of the Combined Fleet ordered the 6th Fleet to send a long-range submarine to disrupt Allied sea lines of communication between the United States West Coast and Hawaii, and the 6th Fleet selected I-12 for the operation. Attached directly to 6th Fleet headquarters, she departed Kobe on 4 October 1944 for her first war patrol, ordered to attack shipping along the U.S. West Coast, in the Hawaiian Islands area, in the Tahiti area, and in the Pacific Ocean east of the Marshall Islands. She proceeded through the Seto Inland Sea and Sea of Japan to Hakodate, where she paused in Hakodate Bay on 7 October 1944 for an overnight stop. She then got back underway and passed through the Tsugaru Strait into the Pacific Ocean. During the early hours of 28 October 1944, the American 7,176-gross register ton Liberty ship — which had departed San Francisco, California, on 24 October with 41 crewmen, 28 United States Navy Armed Guard personnel, and a United States Army cargo security officer aboard bound for Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, with a cargo of crated and uncrated U.S. Army trucks on her deck and 6,900 tons of food and provisions and 140 or 150 tons (according to different sources) of explosives in her holds — broke radio silence for 12 minutes to report the loss overboard in heavy seas of a life raft, a common practice in peacetime to avoid unnecessary search-and-rescue operations if the raft was found, despite the suspension of such reports during World War II due to the wartime proliferation of rafts and wreckage and the need to maintain communications security. I-12, on the surface to recharge her batteries at the time, intercepted the transmission, fixed John A. Johnson′s position, and steered to intercept her. At 21:05 on 29 October 1944, I-12 was submerged northeast of Oahu, Hawaii, when she fired two torpedoes at John A. Johnson, which was making in rough seas. One torpedo passed about astern of John A. Johnson and exploded to port and astern of her, but the other hit her on her starboard side immediately forward of the bridge. The torpedo hit broke John A. Johnson′s keel, flooded her No. 3 hold, and destroyed one of her lifeboats, and she quickly lost all electrical power. John A. Johnson′s crew transmitted a distress signal reporting her position as . The ship began to break up forward of her