off the crew and torpedo the ship. She found the crippled submarine on 15 December. Bergalls commanding officer, Commander John Hyde, had decided to remain in Bergall with a skeleton crew. Angler trailed Bergall to take everyone off if a Japanese attack threatened. The two submarines traveled nearly , through waters mostly controlled by the enemy, and reached Exmouth Gulf safely on 20 December without seeing any Japanese airplanes or ships. Angler resumed her patrol, but contacted no enemy shipping. She put in at Saipan briefly on 6 February 1945, then continued on to Pearl Harbor. Angler reached the West Coast of the United States on 24 February, and immediately began overhaul at the Bethlehem Steel Company yard at San Francisco, California. She was underway again on 18 May, and by 12 June was ready to begin her seventh and final war patrol. On 27 June, she made a fuel stop at Saipan then sailed to patrol the waters east of Honshū. At that stage of the war, shipping targets were few and far between, and Angler made only two contacts. One of these moved away faster than Angler could close, but the submarine developed the other into an unsuccessful torpedo attack on 25 July. Angler did, however, conduct three shore bombardment missions during this patrol. The first - on 26 July - found her making a careful reconnaissance to locate a Japanese installation on Kinkasan Island. From a range of about , Angler hurled 25 rounds at a target area containing closely bunched buildings, radio towers, and a lighthouse. Although she claimed at least 20 hits, the large clouds of smoke and dust made a closer assessment of damage impossible. Five days later, on 31 July, after an all-day close-in observation, Angler surfaced at dusk in a thick fog, off Tomakomai, on Hokkaidō, and fired 50 rounds at what looked like a thickly congested factory installation. On 1 August, Angler joined and in carrying out a coordinated gun action against boat sheds and boats; Angler firing 23 rounds of five-inch, 320 rounds of 40 mm and 300 rounds of 20 mm. Post-War Angler arrived at Midway on 9 August, and was there when hostilities ceased on 15 August. She sailed for Pearl Harbor on 26 August and paused there briefly before continuing on to the United States. The submarine transited the Panama Canal on 14 September, and called at