Little Fellow's Big Day

Navy records call her PC-487. Navy men call her "The Little Fellow," and say it with affectionate pride. Like dozens of her sisters who do the monotonous patrol work of the war at sea. PC-487 is a modest, unspectacular little warship, about 170 ft. long, of 600 tons displacement. Her commander is a reserve lieutenant, chubby, ruddy W. Gordon Cornell, a Staten Islander.

On a medium foggy morning, somewhere in the Pacific, PC-487 was dutifully sheep-dogging along on the outskirts of a convoy. Her sound detectors picked up a strange craft and she headed for that spot.

At 250 yd. her lookouts spotted a submarine's twin periscopes sticking up. Skipper Cornell ordered a depth-charge attack. One charge exploded close to the hull, forcing the Jap to the surface. The Little Fellow heeled around sharply in a 180-degree turn, churned up to 19 knots and rammerd the sub amidships.

The sub rolled, her conning tower awash. Machine gunners on the patrol boat poured streams of bullets into the enemy craft. The forward deck gun crew got off one round--a direct hit on the conning tower--as the 487 circled to ram again. Now the submarine was almost entirely on the surface. The Little Fellow crashed into the Jap just forward of the conning tower, rolling the sub over. A wavering periscope scraped the side of the 487's hull, broke a stanchion on deck and came within an inch of decapitating Skipper Cornell.

"The 487 seemed to stick and pivot on top of the submarine, and felt as though it would break in two," he reported. "But the ship finally slid over."

Now the afterdeck gun crew got into action, pumping five shells into the sub. The Jap's bow rose in the air, hung for a moment, then the enemy vessel plunged beneath the surface, stern first, at a 45-degree angle. Fifteen minutes after she had been sighted, the sub was one of the most definite kills of the war. The Little Fellow, somewhat banged up, made emergency repairs and limped home to a thundering welcome of cheers and whistle blasts.

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