In August of 1942 the USS Argonaut left Pearl Harbor on a mission unlike any she had ever undertaken. Built as a mine-laying submarine, she was slow, heavy, and awkward in comparison to the fleet boats that now carried the war westward. But her broad hull and ample internal space made her a fit for something no one had tried before. Along with USS Nautilus, Argonaut carried Carlson’s Raiders, two hundred twenty-one Marines with orders to strike Makin Atoll, inflict damage, confuse the enemy, and get back out alive. It was the first time the Navy would send a submarine into battle not just as a hunter of ships, but as a troop transport. For Argonaut’s crew, used to torpedoes and patrols, this felt like stepping into a different kind of war.
The approach to the island was slow and tense. The boat was crammed not only with sailors but with Marines who had little love for the claustrophobic silence of submarine life. The air was stale, the heat oppressive. Raiders tried to pass the time in the same way the sailors did, with jokes that fell flat, restless sleep, or staring at the pipes overhead as if they could wish themselves elsewhere. When Argonaut finally reached the waters off Butaritari on the night of August 16, everyone on board knew they were about to attempt something untested and dangerous.
At three in the morning on the seventeenth the hatches opened and Marines began clambering into rubber boats. The logs record the routine details of launches and timings, but the reality on deck was anything but orderly. The surf pushed back against every stroke, boats overturned, gear spilled into the black water, and groups became separated before they ever reached the sand. Still, by first light the Raiders were ashore and Argonaut was sliding beneath the waves to hide her presence. Through the steel hull the crew heard distant rumbles. Bombs, rifles, grenades. The war was just above their heads, muffled and strange. They held the periscope up, scanning for planes, trying to piece together the story of the fight by sound alone.
On the island, Carlson’s men struck hard, ambushing Japanese garrisons, burning fuel dumps, destroying seaplanes, and driving home the point that even the most remote outposts were not safe. The submarine, blind to these details, held its position and waited. By the next morning faint radio transmissions confirmed what the crew suspected. The Raiders had taken losses, communications were shaky, and extraction was needed as quickly as possible. Argonaut surfaced under cover, opened her decks, and prepared to haul men back aboard. The sea, however, had no interest in cooperating. The surf battered the little rubber boats until they rolled. Marines came back in clumps, dripping, bruised, cut, some clutching only a rifle, others so exhausted they had to be dragged up the hatch. The submarine log notes several forced dives as Japanese planes swept overhead. Each time Argonaut dipped under, Marines left in the water had to wait, exposed and praying the boat would surface again before the enemy found them.
For the crew the day stretched into an agonizing cycle. Surface, recover who you can, dive at the sight of a shadow in the sky. Every recovery brought relief, but the tally was incomplete. Not every Raider made it back. Some were killed on the island. Others were captured. Argonaut could not linger forever. When it became clear that no more men could be saved, she and Nautilus turned away and began the long journey back across the Pacific. Silence returned to the boat, but it was no longer the silence of patrol. This was the silence of men reckoning with loss.
The official report would mark the raid as a success. The Japanese had been forced to garrison more islands. They had lost aircraft, supplies, and the false sense that their outposts were untouchable. But for Argonaut, the memory of the mission was not measured in strategy alone. It was remembered in the faces of exhausted Marines dragged across her deck, the hollow space left by those who did not return, and the knowledge that this odd and clumsy submarine had been asked to carry out one of the most unusual operations in the history of undersea warfare.
The Makin Raid proved that submarines could do more than sink ships. They could carry men into battle, deliver a strike, and pull them back again, though not without cost. Argonaut’s logs tell the bare facts of surfacing times, dive depths, and recoveries. The story that lives behind those lines is one of endurance, improvisation, and a crew caught between two wars—the hidden war of submarines and the open fight on the beach just over the horizon.
Patrol Reports 
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