End of WWII and Fate
Skate departed Pearl Harbor on 5 August for her eighth war patrol; but, while en route to the patrol area, she received word of the Japanese surrender and returned to port, and then set sail for the United States arriving at San Diego, California, on 6 September. For the next four months, she participated in training operations along the west coast, and then sailed to Pearl Harbor arriving on 9 January 1946. On 21 May, she departed for Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, to be used as a target ship in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests. Although considerably damaged by the first of the tests, the submarine survived and was towed back to Pearl Harbor, where she was moored in an isolated berth. On 11 October, salvage vessel Clamp took Skate in tow and headed for San Francisco, and then to Mare Island Naval Shipyard where the submarine was inspected and then decommissioned on 11 December. The submarine was destroyed on 5 October 1948, off the California coast, and struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 21 October 1948.
Read more about this topic: USS Skate (SS-305)
Famous quotes containing the word fate:
“I am no Poet here; my pen ‘s the spout,
Where the rain water of my eyes run out,
In pity of that name, whose fate wee see
Thus copied out in griefs Hydrography:
The Muses are not Mer-maids, though upon
His death the Ocean might turn Helicon”
—John Cleveland (1613–1658)