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YP-151

1942-1946

(YP-151: displacement 90; length 87'; beam 22'1"; draft 10.2'; speed 10 knots; complement (as fishing vessel) 11; armament 2 .50-caliber machine guns, 2 depth charge tracks)

The wooden-hull purse seiner Sunrise -- completed in 1939 at Tacoma, Wash., by the Western Boat Building Co. -- was acquired by the Navy on 19 December 1941, through the Maritime Commission, from Nick Mardesich of Everett, Wash., and delivered to Olson and Winge Marine Works of Seattle, Wash., on 21 December. Conversion work started the next day, and YP-151-- assigned to the Thirteenth Naval District two days after Christmas of 1941 [27 December] -- was placed in service at her conversion yard on 17 February 1942, Lt. Charles C. Cagle, D-V(S), USNR, officer-in-charge. The yard completed the conversion work on 26 February 1942.


YP-151 (ex-Sunrise) pierside during her conversion in February 1942, with YP-149 (ex-Farallon) moored astern. Note style of her identification number, curious (or perhaps suspicious) sailor looking forward at the photographer from behind the deck...
Caption: YP-151 (ex-Sunrise) pierside during her conversion in February 1942, with YP-149 (ex-Farallon) moored astern. Note style of her identification number, curious (or perhaps suspicious) sailor looking forward at the photographer from behind the deckhouse, and the clear windscreen ahead of the ship’s wheel on the open bridge ahead of the enclosed pilot house. The starboard anchor is a 500-pound stockless ball type, of cast steel, but the one on the port side is a 450-pound stockless ball type, also of cast steel. (U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships Photograph 19-LCM-28501, National Archives and Records Administration, Still Pictures Branch, College Park, Md.)


Another view of YP-151 in February 1942, underway on a foggy day in the Pacific Northwest. At that point she has one .50-caliber Browning machine gun mounted aft and two depth charge tracks. The foundation is in place for the .50-caliber Browning...
Caption: Another view of YP-151 in February 1942, underway on a foggy day in the Pacific Northwest. At that point she has one .50-caliber Browning machine gun mounted aft and two depth charge tracks. The foundation is in place for the .50-caliber Browning atop the pilot house, but the gun itself has not yet been mounted. (U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships Photograph 19-LCM-28502, National Archives and Records Administration, Still Pictures Branch, College Park, Md.)

Assigned to operate under Commandant, Thirteenth Naval District (ComThirteen), YP-151 took part in an important operation a little over a month after the Aleutian phase of the Battle of Midway when the Japanese brought the war to the Alaskan territory on 3 June 1942, and the Second Strike Force (Rear Adm. Kakuta Kikuji), centered around the aircraft carriers Ryūjō and Junyō, bombed Dutch Harbor. The same force reprised the attack on 5 June, and occupied the island of Attu the same day without opposition. Two days later, on 7 June, a Japanese force carried out the unopposed occupation of the island of Kiska.

On 10 July 1942, as Lt. William N. Thies, A-V(N), USNR, of Patrol Squadron (VP) 41, flew his PBY Catalina past the southwest side of Akutan Island while returning from a routine tactical patrol, one of his crew “sighted a small crashed Japanese plane on its back. From its size…a zero type Navy fighter.” What had been seen by the crewman on board Thies’s Catalina was indeed a Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21 kanjō sentōki (abbreviated kansen) [carrier fighter], that had been flown during the strike on Dutch Harbor on 3 June by Petty Officer Koga Tadayoshi of the Ryūjō’s hikōkitai [air unit]. His kansen damaged by antiaircraft fire, Koga had spotted level ground on Akutan Island. Unaware of the nature of the treacherous terrain ahead of him, however, he “apparently attempted to make a normal wheels-down, flaps-down stall landing in the soft ground, skidded along for a short distance carrying away the landing struts, damaging flaps, and belly tank and going over on its back, in which position he skidded somewhat further damaging the wing tips, vertical stabilizer and trailing edge of the rudder.”

Lt. Thies hastened back to Dutch Harbor and made his report, after which Lt. Cmdr. Paul Foley, Jr., VP-41’s commanding officer, put him in charge of a party “to investigate and salvage such parts of the plane as were of intelligence value.” YP-151 transported Thies and his men to the island, where “after considerable struggle” in the terrain, they found the object of their search “in a high valley about a mile and a half from the beach in a soft marshy land.” The kansen rested “with the fuselage and engine half-buried in the knee-deep mud and water,” Petty Officer Koga’s head and shoulders submerged. He had suffered a broken neck in the crash. The first order of business for the salvage party lay in removing the pilot’s decayed body that was held firmly in place by two safety belts. Once Koga’s remains were finally extracted, they were “buried with simple military honors and Christian ceremony near the scene of the accident.”


Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21 kanjō sentōki (abbreviated kansen) [carrier fighter], tail code DI-108, that had been flown during the strike on Dutch Harbor on 3 June 1942 by Petty Officer Koga Tadayoshi of the Ryūjō’s hikōkitai [air unit]. This...
Caption: Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21 kanjō sentōki (abbreviated kansen) [carrier fighter], tail code DI-108, that had been flown during the strike on Dutch Harbor on 3 June 1942 by Petty Officer Koga Tadayoshi of the Ryūjō’s hikōkitai [air unit]. This view captures the appearance of the fabled fighter as salvagers first beheld it in this Alaskan marsh. (U.S. Navy Photograph 80-G-206218, National Archives and Records Administration, Still Pictures Branch, College Park, Md.)

The salvagers removed the two 20-millimeter wing guns, the optical reflector sight, and “certain small articles…for immediate attention,” finding, in so doing, “that the condition of the plane warranted attempts to recondition and flight test it.” They had also discovered, however, that the plane’s construction – wings integral with the fuselage – complicating the recovery process. “The press of other operations” militated against further work that day, and the salvage party returned in YP-151 to Dutch Harbor. A third salvage expedition, transported to Akutan by YP-72, ultimately proved successful.

Assigned to the Northwestern Sea Frontier on 23 July 1942, YP-151 was assigned to the Alaskan Sea Frontier on 19 September 1944. She remained assigned to that region until routed to Seattle to report to ComThirteen for disposal shortly after the end of hostilities. Escorted by the submarine chasers PC-794 and PC-818, YP-151 reached Kodiak on 4 December 1945, where her officer-in-charge reported her unseaworthy. After investigating that report, the Commandant, Seventeenth Naval District, reported on 21 December that the vessel was sufficiently seaworthy to continue her voyage and YP-151 returned to Seattle on 13 January 1946. Placed out of service on 31 January 1946, the vessel was berthed for a time at ComThirteen’s Seattle-Kennydale Berthing Area in Lake Washington. Found surplus to naval needs and thus made available for disposal, YP-151 was stricken from the Navy Register on 8 May 1946.

The former district patrol vessel that had taken part in the initial efforts to recover a priceless intelligence asset in the wake of the Aleutian phase of the Battle of Midway returned to the fishing trade under her pre-war name (Sunrise) and for her pre-war owner (Nick Mardesich). She was still operational as Sunrise, as late as 1965, homeported at Juneau, Alaska, for Kadiak Fisheries, Incorporated.

Robert J. Cressman
December 2014

Published: Tue Mar 21 14:51:33 EDT 2017