An Irish Mystery Submarine?

It started with a newspaper clipping. A yellowed scrap from the Hope Pioneer, dated July 8, 1920. One of those curious little stories buried deep inside the paper, just above the church picnic announcements and well below the latest grain prices. It claimed that the Irish revolutionaries, in a bold move that sounded half like a punchline and half like a legend, had once considered buying a submarine. Not just any submarine. One built right here in America. The tale went that the whole enterprise fizzled when the boat was struck by a coal barge in Long Island Sound and sank during its trial run. Just like that, the dream went under.

Or… did it?

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Sixteen Year Old Sub Vet

At just sixteen years old, Timothy A. Boone of Muskegon, Wisconsin, returned home a wounded veteran of the Pacific submarine war. With three broken ribs, burns, and a cast on his arm, Boone limped off the front lines of World War II not with fanfare, but with the quiet resolve of someone who had seen too much, too soon. The Navy had tried to say he was too young. He insisted otherwise. After slipping past the red tape, training hard, and deploying into the teeth of the Pacific theater, Boone found himself on the wrong end of a Japanese depth charge attack during a tense submarine patrol between Saipan and the Philippines. His actions—gunning topside and surviving the brutal concussion of an underwater barrage—earned him an honorable discharge and a quiet seat at the table of submarine legends, though he wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.

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Post Holiday Action in the Kuriles

In the early morning fog of July 5, 1944, the USS Sunfish broke free from a curtain of gray and found herself staring at a rare, eerie clarity over the northern Kuril Islands. Aradio To rose sharply in front of her like a black tooth jutting from the sea, and for the first time in days, the crew could see clearly. Paramushiru, Shimushu, even Kamchatka were all laid out under a hazy sun that had barely burned through the mist. The weather gave them a moment of visual advantage, but it also left them exposed. There was no Japanese shipping in sight, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t out there. In these waters, silence could kill.

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