War
Patrol Diary of Torpedoman First Class Robert S. Ferris, U.S.N.
U.S.S. Pompano (SS-181)
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Torpedoman First Class Robert S. Ferris and his wife Ruth (Axner) Ferris in a prewar photo dating from around 1940. Ferris' wife and two daughters were living on Oahu during the Pearl Harbor attack and were shipped back to the mainland in April 1942. Ruth returned home to Wichita, Kansas to stay with Robert's family and took a job working at the Boeing aircraft factory in Wichita until Robert returned home on June 6, 1944. Robert stayed in the Navy until 1953 having served 25 years: two years with the Army (1927-29) and 23 with the Navy (1929-1953). His first assignment in the Navy had been aboard the Saratoga but when he re-upped his enlistment in 1933, he did so on the condition that he be allowed to transfer to the Submarine Force. He spent the rest of his career in the boats.
(Image courtesy of Jamie Laurie, their granddaughter) |
Robert Southard Ferris was born September 9, 1909 in Kansas. He joined the U.S. Army in 1927 and served two years before transferring to the U.S. Navy where he spent 23 years, most of that time aboard submarines. He attended sub school in 1933 and was part of the commissioning crew of the U.S.S. Pompano when it was launched in March 1937. Ferris would stay with the Pompano until January 1943 and when he left, he was the chief of the boat as well as the last remaining member of the commissioning crew.
The outbreak of war on December 7, 1941 found Ferris aboard the Pompano en route to Pearl Harbor from Mare Island near San Francisco. While his wife and daughters worried, Ferris and the Pompano sailed for safety at Lahaina but a few weeks later, the Pompano was off on her first war patrol. Ferris would serve through three war patrols on the Pompano, sailing as far east as Formosa and even attempted to enter Tokyo Bay on their third patrol.
After the Pompano received new engines during a major overhaul in late 1942, Ferris was assigned to the Fleet Torpedo School at Pearl Harbor and served there for more than a year. He learned later that fall that the Pompano was lost at sea with all hands during its seventh war patrol. He arrived home in Wichita, Kansas on June 6, 1944 and then spent the remainder of the war teaching at the sub school in Groton, Connecticut. Ferris stayed in the Navy until 1953; he went into teaching and eventually moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma where he died in 1965.
Below are words and images from an extraordinary diary that Ferris kept during his three war patrols aboard the Pompano. Interspersed with the text are cartoons that Ferris drew depicting life aboard the submarine as well as additional images, both from Ferris' family and from the U.S. Navy, that provide additional context to his descriptions of life on patrol.
I present Robert Ferris' war patrol diaries with a deep thanks to his daughter Betty Lou Nelson who lovingly preserved them, and to his grand daughter Jamie Laurie who remembered my great interest in her grandfather's WWII service.
