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Joining Seadragon and Blackfish at Pearl Harbor,
the second Shark (Commander E.N. Blakely) left that place on 23 September 1944, and proceeded to Saipan to begin her third war patrol. The three vessels left the latter island on 3 October to conduct a coordinated patrol in the vicinity of Luzon Strait. Commander Blakely had command of this coordinated attack group, called Blakely's Behemoths.
On 22 October, Shark reported having
contacted four large enemy vessels in Latitude 20°-28'N, Longitude 117°-50'E.
She still had her full load of torpedoes aboard, so had not made an attack.
Shark addressed no further messages to
bases, but on 24 October, Seadragon
received a message from her stating that she had made radar contact with a
single freighter, and that she was going in to attack. This was the last
message received from Shark.
However, on 13 November 1944, a dispatch originated
by Commander Naval Unit, Fourteenth Air Force, stated that a Japanese ship
enroute from Manila to Japan with 1800 American
prisoners of war had been sunk on 24 October by an American submarine in a
torpedo attack. No other submarine reported the attack, and since Shark
had given Seadragon a contact report only a few hours before the sinking, and
could not be raised by radio after it, it can only be assumed that Shark made
the attack described, and perished during or after it. Five prisoners who
survived and subsequently reached China stated that conditions
on the prison ship were so intolerable that the prisoners prayed for
deliverance from their misery by a torpedo or bomb. Because many prisoners of
war had been rescued from the water by submarines after sinking vessels in
which they were being transported, U.S. submarines had been
instructed to search for Allied survivors in the vicinity of all sinkings of
Empire-bound Japanese ships. Shark
may well have been sunk trying to rescue American prisoners of war. All
attempts to contact Shark by radio
failed and on 27 November she was reported as presumed lost.
A report from the Japanese received after the close of war on antisubmarine attacks
records the attack made by Shark on
24 October 1944, in Latitude 20°-41'N, Longitude 118°-27'E. Depth charges were
dropped 17 times, and the enemy reports having seen "bubbles, and heavy
oil, clothes, cork, etc." Several American submarines report having been
attacked on this date near the position given, but in view of the fact that
none reported the attack on the convoy cited above,
this attack is considered the most probable cause of Shark's loss.
Shark sank five ships,
totaling 32,200 tons and damaged two, for 9,900 tons prior to her last patrol.
Her first patrol was in the area west of the Marianas. Shark sank two
freighters, a transport and a large tanker, and damaged a freighter. In her
second patrol in the Bonins, Shark
sank a medium freighter.
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