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 27, 1970, a reporter with a poetic bent described Admiral John S. McCain Jr. as the shortest, saltiest, and most incorrigible admiral in the Navy. That reporter was Col. R.D. Heinl Jr., and he was not exaggerating. McCain, standing barely five-foot-seven, paced the floor of his headquarters in Pearl Harbor with a cigar clenched in his teeth. He commanded the largest forward-deployed force in American history. His authority reached across 500 ships, 7,500 aircraft, and nearly a million servicemen scattered throughout the Pacific from the Golden Gate to the Indian Ocean.
Continue reading “Shortest and Saltiest”
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”
Patrol Reports 