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The Vanished Golden Submarine’s Final Journey and Fate

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2024 14 min

I-52 - Underwater wreckage of the Golden Submarine — Underwater wreckage of the Golden Submarine. National Geographic

3. Finding the I-52

I-52 - Grumman TBF Avengers — Grumman TBF Avengers. Wikimedia

At around 10PM, June 23^rd, the Bogue launched Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers to try and find the enemy submarines. The U-530 slipped away undetected, but at 11:40PM, an Avenger piloted by Lieutenant Commander Jesse D. Taylor got a surface contact on its radar, about ten miles away. Taylor homed in on the radar blip, got there within minutes, then dropped flares to illuminate the area. By their glare, the surfaced I-52 became visible to the naked eye. Taylor immediately dropped sonobuoys – a type of underwater microphone that picks up propeller sounds and transmits them to an airplane – then began his attack.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.