Hedgehog and the Hunter: The USS England Story

Prologue: Midnight Math

At 0150 on May 19th, 1944, Lieutenant Commander Walton Pendleton stood in the cramped combat information center of USS England, his eyes fixed on the glowing sonar screen. The destroyer escort rocked gently on black Pacific waters north of Bougainville, but Pendleton’s mind raced. Thirty-seven years old, first war patrol as commanding officer, zero submarine kills. The Japanese Imperial Navy had stationed seven submarines across the route to the Marianas—seven shadows in the dark, each carrying fifty-six men, each tasked with reporting the movements of the American fleet. The odds were impossible. The weapon, unproven. The crew, tense.

England wasn’t a mighty battleship—she was a Buckley-class destroyer escort, seventy-seven feet shorter than a fleet destroyer, half the crew, built for one purpose: hunting submarines. But on her foredeck sat a secret weapon that most captains doubted. Twenty-four spigot mortars arranged in rows. The British called it Hedgehog.

Hedgehog fired projectiles 200 yards ahead of the ship in a circular pattern. Each shell carried a contact fuse—no explosion unless it hit something solid. Depth charges had been killing submarines for decades, but with a brutal efficiency: 5,174 attacks, 85 confirmed kills, one for every sixty attacks. By the time the charges sank, submarines had moved. The explosions disturbed the water so badly that sonar became useless for fifteen minutes. Submarines escaped in the chaos.

Hedgehog was different. Forward-throwing, maintaining sonar contact throughout the attack. Sixty-five pound projectiles, each with thirty-five pounds of Torpex. Silent misses. No water disturbance. No lost contact. But the numbers were still being proven. Five percent success rate in early trials. Crews didn’t trust it. Captains preferred the familiar thunder of depth charges.

Pendleton trusted numbers. One Hedgehog kill for every five attacks versus one depth charge kill for every eighty. The mathematics were simple.

Act I: First Contact

Fleet Radio Unit Pacific had decoded Japanese submarine I-16’s transmission four days earlier. Destination: Bougainville. Arrival time: 2200 hours, May 19th. Intelligence was perfect. England and two sister ships had positioned themselves along I-16’s route. Now the contact was real.

Pendleton’s sonar operator called out the range: 1,500 yards. I-16 was diving. Standard Japanese evasion—radical turns, changing depth. The submarine commander knew he was being hunted.

Pendleton ordered the first Hedgehog attack at 1341. Twenty-four projectiles arced through the afternoon sky, splashed into the Pacific, sank at twenty-three feet per second. Silence. Miss. I-16 had turned.

The second attack scored one hit at 130 feet. The explosion lifted England’s bow. Not enough.

Third attack missed. The fathometer revealed the problem. I-16 had gone deep—325 feet, deeper than Pendleton had estimated.

Fourth attack, I-16 turned inside the pattern. Another miss.

Fifth attack: four detonations, then six. A massive underwater explosion followed. The blast lifted England’s stern clear out of the water, knocked sailors off their feet. Twenty minutes later, debris began surfacing—oil, wood, fabric. I-16 was gone. 107 men dead.

Act II: The Line of Death

Fleet Radio Unit Pacific decoded another message. Seven more Japanese submarines were stationed in a patrol line north of the Admiralty Islands. England was sailing straight toward them.

Commander Hamilton Haynes received the decoded intelligence at Tulagi on May 20th. Japanese 7th Submarine Squadron had deployed seven Type KO submarines along a line designated NA. RO-104, RO-105, RO-106, RO-108, RO-109, RO-112, RO-116. Each carried fifty-six crew members. Their mission: detect American carrier task forces moving toward the Marianas or Palau Islands. Admiral Soemu Toyoda needed to know where the Americans would strike next.

Haynes ordered England to join destroyer escorts George and Raby. Three ships, seven targets. The odds seemed impossible, but Pendleton had proven something in that first engagement with I-16. Five Hedgehog attacks, one kill. Twenty percent success rate—four times better than early trials. The weapon worked. The crew trusted it now. They had heard the explosions, watched the debris surface, counted the oil slicks spreading across the Pacific.

The hunting group departed Purvis Bay on May 21st. Standard line abreast formation, 16,000 yards between ships during darkness. Radar sweeps every thirty seconds. Sonar pinging continuously. The Japanese submarines maintained radio silence now. No more transmissions to decode. No more precise coordinates. The hunter-killer group would have to find them the old way—electronic detection, patience, mathematics.

