Category: Eternal Patrol

Stickleback

She was born in the final stretch of World War II, commissioned in March 1945 at Mare Island. Like many boats of her generation, she came too late to fire a shot in anger, but the USS Stickleback (SS-415) still made her presence known. She served with quiet distinction in the Pacific, patrolling the waters between Japan and Korea, offering aid to shipwrecked Japanese survivors in the war’s waning days, and returning home in time to parade in Admiral Halsey’s victory fleet. Then she went to sleep in the reserve fleet, waiting, like many others, for a second act.

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Squalus Down

On a crisp May morning in 1939, the crew of the USS Squalus set out from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, unaware that they were about to write one of the most remarkable chapters in submarine history. The Squalus was new. She was sleek, modern, and powerful. A Sargo-class submarine, she had been launched only the previous September, and commissioned into service just two months before. Her commander, Lieutenant Oliver Naquin, a Naval Academy graduate and seasoned submariner, had a reputation for discipline, attention to detail, and the quiet confidence needed to lead a crew through the perilous underworld of undersea warfare.

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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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