headed for Japanese home waters. On 16 August, she sighted a Japanese task force which reportedly included an aircraft carrier of the Otaka-class (there was, in fact, no such class; intelligence had misidentified), but its high speed prohibited an attack. On the 21st, the submarine contacted two large, escorted, cargo ships. She fired a spread of three torpedoes at each and damaged both targets. Seven days later, Tarpon damaged another freighter as it was leaving Mikura-jima. On 4 September, she sank a patrol ship with all hands and then returned to Midway on 8 September. Tarpon conducted her ninth war patrol off the coast of Honshū from 1 October to 3 November. On the night of 16 October, she was patrolling the approaches to Yokohama when she sighted a ship which she tentatively identified as a large auxiliary. The submarine tracked the target until 01:56 the next morning when she attacked it with four torpedoes which stopped it dead in the water. However, it soon got underway again and headed straight for Tarpon. The submarine submerged, went under the ship, and attacked the target from the other side with three more torpedoes which produced one hit in the stern. The enemy still did not sink, so Tarpon fired again with a torpedo which struck the target in the same place as the first. The vessel exploded and disappeared. Postwar examination of enemy records revealed that the victim was the German raider Michel (Schiff 28) which had been preying on Allied shipping in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Michel was the only German raider sunk by a United States submarine in the Pacific. Four days later, Tarpon contacted an aircraft carrier and a destroyer. She made a submerged approach and fired four torpedoes at the carrier. However, both ships speeded up and avoided. On the morning of 23 October, the submarine made radar contact on two ships and fired five torpedoes at the larger target. All apparently passed under the freighter. The submarine returned to Pearl Harbor on 3 November. Tarpon'''s next war patrol, a photo reconnaissance of various atolls in the Marshall Islands group from 4 December 1943 to 12 January 1944, was largely uneventful. She did get an opportunity at an inter-island tanker and fired two torpedoes, but both missed and the vessel escaped. 1944 From 19 June to 8 August, Tarpon performed lifeguard duty in the Truk