Pendleton studied the charts in his cabin. The NA line stretched across Admiral Halsey’s previously used routes. The Japanese were predictable—station submarines where American forces had moved before, hope the Americans moved there again. But Fleet Radio Unit Pacific had given the Americans an advantage the Japanese didn’t know existed. The Americans knew exactly where the picket line was positioned. The question was timing.

Submarine patrol patterns were predictable. Surface at night to recharge batteries. Dive at dawn. Run submerged during daylight. Surface again after sunset. The window for radar detection was narrow. Submarines were vulnerable on the surface, but they were fast. A commander could dive in sixty seconds, be at 200 feet depth in three minutes, disappear into the black water.

England’s crew had drilled for this. Sonar operators could track a diving submarine, calculate depth, estimate speed, predict position. Hedgehog launchers could be loaded and fired in ninety seconds. Twenty-four projectiles, 130-foot circle, thirty feet deep. Every launch was a gamble. Contact fuses meant certainty—if the projectiles exploded, they hit something. If they stayed silent, they missed.

Act III: The Hunt Begins

At 0350 on May 22nd, George’s radar detected a surface contact at 15,000 yards. The first submarine, RO-106, was recharging her batteries. She never saw the destroyer escorts coming. George’s searchlight caught RO-106 on the surface. The submarine crash-dove immediately. Seawater flooded her ballast tanks. Her bow angled down. Within ninety seconds, she was submerged.

George fired Hedgehog at 0415. Twenty-four projectiles splashed into the dark water. Silence. Miss.

England regained sonar contact at 0425. Range: 1,400 yards. RO-106 was running deep, making radical turns. The Japanese commander knew the tactics—turn inside the attack pattern, change depth constantly, make the Americans guess.

Pendleton didn’t guess. His sonar operator tracked every turn, called out depth changes, range, bearing. The data fed directly to the Hedgehog firing solution.

First attack missed. RO-106 had turned thirty degrees during the projectile sink time. Nine seconds was enough for a submarine to move 150 feet.

Second attack at 0501. Twenty-four projectiles formed their circular pattern, sank through the darkness. Three detonations, then a massive underwater explosion. The pressure wave rolled across the surface. England’s hull shuddered. George and Raby felt it 4,000 yards away. At sunrise, the oil slick was half a mile wide. Debris floating—metal fragments, wood. No survivors.

Kill number two. Twenty-four hours after I-16.

Act IV: Patterns and Legends

The three destroyer escorts reformed their line, 16,000-yard spacing, continued northeast along the NA line. The next submarine was out there—RO-104 or RO-105 or any of the remaining five. Japanese submarine commanders maintained strict radio silence, but they surfaced on predictable schedules. Batteries required recharging. Electric motors needed power. Diesel engines needed air.

At 0600 on May 23rd, Raby’s radar detected another surface contact. Range: 22,000 yards. The contact dove before identification. The Japanese commander had learned something from RO-106’s death—stay deep, make them guess your depth.

Raby fired four Hedgehog attacks starting at 0617. All misses. RO-104 was turning inside the patterns.

George tried next. First attack missed at 0717. Second, third, fourth attacks all missed between 0730 and 0810. The Japanese submarine commander was good. Every time projectiles splashed above him, he turned, changed depth, made the mathematics impossible.

Division Commander Haynes watched England approach for her turn. Pendleton’s crew had two kills. Raby and George had none. The pattern was becoming clear. England’s sonar operators were better, or her Hedgehog crews were faster, or Pendleton’s firing solutions were more accurate. Whatever the reason, England was the killer in this hunting group.

Haynes radioed five words that would become Navy legend: “Oh hell, go ahead, England.”

Pendleton’s first Hedgehog attack missed. RO-104 turned. But the second attack at 0834 scored ten detonations, maybe twelve. The explosions merged into one continuous roar. Breaking-up noises followed—metal tearing, bulkheads collapsing. Then a major underwater explosion three minutes later. The submarine’s batteries had ruptured. Oil and debris surfaced at 1045.

Kill number three. Seventy-two hours. Three submarines. 163 Japanese sailors dead. England still had four more targets ahead.

Act V: The Fourth Kill

At 0120 on May 24th, George’s radar detected RO-116 on the surface. Range: 15,000 yards. The submarine dove at 0130. England established sonar contact at 0150. The pattern was repeating—radar detection, crash dive, sonar tracking, Hedgehog attack.

