“CARLIN was my Plane Captain (crew chief) on my plane over a relatively long period on WW II which took us sub hunting from the Iceland/Newfoundland area to the most southern part of Brazil, with a lot of stops such as river mouths and islands and other odd places that seaplanes could get in and out of. We covered a large part of the Atlantic Ocean and tried to be always where the German sub activity was the heaviest. I have always found JOHN to be a very modest man, thus it didn’t surprise me to see that he had not mentioned several things about himself in conjunction with the list of subs sunk by our squadron. By the way, he also did not mention subs attacked, wounded, unknown damaged etc. nor did he say anything about the 285 shipwrecked (torpedoed) sailors that the Squadron rescued during that period.

JOHN participated in the sinking of U-128, Skippered by Steinert. From that boat was taken (if my memory is correct) 58 prisoners/survivors. A goodly number of these German submariners were saved because we dropped them liferafts when the sub was in a sinking position. JOHN CARLIN was promoted to Chief Petty Officer while we were still in the air for his part in this sinking. With this promotion, he became the youngest Chief Petty Officer in the NAVY at the age of 20. He was further decorated by the Secretary of the Navy in the name of the President with the AIR MEDAL which, at that time, was a prestigious decoration.

JOHN was also my Plane Captain on 24 February, 1943 when we made a ‘mystery attack’ on another submarine. This submarine, to the best of my knowledge, has never been identified and maybe that would be a good research project for either your German or Italian Members. The attack occurred on 24 February, 1943 off the coast of Natal, Brazil. We found this sub while it was in the process of sinking a cargo vessel of about 10,000 tons with a Spanish name and flying a Spanish flag. In fact, we determined the location of the sub by following two torpedo tracks from the ship to the sub, which was lying just below the surface in almost crystal clear water. We were on a mission to locate and identify a reported ship out of Argentina which was supposed to be hauling contraband gold and German spies out of the country. Our mission was to herd this ship into the nearest port if the identification was confirmed. We had made a low run on the ship, picked off its name and nationality, and climbed back to about 1,500 feet to make our report back to the base and receive instructions on further action at the time the ship was torpedoed. We immediately initiated an attack run on the sub with it in sight submerged.

When within about half a mile of the sub with the plane in attack configuration, at attack speed and altitude, the sub surfaced and began firing at us. The first fire came from a ‘bandstand’ aft & seemed to be remotely controlled. Immediately thereafter the bowgun was manned & began firing. Due to faulty machine gun parts which had been installed in all ten of our .50 cal. the night before, we were unable to reply with any gunfire and thus unable to sweep the decks or protect ourselves. We continued our run and dropped six five-hundred pound torpex depth charges.

This was a full deflection run with the sub underway and the depth charges fell short, except that the last one or two were close enough to deluge the decks of the sub with water. To shorten it - the sub stayed on the surface for about one and a half hours and it seemed to be trying to dive. Without the ability to attack, we tried to stay out of range of his larger deck gun and kept reporting our position in order to get any other American forces on the scene. He managed to dive before any arrived. We suffered no damage at all except one strut of the starboard wingtip float was shot in two and the 26-foot-long float dangling by one strut and giving us a fit in the control department. We finally managed to twist it off through flight maneuvering. When we got back to base, we found that we had 156 holes in the aircraft with some of them going right through the engine nacelles but not hitting any vital parts.

I was never given any kind of an evaluation for this account. The common knowledge and our ASW ‘GRAPEVINE’ told us that this was the first sub that had surfaced & engaged an attacking airplane & that this was the first of a series of new subs that had the remote control ‘bandstand’ machine gun set up on the stern. These same rumors told us that it was an Italian submarine.

This sort of embarrassed me, as at that time we didn’t think of the Italian Navy as any kind of a threat. Our official Squadron history that was made available after the classified label was taken off it just shows that the attack was made and has no assessment or evaluation at all on it. In our estimation, the sub was surely damaged, probably the diving planes jammed or it would have submerged long before it did in order to avoid any other potential attacks. We have never had any confirmation as to whether or not it was Italian and in all of the intelligence reports that I have seen since then having to DSO with the ASW activities in the Atlantic. I have never seen any reference to this attack.

We saw no boats being put over the side from the torpedoed ship and we saw no survivors in the water after the ship was sunk. It appeared to us that the ship sunk within a very few minutes after it was torpedoed.

I would appreciate any comments on this attack from either you or any of your historically inclined Members.

Well Captain Barnard, we can give you a lot of information on this action. First, I am really not familiar with this ‘remote controlled bandstand’ gun platform you mention, but the submarine was indeed Italian. The boat was BARBARIGO and the Skipper was our SHARKHUNTERS friend, Captain Roberto Rigoli. The ship that was attacked was the 3,453 ton Spanish steamer MONTE IGUELDO. Rigoli earned the ‘MEDAGLIO D’ ARGENTO’ (the SILVER MEDAL), Italy’s second highest award. Earlier in the War, while in command of PLATINO, he sank the NARKUNDA, a 16,632 ton British transport in the Mediterranean. It was the largest ship sunk by any Italian submarine in the Mediterranean during World War II. Rigoli ultimately sank more than 32,000 tons of ALLIED shipping.