Patrol Reports

On September 15, 1944, the crew of USS Guavina found themselves staring down the kind of target submariners rarely got a shot at. Anchored tight in Sarangani Strait was a Japanese light cruiser, sitting still but bristling with guns and men. What followed was not a quick strike or a clean kill. It was an all-day brawl against the sea, the current, and the stubborn will of a ship that refused to di...

On September 12, 1944, the USS Growler and her crew faced one of the most extraordinary days in submarine history. Operating as part of a wolf pack in the waters between Formosa and Luzon, Growler found herself in the middle of a heavily guarded Japanese convoy. What followed was a series of bold attacks that pushed both the submarine and her men to the limit. This was the day Commander Thomas B....

This episode takes us beneath the surface, into the hidden world of one of the Navy’s most formidable submarines. USS Michigan was commissioned on September 11, 1982, as part of the Ohio class, carrying the weight of America’s nuclear deterrent during the darkest days of the Cold War. Later, she was transformed into a guided missile submarine, bristling with Tomahawks and carrying special operatio...

Special Guests Lena and Graham from the  Patrol Reports Podcast  join us today to talk about the first US Submarine attack in history… during the Revolutionary War… On the night of  September 7, 1776 , New York Harbor looked like a wooden forest, crowded with the towering masts of the Royal Navy. The British had come to town, and they came in force. Admiral Richard Howe’s fleet lay at anchor, its...

Welcome to another episode of Patrol Reports, where we bring you the stories of the Silent Service in World War II. Today we follow the USS Paddle on patrol during the first week of September 1944, a mission that would become one of the most tragic chapters of the submarine war in the Pacific. For the crew of Paddle, it was another dangerous assignment. They spent days dodging aircraft, slipping t...

The USS Cod was one of the Silent Service’s proud hunters in World War II, a steel prowler built to stalk and sink the ships that kept Japan’s war machine alive. Commissioned in June of 1943, she quickly entered the fight in the South China Sea and the waters off Java and Luzon. Aboard her during the second and third war patrols was Calvin Baker, a young man who had graduated from submarine school...

Welcome back to Patrol Reports. Today we’re taking you back to September 1, 1920, when the brand-new submarine USS S-5 went down off the Delaware Capes in what should have been a routine dive. Thirty-eight men were suddenly trapped in what one survivor later called a steel coffin on the ocean floor. Their air was fouling, chlorine gas was forming, and the Atlantic was doing its best to finish them...

On August 29, 1915, the U.S. Navy accomplished something no one had ever done before: it raised a lost submarine from the ocean floor. The USS F-4 , a pioneer of America’s early undersea fleet, had sunk off Honolulu months earlier, entombing her crew in the dark. Salvaging her seemed impossible. The boat lay more than 300 feet down, crushed by pressure and mud, beyond the limits of human endurance...

Welcome to Patrol Reports , stories from the history of the United States Submarine Force, brought to you by the United States Submarine Veterans Bremerton Base. On this episode, we journey north—far north—with Captain Jim Harvey, former commanding officer of USS Queenfish (SSN-651). In August of 1985, Queenfish and her crew did what only a handful of submariners had ever done: they surfaced at th...

On August 27, 1944, the USS Guitarro found herself in the thick of Japan’s desperate effort to keep its supply lines open in the Philippines. By that stage of the war, large tankers and freighters were easy prey, so the Japanese turned to smaller intercoastal vessels, hoping their shallow drafts and coastal routes might spare them from American attack. That gamble ended when Commander Enrique D’Ha...

In the summer of 1958, the USS Queenfish was not chasing enemy shipping or slipping through Pacific patrol zones. Instead, she was tied up in San Diego Harbor, carrying out the routine but necessary duties that kept the submarine force sharp. For her crew, it meant a long stretch of daily operations that rarely made headlines but defined the rhythm of Navy life. Torpedoes were offloaded, equipment...

In late August of 1944, USS Ronquil, a brand-new Balao-class submarine, made her first serious mark in the Pacific war. After weeks of drills, training, and shakedowns, the crew finally got their chance at combat in the waters north of Formosa. What they found was a massive Japanese convoy, heavy with cargo ships and bristling with escorts. For a green boat on her first patrol, it was a dangerous...

The USS Batfish (SS-310) earned her reputation later in the war as the submarine that destroyed three enemy subs in just three days, a record that still stands. But before that legendary patrol, Batfish carved out her place in the Pacific with a series of bold and dangerous actions that tested her crew and her skipper, Lieutenant Commander John K. Fyfe. One of those moments came on August 23, 1944...

In 1928, the submarine force found itself caught between tragedy and transformation. The year opened with the lingering sorrow of the USS S-4, lost after colliding with the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding. Her crew of forty never came home, though their struggle and the desperate attempts to save them gripped the nation. Salvage teams fought the sea for months until the boat was finally raised, and...

Welcome to Patrol Reports , where we share stories from the history of the United States Submarine Force. Today we turn to USS Muskallunge, a Gato-class submarine whose name came from the legendary muskie, the fish of ten thousand casts. Built at Electric Boat and commissioned in 1943, Muskallunge was destined to play an outsized role in the Silent Service. She tested the torpedoes that helped tur...

On August 20, 1943, the submarine USS Gar went to battle carrying more than torpedoes. She carried damage. Earlier that day, she struck a floating log that bent her port screw and left her nearly crippled. On the surface she could barely make eleven knots, underwater only four. Most commanders would have turned back. But Gar pressed on. That afternoon, she sighted a Japanese freighter with an esco...

August 19, 1944 . On that night, Bluefish would slip into history. Alongside USS Rasher, she fell upon one of the last great Japanese convoys, a lumbering mass of ships carrying men, supplies, and hope for a faltering empire. Out in the blackness, under rain squalls and against the pulse of enemy escorts, Bluefish delivered one of the decisive strikes of the submarine war. That night became her de...