But RO-116’s commander had changed tactics. He went shallow—150 feet. Most submarine commanders dove deep, 300 feet, 400 feet. Maximum cushion against explosions. RO-116’s commander did the opposite—stayed shallow, made sharp turns, bet that the Americans would set their firing solutions for deep targets. He bet wrong.

Pendleton’s sonar operator called out the shallow depth. The Hedgehog firing solution adjusted instantly. First attack at 0214—three detonations, maybe five. Not the massive explosion of previous kills. No battery rupture, just the sound of sixty-five-pound projectiles punching through pressure hull at 723 feet per second, creating three-inch holes.

At 150 feet depth, seawater enters a submarine at 400 gallons per minute through a three-inch hole. Breaking-up noises weren’t loud, just the groan of metal under pressure. The submarine settled deeper. More holes meant more water. More water meant more weight. More weight meant deeper. At 300 feet, the pressure increased. More water flooded in. The temperature inside rose—200 degrees, 300°. The crew’s lungs seared. Within six minutes, everyone aboard was dead. The submarine continued sinking. Oil and debris surfaced at 0702 after sunrise. Small quantity. The oil slick expanded over the next twenty-four hours—several square miles. Fifty-six more Japanese sailors gone.

Kill number four. Five days, four submarines.

Word reached Admiral Ernest King at the Navy Department in Washington, Chief of Naval Operations, the man who commanded every ship in the United States Navy. King read the action reports. One destroyer escort, four confirmed kills, five days using a weapon most captains didn’t trust. King sent a message to Third Fleet. Simple, direct: “There’ll always be an England in the United States Navy.”

The phrase spread through the Pacific Fleet within hours. England was becoming famous, but fame brought attention, and attention brought new orders.

Act VI: The Final Patrol

On May 25th, Admiral Halsey wanted England pulled from submarine hunting, reassigned to carrier escort duty. Too valuable to risk. Four kills made her crew experienced. Experienced crews were rare. Protect the asset.

Commander Haynes refused. Three submarines remained on the NA line—RO-105, RO-108, RO-109. England had killed four in five days. The mathematics said she could kill the remaining three in three more days. Pull her now and the mission stayed incomplete. Japanese submarines would continue reporting American fleet movements. The intelligence advantage would be lost.

Halsey agreed to one more patrol.

At 2303 on May 26th, Raby gained radar contact on RO-108 at 15,000 yards, 110 nautical miles northeast of Seadler Harbor. The submarine dove. England gained sonar contact at 1,650 yards. The Japanese commander made the same mistake as RO-116—stayed shallow, made radical turns, believed the Americans couldn’t track him.

Pendleton’s crew had tracked four submarines before this one. They knew every evasion tactic, every depth change, every turn pattern. Raby moved in for the kill, but missed with Hedgehog. Division Commander Haynes gave the order again: “Go ahead, England.”

England commenced Hedgehog attack on RO-108. Four projectiles hit, maybe six. The explosions came so close together they sounded like one. RO-108 broke apart immediately. No slow flooding, no gradual sinking. The pressure hull ruptured at multiple points simultaneously. The submarine imploded. Fifty-six men died in less than three seconds—faster than they could process what was happening.

Kill number five. Six days, five submarines, 279 Japanese sailors dead.

Act VII: The Last Kill

At Japanese Imperial Navy headquarters in Tokyo, Admiral Toyoda reviewed the patrol reports. Seven submarines deployed to the NA line. Five submarines missing. No distress calls. No emergency transmissions. Just silence. One submarine every twenty-four hours. The pattern was obvious. Something was killing his submarines. Something fast. Something accurate. Something the submarine commanders couldn’t evade.

Toyoda issued new orders to the remaining submarines. RO-105 and RO-109 received the transmission on May 27th. New patrol depth: 400 feet minimum. New surface protocol: no battery recharging unless absolutely necessary. New evasion tactic: run silent at first detection. No radical maneuvers—radical maneuvers made noise. Noise gave sonar operators better tracking data. The Japanese were learning, but they were learning from dead men’s mistakes.

England, George, and Raby continued northeast. The NA line had two submarines left. Somewhere in 3,000 square miles of ocean. The Americans had the advantage. Fleet Radio Unit Pacific was still intercepting Japanese transmissions. Every radio message gave position data. Every position report revealed patrol patterns, but the tactical situation was changing.

Five kills had depleted England’s Hedgehog ammunition. Each attack fired twenty-four projectiles. Five attacks meant 120 projectiles expended. England carried 240 rounds total. She had 120 remaining. Five more attacks, maybe six if the crew was careful. And the Japanese submarines were adapting.

