In the vast, churning Pacific theater of World War Two, a ship’s worth was measured by its guns and its sheer size. Battleships. Aircraft carriers. Fleet. Destroyers. These were the giants that dominated the seas. But in May 1944, a quiet, unheralded ship, a mere destroyer escort barely half the length of a true destroyer, was about to challenge all those assumptions.

This ship was the USS England, hull number D635. Over a 1012 day period, she would achieve a record that stands unbroken to this day, annihilating six Japanese submarines. That’s roughly one submarine every two days. An unprecedented rate of destruction that utterly baffled the Japanese Imperial Navy. The Japanese Navy never figured out what was killing their cruise so quickly.

They knew only that their boats were dying, instantly, shattered by unseen explosions that gave no warning. Yet this legendary achievement wasn’t a stroke of blind luck. It was a cold, hard, logical victory. The engine of this triumph wasn’t brute force, but a profound and almost solitary reliance on mathematics and a piece of technology.

Most US Navy captain simply refused to trust. This is the story of how a small ship using a forgotten weapon changed the entire way. The war was fought at sea. On May 19th, 1944, the England’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Walton Pendleton, a man in his mid-forties, had a career with zero confirmed submarine kills, but he possessed a quiet, almost stubborn trust in the data.

He knew that the traditional anti-submarine weapon, the depth charge, was a statistical nightmare. Depth charges worked by guessing a submarine’s depth, setting a hydrostatic fuze and rolling the charge off the stern. The problem the submarine had usually moved by the time the charge sank to its preset depth.

The combat statistics were brutal and unforgiving. Across the entire war, British forces recorded only one confirmed kill for every 60 depth charge attacks. That is a dismal 1.65% success rate, and even when they missed, the massive explosion, would cloud the water for critical 15 minutes, blinding the sonar and allowing the submarine commander to slink away in the ensuing chaos.

Therefore, any change to that old way of doing things was worth the risk. The England was equipped with a new experimental weapon called Hedgehog. This wasn’t some complex new torpedo. It was a simple forward throwing mortar mounted on the ship’s Ford deck. It fired 24 projectiles in a circular pattern 200 yards ahead of the ship.

But the genius was in the contact fuzes. They only exploded if they struck something solid the submarine’s hull. This design had three immediate stunning advantages that Pendleton understood before most other officers. First, a mist meant silence. No water disturbance to interrupt the sonar operators tracking, so contact with the target was never lost.

Second, the forward throwing design meant you could maintain sonar contact right up until the point of impact. Third, and this is what mattered to Pendleton’s logical mind. Early trials, even within practice, crews showed a roughly 5 to 8% success rate that was 3 to 5 times better than the old depth charges. If you’re a man who values facts over feel, you can appreciate why this new math spoke to Pendleton.

The immediate target was the Japanese submarine I-16, whose secret communications the U.S. Navy’s intelligence unit, Fleet Radio Unit Pacific, had already decoded. Pendleton, alongside two sister ships, was waiting for her when the sonar operator called out the track. I-16 was diving, twisting, and turning standard evasion tactics from a skilled commander.

The first four Hedgehog attacks missed the complex, unpredictable movements of the sub, combined with the nine second flight and descent time of the mortar projectiles made calculating the point of impact a brutal challenge. I-16 had even gone deeper than anticipated, sinking to 325ft, but Pendleton was an analytical hunter.

He relied on his team’s precision on the fifth attack. The sonar data finally paid off for more. Then six detonations ripped through the deep. The pressure wave was so violent it physically lifted the England’s stern clear of the water and knocked sailors off their feet. I-16 and her 107 man crew were gone. This first kill was just the beginning.

The next challenge was much bigger. Fleet Radio Unit Pacific had decoded another transmission, detailing a line of seven type R o Japanese submarines forming a scouting picket line designated in a stretching north of the Admiralty Islands. Their mission was to detect and report any American carrier task forces moving towards the Marianas.

The success of the U.S. Pacific strategy relied on removing these eyes. Commander Hamilton Haynes, receiving this intelligence, knew he was sending three small destroyer escorts, England, George and Raby, against seven formidable targets. But after the R 16 engagement, Pendleton had something new to offer. A proven success rate in that initial fight, five Hedgehog attacks had secured one kill.

A 20% success rate for the crew. Seeing the oil, the wood and the bodies surface was an undeniable, tangible proof that the weapon worked. They were converted. The hunter killer group set out on May 21st. They couldn’t rely on decoded messages anymore as the Japanese were maintaining strict radio silence. Therefore, the Americans had to revert to the old way of detection.

