USS Tautog (SS-199)

USS Tautog (SS-199) on 29 May 1945
History
United States
Builder	Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut[1]
Laid down	1 March 1939[1]
Launched	27 January 1940[1]
Commissioned	3 July 1940[1]
Decommissioned	8 December 1945[1]
Stricken	1 September 1959[1]
Honors and awards	14 battle stars, Navy Unit Commendation
Fate	Sold for scrap, 1 July 1960[1]
General characteristics
Class and type	Tambor class diesel-electric submarine[6]
Displacement	1,475 long tons (1,499 t) standard, surfaced[2] 2,370 tons (2,408 t) submerged[2]
Length	307 ft 2 in (93.62 m)[2]
Beam	27 ft 3 in (8.31 m)[2]
Draft	14 ft 7+1⁄2 in (4.458 m)[2]
Propulsion	4 × General Motors Model 16-248 V16 Diesel engines driving electric generators[3][4] 2 × 126-cell Sargo batteries[5] 4 × high-speed General Electric electric motors with reduction gears[3] two propellers [3] 5,400 shp (4.0 MW) surfaced[3] 2,740 shp (2.0 MW) submerged[3]
Speed	20.4 knots (38 km/h) surfaced[2] 8.75 knots (16 km/h) submerged[2]
Range	11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h)[2]
Endurance	48 hours at 2 knots (3.7 km/h) submerged[2]
Test depth	250 to 300 ft (76 to 91 m) Crush Depth 500 ft (150 m)[2]
Complement	6 officers, 54 enlisted[2]
Armament	10 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes 6 forward, 4 aft 24 torpedoes[5] 1 × 3-inch (76 mm) / 50 caliber deck gun[5] Bofors 40 mm and Oerlikon 20 mm cannon

USS Tautog (SS-199), the second Tambor-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the tautog, a small edible sport fish, which is also called a blackfish. She was one of the most successful submarines of World War II. Tautog was credited with sinking 26 Japanese ships,^[7] for a total of 72,606 tons, scoring second by number of ships and eleventh by tonnage^[8] earning her the nickname "The Terrible T." Of the twelve Tambor-class submarines, she was one of only five to survive the war.

Tautog's first patrol, into the Marshall Islands in late 1941 and early 1942, produced reconnaissance information but no enemy vessels sunk. However, on her second visit to that area, in the spring of 1942, she torpedoed the Japanese submarines Ro-30 and I-28, plus a freighter. Operating out of Australia between July 1942 and May 1943, Tautog went into the waters of the East Indies and Indochina on five patrols during which Tautog sank the Japanese destroyer Isonami and seven merchant ships. She also laid mines off Haiphong and endured a depth charge attack in November 1942.

Following an overhaul at San Francisco, California, Tautog resumed operations from Pearl Harbor in October 1943, sinking the Japanese submarine chaser No. 30 and damaging a tanker and three freighters during this cruise, her eighth of the war. Her next four patrols, from December 1943 to August 1944, took her to the Japanese home islands, including the frigid northern Pacific. This period was a very productive one, with the destroyer Shirakumo and eleven Japanese merchant ships falling victim to Tautog. A stateside overhaul followed, with the submarine's thirteenth war patrol, into the East China Sea, beginning in December 1944. The next month she sank a landing ship and a motor torpedo boat tender to conclude the submarine's combat career.

Assigned to training duty in February 1945, Tautog spent the rest of World War II in that role and supporting developmental work off Hawaii and the West Coast. She transferred to the Atlantic in November 1945, a few months after Japan's surrender, and was decommissioned in December. In 1947 Tautog went to the Great Lakes, where she was employed as a stationary Naval Reserve training submarine at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for nearly twelve years. Tautog was removed from service in September 1959. Sold some months later, she was scrapped at Manistee, Michigan, during the early 1960s.