suffered damage when she was depth-charged on 25 September 1943. She reached Truk on 27 September 1943 and underwent repairs there. Second war patrol The Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign began on 20 November 1943 with the U.S. invasion of Tarawa and of Makin in the Gilbert Islands. On 21 November 1943, I-39 received orders to proceed to Tarawa along with the submarines , , , and . With a Yokosuka E14Y1 (Allied reporting name "Glen") floatplane aboard, she got underway from Truk on her second war patrol that day, with an assigned patrol area southwest of Tarawa. She reported on 24 November 1943 that she was approaching her patrol area, and on 25 November — the same day she was reassigned to Submarine Division 2 in Submarine Squadron 1 — she reported that she had arrived in her patrol area. The Japanese never heard from her again. Loss On 26 November 1943, the battleship was steaming southwest of Tarawa as part of Task Group 50.2, when she detected a surface target to the southwest on radar at 22:52. At 23:02 the destroyer was detached to investigate. She detected a surfaced submarine on radar at 23:20 and closed with it. She lost radar contact, apparently when the submarine submerged, but Boyd then located the submarine with her sonar. She dropped two patterns of depth charges, and heard a loud underwater explosion 15 minutes after the last attack at . On the morning of 27 November 1943, planes from the aircraft carrier flew over the area and reported a large oil slick on the surface. It marked the end of a Japanese submarine. The submarine probably was I-39, although it is possible that Boyd sank , which also disappeared in the Tarawa area around the same time. An alternative account claims that the destroyer escort sank I-39 off Koli Point, Guadalcanal, on 23 December 1943, although that location lies outside I-39′s patrol area and the date is four weeks after she last transmitted a message, On 20 February 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy declared I-39 to be presumed lost with her entire crew of 96 in the Gilbert Islands area. She was stricken from the Navy list on 30 April 1944. Notes Bibliography Hackett, Bob & Kingsepp, Sander. IJN Submarine I-39: Tabular Record of Movement. Retrieved on August 26, 2020. External links Photo of launch of I-39 on Japanese Wikipedia Type