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USS Paddle

1942 Gato-class submarine

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ6141277 ↗
Source-derived summary

USS Paddle (SS-263), a Gato-class submarine, was a ship of the United States Navy named for the paddlefish.

Construction and commissioning

Paddle was laid down on 1 May 1942 by the Electric Boat Company at Groton, Connecticut; launched on 30 December 1942, sponsored by Mrs. Goldye S. Fechteler, wife of later Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William M. Fechteler; and commissioned at Naval Submarine Base New London in New London, Connecticut, on 29 March 1943.

Service history

United States Navy

After trials and training, Paddle left New London on 8 June 1943 for the Panama Canal and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, arriving on 5 July. She was based at Pearl Harbor during her first two war patrols, between which she trained destroyers in antisubmarine warfare and received meteorological equipment.

Paddle's first patrol, from 20 July to 12 September 1943, was conducted south of Japan. She scored a hit on a large freighter in her first attack on 13 August, but alert escorts forced her down with a 13-hour depth charge attack. Enemy search planes damaged her slightly on 19 August with 7 bombs dropped as she patrolled submerged off the coast of Japan, but she repaired damage quickly and struck back, sinking Ataka Maru on 23 August.

During her second war patrol, from 17 October–9 November, Paddle took station off Nauru to provide continuous weather reporting for the carrier task force attacking the Gilbert and Marshall Islands to cover the Tarawa landings. She also guided, by radio, Army bombers in to raid Tarawa and attacked Nippon Maru off Eniwetok, though escorting destroyers forced her down before she could observe the damage inflicted on the tanker.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “USS Paddle” as 1942 Gato-class submarine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 1943—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Paddle, Gato-class and submarine can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1942 Gato-class submarine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6141277. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1942 and 1943.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “USS Paddle”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow USS Paddle primary sources, USS Paddle archive and Paddle research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “USS Paddle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.