The USSVI Bremerton Base remembering the US Navy Submarines lost in the month of January

We remember the :

USS S-26

USS S-36

USS Argonaut

USS Scorpion

USS Swordfish

The USS Sam Rayburn was built for a job no one ever wanted her to do, and that is precisely why she mattered. In the tense years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, American strategy shifted away from spectacle and toward survival. Submarines like Rayburn were designed to vanish beneath the ocean and remain there, unseen and patient, carrying consequences no adversary could ignore. She spent her early life as part of the Forty One for Freedom, conducting long deterrent patrols from the Atlantic to the Arctic, holding the line without fanfare. Then, when treaties and geopolitics reshaped the Navy, she did something few warships ever manage. She adapted. Stripped of her missiles and transformed into a training platform, Rayburn spent more than three decades educating the men and women who would operate the nuclear fleet. This is the story of a submarine that outlived the Cold War by refusing to become obsolete, and of how endurance, not drama, often shapes history.

The USS George C. Marshall was built for a kind of war that everyone hoped would never happen. No battles, no victories, no headlines, just long months of silence beneath the sea, carrying consequences too large to ever be used lightly. In this episode of Dave Does History, we step inside the steel hull of one of the Navy’s most important Cold War submarines and tell the story the way the sailors lived it, patiently, professionally, and without mythmaking.

Marshall was part of the “41 for Freedom,” the quiet backbone of America’s nuclear deterrent. She patrolled the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic ice, survived a dangerous submerged collision with an unidentified but suspected Soviet submarine, and returned to sea through sheer ingenuity and discipline. This is not a story about explosions or triumph. It is a story about restraint, endurance, and the men who carried the weight of the unthinkable so the rest of the world could sleep.

The USS Woodrow Wilson was built to disappear. Not in disgrace, not in secrecy, but in purpose. She was one of the original Forty One for Freedom, a ballistic missile submarine whose job was to slip beneath the ocean and make sure the unthinkable never happened. For more than thirty years, she did that work quietly, patiently, and without applause.

What makes her story worth telling is not just where she began, but where she ended up. Few submarines lived three distinct lives. Fewer still succeeded in all of them. From Polaris patrols in the heart of the Cold War, to the Poseidon MIRV era, and finally to an unexpected second career as a special operations attack submarine, the Woodrow Wilson adapted as the world around her changed.

There are stories from the Pacific War that settle into the mind with a kind of heavy clarity. They do not shout. They do not demand. They simply sit there and remind us that the ocean has a long memory. Today we are stepping into one of those stories, the night when USS Sea Devil went hunting in the East China Sea and crossed paths with a former passenger liner that had become something far more tragic.

Hawaii Maru began her life carrying travelers who dressed for dinner. By the winter of 1944 she was carrying soldiers, gasoline, ammunition, and the burden of a war that was already slipping away from Japan. What happened when Sea Devil found her was swift, violent, and final. It was also a moment that reveals the strange mix of skill, fear, and consequence that shaped submarine warfare.

This is that story.

The story of USS Bonefish on November 29, 1943, is the kind of moment that captures the strange rhythm of submarine warfare. Long stretches of waiting and watching suddenly turn into a burst of violence that decides everything in a few minutes. Bonefish had been working her way through the Flores Sea when a thin smear of smoke on the horizon pulled the crew straight into the hunt. What followed was a disciplined stalk, a clean attack, and a hard escape under the weight of depth charges.

This introduction sets the stage for the attack itself. It was a morning that began like any other, filled with routine checks and quiet tension, but it quickly became a textbook example of how a trained crew, a steady captain, and a little luck could change the course of a day. It was the silent service at its sharpest.

On this episode of Patrol Reports we return to one of the most remarkable moments in the entire Pacific submarine campaign. The date is November twenty first 1944. The place is the dark and storm driven waters of the Formosa Strait. The submarine USS Sealion is running on the surface through wind, rain, and near zero visibility while trying to track a Japanese formation that includes three battleships. Her skipper, Lieutenant Commander Eli Reich, carries the memory of the first Sealion that was lost in the opening days of the war, and the torpedoes in his forward tubes bear the names of the men who died there.

What follows is the only successful attack by an American submarine that sent an enemy battleship to the bottom. The destroyer Urakaze vanished in an instant. The battleship Kongo died in fire hours later. It is a story of risk, resolve, and a decisive strike that changed naval history.