Submarine History

American submarines proved to be a devastatingly effective fighting force during World War II. Although they made up less than two percent of the U.S. Navy, they sent more than thirty percent of the Japanese Navy and sixty percent of [...]

USS ROBALO (SS-273) was built at Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin and commissioned on 28 September 1943. She was soon on her way to Pearl Harbor. Her first patrol, 57 days long, yielded only a single unsuccessful attack. Perhaps [...]

George Levick Street, III, was born in Richmond, Virginia, on 27 July 1913. He joined the Naval Reserve in 1931 and was chosen to attend the Naval Academy in 1933, graduating in 1937. He served aboard a light cruiser and [...]

December of 1941 found USS SEALION (SS-195), commissioned in 1939 and the veteran of one war patrol, in the midst of a routine overhaul at Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines. But she would never make it back to sea. [...]

Three days after they attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japanese occupied the Gilbert Islands, sixteen small atolls in the Pacific Ocean which comprise the main part of the Republic of Kiribati. This was a strategically brilliant move. It quickly became clear [...]

Just over a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, USS SILVERSIDES (SS-236) set out for Hawaii, eager to get into the fight. The very first page of her very first patrol report details the boat’s maiden encounter with [...]

At the end of every World-War-II patrol report, submarine commanding officers included an addendum in which they analyzed different aspects of the patrol, including attacks, weather, and defects and damage. Two other sections—typically entitled “Personnel” and “Health, Food, and Habitability”—discussed [...]

The fifth war patrol of USS SEAL (SS-183), which began on 24 October 1942, took her to the waters around Palau, a Pacific-island nation that lies about 500 miles east of the Philippines and 2,000 miles south of Japan. [...]

In the spring of 1972, journalist Patrick J. Sloyan of the San Antonio Light rode along with USS SAM RAYBURN (SSBN-635) for part of one of her deployments, then penned a series of pieces about life aboard the ballistic-missile submarine. [...]

  Just after 7 PM on 4 December 1965, astronauts Frank F. Borman, II, and James A. Lovell, Jr., were carried into outer space on Gemini VII. America’s twelfth manned space flight would last nearly fourteen days and carry Borman [...]