War in the Boats

Odin & Aesop

The U.S. Navy started World War Two leaning towards the idea that its submarines were supposed to remain hidden and cautiously scout ahead of the surface fleet. With the surface fleet destroyed at Pearl Harbor, that idea got turned around. Instead a new generation of aggressive commanders rose up. They roamed the vast Pacific on independent war patrols that lasted months. By war’s end the Japanese merchant fleet had lost close to nine million tons of shipping and was only 23% its pre-war size. Over half of those losses came at the hands of U.S. submarines. U.S. submarines also sank close to seven hundred Imperial Japanese Navy ships over five hundred tons. William Ruhe’s “War in the Boats” offers a first hand account of the submarine campaign in the Pacific. We were privileged to be joined by Rear Admiral Scott Pappano for this episode.