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I wonder what prompted them to rummage about the radar picket stations where Abele , Drexler , and Porter were located. Were USN subs operating in that general area ? I believe the closest to that area so far would be Grayback ...where, like Grunion , there was a great deal of contemporary evidence to go with from the get-go. I do question the depths at which these wrecks are said to be located at--some 3000+ meters ; I wonder if the press release meant ' feet '. I'm not sure Toyama Wan (a bay, of course) is that deep and certainly not in the area commonly described as where Bonefish fought her last battle. Of course, surprises could be in store, this is Honshu geography.

I have no dog in this particular race--my work is in the Solomons where there has been some good work recently, with more to come. But this does prompt me to think about Shinano although, of course, she is totally across Honshu from Toyama Wan, quite deep and--so far as I'm aware, the Japanese are still pretty sensitive about matters.

The reasons I wound up in the Okinawa area rather than the Solomons on this issue is that the CO of Abele was the Engineering Officer aboard Minneapolis at Tassafaronga, Alton Parker, a kindly gentleman who initially made not one mention of Abele while we went over events belowdecks on Minnie. Parker was recognized for the fact that he knew Minnie's plumbing like the back of his hand--not his characterization, of course--but his knowledge kept what machinery she retained after her torpedoing running, to bring her into Tulagi.

I then ran into Roy Andersen who wrote a book on Abele -- Three Minutes off Okinawa --which I highly recommend, if one can afford it ! I got my copy from Roy for the princely sum of 12 bucks. Roy is gone now--his wife too--and he was a great guy as well. This may have strayed a bit off-topic but it suggests how interconnected the Navy was at that time.

I could go into some detail about Grunion herself but that opens a bit of a wound which quite possibly resulted in a several years delay in locating her. I'm also more than a bit ticked because I 'have' about a dozen shots taken aboard the Porter after she was fatally damaged and have yet to locate them in my 'archives'. There is no question the photos are of her; the only shots of her sinking which we currently have are those shot from a Pallbearer. As with the Grunion 'incident', this makes me want to roll out that ass-kicking machine the Professor in Felix the Cat built and put that big boot to good use on my own ass.

Sorry for the personal rant.

RS