Qualla: Forty-Five Men and Thirty-Six Depth Charges

Forty-Five Men and Thirty-Six Depth Charges: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

She was 64 meters long and displaced 266 tons -- barely larger than a modern tugboat. Her crew of 45 men carried 36 depth charges and a pair of 40-millimeter guns into a war fought across an ocean that dwarfed everything about their vessel. The Japanese submarine chaser CH-2 was not the kind of ship that earns chapters in naval histories. She did not sink enemy carriers or shell distant beachheads. Her war was the grinding, invisible work of convoy escort and anti-submarine patrol, the kind of duty where success meant nothing happened and failure meant oil slicks and silence. For eleven years, from her commissioning in 1934 to her sinking in 1945, CH-2 lived in the margins of the Imperial Japanese Navy's story -- until a torpedo hit in the stern wrote her ending off the coast of Lombok.

Forty-Five Men and Thirty-Six Depth Charges: A Vessel That Nearly Capsized by Design

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

CH-2 was laid down at the Ishikawajima Shipbuilding and Engineering Company shipyard in Tokyo on June 9, 1933, launched that December, and commissioned on March 25, 1934. She was a CH-1-class submarine chaser, a type that the Imperial Japanese Navy would discover carried a danger...

Forty-Five Men and Thirty-Six Depth Charges: Opening Shots Across the Archipelago

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

CH-2's war began on the first day. On December 7, 1941, she sortied as part of Operation M, supporting the Japanese landings in the northern Philippines. Three days later she was at Aparri, on the northern tip of Luzon, where Japanese forces came ashore against light resistance. ...

Forty-Five Men and Thirty-Six Depth Charges: The Quarry That Always Escaped

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the Dutch East Indies fell, CH-2 settled into the role she would occupy for most of the war: convoy escort and anti-submarine patrol across the South Pacific. It was repetitive, exhausting, and dangerous work. The submarine chasers were the sheepdogs of the fleet, circling ...

Forty-Five Men and Thirty-Six Depth Charges: A Hit in the Stern

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By mid-1945, the waters of the Indonesian archipelago had become some of the most dangerous in the Pacific for Japanese shipping. Allied submarines roamed with increasing confidence through straits and coastal waters that Japanese forces could no longer effectively patrol. On Jun...