THE TWELVE-DAY SLAUGHTER

How USS England Erased a Japanese Submarine Squadron**

PROLOGUE — MAY 19TH, 1944 — 0150 HOURS — NORTH OF BOUGAINVILLE

The sea was black, silent, and cold when Lieutenant Commander Walton Pendleton stepped into the combat information center of USS England.
Sweat clung to the steel walls. Sonar pings echoed like heartbeats. A contact—faint, steady—moved at 6 knots beneath them.

Pendleton, thirty-seven years old, on his first war patrol as commanding officer, had never sunk a submarine in his life.

The Japanese, however, had positioned seven submarines across a 300-mile picket line to guard the approach to the Marianas.
If any one of them survived long enough to report American carrier movements, the coming invasion could be compromised.

Tonight, only one ship stood between that report and silence.

USS England—a Buckley-class destroyer escort, 77 feet shorter than a fleet destroyer, underpowered, underarmored…
but armed with something new.

Something untested.

Something the Japanese had never imagined.

CHAPTER I — THE NEW WEAPON

Mounted on England’s foredeck sat a grid of twenty-four silent iron tubes.

The Hedgehog

24 spigot mortars

Thrown 200 yards ahead of the ship

Each carrying 35 pounds of Torpex, the most brutal explosive of the war

Contact fuses — no explosion unless they hit steel

A circular kill zone 130 feet wide, 30 feet deep

Depth charges, the weapon used since World War I, detonated on timers. They churned the sea, blinded sonar, and killed little more than fish.

The statistics were damning:

5,174 British depth charge attacks → 85 kills

1 kill for every 60 attacks

By contrast, Hedgehog offered continuous sonar tracking and instant confirmation:
Silence meant a miss.
Explosions meant a kill.

Pendleton trusted mathematics.
The Pacific would soon learn why.

CHAPTER II — KILL #1 — I-16

Fleet Radio Unit Pacific had decrypted I-16’s movement order four days earlier.
Destination: Buoin.
Arrival: 2200, May 19.

The Americans were waiting.

At 1341 hours, England launched the first Hedgehog salvo.

Twenty-four projectiles arced through the sky—
silence.

I-16 turned. Second attack—one faint explosion, not fatal.
Third—miss.
Fourth—miss.

The fathometer told the truth:
I-16 had slipped deeper than anticipated—325 feet.

Then, at 1433, the fifth salvo struck.

Four explosions.
Then six.

A final blast tore upward through the sea, so powerful it lifted England’s stern clear out of the water.

Debris surfaced twenty minutes later.
Oil. Wood. Shattered fabric.

I-16 and all 107 men aboard ceased to exist.

The hunt had begun.

CHAPTER III — THE PICKET LINE OF THE DEAD

On May 20th, decrypted traffic revealed the full Japanese formation:

RO-104
RO-105
RO-106
RO-108
RO-109
RO-112
RO-116

Seven submarines.

Fifty-six men each.

Three American destroyer escorts were ordered into a hunter-killer group:

USS England
USS George
USS Raby

They sailed into the dark, radar sweeping every thirty seconds, sonar pinging nonstop.

The Japanese submarines had gone radio silent.
They were deep.
They were waiting.

So was England.

CHAPTER IV — KILL #2 — RO-106 (May 22)

At 0350, radar found RO-106 on the surface, charging batteries.
Searchlights cut the darkness.

The submarine crash-dived.

George attacked first—miss.
England regained sonar contact: 1,400 yards, moving deep, violent evasive maneuvers.

Pendleton fired.

Three detonations.
Then a massive pressure wave that rolled the sea flat.

At sunrise, the oil slick stretched half a mile.

RO-106 destroyed.
Kill #2.

CHAPTER V — KILL #3 — RO-104 (May 23)

RO-104 was better.
Shallow dives, sharp turns, unpredictable maneuvers.

Raby missed.
George missed.
Four attacks in total—nothing.

Then England moved in.

Pendleton fired a Hedgehog pattern that detonated ten times—the sea erupting as if something enormous had torn open beneath the waves.

Three minutes later, the submarine’s battery compartment exploded, surfacing fuel and debris.

Kill #3.
Three submarines in 72 hours.

CHAPTER VI — KILL #4 — RO-116 (May 24)

RO-116 tried a tactic none of the others dared:
She stayed shallow.

150 feet.
Turning sharply.
Taunting the Americans to miscalculate depth.

It failed.

The Hedgehog projectiles punched 3-inch holes into her pressure hull.
At 150 feet, a single hole takes in 400 gallons per minute.

The crew drowned in darkness as the submarine slid past 300 feet, then deeper, until every rib of steel buckled inward.

Kill #4.

Word reached Washington.
Admiral Ernest King read the dispatch and said the sentence that echoed across the fleet:

“There’ll always be an England in the United States Navy.”

CHAPTER VII — KILL #5 — RO-108 (May 26)

RO-108 dove shallow and maneuvered wildly.
Raby attacked—miss.
Haynes spoke into the radio:

“Go ahead, England.”

Twenty-four projectiles descended.

Then came one continuous roar—
RO-108 imploded in under three seconds.

No flooding, no survivors, no final transmissions.

Kill #5.
Six days. Five submarines.

CHAPTER VIII — THE FINAL HUNT — RO-105 (May 30–31)

RO-105 was different.

Smart.
Patient.
Disciplined.

She went deep: 400 feet.
Then killed her engines—silent running.

For four hours, she drifted with the current, leaving only faint sonar “knuckles,” false echoes.

Then she surfaced—
three miles from her last known position.

A desperate, brilliant move.

When she dove again, she ran at 6 knots, varying speed constantly, forcing England to solve firing equations that changed every 17 seconds—the time it took Hedgehog projectiles to sink to 400 feet.

Attack #1: miss
Attack #2: miss
Attack #3: four detonations
The hull was pierced but RO-105 fought on, flooding slowly.

The Japanese commander blew ballast, trying to surface.

Pendleton fired again.

Attack #4: eight detonations.

The submarine broke apart before the crew reached escape depth.

At sunrise, the oil slick spread across the sea.

Kill #6.
Twelve days. Six submarines.
The greatest anti-submarine performance in naval history.

CHAPTER IX — AFTERMATH

Admiral Halsey immediately ordered England to stand down.
She had proven Hedgehog beyond all doubt.

By September 1944:

Every destroyer escort

Every destroyer

Every convoy group

was trained using England’s firing solutions.

Hedgehog went on to sink 47 German U-boats in the Atlantic.
It became the most successful ASW weapon of the war.

But none matched England’s record.

Not before.
Not after.
Not ever.

CHAPTER X — THE FALL OF ENGLAND

England survived the hunt—but not the war.

On October 31st, 1944, a kamikaze tore into her forward engine room.
Thirty-seven men were killed.
Twenty-five wounded.

The damage was too severe.
Repairs cost more than building a new ship.

In 1946, the greatest submarine killer ever built was cut apart for scrap metal.

Her Hedgehog launcher sits in storage today—rusted, unremarkable, ignored.

The placard lists statistics.
It does not mention Pendleton.
It does not mention the twelve-day massacre.
It does not mention that one ship stopped an entire Japanese intelligence operation.

EPILOGUE

Walton Pendleton retired after 34 years of service.
He died in 1973, buried in Arlington.

His headstone bears the Navy Cross.

It does not say:

“Sank six submarines in twelve days.”

But naval historians remember.
Sonar men remember.
Mathematicians remember.
And every destroyer escort that went to sea afterwards followed the firing solutions written in the Pacific by USS England.

In all of naval warfare, no ship has ever surpassed her record.

And none ever will.