Silent Sea

PROLOGUE

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. When the attack was over the major surface ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were burned and sunken hulks. Fortunately, the submarines were untouched by the holocaust of that Sunday morning. They took up the burden of carrying the war to Japan and became known, with justification, as the “Silent Service.”

Plagued by unreliable torpedo exploders for almost two years, slowed by erratic diesel-engine performance, ripped internally by the internecine political warfare of Admirals clinging to outmoded concepts, the American submariners fought two bitter wars: one against the Japanese, the other with their own high command. But as new submarines were built and commanded by younger and far more aggressive men, the submariners won their intramural war, almost eliminated the entire Japanese Merchant Fleet, and badly crippled the Japanese Navy.

By April 1945, the U.S. submarine force in the Pacific had so tightened the noose of naval blockade around Japan’s throat that the enemy was finished as an industrial nation, unable to fight a war effectively.

Proof of this is found in the fact that on April 5, 1945, the Japanese High Command decided to send a battle fleet headed by Japan’s mightiest battleship, the Yamato, to crush the U.S. invasion fleet at Okinawa. Yet there were only 2,500 barrels of oil available to fuel the Japanese ships, not enough for the 1,000-mile round trip from Japan to Okinawa. The Yamato and her escort sailed without sufficient fuel and with no air cover — there was little or no aviation fuel to be had — and the Japanese battle fleet was smashed, the Yamato sunk, by U.S. carrier planes. It was the last major naval sortie Japan was able to mount.

The American submarines paid dearly for their victory over Japan. One of every five men who went to sea in submarines in the Pacific died in combat, the highest percentage of casualties of any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.