BAP Pacocha (SS-48)
| History | |
|---|---|
 Peru
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| Name: | Pacocha |
| Laid down: | 2 December 1943 |
| Launched: | 6 March 1944 |
| Acquired: | 31 July 1974, from the United States Navy |
| Commissioned: | 28 May 1974 |
| Identification: | SS-48 |
| Fate: | Rammed and sunk by a fishing trawler, 26 August 1988 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Balao-class submarine |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 307 ft 7 in (93.75 m) |
| Beam: | 27 ft 4 in (8.33 m) |
| Draft: | 17 ft (5.2 m) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: |
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| Range: | 17,000 nm (28,000 km) surfaced at 11 knots (20 km/h) |
| Endurance: | 36 hours at 3 knots (5.6 km/h) submerged |
| Test depth: | 400 ft (120 m) |
| Complement: |
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| Armament: |
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BAP Pacocha (SS-48) was a submarine of the Marina de Guerra del Perú (Peruvian Navy) named for the 1877 Battle of Pacocha, in which the Peruvian ironclad Huascar clashed with the Royal Navy. Formerly USS Atule (SS-403), a Balao-class submarine with a GUPPY IA upgrade, she had been sold to Peru and commissioned on 28 May 1974. She was rammed and sunk by a fishing trawler on 26 August 1988.
At 18:50 in the evening of 26 August 1988, Pacocha was transiting on the surface with the forward torpedo room and bridge hatches as well as the main induction valve open. Forty-nine men were aboard, including the squadron commander, to conduct an operational readiness inspection. About half an hour after sunset, ten minutes from Pachocha’s expected arrival at the port of Callao, the 412-ton Japanese fishing trawler Kiowa Maru (also spelled Kyowa Maru and Hyowa Maru) rammed her in the aft port quarter. Kiowa Maru was equipped with an ice-breaker bow, with a sub-surface protrusion designed to penetrate and break apart what it struck. Pacocha sank quickly.
Four men died immediately in the collision and sinking: her commanding officer, Capitán de Fragata (Ship Captain) Daniel Nieva Rodríguez, died securing the bridge access hatch; Teniente Segundo (Second Lieutenant) Luis Roca Sara and two enlisted men were trapped in flooded compartments and drowned. Twenty-three of her crew succeeded in abandoning ship.
In the sinking submarine, Teniente (First Lieutenant) Roger Cotrina Alvarado secured the watertight forward torpedo room door and attempted to pressurize the compartment. He then tried to secure the forward torpedo room hatch. Instead, however, he had to force the hatch open to free a sailor whose leg was caught in the hatch due to the 40-degree up angle the Pacocha assumed before sinking. As the Pacocha began to capsize water rushed into the compartment, washing lieutenant Cotrina down the ladder and fortunately, shortly afterwards, forcing the hatch door closed.
Cotrina credited this sequence of events to a miracle coming from the intercession of then Venerable Marija Petković, whom he was praying to while fighting for his and his fellow crewmate's survival. He testified, “I saw a light and I experienced an ineffable power that allowed me to shut the hatch.” There is little doubt that if that hatch had not been shut, no one inside the submarine would have survived. Two commissions, one conducted by the Peruvian military, the other by the Vatican came to the conclusion that with the water pressure, it would have been technically impossible for anyone to close the hatch. As such the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for the Causes of the Saints authenticated the miracle. This is unusual, as normally miracles in the causes of saints, are those for cures believed by the Church to be through the saint's intercession, but in this case the declaration of a miracle was the obtaining of superhuman strength by someone in a disaster situation. On 6 June 2003, Pope John Paul II celebrated Marija's beatification Mass ironically in the Croatian port city of Dubrovnik. Cotrina Alvarado received Holy Communion from the pope on this occasion, and afterwards gave him a small replica of the Pacocha as a memento.
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