The Pacific War was not won by a single battle or a single weapon, but by the grinding, relentless pressure applied across thousands of miles of ocean. In that vast chessboard of sea lanes and islands, submarines played an outsized role. Among them was USS Bluefish (SS-222), a Gato-class submarine commissioned in May of 1943. She was not one of the glamour boats that made headlines back home, but she was steady, aggressive, and efficient, a hunter that earned the respect of the men who served in her.