It's what every submarine commander dreams of, this is what Commander Malcolm E. Garrison, USN wrote;
" ...came to periscope depth. There was a sight beautiful to behold. It was worth the past four weeks of battling typhoons, blizzards and ice fields. We were completely surrounded by ships."

He was right to be excited, this was the first war patrol for USS Sand Lance SS-381 and it was also Garrison's first command. It had been a miserable voyage, three days after leaving Midway they ran into a typhoon, then when they got to their patrol area north of Japan they found freezing cold and ice. The main antenna and the No. 1 periscope had been damaged and the cold made life in the boat uncomfortable for the crew. They had also been bombed by aircraft on Mar. 5th and again on the 11th.

Three ships had been sunk, including one a Soviet freighter sunk in error, so the patrol had born fruit. But when Garrison put his periscope up about 50 miles west of Hachijō-jima Island on March 13, 1944 he was flabbergasted. In his sight he could see five freighters a destroyer and a light cruiser, he could also see several other ships in the distance. The moon, bright in the sky, was a great advantage to Garrison and the darkness would help hide his periscope from the enemy.

Garrison was in a good position, but he had only six torpedoes remaining in his boat. Two days before he had fired five torpedoes at a group of freighters which he later believed were decoy ships with a very shallow draft, none of the torpedoes hit and he was bombed by a covering aircraft. He felt this was a trap designed to draw a submarine in with the hope of great success only to be sunk by an escort or aircraft.

Nevertheless he took aim and fired four Mk18 torpedoes from his stern tubes, two at the cruiser and two at a freighter which were about 2,000 yards away, Garrison claimed one hit on the cruiser and two on the freighter. He then came around and fired the two remaining bow torpedoes at another freighter, which was only 1,000 yards away claiming two hits.

For fifteen minutes Garrison watched through his periscope, he could see the cruiser was damaged and giving off smoke, but could not see the extent of the damage. He saw one freighter sink and a second was down with her decks awash. It was now time to escape, but Sand Lance was soon under a concentrated depth charge attack. He dove to 550' and remained submerged for some eighteen and a half hours, sixteen of those hours they were depth charged, in all he counted 105 charges dropped on his boat. Fortunately for Sand Lance the depth charges seemed to have been set far too shallow to do any damage to the boat.

Sand Lance escaped to fight another day arriving at Midway on Mar. 19. Garrison was awarded the Navy Cross for this war patrol and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Navy Cross for the next war patrol. Sand Lance was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for the 5th war patrol and received 5 battle stars for the war.

Unknown to Garrison the cruiser, Tatsuta, sank. Only one of the freighters, the 4,667 ton Kokuyo Maru, sank, any other ship that was damaged apparently survived. The convoy (Matsu 2) was a troop convoy bound for Saipan, and in Kokuyo Maru were over 1,000 Special Naval Landing Forces of which over 700 were lost. The survivors were picked up by the escorting destroyers Nowaki and Uzuki.