Stories From the US Submarine Force
The South China Sea lay deceptively calm on the evening of June 28, 1944, as USS Jack SS-259 slipped through the tropical waters just off the coast of French Indochina. The day had begun hours earlier with routine maneuvers submerging before dawn, surfacing after first light, and diving again with the twilight. It was a pattern worn smooth by repetition, the daily rhythm of a hunter.
Continue reading “A Moonlit Standoff: USS Jack SS-259 on June 28, 1944”
On June 24, 1948, readers of The North Adams Transcript opened their paper to find a quiet notice tucked amid the day’s dispatches: the old submarine Sailfish had been sold for scrap. No fanfare, no ceremony. Just a line confirming that one of the most storied submarines in American naval history had reached her end. To most readers, it might have meant little. But to those who knew her story—those who had followed her transformation from the sunken Squalus to the battle-hardened Sailfish—it marked the closing chapter of a saga that began with tragedy, rose through heroism, and sailed deep into the waters of legend.
Continue reading “Legacy of Sailfish”
If Herman Melville had served aboard the USS Triton, he might’ve written Submarine! instead of Moby-Dick. But as fate would have it, that task fell to Edward L. Beach, a decorated U.S. Navy submarine officer and later the author of the bestselling novel Run Silent, Run Deep. In Submarine!, Beach doesn’t just tell sea stories. He opens the watertight doors of a secret world, inviting us into the steel bellies of America’s undersea fleet during World War II.
What makes Submarine! unique is its blend of firsthand memoir and composite storytelling. Rather than write strictly about his own missions, Beach gathers real-life experiences from several submarines—Trigger, Wahoo, Harder, Tang, and others—blending them into a chronological, unified narrative of the Pacific submarine campaign. The result is a thrilling, authentic, and highly readable account of a silent war fought beneath the waves.
Continue reading “Submarine!”
Patrol Reports 