Stickleback

She was born in the final stretch of World War II, commissioned in March 1945 at Mare Island. Like many boats of her generation, she came too late to fire a shot in anger, but the USS Stickleback (SS-415) still made her presence known. She served with quiet distinction in the Pacific, patrolling the waters between Japan and Korea, offering aid to shipwrecked Japanese survivors in the war’s waning days, and returning home in time to parade in Admiral Halsey’s victory fleet. Then she went to sleep in the reserve fleet, waiting, like many others, for a second act.

That act came with the Cold War. The Soviet bear was stirring, and the United States Navy needed eyes beneath the waves. Stickleback was pulled from mothballs, given a GUPPY IIA conversion, and sent back to sea with upgraded sonar, fire control systems, and the addition of a snorkel. She was faster, quieter, and now a vital tool in the growing undersea chess match with the Soviet Union. For years, she prowled the Pacific, often within striking distance of Soviet shipping lanes. Her crew tracked Soviet destroyers, cruisers, and submarines, sketching their outlines, recording their positions, collecting the sort of intelligence that rarely makes headlines but quietly shapes the course of history.

But it was not an enemy missile or torpedo that sent Stickleback to the bottom. It was a training accident. It was bad luck. And for her crew, it was a heartbreak that still lingers.

On May 28, 1958, Stickleback was participating in an anti-submarine warfare exercise off Oahu. She was working with the destroyer escort USS Silverstein and a torpedo retriever boat. These kinds of drills were routine, part of the sharpening of skills that every Cold War boat had to endure. Stickleback had just completed a simulated torpedo run and was diving to a safe depth when something went wrong. She lost power. Her angle steepened. She dropped fast.

The crew blew ballast hard. Emergency air roared through the tanks. Somewhere around 700 feet, the descent halted. Then she came up fast, a blunt, steel whale breaching 200 yards in front of Silverstein. There was no time. The destroyer backed full and turned hard, but it was not enough. She rammed Stickleback just aft of the bow, tearing a jagged hole in her pressure hull.

What happened next was chaos, but it was also heroism. Orders crackled over the 1MC. Collision alarms blared. Men scrambled forward. One by one, compartments were evacuated. Watertight doors were dogged. In the forward battery, eight men were trapped, screaming to be let out. One officer tried to hold the hatch shut. Another sailor shoved him aside and opened it. Those eight men lived. Had they stayed ten seconds longer, they might not have.

Pat Barron, a young Engineman Second Class aboard that day, remembered the sound of the Captain’s air bank being opened in a panic. He remembered the silence in the after battery when the boat finally stopped sinking. He remembered thinking he would die. He remembered the water rising outside the watertight door. But mostly, he remembered how the crew pulled together. He remembered how the men made their way out, one compartment at a time, until they reached the after torpedo room and were brought topside.

The rescue ships tried everything. Silverstein held her bow in the gash to stem the flooding. USS Greenlet arrived and tied up to the starboard side. Divers attempted to assess the damage. One of them, Mike Fallet, had just finished SCUBA school and volunteered for the dive. He swam into the wrecked ballast tank and saw the curtains from the wardroom fluttering out of the pressure hull. He came back up, soaking wet, and told the skipper there was nothing more to be done.

The order came to abandon ship. The crew crossed to Greenlet. The skipper was the last to leave. One by one, the compartments of Stickleback filled. Her bow dipped, her stern lifted, and finally, she slipped beneath the surface, screws in the air, vanishing into over ten thousand feet of water.

It was over. The boat was gone, but the grief had just begun. Stickleback’s crew returned to Pearl Harbor aboard Greenlet, huddled together on the fantail under the glow of a Hawaiian sunset. Some were crying. Some were silent. All were grieving. They had lost more than a boat. They had lost their home.

At the pier, Chief Engineman “Pappy” Rail, a battle-hardened veteran of Cavite and the war patrols of USS Sailfish, stood at the brow and shook every man’s hand. Most of the crew went straight to the chapel. There were no briefings. Just instructions not to talk to the press. Later they would get clean clothes from small stores. They would fill out dream sheets for reassignment. They would move on. But they would never forget.

Some men had dreams. Some got boils from the stress. Some stayed in touch for decades. Pat Barron would meet “Dutch” Schulz again years later, by chance, on a pier. Schulz had survived the court of inquiry, but the loss of the boat had clipped his career. He would not rise above Captain.

Then, for sixty-two years, Stickleback rested where she fell. Her name was struck from the register. She joined a short list of submarines lost during peacetime. USS Cochino, USS Thresher, USS Scorpion — and Stickleback.

In March 2020, Tim Taylor and the Lost 52 Project found her. Nearly two miles down. Silent. Intact. Still resting in the depths off Oahu, a reminder of the risks of submarine service even in peacetime. She had been a Cold Warrior, a rescuer, a symbol of comradery, and a casualty of misfortune.

Today, she is on eternal patrol. But for the men who served aboard her, for the families who still tell her story, and for the veterans who salute her memory, Stickleback lives on. She was more than a hull number. She was a brotherhood, forged in pressure, sealed in steel, and tested in one final, fateful dive.