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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Independence Day in the Kuriles

Aboard the USS Sunfish SS-281, July 3-4, 1944…

Not every Fourth of July comes with flags and fireworks. Sometimes, it comes with fog, fishing boats, and a barometer that just can’t make up its mind.

On July 3, 1944, the submarine USS Sunfish slipped into her patrol zone. She was sixty miles southeast of Kurabu Zaki, off the northern edge of Paramushiru, one of the outermost of Japan’s Kurile Islands. This was not a place for parades or patriotic speeches. It was a place for shadows, silence, and submarine warfare. On this particular patrol, action was measured less in torpedoes and more in fathoms and fogbanks.

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