Acknowledgments and a Note on the Text

No book comes together without great effort from many quarters, and in the case of this book, the list of those who have helped me is considerable. First and foremost I have to thank my wife, Kathryn, whose support was comprehensive, unwavering, and long-standing. It was she who allowed me to do what I needed to do and without whom the thing never would have been written. Her mother, Jane, was also a major factor by helping to watch our children while I was doing research far from home.

After several years in the book publishing business, I came across many very good literary agents, and there are a great many I have not yet met. But in my experience, Sorche Fairbank outshone them all for her patience, professionalism, sense of humor, and tenacity. I am truly lucky to be her client and to know her partner, Matt Frederick, who has always been very helpful. Sorche introduced me to the next person I have to thank, my editor at Grand Central, Rick Wolff, who believed in the project from the beginning and whose persuasive guidance and many detailed and incisive observations honed the book into what it is. Rick also came up with the title.

A great deal of research went into the book, and along the way I had a great deal of help from friends old and new. Tom Allen and his wife, Scotty, graciously took me in as a houseguest and showed me the ropes while I was conducting research at the National Archives and the Navy Yard around Washington. They are wonderful, warm hosts, great conversationalists, and fantastic friends. I only hope I will be able to repay them in kind. Tom’s longtime friend and author of The Death of the USS Thresher, Norman Polmar, was also extremely helpful by taking time in his busy schedule to rid the manuscript of the many niggling, yet acutely embarrassing, errors I and I alone had managed to introduce, multiply, and magnify. Wendy Gulley, the archivist at the Submarine Force Museum Library in Groton, Connecticut, patiently and kindly supplied me with the ships’ books and other materials. The National Archives in College Park, Maryland, is a national treasure that every American should visit, use, admire, and support. Without its fantastic people—the real vitality of any institution—its mysteries would be inaccessible. I had great allies in archivists Barry Zerby, Nathaniel Patch, Deborah Edge, Lawrence McDonald, Lynn Goodsell, Andrew Knight, Kevin Bradley, James Konicek, and that inimitable institution John Taylor. At the Operational Archives Branch of the Naval Historical Center, Dr. Akers and Tim Petit were extremely accommodating and knowledgeable resources. Jack Gustafson and William Lockert at the Wenger Command Display in Pensacola, Florida, make the best damn coffee in the Navy.

The research for the book was not, however, confined to archives. Many people gave quite a bit of their time to talk to me about their experiences during the war—most notably USS Sculpin survivors George Rocek and Bill Cooper, possibly the most notable and, thankfully for me, the longest living from either boat. Regrettably, George passed away shortly after our interview, but luckily his son, also George, was very helpful afterward. Sculpin crewmen Jack Connors and Herbert Thomas were also very helpful and informative. John Philip Cromwell’s son was very generous with his time, experiences, and practical pointers about the U.S. Navy. Jasper Holmes’s son, Eric, was likewise a terrific resource and eyewitness who gave freely of his time. Randy Chappell and Lou Chappell kindly shared photos and clippings as well as reminiscences of their father, skipper Lu Chappell. Anne Pope, daughter of Lieutenant Commander Fred Connaway, also kindly told me everything she knew about her father. I thank them all. Anthony and Patterson Taylor kindly gave permission for me to use their father’s now-infamous poem “Squat Div One.” Not every quote in the book came from research or my own personal interviews. I owe thanks to Carl LaVO for permission to use quotes from his book Back from the Deep, an excellent resource that comes with my recommendation.

Putting a book together—really putting a book together—is a laborious, handcrafted process requiring years of experience, good judgment, and conscientious hard work. That you are reading this now is the result of the work of Tracy Martin, Jim Spivey, Rick Scruggs, Fred Chase, Tricia Tamburr, Shauna Toh, Stratford Publishing Services, Ellen Rosenblatt, and Mari Okuda, and likely many others at Hachette Book Group whose names I do not know. Mari corrected the manuscript not only in English but the parts in Japanese as well, and asked a very good question about the many quotes used throughout the book: “How do we know that’s what they said?”

Some submarines of the day did use rudimentary tape recorders that utilized wire instead of magnetic tape to capture what was going on, and some of these exist, but not for the USS Sculpin or the USS Sailfish.

In the case of the basic mechanics of commanding the submarines and following the captains’ orders, I reconstructed the sequence of events from the skippers’ patrol reports. During attacks on enemy ships and subsequent evasion, some of the accounts are given on a minute-by-minute basis. The command-and-response language was exceedingly specific and uniform throughout the submarine force; the skipper and crew conducted practice drills not only to run the sub but also to ensure that the skipper’s commands were understood and that the crew complied in every respect. Because their lives depended on adherence to even the smallest details, submariners even had instructions on how to pronounce numbers—“four,” for instance, was to be pronounced “FO-wer.” If the skipper wrote in the patrol report that the submarine came to a depth of 200 feet, barring other circumstances such as loss of the control of the boat, that was always a result of his direct command, and Navy regulations stipulated that he give that command in the form of “come to two-oh-oh feet,” and that the response would be “two-oh-oh feet, aye aye, sir.” It is possible, though extremely unlikely, that the officers or crewmen would deviate from their training.

I’ve also included other sorts of dialogue outside the command-and-response structure, and in these cases I’ve relied on the written recollections of several eyewitnesses. You’ll notice that there’s no idle chitchat in the control room or elsewhere; unless it was remarkable in some way, no one thought to record it, and as such it is lost. But aside from the skippers’ patrol reports, many participants wrote memoirs with direct quotes from the people around them. Corwin Mendenhall kept a secret diary—strictly against Navy regulations—and expanded on it after the war to write his book Submarine Diary. Pete Galantin also wrote about his experiences during the war, including his stint as PCO aboard the Sculpin, in his book Take Her Deep. Edwin Layton gives an excellent account of his time as intelligence chief for Admirals Kimmel and Nimitz in his book And I Was There. Jasper Holmes recounted his experiences in Double-Edged Secrets and his son, Eric, was able to corroborate the events and utterances of the Holmes household. John Cromwell’s son likewise provided information about the experiences he had with his father. Holmes, Mendenhall, Thomas Dyer, and Joseph Rochefort also gave oral histories about their experiences during the war. After repatriation, the survivors of the Sculpin gave interviews to Navy personnel about the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the ship and their treatment at the hands of their captors. Interviews with two surviving Sculpin crewmen, George Rocek and Bill Cooper, gave me new material or confirmed what I’d already researched, as did the material from author Carl LaVO’s interviews. In instances where eyewitness accounts were specific enough to be put in direct quotes in the references, I included them. If not, I simply paraphrased the conversation or the outcome of the conversation. It is possible that the eyewitnesses misremembered a specific event or misquoted a particular utterance. But after reconstructing the events dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of times, using all resources to cross-check and confirm what happened, in my experience their accounts have remained consistent. In the end, whether it is a patrol report written the day after an event, a book composed from diaries by an eyewitness, or an interview conducted sixty years later, these are the materials of history.