Month: August 2025

The Destruction of Convoy Hi-71: USS Bluefish (SS-222) and the Night of August 19, 1944

The Pacific War was not won by a single battle or a single weapon, but by the grinding, relentless pressure applied across thousands of miles of ocean. In that vast chessboard of sea lanes and islands, submarines played an outsized role. Among them was USS Bluefish (SS-222), a Gato-class submarine commissioned in May of 1943. She was not one of the glamour boats that made headlines back home, but she was steady, aggressive, and efficient, a hunter that earned the respect of the men who served in her.

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USS Rasher’s Fifth War Patrol: How an American Submarine Crippled Japan’s Convoys in 1944

When USS Rasher (SS-269) limped back into Fremantle on June 23, 1944, she looked like a boat that had given the war everything she had to offer. Her paint was worn, her machinery tired, and her crew bone-weary after the fourth war patrol. Fremantle was one of those places where submariners knew they would find a few weeks of peace. There were cold beers, hot meals, and the company of people who appreciated that these young men were daily gambling their lives under the sea. But more importantly, Fremantle was where submarines were put back together again.

Podcast: Rashers Legendary Night: August 18, 1944

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A Submarine’s View of Carlson’s Raiders, August 1942

 

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.

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