rescue started. Other PT boats are mentioned then.

[chadhill]

Another great find, WW. I have not seen Colonel Braly's report before, either. As General Moore's G-3 or ops officer he certainly adds more credence to there being a USN "control ship", as he calls it, involved in the SS Corregidor tragedy. Again, PT-41?

I'm scratching my head, though, about Braly's assertion that "the Navy was bringing in six submarines which delayed the exit of the Corregidor several hours. As the last sub turned into Mariveles Harbor...".

The USN had one submarine tender left on the night of 16-17 December, the USS Canopus, and it was moored at the Port of Manila, Pier 4, Warf B ("Ghosts of Canopus", p.63). The Canopus did not leave Manila for Mariveles until late on 24 December. The other two USN sub tenders, the USS Otus and USS Holland, were ordered by Admiral Hart to leave for the Dutch East Indies and Port Darwin immediately after the bombing of Cavite Naval Yard on 10 December ("Fighting for MacArthur", p. 59, 63).

According to Clay Blair, Jr., in "Silent Victory" (p. 135) twenty-two of the Asiatic Fleet's surviving twenty-eight subs had gone to sea by 11 December. It seems a bit of a stretch to me that six of them would return on the night of 16 December, nearly simultaneously, to Mariveles Harbor, where no sub tenders were deployed.

Combined with Colonel Braly's second sentence in the final paragraph, "Naval officers stated that they had been informed the previous afternoon that the vessel would be going out but never authorized her to pass the control ship", this strikes me as a deflective, thinly veiled attempt to assign a degree of possible responsibility for the tragedy to the USN. That may conceivably be true, perhaps, if we were to ever learn the whole story, but the colonel curiously never mentions the requests made to Bunker to remove the Army mines from "contact".

[xray]

I likewise have never heard of multiple subs entering the bay, much less half a dozen.

Also, has it ever been reported anywhere else that the SS Corregidor was "delayed for several hours" while the subs cleared ? What authority would have ordered it to hold ?
Wouldn't the mines have been on safe if there was a flock of subs coming in ?
All in all, seems a very difficult scenario to believe, which contradicts most other known 1st hand accounts.

As far as him not mentioning Bunker, I suppose it is very possible that he was perfectly unaware of the request and subsequent refusal to safe the mines.

[EXO]

Agree with your comments on this, Xray.

Within the last 24 hrs., I was speaking with someone who had a very close family friend who was last seen dragging women and children to a rescue boat that had come to the aid of the SS Corregidor. My friend commented that he preferred not to tell the relatives of that hero what he'd learned recently about the incident.

This reinforces that the issue still has a raw nerve here in the Philippines. Given the effect on society in the Central Philippines in that decade, I accept that is justifiably so.

[fots2]

xray, I spent some time searching the internet for information regarding submarines entering Mariveles during the time in question. I found nothing. As chadhill mentions, why would they go there anyway since there was no tender to support them here. They wouldn’t need replenishing anyway if they just left days earlier.

I would think that if friendly submarines were coming through the channel then there is no question the mines would be on ‘Safe’. According to Braly’s account, if the Control Ship was about to signal the SS Corregidor to proceed at the moment it hit a mine then the mines would have already been on ‘Safe’.

This particular version of events does not quite make sense to me either.

[wwalker]

Hello everybody,

I'm not sure what to make of the submarine part of the story either. I'll begin by saying that I do not have alot of knowledge of the submarine movements during this time, and have done very little studying of that particular subject. I certainly don't want to say that everything that Col. Braly wrote on the SS Corregidor is entirely true, but I also haven't seen any solid evidence that contradicts the submarine story. But this comes from someone who knows very little on the subject of submarines in Manila Bay in late 41'.

One of two things took place during the writing of his recollection of events. Either he knew about Bunker's decision, and this was an effort to cover the blame, OR he did not know about Bunker's decision and the information that he wrote was what he was told happened.

About the mines, again I'm delving into territory that I know little about, but wasn't there Navy controlled mines and Army controlled mines? Perhaps IF there were submarines in the bay that evening only the Navy mines were put on safe? Or is this even possible to navigate to Mariveles with only the Navy mines turned off?

