Submarine commander : a story of World War II and Korea

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. Here is an authentic, blow-by-blow account of battles in mine-seeded waters against enemy destroyers, submarines, and planes--and sometimes a cumbersome Navy bureaucracy. Schratz takes readers through the danger, bravery, and life-and-death decisions of World War II's submarine war and his secret mission in the Korean War. Hvalfjordur, Iceland, December 1941. A few minutes before midnight, as the sixth of December passed into history, I scaled the familiar six ladders from my stateroom to "sky forward," the weatherbeaten compartment housing the antiaircraft director in Wichita, where I stood watch as gunnery control officer. The author shares his war experiences, his role in the Japanese surrender, and his participation in the setting of a world's record for longest submerged voyage.