Covediver's Underwater World

More than a year ago, I reported in this blog about an encounter that I had with a member of an expedition going out to the Aleutian Islands to look for the U.S.S. Grunion, a submarine missing and presumed lost to hostile action in August 1942. This date was among the darkest day in the war. The Japanese forces were ensconced on American soil in the Aleutians, and while empire’s expansion in the Pacific had been checked at the Battle of Midway, American victory was by no means assured. The Thousand-Mile War, as the Aleutian campaign is known, was just underway and would prove to be among the most costly of any battle of the war. The Grunion was among the first casualties in the campaign.

While I was researching an article on diving in the Great Lakes last autumn, I happened upon a submariner’s memorial near the Marquette Maritime Museum. Within the memorial was a modest plaque listing the submarines lost on patrol during World War Two. Among the roll of the missing appeared the U.S.S. Grunion.

This morning I opened the Anchorage Daily News to an article that indicated that the U.S.S. Grunion had been located by a remote sensing survey sponsored by the now-elderly sons of the submarine’s skipper. The evidence, including photographs taken from a remotely operated vehicle that surveyed the site, now seems indisputable. The Grunion has been found, and is no longer on Eternal Patrol.