There are moments in naval history when the line between chaos and calculation becomes so thin that no amount of hindsight can separate them. December of 1944 was a month full of such moments, a time when the Pacific had become a kind of cosmic joke told in a language only submariners understood. If the Hitchhikers Guide had ever been foolish enough to publish a chapter on the American submarine campaign, it might have described those boats as improbable machines crewed by improbable men who somehow made logic work underwater. It would then likely note that the worst poetry in the universe had nothing on the way the ocean recited explosions back to the hull of a submarine in the pre dawn hours.
Patrol Reports 