War Stories: The Sinking of the last American Ship, USS Bullhead

 

The USS Bullhead (a submarine)

Overshadowed by the atomic bomb
The USS Bullhead did not participate in any major battles of the Pacific War, but yet it gained infamy as the last American ship sunk.

The last transmission of the USS Bullhead was on 6 August 1945, and that it was safely in the Lombok Strait. Astute readers will note that 6 August 1945 was the date of the Hiroshima atomic bombing,

The sinking
The USS Bullhead was primarily used for a patrol missions near China and Southeast Asia. Thus it was dispatched to patrol the Indonesian and Bali sea during the waning days of the Pacific War. 

At around 8am, a Ki-51 (an Japanese light/dive bomber) spotted the USS Bullhead near the coast of Bali. It dropped two depth charges, and the pilot reported a gush of oil and bubbles at the site of the bombing.

The last reported location of USS Bullhead

On 13 August (two days before the Japanese official surrender), all American submarines were given the "cease-fire" order. (Japan had agreed to surrender days earlier). It was then that the Americans realised that something had happened to the USS Bullhead as they did not acknowledge the order.

Rescue attempts followed, but the ship was presumed lost on 24 August and all 84 crew (including the captain of the ship, Lieutenant Commander Edward Holt) were listed as dead on 30 August.

The trauma of the original captain
Yet the casualties did not end there. The original captain, Walter Griffith, survived the sinking as he was too ill for the final patrol was replaced by Holt.

Stricken with survivor's guilt, Griffith took his life in a motel in Florida in January 1966.