On May 30th, George detected RO-105 on radar at 2145. The submarine dove immediately, but this time the Japanese commander did something different. He went deep—400 feet—then stopped all engines. Complete silence. No propeller noise, no machinery vibration, nothing for sonar to detect. England established contact at 2,200 yards. Weak signal, intermittent. The submarine was barely moving. Sonar operators called it a knuckle—a patch of disturbed water that created false returns. The submarine could be anywhere within 200 yards of the signal.

Pendleton faced a choice. Fire Hedgehog at a weak contact and probably miss—waste twenty-four precious projectiles—or wait for the submarine to move. Give up tactical advantage, let the Japanese commander choose when to run. He chose to wait.

Four hours passed. The submarine stayed silent. Then at 0230 on May 31st, the signal strengthened. RO-105 was moving. Battery power was running out. The electric motors needed recharging. The commander had no choice—he had to surface soon or die anyway. But he had one more tactic, one final desperate gamble.

RO-105’s commander surfaced at 0315 on May 31st, but not where England expected. The submarine had drifted with the current during those four silent hours, moved three miles from her last known position. George’s radar caught her at 13,000 yards. Wrong direction, wrong bearing. The hunting group had been searching the wrong grid square. By the time England turned toward the new contact, RO-105 had already crash-dove. The Japanese commander had bought himself ninety seconds of battery charging, enough to add ten percent power to his depleted batteries, enough to run.

England established sonar contact at 0345. RO-105 was running deep and fast, six knots, heading northeast away from the hunting group. The Japanese commander was good, maybe the best they had faced. He had studied the previous attacks, learned from five dead submarines, knew that staying deep and running fast made Hedgehog attacks difficult.

The problem was mathematics. Hedgehog projectiles sank at twenty-three feet per second. At 400 feet depth, projectiles took seventeen seconds to reach target depth. In seventeen seconds, a submarine moving at six knots traveled 170 feet. The firing solution required predicting where the submarine would be in seventeen seconds. Predict wrong and the circular pattern missed completely.

Pendleton’s first Hedgehog attack at 0405 missed by 200 feet. RO-105 had turned during the projectiles’ descent. Second attack at 0423 missed by 100 feet. Better prediction, but still wrong. The submarine was varying her speed—six knots, then four knots, then six knots again—making the mathematics impossible. England had fired forty-eight projectiles. Seventy-two projectiles remaining. Three more attacks, maybe three and a half if the crew loaded carefully.

Division Commander Haynes watched from George. This engagement was different. The previous five submarines had died quickly—two attacks, three attacks maximum. RO-105 had survived two attacks, was heading toward a third, maybe a fourth. The Japanese commander was winning the mathematics game.

At 0447, Pendleton’s sonar operator detected a pattern. RO-105 turned every four minutes—thirty degrees to port, then thirty degrees to starboard, back and forth. The pattern was consistent, predictable. The Japanese commander thought he was being random, but humans aren’t random. They fall into patterns.

Pendleton adjusted the firing solution, predicted the turn, led the target by 200 feet. Third Hedgehog attack at 0508. Twenty-four projectiles splashed into the Pacific, sank into darkness. Four detonations, maybe five. Not the massive explosion of previous kills—RO-105’s pressure hull was breached, but not destroyed. The submarine continued moving, flooding, but not sinking. The Japanese commander was executing emergency procedures—blow ballast tanks, surface, abandon ship, save the crew.

But England’s fourth attack at 0532 hit with eight detonations. The submarine broke apart. Emergency blow stopped. The crew never reached the surface. Oil and debris appeared at 0615 after sunrise.

Kill number six. Twelve days. Six submarines. 335 Japanese sailors dead.

Act VIII: The Aftermath

Admiral Halsey received the report at Third Fleet headquarters. Six submarines in twelve days. One destroyer escort. One weapon system that most captains didn’t trust. The record was unprecedented, unmatched, impossible to believe. But one submarine remained—RO-109.

Admiral Halsey issued new orders on June 1st. Pull England from submarine hunting immediately. Six kills was enough. The destroyer escort had proven the Hedgehog system, proven it beyond any doubt. Every destroyer escort in the Pacific Fleet would receive updated training, updated tactics, updated firing solutions based on England’s action reports.

But RO-109 was never found. The submarine had received Toyoda’s warning after RO-108 died, abandoned her patrol station, ran deep and silent toward Truk. She survived the war, surrendered in August 1945. Her crew learned about the NA line massacre months later—learned that six of their sister submarines had been destroyed in twelve days by one ship using a weapon they had never heard of.