But even in the old way, Pendleton found an advantage. He knew the Japanese were predictable, positioning their subs along routes. Admiral Halsey’s forces had previously used more critically. Submarine patrol patterns were dictated by necessity. Surface at night to recharge batteries. Dive at dawn, and run submerged during the day.

This created a narrow, vulnerable window for radar detection. The enemy could crash dive, and disappear in a mere three minutes. So speed was everything. The England crew had drilled this sequence into a fine, deadly art. Sonar operators could track a diving sub, calculate its speed and depth, and predict its final position.

The hedgehog launcher could be reloaded and fired in 90s. That meant a 24 projectile attack, where success or failure was immediately known by the sound of contact fuzes could end a mission and the lives of 56 men in just nine seconds. On May 22nd, Georgia’s radar found the first sub radio 106 on the surface.

Recharging her batteries. The sub crashed, dived immediately, but Georgia’s hedgehog attack missed. It was England’s turn. The Japanese commander was experienced making radical turns and changing depth constantly to force the Americans to guess his position. Pendleton didn’t guess sonar data was fed directly into the hedgehog firing solution.

The first attack missed, proving the Japanese commander’s skill at evading the nine second projectile sync time. But on the second attempt, at 05013 detonations, then a massive underwater explosion rattled the three escort ships. The resulting oil slick was half a mile wide. Kill number two. Three days after I-16.

If you are finding this story of precision, audacity and success captivating, consider subscribing. On May 23rd, the hunt for arrow 104 began. The commander of the sub had clearly learned from the fate of R0 106. He was running deep to evade detection and force the Americans to make a death guess. Raby and George fired four attacks each, all missing.

The sub commander was masterful, consistently turning inside the circular pattern of projectiles to render the attack impossible. But division commander Heinz, watching from the George, knew who the killer in the group was. England had two kills. The others had none. He sent a fateful five word message that would become Navy legend.

Oh, hell. Go ahead. England. Pendleton’s first attack missed, but his second attack at zero 834 scored ten, maybe 12 detonations. The explosions merged into a single continuous roar, followed by the sound of tearing metal and collapsing bulkheads. The submarine’s batteries had ruptured. Kill number three. Three submarines in 72 hours.

The next victim, arrow 116, was detected by Georgia’s radar on the surface in the early morning of May 24th. The pattern of radar detection, crash dive and sonar tracking was repeating, but the R 116 commander made a bold tactical change. He went shallow to 150ft. Most subs went deep, seeking a cushion of water against explosions.

The R01 16 commander gambled that the Americans would set their hedgehog solution for a deep diving target. He bet wrong. Pendleton’s sonar operator instantly called out the shallow depth and the firing solution was adjusted. The first attack at zero 214 produced 3 to 5 detonations. It wasn’t the massive explosion of the previous kills.

It was the sound of 65 pound projectiles traveling 723ft per second. Punching three inch holes in the sub’s pressure hull at that shallow depth, water would flood the hull at a terrifying 400 gallons per minute through a three inch hole. The submarine didn’t immediately explode. It groaned. The weight of the water forced the sub deeper, increasing the pressure and the rate of flooding below 300ft.

The pressure sealed the crew’s doom. The internal temperatures soared, searing their lungs. Within six agonizing minutes, the crew was dead and the sub continued its silent descent. Kill number four for submarines in six days. The news of the incredible Killstreak reached the highest levels. Admiral Ernest King, the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, D.C.

, read the reports of one small destroyer escort, sinking four submarines in five days using a weapon. Most captains distrusted. King’s response was a simple, direct message to the Third Fleet. There will always be an England in the United States Navy. The phrase spread like wildfire through the Pacific Fleet. The England was famous, but that fame brought unwanted attention.

Admiral Halsey wanted to pull the England from submarine hunting to reassign her to carrier escort duty. She was deemed too valuable to risk, but Commander Haines refused. Three subs row 105, row 108, and row 109 remained on the nay line. England had a track record of four kills in five days, suggesting she could take out the remaining 3 in 3 more days.

To pull her now would leave the mission incomplete, allowing the Japanese eyes to continue reporting fleet movements. Halsey reluctantly agreed to one more patrol on the night of May 26th. The hunt for row 108 began. The Japanese commander made the same tactical error as the last sub, staying shallow and making radical turns.

But Pendleton’s crew was now an elite, seasoned unit. They had tracked four submarines before this one, and knew every evasion trick. Raby tried first and missed. Haynes’s voice crackled over the radio again. Go ahead. England. England commenced its attack on row 108 at 2323. Four, maybe six, projectiles hit simultaneously.

