AMERICAN SUBS—WHERE?

Nine million square miles. That’s the size of the patrol zone assigned to American submarines in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. From Perth to the Kurile Islands. From the Gulf of Tonkin to Tarawa Atoll. It was an area encompassing coastal littorals, narrow passages, and open ocean. Within that vast region, a force of fewer than 230 subs managed to send to the bottom 55 percent of all Japanese ships sunk during the war: 1,200 merchantmen, 214 men-of-war, 5,600,000 tons in all—more than twice the vessels sunk by all other services combined. The subs helped starve Japan of inbound raw materials and slowed outbound replenishment of bases and garrisons across the empire. By any standard, the U.S. Navy’s undersea achievements in the Pacific were a resounding success.

On the other side of the world, in the more confined waters of the European Theater, it was a different story. American submarines played only a paltry role in the defeat of Germany—though not for want of trying on the part of their crewmen. The force never exceeded the six boats of the single unit operating there, Submarine Squadron 50, and spent only eight months on station patrolling off Western and Northern Europe. The results there were, by any standard, meager.

“Subron 50” got its mission based not so much on some grand strategy but on a personal request by British