"For Extraordinary Heroism:" July 3, 1941, when he was posted to service. A Navy Cross to a World War II Submarine Captain

Murray A. Louis

Figure 2: USS Steelhead.

Bowers served aboard the submarine USS Steelhead (Figure 2), eventually becoming her executive officer, from August of 1942 until mid-December, 1944. On April 25th of that year, Steelhead began her first patrol, and on June 17 in company with USS Parche and USS Tinosa, was south of Formosa, participating in five sinkings of Japanese shipping, totaling more than 30,000 tons.

In February 1945, John Bowers took command of USS Pogy (SS266), a command he held until mid-1946 (Figures 3 and 4). While serving as Pogy’s skipper, Bowers, now a Lieutenant Commander, departed Pearl Harbor for the Sea in Pogy’s tenth, and final, war patrol. It was to be a momentous run for Pogy’s captain. An account published in Patrol, a periodical, on April 5, 1985, asserted that Pogy left Pearl Harbor bound for the Japan Sea, and that on July 27, 1945, sank a large freighter; damaged a 10,000-ton tanker on August 2nd and on August 5th, destroyed a 2200-ton freighter.

A diary kept by an anonymous member of Pogy’s crew

Figure 1: Lieutenant Commander John Michael Bowers.

John Michael Bowers was born in 1916, in Georgetown, British Guiana, where his father managed a rubber plantation. Later the family moved to Chefoo, China, where his civil engineer father supervised the construction of a breakwater, moving to Piedmont, when John was six years old. John entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1934, graduating as an Ensign, USN in the class of 1938 (Figure 1). The same year, he was assigned to the battleship USS Arizona, departing slightly more than eight months later for duty at the United States Submarine Base, New London, Figure 3: USS Pogy. Connecticut, where he remained until

20 JOMSA Japanese had accepted surrender unconditionally. I didn’t know whether to yell out for joy or continue shaking. I continued shaking."

Captain Claude M. Pearson (USNR, Retired) (Figure 5), in his extensive, 90-page, Memoir of Four War Patrols on U.S.S. Pogy, added his own words to the previous narrative. I was privileged to talk with Captain Pearson, a retired lawyer living in Tacoma, , and received his generous assistance in the Figure 4: Two patches worn by the crew of the USS Pogy. preparation of this story. He was Pogy’s gunnery/ officer as a takes the story to another level: Lieutenant (Junior Grade) at the time of the incident recounted: "July 27: Left for for our station. As yet don’t know where we’re going. Usually we would have been told."

July 18: Underway on the surface. Got word there was a mine floating around topside and the old man intended to try to sink it. Two and half pans of 20 mm shells were fired and still didn’t explode it."

But the narrative of July 25, 1945 explains the circumstances and actions that underlie the award of the Navy Cross to Commander Bowers:

"Now inside the ! I can’t begin to explain my emotions. At 0340 hours, we dove at the entrance of Chosen Pass; there was a mine contact ahead at 100 feet. This was near the last dive Pogy had to make." "We scraped the mine cable, but passing below the mine itself. I was playing poker at the time when I heard the scraping sound along the hull. I believe my hair stood on end. I tried to concentrate. The channel had four minefields, but we had to pass through three that boats before had charted. Now there was another extra one stuck in on us. It took us eight hours to get clear. I can say it was the most tense moment of my life thus far. Figure 5: Captain Claude M. Pearson.

August 15: We had a torpedo fired at us that "Pogy got underway for Guam on July 2, 1945 passed about eight feet in front of our bow. and there practiced on dummy minefields under Brother, I had the shakes bad. Not two minutes the personal supervision of the Force Commander after that someone comes back saying the Admiral [Charles A.] Lockwood" (Figure 6).

Vol. 56, No. 5 21 perfection; of the 20 boats to make the perilous mission, 19 made it home. Pogy was one of the 19. I believe it was Pogy’s longest day. It was a day no man alive wants to relive."

After a bizarre episode involving an encounter with Japanese survivors floating on a section of a ship’s deck, Pearson said, "My opinion of Bowers’ professionalism was enhanced by this episode [in which Bowers decided to abandon the survivors, for fear that they would compromise his mission]." Pearson resumes his narrative, "Pogy sailed in triumph into Pearl Harbor, her crew in a high state of exuberance. [Fleet] Admiral [Chester W.] Nimitz (Figure 7) was piped aboard and held a brief ceremony. With the Force Commander, Admiral Lockwood looking on, he awarded John Michael Bowers the Navy Cross (Figure 8)."

Figure 6: Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood.

On July 17, she departed Guam for the Sea of Japan (also known as the Japan Sea), and on July 23 Bowers made the high-speed surface run through the Nansei Shoto [Strait] and cautiously closed on the islands near the southern tip of Korea." On July 25, Captain Pearson records, "Closing my eyes, I can still revisit the scene in the control room after more than 50 years. The terrible minefields the enemy had planted to block Allied forces from entering the Japan Sea. Fear has many dimensions. For the Pogy crew it was necessary to manage a new and terrifying scenario being submerged at 90 feet, 70 feet below a solid umbrella of thousands of mines. I responded to Figure 7: Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. the fear by sweating.. In an hour my shirt was saturated, the stain having expanded from The citation reads as follows: underarms to all around my torso. "October 10, 1945 Bowers, with eyes on the plot and the "A" scope, maneuvered the boat left and right through three. The President of the United States takes pleasure separate fields, each taking about two hours, with in presenting the NAVY CROSS to an hour between each field. Cables scraped down LIEUTENANT COMMANDER JOHN the sides in random groups. When the scraping MICHAEL BOWERS stopped, a suck of air was heard in every man’s throat, until the scraping resumed. Would a cable For service as set forth in the following hang up and pull the mine down to break an ugly CITATION: spike on Pogy’s hull? For extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer Pogy’s mine-tracking team performed its job to of the USS POGY during the tenth War Patrol of

22 JOMSA