page_title: Military career of L. Ron Hubbard
section_title: Pacific service: USS PC-815
hierarchical_section_title: Military career of L. Ron Hubbard / World War II / Pacific service: USS PC-815
caption_attribution_description: English: USS PC-815 running trials 13 April 1943 on the Columbia River.
context_page_description: The military career of L. Ron Hubbard saw the future founder of Scientology serving in the United States Armed Forces as a member of the Marine Corps Reserve and, between 1941–50, the Navy Reserve. He saw active service between 1941–45, during World War II, as a naval Lieutenant and later as a Lieutenant. After the war he was mustered out of active service and resigned his commission in 1950.
  As with many other aspects of L. Ron Hubbard's life, accounts of his military career are much disputed. His account of his military service later formed a major element of his public persona, as depicted by his Scientologist followers. The Church of Scientology presents Hubbard as a "much-decorated war hero who commanded a corvette and during hostilities was crippled and wounded". According to Scientology publications, he served as a "Commodore of Corvette squadrons" in "all five theaters of World War II" and was awarded "twenty-one medals and palms" for his service.
context_section_description: When Hubbard arrived in Portland, USS PC-815 was in the last stages of its construction. The ship, a 173 ft (53 m) steel-hulled subchaser of the PC-461 class, had been laid down on October 10, 1942 at the Albina shipworks. She was commissioned on April 21, 1943 with Hubbard in command and Lt (jg) Thomas Moulton, an officer with whom he had studied in Florida, as the ship's executive officer. The ship left Portland on May 18 to travel down the Columbia River to Astoria, Oregon, where she took on ammunition. After participating for a day in an air-sea rescue operation, USS PC-815 was ordered to sail to San Diego to commence its shakedown cruise.
  In the early hours of May 19, PC-815's sonar detected what the crew believed to be an enemy submarine off Cape Lookout, about ten to twelve miles offshore. Over the next two and a half days, Hubbard ordered his crew to fire a total of 35 depth charges and a number of gun rounds to target what Hubbard believed to be two Imperial Japanese Navy submarines. PC-815 was joined by the US Navy blimps K-39 and K-33, the US Coast Guard patrol boats Bonham and 78302, and the subchasers USS SC-536 and USS SC-537, to assist it in the search for the suspected enemy vessels. Hubbard was given temporary command of the vessels on the afternoon of May 19. The larger subchaser PC-778 also joined the submarine search, though it found no indication of submarines and its commander was subsequently castigated by Hubbard for his refusal to lay its own larger stock of depth charges or resupply the PC-815.
  Hubbard stated in his eighteen-page after-action report that he had intended to force the submarine to surface so that it could be attacked by the surface vessels' guns. He reported that his vessel had seen oil on the surface, though PC-815 took no samples, and asserted that the blimps had seen air bubbles, oil and a periscope, though the blimps' own reports did not corroborate this. No wreckage was seen, despite the heavy depth-charging. PC-815 sustained some minor damage and three crew were injured during the incident when the ship's radio antenna was accidentally hit by gunfire. At midnight on 21 May, with depth charges exhausted and the presence of a submarine still unconfirmed by any other ship, PC-815 was ordered back to Astoria.
  The incident attracted the attention of the naval high command, as there had been a verified Japanese submarine attack against Fort Stevens about 50 miles (80 km) further north in June 1942 and there had been an invasion scare in southern California earlier in 1942. Hubbard claimed to have "definitely sunk, beyond doubt" one submarine and critically damaged another. His view was not shared by his superiors. After reviewing the action reports and interviewing Hubbard and the other commanders present, Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher noted: "An analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area. Lieutenant Commander Sullivan states that he was unable to obtain any evidence of a submarine except one bubble of air which is unexplained except by turbulence of water due to a depth charge explosion. The commanding officers of all ships except the PC-815 state they had no evidence of a submarine and do not think a submarine was in the area." Fletcher also noted that there was a "known magnetic deposit in the area in which depth charges were dropped". The clear implication was that Hubbard had been targeting the deposit all along.
  Hubbard nonetheless continued to believe that he had sunk at least one Japanese submarine. Years later, in 1956, he told Scientologists:
  I dropped the I-76 or the Imperial Japanese Navy Trans-Pacific Submarine down into the mouth of the Columbia River, dead duck. And it went down with a resounding furor. And that was that.
  In another lecture, he commented:
  I know one officer that was reprimanded for taking on a submarine three times the size of his ship and sinking it – a Japanese submarine. And he was called in and reprimanded. That doesn't sound possible, does it?
  After the war, the British Admiralty and the US Navy analysed the capt
caption: The newly completed subchaser USS PC-815 running trials on the Columbia River on April 13, 1943.
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