barrage of rockets from her “hedgehog” at 13"08. Two explosions followed, before an underwater detonation rocked the ship. While the ships in company took evasive action on signal from the convoy commodore in U. S. Grant, Ardent carried out two more attacks and the frigate dropped 13 depth charges. Wreckage recovered on the scene—deck planks, ground cork covered with diesel oil, a wooden slat from a vegetable crate with Japanese writing and advertisements on it, pieces of varnished mahogany inscribed in Japanese, and a piece of deck planking containing Japanese builders’ inscriptions—indicated a definite “kill” that the Navy ultimately awarded to Ardent and Rockford equally. Postwar research revealed the sunken boat to be , Commander Kudo Kaneo, that had sailed from the Inland Sea on 4 October 1944, to disrupt American shipping between the west coast and the Hawaiian Islands. In sinking I-12, Ardent and Rockford avenged the atrocity I-12 had committed on 30 October, when, after sinking the freighter John A. Johnson with two torpedoes, the submarine had rammed and sunk the lifeboats and rafts and then employed machine guns and pistols on the 70 survivors. Among the ten men slain were five sailors of the merchantman's US Navy Armed Guard. There were no survivors from I-12s 114 officers and men. End of 1944 Lynx relieved U. S. Grant as convoy commander, in accordance with orders from Commander, Western Sea Frontier, on 15 November 1944, and the following day the venerable transport and Gulf Caribbean proceeded independently. Putting into San Francisco two days later, 17 November, the ship unloaded cargo over ensuing days, completing the evolutions on 21 November, when she shifted from the familiar confines of Pier 18 North to the Naval Supply Depot, tying up at Berth B and beginning the loading process immediately thereafter on 21 November. Tugs shifted Lynxs berth to Berth C on the following day and she continued the loading there, a process she carried on into the first week of December. LCT-1355 was loaded on board as deck cargo on 2 December, and Lynx moved out to the naval anchorage the next day, where she secured a towing cable to . The ship then sailed for Oahu at 13:20. Arriving off Pearl Harbor on 12 December 1944, Lynx cast YF-746 loose then proceeded to berth X-8, mooring alongside , that got underway from there on 14 December, permitting the unloading of the