Overview

A fascinating personal memoir of underwater combat in World War II, told by a man who played a major role in those dangerous operations. Frank and beautifully written, Submarine Commander's breezy style and irrepressible humor place it in a class by itself. This book will be of lasting value as a submarine history by an expert and as an enduring military and political analysis. In early 1943 the submarine USS Scorpion, with Paul R. Schratz as torpedo officer, slipped into the shallow waters east of Tokyo, laid a minefield, and made successful torpedo attacks on merchant shipping. Schratz participated in many more patrols in heavily mined Japanese waters as executive officer of the Sterlet and the Atule. At war's end he participated in the Japanese surrender, aided the release of American POWs, and had a key role in the disarming of enemy suicide submarines. He then took command of the revolutionary new Japanese submarine I-203 and returned it to Pearl Harbor. But this was far from the end of Schratz's submarine career. In 1949 he commissioned the ultramodern USS Pickerel, the most deadly submarine then afloat, and set a world's record in a 21-day, 5,200-mile submerged passage from Hong Kong to Honolulu. With the outbreak of the Korean War, the Pickerel was immediately sent to Korea to participate in secret intelligence operations only recently declassified and never before revealed in print. Schratz's broad military experience makes this a far from ordinary memoir.

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9780813109886

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Schratz's description of life aboard a submarine is one of the single best accounts of the 'Silent Service' during World War II and the Korean War....The book is highly recommended. -- Leo J. Daugherty III, World War Quarterly

Schratz's description of life aboard a submarine is one of the single best accounts of the 'Silent Service' during World War II and the Korean War....The book is highly recommended. -- Leo J. Daugherty III, <i> <i>World War Quarterly</i></i></p>

An ebullient, consistently engrossing memoir of submarine service in WW II's Pacific theater and during the Korean conflict. An Annapolis grad (Class of '39), Schratz was a junior officer on the Iceland-based cruiser Wichita when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Transferring to the silent service, he won his golden dolphins and spent the rest of his war, from early 1943 on, mainly in hostile waters off Japan. All told, the subs on which he sailed sank or damaged over 63,000 tons of enemy shipping; on their combat patrols, the close-quarters craft also laid mines, helped rescue more than a half dozen American airmen, and even took one prisoner. After V-J Day, the author was among those assigned to the hairy job of demilitarizing (i.e., disarming and/or blowing up) submarines built by the Japanese for suicide missions. Schratz did not get a command of his own until after the guns fell silent. Ironically, his first was the I-203, a high-speed enemy vessel he skippered back to Hawaii. The author returned to subs as captain of the Pickerel; after a record-breaking underwater cruise from Hong Kong to Honolulu, it carried out a clandestine photoreconnaissance of Korea's eastern shoreline during the early phases of the so-called police action. A graceful writer, Schratz is as adept at conveying the ties that bind the gallant brotherhood of submariners as he is at recounting the hell-and-high-water realities of surface as well as underseas engagements. If the old salt were still on active duty, his vivid log would rate him an E (for excellence). The text is complemented by eight pages of combat and candid photos. (Kirkus Reviews)

<p> Schratz's description of life aboard a submarine is one of the single best accounts of the Silent Service during World War II and the Korean War....The book is highly recommended. -- Leo J. Daugherty III, World War Quarterly

Schratz's description of life aboard a submarine is one of the single best accounts of the Silent Service during World War II and the Korean War....The book is highly recommended. -- Leo J. Daugherty III, World War Quarterly

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