January 1945

Near Miss, Near Hit

Mason took several convoys to Algeria through the treacherous straights of Gibraltar where German U-boats would lie in wait.

In the radio shack, crew members heard reports of ships being sunk in convoys ahead of them and behind them. (The only time Mason lost a ship was in Convoy 
119, during the worst North Atlantic storm of the 20th century.)

On 11 January 1945, a sonar contact was made just past midnight. Determining the contact to be a non-friendly of some sort, the crew went to general quarters, and the ship swung into action. "K-guns" propelled shells toward the contact. Depth charges were dropped into the night sea.

Sonarman Gordon Buchanan said, "... it looked like a huge Christmas tree. I'm standing up there, forty feet off the water in a 1400 hundred ton ship, and I feel like somebody hit me with a baseball bat under my feet. And I was stuck on top of it."

USS Mason dropping depth charges

Mason dropped on more full pattern of depth charges and made visual contact. Captain Blackford made the decision to ram the contact. (Something destroyer escorts were built to do.) The bow of the ship hit the contact, went up in the air then crashed back down in the water. Everything went quiet.

It was never officially determined what USS Mason sunk that night. A report later said it was an abandoned barge. But other sources, including some crew members hold to this day it was a German submarine.

We will never know conclusively. What we do know is that the crew proved once again they could do any job any white sailor could do with bravery and skill.

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