Illustrated with seven color pictures, this wartime magazine article served to give the folks back home a sense of what an U.S. Navy sub is capable of doing:
"With a crew of 44 men, an American submarine in Pacific waters may reasonably hope to sink twenty or more enemy ships before the end of this war... By its very limitations, the submarine offers its crew opportunities to do damage to the enemy which are not given to sailors on other types of vessels. Ninety percent of the time during the war our pig boats (ie. submarines) are looking for the enemy. Cruisers and destroyers, on the other hand must often pass up the privilege of fighting in order to carry out some broad strategy objective; thus convoying, reconnaissance and scouting are a kind of boresome duty the submariner seldom knows."
"They are a proud lot, our submarine men, but not boastful. They talk less of their exploits than the public likes. The brass hats apparently have decided to keep it that way."
Click here to read a unique story about the Battle of the Sula Straits...
This article,
'Blow It Out of Your Ballast Tank' was penned by
Marion Hargrove and cartoonist Ralph Stein
in order to clear away some of the Hollywood blarney and set the record straight about the W.W. II submarine duty in the U.S. Navy:
"To read articles about submarines, you'd think they were about as big as a small beer keg, and that the men worked curled around each others elbows. To see submarine movies, you'd think the sailors spent their time bailing water, gasping, sweating, hammering on jammed doors and getting on each other's nerves."
"This is really a lot of Navy propaganda, designed to keep surface fleets from being stripped of their personnel by a rush of volunteers for submarine duty."
Click here to read about a Soviet submarine called the S-13...
Attached herein are a few "authentic sketches [that] show the nerve center of a captured Nazi sub." accompanied by a few informative paragraphs about the beast:"
"Every inch of a U-boats space, every one of its 45 men, is utilized to the maximum. Each serves the sub's principal weapon, the torpedoes which speed toward an objective at 45 knots. New models have one or two guns of 3.5-inch caliber or more which are effective against unarmored ships at ranges up to five miles."
"During World War II, the officers and men of the U.S. Navy's submarine
Tang had a proud boast. Their submarine, they crowed, rarely wasted a torpedo. In less than a year of combat, the
Tang mowed down Japanese transports, freighters and tankers with deadly accuracy. But it was her fifth patrol from September 27 to October 24, 1944, that gives a unique place in the annals of submarine warfare."
You see, the Tang was sunk by her own torpedo.
The attached is an uncredited article from the later days of 1943 concerning the continuing struggle for supremacy of the North Atlantic:
"It was plain to see that due to the Allied tactics which drove the U-boats from the seas last summer, sinking 90 subs in 90 days, something new had to be added... the newer [German] subs have larger conning towers, painted white this time instead of black - packing at least two new guns, and shooting it out in the open instead of from ambush... Brazil has recently reported 11 sinkings in the South Atlantic."
This article recalls an event in W.W. II history that is still remembered today as the greatest maritime disaster of all time: January 30, 1945, when Soviet Navy submarine
S-13 sank the German liner
Wilhelm Gustloff as she fled the Danzig port overloaded with fleeing refugees.
Written 18 years after the attack, this article erroneously attributes the sinking to two submarines and killing 8,000; but this was not the case.
"U.S. submarines toll of Japanese ships reaches 256 since Pearl Harbor . Russell Islands are scenes of bitter dog-fights."
"For the first time, U-boats became active in the Gulf [of Mexico], evidently under command of men familiar with its shallow waters. Two freighters, one American and one Honduran, were sunk."
"Proceed at once to the coast of Japan"
"Sometimes it is difficult to repress an impulse to whoop with delight, and this was one of them. This was the moment we had lived for, the moment every submariner dreams about... We were ready. War was our trade... Now we were playing for keeps. We were eager to get at it."
Click here to read about the rise of naval aviation.
"Informed London sources said Saturday that the number of U-boats operating against Allied shipping is increasing despite the improved defense record of the last six months."
