Stories From the US Submarine Force
USS John Adams (SSBN-620) belonged to a class of submarines built in a time when the world’s stability depended upon quiet patrols beneath the sea. She was a Lafayette-class ballistic missile submarine, one of the Navy’s workhorses of deterrence during the Cold War. Named for the nation’s second president and a man whose voice helped declare American independence, the boat carried his name across decades of silent service in defense of the same principles.
If you ever spot an Ohio-class submarine on the horizon, you are seeing something most people will never witness in their lives. They are not meant to be seen. They are built for silence, shadows, and deterrence. USS Michigan (SSBN-727), later redesignated SSGN-727, was one of these giants, a steel colossus born of Cold War necessity. She was my ship. My home for years under the waves.
If Herman Melville had served aboard the USS Triton, he might’ve written Submarine! instead of Moby-Dick. But as fate would have it, that task fell to Edward L. Beach, a decorated U.S. Navy submarine officer and later the author of the bestselling novel Run Silent, Run Deep. In Submarine!, Beach doesn’t just tell sea stories. He opens the watertight doors of a secret world, inviting us into the steel bellies of America’s undersea fleet during World War II.
What makes Submarine! unique is its blend of firsthand memoir and composite storytelling. Rather than write strictly about his own missions, Beach gathers real-life experiences from several submarines—Trigger, Wahoo, Harder, Tang, and others—blending them into a chronological, unified narrative of the Pacific submarine campaign. The result is a thrilling, authentic, and highly readable account of a silent war fought beneath the waves.
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Patrol Reports 