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| Career | |
|---|---|
| Laid down: | 27 August 1942 |
| Launched: | 23 May 1943 |
| Commissioned: | 28 August 1943 |
| Fate: | lost, possibly to friendly fire |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 1475 tons surfaced, 2370 tons submerged |
| Length: | 311 feet 9 inches |
| Beam: | 27 feet 3 inches |
| Draft: | 15 feet 3 inches |
| Speed: | 20 knots surfaced, 8.75 knots submerged |
| Depth: | 300 feet |
| Complement: | six officers and 54 enlisted men |
| Armament: | one three-inch/50-caliber gun, six 21-inch torpedo tubes forward, four aft |
Dorado's sea trials proved the readiness of the crew, and she sailed from New London, Connecticut, on 6 October 1943 for the Panama Canal Zone. She did not arrive.
The standard practice of imposing bombing restrictions within an area fifty miles ahead, one hundred miles astern, and fifteen miles on each side of the scheduled position of an unescorted submarine making passage in friendly waters had been carried out and all concerned had been notified. However, the crew of a PBM Mariner of Patrol Squadron 210 out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, assigned to provide air coverage on the evening of 12 October had received an incorrect description of the restriction area.
At 2049, local time, under a moon-lit but stormy sky, that plane attacked an unidentified submarine that it believed was outside the restriction area with three Mark-47 depth charges and a 100-pound Mark-4 Mod-4 demolition bomb. About two hours later, the plane sighted a second submarine with which it attempted to exchange recognition signals. This second submarine fired upon the plane.
A convoy scheduled to pass through the restriction area surrounding Dorado on the evening of 12 October reported no contact.
Air searches were begun immediately after 14 October, her scheduled date of arrival. Widely scattered oil slicks with occasional debris were found.
At the Board of Investigation in Guantanamo Bay and the more formal Court of Inquiry at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, the aircrew testified that they were certain they had bombed a U-boat. After World War II, the captured logbook of U-214, the U-boat that had fired on the plane two hours after the bombing, provided conflicting information.
A memorial to Dorado has been constructed in the Veterans Memorial Park in Wichita, Kansas on the Arkansas River.
The Syneca Research Group asserts that there is evidence that Dorado was not completely sunk by the bombing. They state that the boat's sea trials were marred by a fire, a submerged grounding, and difficulties in diving the boat and keeping her submerged. They also believe they have evidence that aircraft pilots in the early 1970s were familiar with the remains of a submarine conning tower that stuck up out of the sandy bottom just off the Mexican coast -- a handy reference point, especially easy to spot when the rising or setting sun threw the sail's silhouette across the white sand. However, since the 1970s, drifting sand has covered the site. Dorado's bouyancy problems are cited to support the possibility that the bombing killed her crew, but left the boat in a bouyant condition so that she did not sink to the ocean floor, but rather drifted some 900 miles in the currents of the Carribean Sea until she grounded in the shallow water near the coast.
See USS Dorado for other ships of the same name.
References
This article includes information collected from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
The Syneca Reseach Group's discussion of Dorado is published at http://www.syneca.com/live/papers/dorado.html