USS GUDGEON (SS 211) was probably lost on 18 APR 1944 with the loss of seventy-nine officers and men, southeast of Iwo Jima, but may have been sunk as late as 12 MAY 1944 in different attack on an unidentified submarine and heard by several other submarines in the area.
Winner of five Presidential Unit Citations, USS GUDGEON was on her twelfth war patrol and most likely the victim of a combined air and surface anti-submarine attack.
USS GUDGEON was the first US submarine to go on patrol from Pearl Harbor, HI, after the Japanese attack.
On her first patrol, she became the first US submarine to sink an enemy warship, picking off the Japanese submarine I-173.
Gudgeon was officially overdue and presumed lost on 07 JUN 1944.
Captured Japanese records shed no light on the manner of her loss, and it must remain one of the mysteries of the silent sea.