When we talk about the legacy of the U.S. Submarine Force during the Second World War, we often gravitate toward the celebrated names—Tang, Wahoo, Barb. But woven just as tightly into the silent steel of America’s wartime submarine story is the USS Snook (SS-279), a Gato-class boat launched in 1942 that would go on to serve valiantly and vanish mysteriously in the closing months of the war. Her story begins with the hard-earned lessons of a young submarine fleet still feeling its way through the murky depths of undersea warfare.