10/10/2026
The Navy Confirmed Her Wreck Exactly 82 Years After 83 Men Vanished
On June 1, 2026, the Naval History and Heritage Command confirmed that a submarine wreck lying about 300 feet down off Matsuwa Island, in the Kuril chain, is USS Herring, exactly 82 years after she was lost. The wreck was first located in 2017 by a joint Russian Geographic Society and Russian military expedition, which suspected her identity from her location and appearance. A 2022 return expedition documented the site and placed a commemorative plaque for her crew. The island has been under Russian control since August 1945, so the confirmation depended on data collected by Russian teams. That data was analyzed by two American volunteer researchers and one Japanese researcher before the Navy's archaeologists confirmed it. The wreck sits upright on her keel, and the Navy says she maintains a high degree of integrity. Her bow shows evidence of grounding and her conning tower shows hit damage, matching the historical record.
Herring left Midway on May 21, 1944, under Commander David Zabriskie Jr., bound for the Kurils. Early on June 1, she is credited with sinking two Japanese merchant ships anchored at Matsuwa. Then she ran aground. Japanese shore batteries spotted her and scored two direct hits on her conning tower as she backed away into the fog. She was never heard from again. When she failed to report to Midway on July 13, she was presumed lost with all 83 men aboard, a rare case of an American submarine sunk by coastal artillery. In her first seven patrols alone she had sunk nine ships totaling 45,200 tons. In 2005, a memorial sign to her crew and all lost submarines was placed on the nearby shore.
For 82 years, her crew's families had a date but no place. Now they have both.
Photos by:Eternal Patrol/RGS
