their crews and imprisoned by the Japanese, after the fall of Corregidor in mid-1942. Luzon was later salvaged and used by the Japanese. was sunk in battle on 3 March 1942 and Mindanao was scuttled on 2 May; Oahu was sunk in battle 5 May 1942. During different periods of time, Naval and Marine Corps personnel, who were in the patrol, were eligible for either the Yangtze Service Medal or the China Service Medal. 1945–1949 After the surrender of Japan, some patrols on the river were resumed in September 1945. A few days after Japan's surrender, Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, commander of the United States 7th Fleet, sailed south aboard to rendezvous with Task Force 73 and continue on to Shanghai. However, they were delayed due to a large typhoon and the river being swept for mines. They finally proceeded up the river and arrived in Shanghai on 19 September 1945, with the first Allied ships in over three years. The American flotilla included the command ship (USS Rocky Mount), two light cruisers, four destroyers, twelve destroyer escorts, and many PT boats and minesweepers along with a British naval contingent of three light cruisers, six destroyers, six destroyer escorts, and some minesweepers. In November the new heavy cruiser joined the unit. When the Chinese Civil War finally reached the Yangtze Valley, in 1949, the U.S. Navy permanently ceased operations on the Yangtze River and officially disbanded the Yangtze Patrol. Yangtze River Patrol gunboats Popular culture The fictional USS San Pablo, the Yangtze Patrol gunboat in Richard McKenna's well-known 1962 novel The Sand Pebbles, set in 1926, was modelled on the , a 31-year-old vessel originally captured from Spain during the Spanish–American War in 1898. In many respects, it resembled design features of the later 1928 gunboats. McKenna served aboard one of these newer river gunboats a decade after the time of his novel. The 1966 film The Sand Pebbles was based on the novel. William Lederer, the author of the 1958 novel The Ugly American, served on the gunboat USS Tutuila around the same time as McKenna. Kemp Tolley, an officer who served as executive officer of the gunboat USS Tutuila in the 1930s, wrote Yangtze Patrol, a well-received history of the patrol. Actor Jack Warden was an enlisted sailor with the Yangtze Patrol in the late 1930s, before World War II. See also China Marines References Sources External links