From Nimitz Graybook
Extensive ice flows encountered forced DesRon 57 to abandon bombardment of SURIBACHI.
My wiki search produced these five references
Suribachi can refer to:
• Suribachi and surikogi, Japanese mortar and pestle
• Mount Suribachi, mountain on Iwo Jima, Japan
• Mount Suribachi (Antarctica), mountain in Antarctica
• USS Suribachi (AE-21), ship of the United States Navy
• Suribachi-class ammunition ship, class of ship of United States Navy
Omitting the three non place references, we can also omit Mount Suribachi (Antarctica), as it dates to 1973.
Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima which is at 24 45 01 North, 141 17 20 West; calculated as about 1623 miles north of the equator and slightly higher than Hawaii.
Was this referring to another place and they got the spelling wrong or was there really icebergs that far south.
Putting the lat/long in exact format screwed up last post.
I wondered about that, too. I guess in this case SURIBACHI is code name for an island in the Kuriles. From the site linked below:
Destroyer Squadron 57 was the next-to-last squadron of 2,100-ton Fletcher-class destroyers formed. It was composed of nine square-bridge ships as follows:
Destroyer Division 113: Rowe (DD 564), Smalley (DD 565), Stoddard (DD 566), Watts (DD 567) and Wren (DD 568), all built at Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding and commissioned in March and April 1944;
Destroyer Division 114: Bearss (DD 654) and John Hood (DD 655) from Gulf Shipbuilding and Jarvis (DD 799) and Porter (DD 800) from “Sea-Tac,” all commissioned in June and July 1944.
OPERATIONS
Following shakedown, both divisions sailed for the Aleutian islands for duty with the Ninth Fleet. There they deployed on multiple missions to the Kurile Islands.
While DesDiv 114 remained on station in the Kuriles and patrolling the Sea of Okhotsk for the duration of the war, when they steamed south to Japan, DesDiv 113 was detached from the North Pacific Force on 18 April 1945.
http://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/desron57/#
It will ultimately be used to justify sending American troops into Bavaria rather than advance on Berlin on a narrow front.