Mystery at Sea

Decades after 70 men disappeared on a Navy submarine, their families never stopped searching.

A Love of Military History

Ten years ago, Air Force Lt. Col. Richard Lane walked into an antiques shop and plunked down a dollar for an old Japanese electrical diagram of a ship's winch. On the back of the illustration was a note, handwritten in English: "Wiring diagram of deck winch on Kano Maru." A military history junkie, Lane could find no mention of a Japanese freighter called Kano Maru in the usual sources. In 2001, still curious, he posted a query about the ship on a military history website, j-aircraft.com. Within days, a Japanese amateur historian responded. His account of an embattled Kano Maru, which supplied Imperial forces in the Aleutian Islands, would satisfy more than one man's curiosity.

It would set in motion an emotional search for the USS Grunion, an American submarine that disappeared during World War II.

No Goodbyes
The skipper of the newly commissioned Grunion was 38-year-old Lt. Comdr. Mannert L. Abele. As a boy, Mannert didn't much care for his given name and decided that Jim was a better fit. And so it was that on May 24, 1942, a Sunday, Jim Abele invited his wife and three young sons for dinner at his submarine base in New London, Connecticut.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the meal. No grand gestures or pronouncements, just the mundane chitchat of families. And in hindsight, that's what was so strange.

After the meal, Commander Abele sent his wife, Catherine, and their three sons -- Bruce, 12, Brad, 9, and John, 5 -- home, saying he had "important work" to finish up.

Word of the Grunion's departure came that evening, when another officer's wife telephoned the Abele house to say she'd just spotted the sub heading out to sea. The Grunion's mission was so top secret, its departure orders couldn't even be disclosed to the commander's wife.

"We all knew that Jim would be in the thick of things as soon as he could get his boat ready to go to sea," writes Brad Abele in his memoir of his father, Jim. "However, as things turned out, it was the last time we were ever to see him."

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