Stories From the US Submarine Force
In honor of Navy’s Liberty Bowl Win…
The Springfield Daily Republican, January 4, 1944
Cutter, Chapple, Navy Stars Now Starring Underseas
By BOB CONSIDINE
New York, Jan. 3—(INS)—Some of the Naval Academy’s best athletes have gone into the navy’s silent service—submarine work. They couldn’t ask for or receive tougher duty. The submarine boys regard publicity in the same light as they regard enemy depth charges. They want neither.
The night air in the Formosa Strait felt like a lid pressed down on the sea. Clouds hung so low they nearly brushed the masthead light of anything tall enough to carry one. Rain drifted in and out as if the sky could not decide whether to spit or swallow. The water was rough, the wind stiff, and visibility sat so close to zero that even the best eyes in the Pacific Fleet would have been useless. It was the kind of place where battleships felt safe and submarines felt blind. The Japanese believed the strait offered shelter, with shallow water to limit diving, strong currents to confuse sonar, and the comfort of home waters after the chaos of Leyte Gulf. They had every reason to believe the night belonged to them.
In Ava, Missouri, Mrs. Hutchinson walked into the office of the Douglas County Herald with a request that surprised the editor. She asked them to stop sending her the papers. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to read the news, she read every line about the war as closely as any mother with a son in uniform. Her worries were different. She had been faithfully forwarding the paper to her boy, Fireman Second Class E.E. Hutchinson, serving on a submarine somewhere in the South Pacific. But letters had been few, and she had no way of knowing if the papers ever reached him. More than once, she wondered if stacks of unread issues were piling up in some forgotten postal bag while her son remained cut off from the world back home. In the end, she decided there was no sense in continuing the subscription if she couldn’t be sure he was receiving them.
Patrol Reports 