Sounding like a single devastating blow. This time there was no slow flooding. The pressure hull ruptured instantly at multiple points. The submarine imploded. 56 men died in less than three seconds. Too fast to process what was happening. Kill number five. Five submarines in eight days. In Tokyo, Admiral Soma Toyoda reviewed the patrol reports.

Seven submarines deployed to the North Line and five were now missing. No distress calls, just silence. The pattern was chillingly obvious. Something fast, something accurate. Something unavoidable was killing his submarines. Toyota issued new, desperate orders to the two remaining submarines. Row 105 and row 109.

New patrol depth 400ft minimum. New surface protocol. No battery recharging unless absolutely necessary. New evasion tactic. Runs silent at first. Detection with no radical maneuvers because noise only gave the American sonar better tracking data. The Japanese were adapting, but they were learning from the mistakes of their dead comrades.

The England George and Raby continued the hunt. They had the intelligence advantage, but the tactical situation was becoming complex. Five kills had depleted the England’s hedgehog ammunition. They had only 120 rounds remaining. Enough for five, maybe six more attacks. On May 30th, the new Japanese tactics became clear.

George’s radar found R0 105, which immediately dove to 400ft, then stopped all engines. Complete silence. No propeller noise. No machinery vibration. The contact signal was weak. Intermittent, barely a knuckle. A patch of disturbed water that yielded false returns. Pendleton faced an impossible choice. Fire Hedgehog at a weak contact and likely miss.

Wasting 24 precious projectiles or wait for the sub to move. Conceding the tactical advantage, he chose to wait for hours of agonizing silence passed. Finally, at zero 230 on May 31st, the signal strengthened. R0 105 was moving. Her batteries were running out. The commander had to surface soon or die in a final desperate gamble.

He surfaced at zero 315, but had drifted three miles with the current during the silent hours, putting him out of the hunting groups grid. He’d bought himself 90s of charging time enough to power his motors. England regained sonar contact at zero 345 zero 105, was running deep and fast, six knots away from the escorts.

This commander was good, perhaps the best they’d faced. He knew that depth and speed made the hedgehog attack difficult. Pendleton’s crew faced the mathematical nightmare at 400ft. The projectiles took 17 seconds to sink, and in that time the sub could travel 170ft. A wrong prediction and the circular pattern would miss entirely.

The first two attacks missed. The sub was varying her speed between 4 and 6 knots, making the calculation impossible. England had expended 48 projectiles in a matter of minutes. Only 72 remained three chances to kill R0 105. Heinz watched, knowing this engagement was different. The previous five had died quickly.

R0 105 was winning the math game, but at zero 447, Pendleton’s sonar operator detected a pattern. The Japanese commander, believing he was random, was turning 30 degrees to port. Then 30 degrees to starboard every four minutes. Humans aren’t random. They fall into patterns. Pendleton adjusted the firing solution, predicting the next turn, leading the target by 200ft.

The third hedgehog attack at 0508 was delivered perfectly for maybe five detonations. The pressure hull was breached, but not destroyed. The sub was flooding, but still moving. The commander was blowing ballast tanks, executing emergency procedures to abandon ship and save his crew. But England’s fourth and final attack at zero 532 was the finishing blow.

Eight detonations ripped the submarine apart. Emergency blow procedures ceased instantly. The crew never reached the surface. Oil and debris surfaced at zero 615. Kill number six. Six submarines in 12 days. The record was unprecedented and impossible to believe. Halsey immediately pulled England from the hunt.

Six kills was enough. England had validated the hedgehog system beyond any doubt. Every destroyer escort in the Pacific Fleet would receive new training, tactics and firing solutions. Based on England’s action reports. The remaining Japanese submarine R0 109 took Toyota’s warning to heart and was never found. She ran deep and silent, surviving the war.

Her crew only learned months later that six of their sister submarines had been annihilated in 12 days by one small ship using a weapon they’d never heard of. The Presidential Unit Citation was awarded in July. It mentioned the crew’s discipline and the weapons effectiveness, but the citation didn’t capture the real lesson.

The mathematics did. England achieved a roughly 35 40% success rate, more than 20 times more effective than the old depth charges. Pendleton trusted numbers when other captains clung to tradition, he calculated and predicted, while others guessed. After surviving a devastating kamikaze attack on May 9th, 1945 off Okinawa, which killed 37 of her crew, the Navy repaired her but decommissioned her postwar as surplus.

She was stripped for scrap, and by November 1946, the ship that sank six subs in 12 days was reduced to razor blades and tin cans. Her record remains. No ship has ever matched it. Lieutenant Commander Walton Pendleton survived the war. His grave at Arlington National Cemetery. Only mentioning the Navy Cross. It doesn’t mention the six submarines or the 12 days that changed naval history forever.

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