Missing WWII Sub Hunt a Labor of Love
Sons of submarine's skipper never gave up hopes of finding the lost ship.
Oct. 5, 2008— -- It was a mystery that endured for 66 years: What happened to one of the first U.S. submarines launched during World War II?
The USS Grunion was on its maiden mission, patrolling the icy Bering Sea off the far western tip of Alaska, when it vanished in July 1942 with 70 men on board.
Bruce, Brad, and John Abele, the three sons of the Grunion's skipper, always wondered about the submarine's fate. But unlike the families of most service personnel missing in action, they were in a position to do something about it.
The brothers tapped into John Abele's huge fortune -- he is a billionaire, after having co-founded the world's largest medical device company, Boston Scientific -- to finance an extraordinary search.
Last week, after many years, more than a little luck and two expeditions financed by the Abeles to comb one of the world's most treacherous stretches of ocean, the Navy confirmed that wreckage found at a depth of 5,000 feet off a tiny Alaskan island was in fact the missing submarine.
"This discovery has come about through a stream of seemingly improbable events," said Bruce Abele, 78, the oldest of the three brothers. "It's like we won the lottery 10 times in a row."
The Grunion left Hawaii on June 30, 1942, for the waters off Alaska's Aleutian chain. In the following weeks, the sub radioed that it sank three Japanese destroyers. On July 30, the Grunion reported intense anti-submarine activity. It was never seen or heard from again.
Bruce Abele, then 12 years old, and his brothers were tossing a football outside their suburban Boston home, when their mother received a Western Union telegram. The Navy wrote that the Grunion had not been heard from, and that Lt. Comdr. Mannert L. Abele was feared lost at sea.
It was Sept. 30, 1942. The Abeles -- and the families of the 69 other crewmen -- were never told much more than that.
"Our mother was left with three small children, and no means of support," Bruce recalled, "and yet she was able to sit down and write a note of condolence to every single next of kin. As the wife of the Grunion commander, she felt an obligation."
