surface attack, and would subsequently ground in shoal water, shearing off her starboard sound head and blowing the sound head cable back into the torpedo room. To prevent further flooding, the submarine came to periscope depth where she saw the bowless cruiser being towed away by a transport. Her own damage and the Japanese escorts kept Ray from following up the attack. Kumano was destroyed off Luzon by Navy carrier planes 25 November. On the night of 14 November, Ray made a surface attack on a three-ship convoy, blowing up an 800-ton frigate with a direct hit in its magazines. Two days later she launched two torpedoes at a grounded transport, but could not complete the attack because of minefields and shoal water. On 19 November, she rescued a downed pilot from . The patrol terminated at Pearl Harbor 8 December 1944. From there the submarine headed east, arriving at Mare Island Naval Shipyard 16 December for a major overhaul. Departing San Francisco 26 March, she proceeded via Pearl Harbor to Guam, arriving at Apra Harbor on 29 April 1945. Seventh war patrol, April–June 1945 Ray cleared Guam for her seventh war patrol 30 April to 16 June 1945. On 7 May while on lifeguard duty off Kyūshū she rescued 10 men from a downed B-29. On the night of 15 May – 16 May, she picked up the 10 crewmen of a PBM Mariner patrol bomber which was foundering in heavy seas. Ray transferred the rescued crews to and and continued her patrol. On 19 May, she intercepted three small freighters. Her torpedoes ran beneath the targets, and the "freighters", a disguised hunter-killer group, converged on the area where Ray had dived, laying a depth charge pattern. The submarine surfaced and fired her deck gun at her pursuers as she dashed away at flank speed. The remainder of the patrol was devoted to attacking patrol craft and coastal vessels with gunfire until it ended at Midway on 16 June. Eighth war patrol, July–August 1945 Her eighth and final wartime patrol, 11 July to 13 August, took Ray to the Gulf of Siam. On the evening of 7 August, she sank 16 small craft by gunfire off Bang Saponnoi, Thailand. That night two boarding parties from the submarine burned seven Junks anchored north of Lem Chong Pra. The submarine arrived at Subic Bay for more ammunition on 13 August, where