A Navy Cross to a World War II Submarine Captain

"For Extraordinary Heroism:"
A Navy Cross to a World War II
Submarine Captain
July 3, 1941, when he was posted to submarine service.
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 Japan 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, California 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,
Connecticut, where he remained until
20
Figure 3: USS Pogy.
JOMSA
Japanese had accepted surrender
unconditionally. I didn’t know
whether to yell out for joy or
continue shaking. I continued
shaking."
Figure 4: Two patches worn by the crew of the
takes the story to another level:
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, Washington, and received
his generous assistance in the
USS Pogy.
preparation of this story. He was
Pogy’s gunnery/torpedo officer as a
Lieutenant (Junior Grade) at the time of the incident
recounted:
"July 27: Left for Guam 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 Sea of Japan! 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.
August 15: We had a torpedo fired at us that
passed about eight feet in front of our bow.
Brother, I had the shakes bad. Not two minutes
after that someone comes back saying the
Vol. 56, No. 5
Figure 5: Captain Claude M. Pearson.
"Pogy got underway for Guam on July 2, 1945
and there practiced on dummy minefields under
the personal supervision of the Force Commander
Admiral [Charles A.] Lockwood" (Figure 6).
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
the fear by sweating.. In an hour my shirt was
saturated, the stain having expanded from
underarms to all around my torso.
Figure 7: Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.
The citation reads as follows:
"October 10, 1945
Bowers, with eyes on the plot and the "A" scope,
maneuvered the boat left and right through three.
separate fields, each taking about two hours, with
an hour between each field. Cables scraped down
the sides in random groups. When the scraping
stopped, a suck of air was heard in every man’s
throat, until the scraping resumed. Would a cable
hang up and pull the mine down to break an ugly
spike on Pogy’s hull?
Pogy’s mine-tracking team performed its job to
22
The President of the United States takes pleasure
in presenting the NAVY CROSS to
LIEUTENANT
COMMANDER
JOHN
MICHAEL BOWERS UNITED STATES NAVY
For service as set forth in the following
CITATION:
For extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer
of the USS POGY during the tenth War Patrol of
JOMSA