Japanese Couldn't Believe One American Submarine Sank 45 Ships in 10 Months — USS Harder's Record

February eighth, nineteen forty-four, off the coast of Woleai Atoll in the Caroline Islands, Commander Samuel David Dealey stood in the conning tower of USS Harder, his eyes fixed on a sight that would have made most submarine captains retreat to safer depths. Through the periscope's narrow field of view, he watched a Japanese destroyer bearing down on his position at full speed, her bow wave churning white against the dark Pacific waters. The destroyer's crew had detected Harder's presence and was charging in for the kill, depth charges ready, sonar pinging frantically to pinpoint the submarine's exact location. Most commanders would have gone deep, rigged for silent running, and hoped to slip away undetected. Dealey did the opposite. He turned Harder directly toward the oncoming destroyer, closed to point-blank range, and prepared to fire.
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This moment crystallized everything that made Dealey and Harder legendary in the annals of submarine warfare. While other submarines hunted merchant ships and avoided warship escorts, Harder actively sought out destroyers, the very vessels designed to kill submarines. Dealey had developed a tactic so audacious it bordered on suicidal: the down-the-throat shot. Instead of firing torpedoes at a destroyer's vulnerable broadside, Dealey would aim directly at the narrow bow profile as the warship charged toward him. The mathematics were brutal. A destroyer approaching at twenty-five knots closed the distance at terrifying speed. Firing too early meant the destroyer could maneuver and avoid the torpedoes. Firing too late meant depth charges would rain down before the torpedoes reached their target. The window for a successful shot measured in seconds, requiring perfect judgment of range, speed, and angle. One miscalculation meant death for Harder and her entire crew of eighty men. Yet Dealey had such confidence in his calculations and his crew's precision that he would wait until the destroyer was close enough to see individual sailors on her deck before giving the order to fire.
The destroyer closing on Harder that February morning was typical of the Japanese escort vessels that protected convoys and hunted American submarines throughout the Pacific. She displaced approximately two thousand tons, carried a main armament of four or five five-inch guns, possessed a top speed exceeding thirty knots, and was equipped with depth charges and primitive sonar. Japanese destroyers were formidable warships, fast and deadly, crewed by sailors who had trained for years in anticipation of surface combat against enemy fleets. What they had not trained for, what their doctrine did not emphasize, was anti-submarine warfare against an enemy who refused to run. The Imperial Japanese Navy viewed submarines primarily as fleet scouts, vessels that would support battleship engagements and avoid direct combat with surface warships. This doctrine shaped how Japanese destroyers responded to submarine contacts. They would charge in aggressively, attempting to force the submarine deep and then pummel it with depth charges until it was destroyed or driven away. Against conventional submarine tactics, this approach worked reasonably well. Against Samuel Dealey's revolutionary approach, it proved catastrophic.