Operation Iceberg

Five and a half years ago, I was sitting at a table on a Saturday morning with one of our newest Base members at the time. He had been a Sonar Tech and was DBF to the core. As we talked about his story, he told me that his adventures had included going under the ice… in a diesel boat.

Look, I am fascinated by under ice ops, but the idea of a diesel boat going under the ice for more than a quick duck seemed… insane. He laughed. “It was, but we did it.”

At the time I had no idea about Operation Iceberg, the Navy’s 1946 expedition under the overall Operation Nanook, to send submarines into the Arctic Ocean. Tom (although he qualified in 1962 aboard USS Cutlass SS-478) wasn’t old enough to have been a participant, but he certainly would have understood it.

One of my least favorite parts of being a USSVI Base Commander were the Eternal Patrol notices and the funerals. Tom was a great guy, and I was looking forward to a lot more discussions about these kinds of things. But it wasn’t to be.

So this article is dedicated to the memory of STSCS(SS) Tom Lee, departed on Eternal Patrol on May 8, 2020.

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Legacy of Sailfish

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.

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Wartime Glimpses into the Silent Service

On June 23, 1943, the Norfolk Ledger-Star published a rare look into one of the most secretive corners of the American war effort. Titled “Submarine Crews Submerge, Sweat, When Depth Charges Are Dropped,” the article gave readers at home a dramatic, carefully curated peek into life aboard a U.S. Navy submarine during World War II. For a service built entirely on secrecy, it was a surprising choice.

The story brings readers just close enough to the action. It describes the chaos and claustrophobia of a depth charge attack. The lights go out. The sub tilts and groans. Officers calculate courses, speeds, and firing angles in tense silence. Crewmembers hold their breath, literally and figuratively, as enemy destroyers hunt above them. And all of this unfolds without giving up a single operational detail.

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