The USS S-30 (SS-135)
Displacement: 854 tons surfaced; 1,062 tons submerged Length: 219.2 feet Beam: 21.7 feet Test depth: 200 feet Speed: 13 knots surfaced; 9 knotes submerged Armament: 4"/50 caliber deck gun; four 21" torpedoes forward Crew: 4 officers, 34 enlisted men
The S-30 was commissioned in October 1920 and arrived in Cavite, Luzon, Philippine Islands in July 1925. She remained part of the Asiatic Fleet until 1932, when she transferred to Pearl Harbor, and then to the US east coast in 1937. S-30 was awarded two battle stars for World War II service, primarily against the Japanese, and was finally decommissioned in October 1945 and scrapped the following year.
S-30 was my grandfather's home for most of his time in the US Navy.
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Here are sailors working and playing on the S-30 at sea and in port. Among the photos I found, there were only two which included any of the boat's officers, and they were not very good shots.
That looks like Abner in the last two photos, at lower right, though I can't be sure. |
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Changing the batteries, and manuevering them through the small hatches, looks like it was a pretty miserable job.
The photo at far left is labeled, "Installing new batteries at Cavite, Feb 1927"
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This is a rare interior shot, of the forward battery compartment. Since Abner's camera did not have a flash, there was no way to photograph any compartments below deck that could not be lit through a hatch by the sun.
The crewmembers in this photo are Hartung (?), Clennon, Morgan, Gehrke and Fields. |
| S-30 with the rest of her squadron at the dock at Olongapo (Subic Bay) in the Philippines, Navy Day 1926. |
| Part of the crew on the S-30 at her summer port of Tsingtao, China. Note the Chinese workers on the left. |
| The S-30 tied up at an unknown dock. |
| The S-30's 4"/50 caliber deck gun. |
 
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USS CANOPUS (AS-9), the S-30's submarine tender, started life in Camden, NJ, in 1919 as the Santa Leonora, but was acquired by the Navy in 1921 and converted into a submarine tender. She arrived in the Philippine Islands in November 1924, and remained attached to the Asiatic service for the rest of the decade.
In the upper photo, CANOPUS shares Hongkong harbor with British destroyers. |
Continue on to Asiatic Fleet life.
