USS Paddle and the Tragedy of Shinyo Maru

The first days of September 1944 found the USS Paddle deep in enemy waters, sliding along the edge of the Sulu Sea and the Celebes, that broad, restless stretch of ocean where islands rise like jagged teeth out of the water. She was a Gato-class submarine, crewed by men who had already seen enough of the war to know its rhythms. They knew the false alarms, the sudden bursts of action, and the endless stretches of waiting. For them, the days blended into a pattern of diving before dawn, running silent through the daylight hours, then surfacing at night to breathe, to charge the batteries, and to prowl.

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The Silent Prowler and the Submarine School Graduate: USS Cod’s War Patrols 2 and 3 through the Eyes of Calvin Baker

When the USS Cod (SS-224) first slipped into the Pacific war, she was one of dozens of Gato-class submarines sliding down the ways in 1943. The war was still young for the Silent Service, but it had already turned into a proving ground for men and machines. By the time Cod was commissioned on June 21, 1943, under Commander James C. Dempsey, the submarine force had become America’s sharpest spear against Japan’s supply lines. Cod herself was a sleek, steel predator, long, lean, and packed with 24 torpedoes, a 5-inch deck gun, and the engines and batteries to make her a silent prowler beneath the seas. She was part of the answer to Japan’s sprawling empire: cut the lifelines, sink the ships, starve the war machine. But ships are only steel and rivets until men step aboard to bring them to life.

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USS S-5: The Sunken Submarine That Cheated Death off Cape May

 

In the summer of 1920, the United States Navy had a new submarine to boast about. USS S-5, hull number SS-110, was one of the latest S-class boats, built not just for coastal defense but for true blue-water operations. She measured 231 feet in length, with a beam just shy of 22 feet, displacing 876 tons on the surface and 1,092 tons when submerged. She carried four 21-inch bow torpedo tubes, a 4-inch deck gun, and a crew of thirty-eight men. The S-class boats represented a new era of American submarine design, conceived during World War I and forming the backbone of the Navy’s undersea force through the 1920s. But with innovation came problems, and the S-5 carried a flaw that would prove decisive. Her main air induction valve, vital for sealing the submarine when diving, was notoriously hard to close.

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