“Fish don’t vote.”

That was Admiral Hyman Rickover’s explanation for why the Navy began naming attack submarines for cities. By 1987, the Navy was naming its Trident missile boats for states, and Congressman Sam Gejdenson wanted to know why Connecticut was missing from the list. After all, the boats were being built at Electric Boat in Groton.

On Patrol Reports, Dave Bowman follows Gejdenson’s appeal from a newspaper clipping to the christening of USS Connecticut and a naming decision decades later that brought the story back to the shipyard’s hometown.

On November 6, 1943, USS Haddock closed on a Japanese convoy near Truk with just four torpedoes remaining. After an initial attack slowed two tankers, Lieutenant Commander Roy Davenport brought his boat around for another surface approach. His crew reported hits, fire, and the disappearance of both targets, but postwar analysis would reach a different conclusion.

In this episode of Patrol Reports, Dave Bowman follows Haddock’s night attack through the boat’s own patrol report, examining the crew’s persistence and the difficulty of determining a ship’s fate in darkness. It is an account of submarine combat that preserves what the sailors witnessed while distinguishing their wartime claims from confirmed losses.

#PatrolReports #USSHaddock #SubmarineHistory #WWII #NavalHistory #USSVI

On November 5, 1944, a hometown newspaper reported that Electrician’s Mate First Class Ansel Sampson was leaving his parents’ home to report for another assignment. Behind that brief announcement lay five war patrols aboard USS Rasher (SS-269), one of America’s most successful World War II submarines.

This episode of Patrol Reports follows Rasher’s opening campaigns, from the waters of present-day Indonesia to the devastating attacks on convoy HI-71 off the Philippines. Through Sampson’s service, we remember the electricians and other technical specialists whose work kept the boat fighting, and the millions of Americans who came home on leave, then returned to duty while the war continued.

Sampson went on Eternal Patrol in 1975. His story preserves one life behind the Silent Service’s wartime record.

#PatrolReports #USSRasher #SilentService #SubmarineHistory #WWII #USSVI

In November 1945, the Navy announced that American submarines had rescued 504 Allied aviators during World War II. Behind that number were dangerous searches, exposed crews, and decisions that placed entire boats at risk to recover men from enemy waters.

This episode of Patrol Reports follows USS Skate (SS-305) on her first war patrol off Wake Island in October 1943. Her crew rescued six naval aviators while facing Japanese aircraft and shore batteries, but Lieutenant junior grade Willis Edward Maxson III died from wounds suffered during the mission. Their story reveals how submarine lifeguard duty became an essential part of the Pacific air war, and why lives saved belong alongside ships sunk in remembering the submarine force’s wartime service.

#PatrolReports #USSskate #SubmarineHistory #WWII #NavalHistory #USSVI

In 1921, USS S-2 (SS-106) made a voyage that drew national attention: 8,600 miles from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Pearl Harbor in a reported 29 sailing days. Traveling through the Panama Canal and onward across the Pacific, the submarine demonstrated the growing ability of American boats to reach distant stations under their own power.

In this episode of Patrol Reports, USSVI National Historian Dave Bowman examines the contemporary newspaper account, the Navy’s historical record, and photographs of life aboard S-2. It’s a look at an early milestone in submarine endurance and the practical challenges behind the headline.

#PatrolReports #USSS2 #SubmarineHistory #USNavy #USSVI #NavalHistory

On November 2, 1942, USS Seawolf (SS-197) maneuvered through shifting currents and deteriorating weather outside Davao Gulf before launching an attack on the Japanese ship Gifu Maru. Commander Frederick “Fearless Freddie” Warder’s patrol report documents the changing firing plan, the observed torpedo hit, and the ship’s rapid sinking.

In this episode of Patrol Reports, USSVI National Historian Dave Bowman follows the action through Warder’s account, including its sobering aftermath: forty-one men counted in the water, failed lifeboats, and a rescue vessel that never appeared while Seawolf remained nearby. It is a close look at submarine combat and the limits of what a commanding officer could know through his periscope.

On October 30, 1944, USS Salmon (SS-182) attacked the Japanese tanker Takane Maru and suffered a devastating depth-charge counterattack. Flooding and unable to control her depth, Salmon surfaced into the path of four enemy escorts. Her crew now had to keep the submarine afloat while fighting their way clear.

In this episode of Patrol Reports, USSVI National Historian Dave Bowman follows the coordinated attacks by USS Trigger, Salmon, and Sterlet, Nauman’s close-range surface battle, and the dangerous passage to Saipan under the protection of fellow submariners. Drawing on wartime patrol reports, this is the story of the sailors whose training and determination brought a battered boat home.

#SubmarineHistory #USSSalmon #WWIIHistory #PatrolReports #SilentService

In October 1965, sailors aboard USS Barracuda honored an unusual final request: they launched Rear Admiral Hiram Cassedy’s ashes into the Atlantic through a torpedo tube.

In this episode of Patrol Reports, we follow Cassedy’s Navy career, from his Navy Cross rescue off Japanese-occupied Timor to his command of USS Tigrone. At the center is a tense exchange with USS Snook in April 1945. After narrowly escaping a torpedo, Cassedy initially suspected friendly fire. Radio messages cleared Snook in his judgment, then her transmissions stopped.

Explore the connection between a decorated submarine commander and one of World War II’s unresolved submarine losses, as we remember the men he brought home and the shipmates who remain on Eternal Patrol.

#PatrolReports #SubmarineHistory #WWIIHistory #USSSnook #USNavy #USSVI