Tag: Silent Service history

The Water Wolf – USS Muskallunge at Camranh Bay

The USS Muskallunge (SS-262) was one of the U.S. Navy’s steel hunters, a Gato-class submarine that prowled the Pacific during the Second World War. Her name, chosen in honor of the fierce fish that lurks in the lakes and rivers of North America, could not have been more fitting. Fishermen know the muskie as the “fish of ten thousand casts,” a prize hard to land and nearly impossible to forget. For the crew of Muskallunge, the boat became their own elusive prize, tested in battle, hounded by escorts, and remembered today as one of the submarines that carried the Silent Service into the heart of the Pacific war.

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Getting Tight

At a quiet submarine base in the Pacific in July 1945, the war still raged, but the mood had shifted. The end was near, and with it came time for reflection. Two veteran submariners sat nursing beers, their bodies young but their eyes older than they had any right to be. One of them was Chief Machinist Ray E. Cain, better known throughout the Silent Service as “Stinky.” His grin told half the story. His words, printed in the Winchester Sun that summer, told the rest.

“We’re not an ice cream navy,” he said, raising his glass. “We want a drink when we can get it.”

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There’ll Be a Commotion Down Under The Ocean

With the war over and things finally settled down, US Submarine Veterans began to return to their homes and family. They were still keenly aware of the deep sacrifice the Sub Force had made, and the reasons why so many had died there was still a reluctance to talk about how they had carried out the destruction of the Japanese Empire.

But in newspapers around the country, stories began to appear that gave the public a taste of what the Sub force had been through and what it had accomplished. In Bogalusa, LA, a multi-part series was run, telling the stories of submarine veterans from the area who had served on the USS Ray SS-271.

On June 6, 1946, almost a year after the war had ended, one of these articles appeared. In it were the lyrics to “The Submarine Song,” without attribution or any author listed.

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