Mystery solved: A family’s search for a missing World War II Submarine
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:54 AM by Jen Brown
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American Story with Bob Dotson
(From Bob Dotson, NBC News National Correspondent)
Longing can chart a better course than Mapquest. After 65 years, the Abele brothers have finally found their father. Jim Abele commanded the Grunion, a U.S. Submarine that disappeared off the coast of Alaska during World War II.
Five years ago, his sons made a deal with their hearts, not their heads, and went looking for him. It cost them a bundle.
“If this were to be an official Navy project,” John Abele chuckled, “I would guess that the taxpayers would be paying about ten times what we’re paying.”
“How much are you paying?” I asked.
“That’s a secret,” he laughed.
Just like the mystery of what happened to their father’s sub.
Military search planes never found where the Grunion sank, but the brothers from suburban Boston kept looking. Last summer, they began crisscrossing the Bering Sea probing the depths with Sonar. This summer they found the sub a mile down on the slope of an underwater volcano, 12 miles north of Kiska at the western tip of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
Today’s American Story with Bob Dotson gives you an exclusive first look at the underwater video that solved their 65-year mystery.
Video: Sons find father's doomed WWII sub
The brothers’ big break came, when a Japanese historian found an account of the Grunion’s last battle. It said there was a confrontation between a cargo ship and a sub. The freighter’s crew spotted two torpedoes bubbling toward them. The first one missed. The second one hit, exploded and stopped the engine. Terrified, the Japanese seamen turned a deck gun on the sub. They fired 84 times, as it began to surface.
“There was a dull thud noise and a little spout. Presumably oil, we don’t know,” said Abele.
Their dad’s sub slid into history’s shadows. Seventy men were never heard from again.
The last time the boys saw their father was at Sunday dinner here at his sub base in Groton, Connecticut. Wartime secrecy prevented him from telling them he was leaving. He slipped away without a kiss or a wave.
John’s brother, Bruce, told me with a tear in his eye, “We knew that he was gone when a neighbor called and said she had seen the sub leave. We didn’t have a chance to say good-bye.”
Four months later their mom got a telegram saying Commander Abele was missing, then a letter with a Navy Cross, citing him for valor. It came with a check.
“She sent it back to the government,” said John.
And put her sons to work while she taught violin.
The brothers showed me stacks of letters their mother had received. She wrote every family who lost someone on the Grunion.
Their mom never remarried. The boys never forgot. Jim never left their minds.
“How did you finally grieve for your father?” I asked Bruce.
“I used to shoot baskets in the backyard. This is hard to say, but if I could make five at a time, I’d say, ‘Jim’s coming back!’” He choked up. “But he never did...”
So, his sons went to him. Some love cannot be measured. It is the sum of a lifetime of searching.
Want to learn more about the Abele brothers’ efforts to save the USS Grunion? Here’s where you can find more information: www.ussgrunion.com/blog.
Keep those ideas coming. Drop a note in my mailbox at American Story with Bob Dotson.
