Month: May 2025

USS Cod’s Torpedo Ballet: The Action of May 10, 1944

In the dark, moonlit hours of May 10, 1944, the Pacific Ocean off the northwestern coast of Luzon was alive with danger. Beneath the gently rolling swells, the steel predator USS Cod (SS-224), a fleet submarine of the Gato-class, stalked its prey—a leviathan of a convoy moving southwesterly, heavily guarded by Japanese destroyers, torpedo boats, and patrol planes. What followed was a daring submerged engagement worthy of any tale from Theodore Roscoe’s annals of undersea valor: an audacious attack on a 30-ship convoy that left fire on the sea and silence below.

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The Silent Service Breaths

There was a time when submariners went to sea knowing that if disaster struck, they were likely never coming home. In the early days of the Silent Service, a sunken submarine was a steel tomb. Rescue was often impossible. Escape was unheard of. The ocean was merciless, and technology had not yet caught up to the bravery of the men who dared to ride beneath the waves. That is what made the invention and testing of the Momsen Lung on May 8, 1929, such a watershed moment in naval history. It was a turning point in the age-old struggle to wrest survival from the deep.

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USS Lagarto SS-371

She slipped beneath the waves in silence, leaving behind no witnesses, no survivors, and for sixty years, no trace. The USS Lagarto (SS-371), a proud Balao-class submarine built in the heart of the American Midwest, vanished in May of 1945 during her second war patrol in the Gulf of Thailand. It would take six decades, the work of divers, historians, and veterans, and the determined pull of memory to finally bring her back to the surface of public awareness. Her story, like that of many lost submarines, is one of daring service, mystery, and solemn remembrance.

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