Tag: World War II submarine

Cats Eyes

The story was told later in newsprint (January 10, 1943, Hanford, CA), folded into a Sunday paper in California, trimmed to fit a column and given a confident headline that promised reassurance to families far from the sea. It said there was never a dull moment for a submarine, and that submarine duty was not a job but a way of life. It said the night belonged to sharp eyes, steady nerves, and a skipper who knew when to act. All of that was true. None of it conveyed what the night of February 3, 1942 actually felt like aboard USS Searaven SS-196.

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Greenling’s November 7, 1944

After refitting at Saipan, Greenling sailed north as part of the tightening U.S. submarine net around Japan’s home islands. Her mission was straightforward but perilous: interdict shipping along Japan’s coastal lanes and disrupt the remnants of enemy supply traffic fleeing the Philippine front.

The patrol began with quiet days of endurance and routine, constant radar sweeps, periscope observations, and the perpetual strain of aircraft alerts. Submariners of this late stage of the Pacific War lived in the shadows of their predecessors’ successes. Japan’s navy had learned, and anti-submarine air coverage was now relentless. Greenling frequently dived to avoid detection, her log marking dozens of aircraft contacts, many close enough to rattle the boat with their depth-charges.

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In the Silent Depths: The Fighting Life of USS Gurnard

The date was September 18, 1942, when the submarine USS Gurnard was commissioned into the United States Navy. She was one of the many Gato-class submarines that slipped into the war effort during the dark mid-years of World War II, at a time when the Atlantic was still contested and the Pacific was a long way from turning in America’s favor. To her crew she was not just another boat with a fish name, she was home, she was a weapon, and she was a place where life and death mixed in with diesel fumes, sweat, and salt water. To the Navy she was a number in a long line of steel tubes being turned out of yards as fast as the nation could make them. To history, she was a fighting submarine that sank nearly sixty thousand tons of Japanese shipping, disrupted convoys, and lived to tell about it.

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