The USS Ronquil (SS-396) was a Balao-class submarine, one of the many steel predators the U.S. Navy sent into the Pacific during World War II. She carried the name of a humble spiny-finned fish from the waters of the Pacific Northwest, but her business was far from small. Commissioned on April 22, 1944, under the command of Lieutenant Commander H. S. Monroe, Ronquil’s steel frame stretched over 311 feet, her two propellers driven by the throb of Fairbanks-Morse diesels and Elliott electric motors. She carried ten torpedo tubes and a 5-inch deck gun, but what mattered most was the crew of eighty-one who would have to take her into combat and bring her back again.