I must add too, that this was an enormous inexcusable tragedy. It was also a tragedy that took place during a time of great anxiety with all the persons involved. The American servicemen were in the process of being locked into the jaws of hell (as were all of the Filipino people), and after their captivity (and subsequent death of Bunker) they mourned their losses of fellow POW's everyday, and this had an enormous impact on them, those that survived. There were families of lost comrades to think about. Hundreds of Filipino families lost family members. I am not typing this paragraph to defend the mistakes, but only to better understand perhaps why they were made. Amid the anxiety and chaos, bad decisions were made.

Either way, I feel certain there are records that can validate or invalidate this story about the delay and possible submarines. I just don't happen to have them in front of me at the moment. I will do some digging and see if I can come up with any further information. I've got a "shipment" of records from the National Archives that I'm expecting any day now. Am hoping it is some good stuff, there's about 700 pages involved.


WW

PS: Thanks for all the analysis, as it is the only way we can find the truth in this story.

[fots2]

Hi Will,

Navy mines were ‘contact’ mines so essentially acted individually. They were always armed. Army ‘electrical’ mines were connected by cables to a casemate located in James Ravine. This allowed for ‘remote’ control of the mines where any one of three conditions could be set.

Safe – All power ‘off’ on Channel mines and other mines on ‘Supervisory’.

Supervisory – Mines on 110 volts do not detonate on contact but warn the casemate.

Contact – Mine detonates on contact by ship.

If you look at the sketch of the Manila Bay Minefields, the only way to get past the mine fields into Mariveles is via the outer channel where we have learned is the location of the SS Corregidor’s wreck.

If any submarines went into Mariveles that night then there should be Navy records of that. Too bad the web site with the USN Submarine logs that EXO posted about is no longer free for us to read. There is a lot of information on the Internet but as usual it takes mucho time to sort through.

I have not read all of Col. Braly’s report but I will try to do that soon. He may have simply reported what he was told at the time so this could explain some errors.

By the way, these discussions and any new information that is added certainly helps us all to better understand what happened many years ago. Thanks to everyone.

I hope there are a few gems in your upcoming shipment. Good luck.

[xray]

Easy to see why this still strikes a nerve even after decades, Exo.
Even in a time of unparalleled violence and suffering, this unfortunate event is uniquely tragic.

Like most here, I have read just about every book written about Corregidor/Bataan.
And I happen to have a very good memory - Neither of which, of course, makes me any kind of authority. But if multiple subs entered the bay, that would have been a huge event, and surely someone would have referred to it in their post war memoirs.
I think the most likely explanation is that the Col., in good faith, just wrote down chit chat that he heard about this incident. We all know how rumors, in dark times especially, can take on the aura of gospel truth. Men believe, because they want to believe.
It was probably a hot rumor on the Rock that a civy ship hit a mine while waiting for half a dozen subs to clear, and he wrote it down as if it was established fact ,, Which, in his mind at the time, it just may have been.
I also am looking forward to reading more from him, these period accounts are priceless.
But much of their content must be taken with a grain of salt, since we have the advantage of having the glaring light of history to illuminate what was, for them, nothing but a foggy, rumor filled dark void.

In summary, I think that his scenario can be safely disregarded as the words of a well meaning and brave man who, frankly, didn't know what he was talking about.

[fots2]

Good post xray. No argument from me.



P.S. I just finished Col. Braly's report. I have read this a couple times in the past but for some reason, never recognized his name.

There are some errors (Clark field attack on December 8th 1941 destroyed P-38 aircraft; Philippines gold bars were taken by submarine to Australia) but generally I think people consider it to be accurate. It is interesting for sure.

[okla]

Hey Guys....I do not pretend to know too much about the USN Submarine activities during this time frame, other than we were sadly lacking in most areas, but the fact that our undersea craft were not withdrawn from Manila Bay (if memory serves) until just before New Years, it wouldn't seem too unusual for a single or maybe a pair of our Subs to be approaching the minefields on the night that the SS Corregidor went down. What is very difficult to feature is a "flotilla" of six Submarines arriving at approximately the same time. Sounds like a Donitz Wolfpack coming into Kiel during the heyday of the U-Boat. I could "buy" Colonel Bray's explanation/story if he hadn't claimed such an unusually large number of Pigboats were involved. This whole SS Corregidor, with it's varying and supposedly creditable accounts is most mystifying if not downright maddening. Cheers.