The Presidential Unit Citation arrived in July, one of only three destroyer escorts to receive the honor during the entire war. The citation read simply: “For extraordinary heroism in action against enemy Japanese submarines.” The words didn’t capture what England’s crew had accomplished. The mathematics did.

British forces had launched 5,174 depth charge attacks during the war, 85 confirmed kills, 1.6% success rate. Hedgehog attacks before England’s patrol showed 5% success rate, twenty-six attacks for every kill. England made her record with far better numbers—six submarines, approximately fifteen total Hedgehog attacks, 40% success rate, twenty-five times more effective than depth charges, eight times more effective than the Hedgehog average. The weapon system became standard on every destroyer escort by September 1944. Training protocols changed across the fleet. Sonar operators studied England’s tracking techniques. Hedgehog crews practiced England’s loading procedures. Fire control officers memorized England’s firing solutions.

In the Atlantic, Hedgehog sank forty-seven German U-boats by war’s end—268 attacks, forty-seven kills, 17.5% success rate. Still the best anti-submarine weapon of the war. But no ship matched England’s twelve-day record. Not in the Atlantic, not in the Pacific, not in any theater.

Act IX: England’s Final Days

Lieutenant Commander Pendleton received the Navy Cross in August. Single decoration for six submarines. The citation mentioned his tactical brilliance, his crew’s discipline, the weapon system’s effectiveness. But it didn’t mention the thing that mattered most—mathematics. Pendleton had trusted numbers when other captains trusted tradition. He had calculated firing solutions while others relied on experience. He had predicted submarine movements while others guessed. The numbers had been right.

England continued escort duty through summer 1944—convoy protection, carrier screening, anti-submarine patrols. She never found another submarine. Never fired Hedgehog in combat again.

On October 31st, 1944, kamikaze aircraft hit England off Leyte Gulf. The bomb penetrated the forward engine room, killed thirty-seven crew members, wounded twenty-five more. The damage was catastrophic. Repairs would take six months, cost more than building a new ship. The Navy decided England wasn’t worth saving. She was towed to Manus Island, stripped of useful equipment, sold for scrap. In November 1946, cut apart in a salvage yard, the ship that had sunk six submarines in twelve days ended her life as razor blades and tin cans.

But the record stood—still stands today. No ship has matched it. Eighty years later, England remains the greatest submarine killer in naval history.

Epilogue: The Forgotten Legacy

Walton Pendleton survived the war, promoted to commander, given command of an escort division in Alaska, spent the final year of the war hunting Japanese submarines in the North Pacific. Never found any. The war ended in August 1945. Pendleton retired from the Navy in 1961 after thirty-four years of service. Died in 1973 at age sixty-six, buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His gravestone mentions the Navy Cross—doesn’t mention the six submarines, doesn’t mention the twelve days that changed naval warfare.

The Navy kept its promise, sort of. In October 1960, guided missile destroyer leader USS England was commissioned—hull number DLG-22, later reclassified as CG-22—served from 1962 until 1994. Thirty-two years, longer than the original England lasted. But when CG-22 was decommissioned, the name England disappeared from the fleet. Admiral King’s promise broken. There hasn’t been a USS England since 1994.

The original Hedgehog launcher sits in storage at the National Museum of the United States Navy in Washington, DC. Rusted, forgotten. Most visitors walk past without noticing. The placard mentions the weapon’s success rate. Doesn’t mention England. Doesn’t mention Pendleton. Doesn’t mention the twelve days that proved the system worked.

Japanese records recovered after the war confirmed the six kills—I-16, RO-106, RO-104, RO-116, RO-108, RO-105. Each submarine’s final position matched England’s attack coordinates exactly. 335 sailors confirmed dead. The Japanese Navy never understood what killed them so fast. Their action reports mentioned explosions above, flooding below, death within minutes. But nobody survived to describe the circular pattern of projectiles, the contact fuses, the forward-throwing mortars that maintained sonar contact throughout the attack.

The British developed Hedgehog. The Americans perfected it. England proved it.

But history remembers aircraft carriers, battleships, fleet destroyers—the big ships with the big guns. Destroyer escorts were expendable, cheap to build, easy to replace. Seven hundred built during the war. Most scrapped within five years of peace. England lasted two years after the war ended. Scrapped at age two and a half. The ship that sank six submarines in twelve days wasn’t worth the metal she was made from.

But for those twelve days, England was the deadliest ship in the Pacific. And for those who remember, she always will be.