Santa Rosa veteran recalls WWII service aboard storied sub

At this time in 1945, World War II was pretty much over for Francis Sherman and the submarine that’s almost unknown, though it sank more tons of Japanese freighters, oil tankers and other merchant ships than any other U.S. sub.

Sherman grew up in rural Yuba County and prior to joining the Navy never stepped foot on a ship, much less one that disappeared beneath the surface on purpose.

Exactly 70 years ago, the USS Flasher, the trusty sub Sherman served aboard since she was brand new, glided into Pearl Harbor after completing its sixth successful combat patrol in the South China Sea.

April 13, 1945, was a bittersweet day for the Flasher’s crew because they were back in U.S. territory, but Americans there and everywhere mourned the death the previous day of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Sherman, who was once responsible for keeping the Flasher’s indispensable radar, sonar and radios working, shook his head at the thought of how long ago all of that happened, and how much he and the world have changed.

“I’ll be 96 next month,” he said from a favorite chair at his home in Santa Rosa’s Rincon Valley. A bit of a smile came to him and he added, “With any luck, I’ll have strawberry shortcake.”

That dessert has become traditional, he explained, since the baker on the Flasher marked the completion of each sea battle by hauling out frozen strawberries for the crew and serving up shortcake.

Sherman said he and the more than 300 men who served aboard the Flasher from her commissioning in September of 1943 to her final patrol in spring of 1945 had much to celebrate. The “Silent Service” was exceptionally dangerous, and the Flasher beat poor odds by not going to the bottom.

“We lost 52 submarines in the war,” Sherman observed. More than 3,600 men perished aboard them.

Sherman earned 50 percent extra pay for serving on a sub, money he needed because his father died young and he needed to support his mother.

He’d grown up in Dobbins, outside of Marysville, and enlisted in the Navy in 1942. As was the case with so many former country boys, he soon found himself in strange and perilous conditions - he’d never before pondered life aboard a submersible ship just less than 312 feet long and a smidge more than 27 feet wide.

“I loved it,” he said. “You find that after you’ve been to sea awhile, the officers smell about the same as you do. You’re all one big family.”

World War II submarines were named for fish, the inspiration for the Flasher being a warm-water species known also as the tripletail. Sherman was 24 years old and at his post when, in November of 1943, the newly commissioned sub set out from New London, Conn., for Japanese-controlled regions of the Pacific and the South China Sea.

The men aboard the Flasher proceeded down the Atlantic Coast, toward the Panama Canal, with this on their minds: Just a month before, a brand-new sister ship, the USS Dorado, and her entire 70-man crew were lost to unconfirmed circumstances somewhere between Cuba and the canal.

The Flasher arrived in the South China Sea and commenced its mission: to deprive Imperial Japan of oil, materials and supplies crucial to its war effort. Alongside the more dramatic and better publicized achievements of bomber and fighter pilots, crews of aircraft carriers and battleships, and legions of Marines, submariners are entitled to feel that their essential contribution to the winning of the war is undervalued.

All told, U.S. submarines were responsible for sinking nearly ?1,200 Japanese merchant ships and more than 200 of the empire’s naval ships.

It’s a source of pride to Sherman that his ship was credited with sinking the most Japanese tonnage - in excess of 100,000 tons - of any U.S. submarine.

The Flasher was preparing for its seventh war patrol when Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945. Sherman, then a chief petty officer who’d earned both a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for his service, stepped from the sub for the last time at Pearl Harbor and made his way back to California.

He worked at a radio shop in Marysville for several years, then went to Mare Island and made repairs on submarines as a civilian, then found a career in the budding computer industry. He and his wife, Margaret Grace, raised two sons. Margaret died in 2013.

The Flasher was sold for scrap in 1963, but a prominent element was saved. Sherman was delighted for the conning tower to become the focal point of the National Submarine Memorial and Wall of Honor at Groton, Conn.

So far as Sherman knows, he’s one of just 27 of the approximately 300 sailors who served on the Flasher who are still alive. Though seven decades have passed since the sub’s last mission, he thought it’s important to speak while he can of what the ship and its crew did for the country through the second half of World War II.

“It was the last good war we had, as far as I’m concerned,” the old salt said. “I don’t really care for the new ones.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.