ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MANY people deserve credit for making this book reality. First and foremost are the submariners, both living and dead, who allowed us to tell their stories. Without them and their brave sacrifices, there would be no story to tell.

A number of historians and authors also deserve to step forward and be thanked for their mighty contributions to this endeavor. These fine men include Clay Blair Jr.; Theodore Roscoe; Richard H. O’Kane; Charles Lockwood; William Manchester; Norman Polmar; Edward C. Whitman; and all those anonymous authors whose websites represent a heartfelt salute to the courage of the men of the United States Navy.

Thanks, too, must go to the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II, Inc.; Pete Sutherland, historian of the U.S.S. Pampanito at the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco; Robert “Dex” Armstrong in Washington, D.C., for help with research; the staffs at the Naval Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard and National Archives in College Park, Maryland; and Dr. Dirk Ballendorf, Professor of History and Micronesian Studies, University of Guam, Mangilao, Guam.

We also wish to acknowledge the contributions of our agent, Jody Rein, and our editor at Berkley/Caliber, Natalee Rosenstein, and her assistant, Michelle Vega. And to our wives, we offer our deepest gratitude for standing by their men.