"California at War" Story of the S.S. Montebello sunk by the Japanese submarine I-21 off Cambria, CA

SS Montebello, The Sinking SS Montebello: When World War II Came to the Central Coast of California by Stuart Edward McDowell Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/3z2jHSp Today, few people know about the Imperial Japanese Navy submarines attacking merchant ships right off the California coast during WWII. I’ve had the privilege to learn first-hand by exploring the shipwreck remains of the Union Oil of California tanker S.S. Montebello torpedoed right off Cambria, California by the Imperial Japanese navy submarine I-21 in 1941, just a couple of weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The rediscovery of the shipwreck led me to meet my good friend Richard Quincy, the last known living survivor that will share his first-person accounts. Montebello’s archaeological remains is based on two manned-submersible surveys conducted by Central Coast Maritime Museum Association funded by NOAA West Coast National Undersea Research Center in 1996 and NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries 2003, as well as a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) survey by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2011. The archaeological data gathered by the NOAA science teams and the U.S. Coast Guard along with a multibeam sonar survey by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute utilizing an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), funded by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, recorded the vessel’s dimensions and observed site characteristics that were compared to the ship’s construction plans, historic photographs, and reported sinking location. The combine information conclusively indicates that the shipwreck site is the wreck of the American tanker Montebello. The shipwreck lies in 885 feet of water and the remains consist of its hull which sits upright on its keel. Based on manned-submersible observations, it was determined that during the sinking, Montebello hit the ocean floor with enough force to drive the bow deep into the bottom sediment, separating at the torpedo impact zone. The aft 90 percent of the hull then recoiled back and settled squarely on its keel. More importantly the investigations concluded that the torpedo had not penetrated the region of the tanker’s oil cargo storage holds as reported by Montebello’s crew, but actually struck forward in the pump room and dry storage cargo hold.