Adonara, later returning with the only white man on the island, a Dutch missionary, Pastor H. von Den Rulst. He informed Wallace the next high tide would occur between 16:00 and 18:00. His warning that Japanese planes had been over the island during each of the past four days caused the crew a bit of uneasiness until flood tide. Then, with three engines backing, she slid off the bottom, returning to Fremantle on 5 March. Tarpon began her third patrol on 28 March and ended at Pearl Harbor on 17 May with no contacts except a hospital ship. Her next mission, which took her north of Oahu for defense during the Battle of Midway, lasted only ten days, from 30 May to 9 June; but the submarine contacted no enemy shipping. She was then routed back to San Francisco for an overhaul which was completed on 30 September. On 22 October, Tarpon stood out of Pearl Harbor to begin her fifth war patrol which took her to waters north of Bougainville. She sighted many fishing boats which were not worthy of a torpedo and terminated the patrol at Midway on 10 December 1942. 1943 Tarpon then returned to Pearl Harbor for a refit and began her next patrol from there on 10 January 1943, with Tom Wogan in command. Her assigned area was in Japanese home waters, south of Honshū. At 21:30 on 1 February, approximately south of Mikura-jima, the submarine fired four torpedoes at a ship and scored one hit. A follow-up attack with two torpedoes broke the 10,935-ton passenger-cargo ship Fushimi Maru in two. Four days later, Tarpon began patrolling the sea lanes leading to Truk. On 8 February, she made radar contact on a large, unidentified ship. She fired a spread of four torpedoes, and all hit the target. The submarine was forced to go deep by escorts and could not watch the 16,975-ton transport sink. The victim was the Tatsuta Maru, bound for Truk with a load of soldiers. Tarpon made no further contacts before returning to Midway on 25 February, with the highest-scoring patrol of the war so far. Her seventh patrol, conducted from 29 March to 15 May, produced no ship contacts; but Tarpon did bombard the radio station at Taroa with her deck gun until return fire from Japanese batteries ashore prompted her to withdraw from the area. On 30 July, Tarpon again