Sunken Sub Sinks Aircraft Carrier!

Moore, Stephen L.  Strike of the Sailfish: Two Sister Submarines and the Sinking of a Japanese 

         Aircraft Carrier.  New York: Dutton Caliber, 2023.  ISBN: 9780593472873

"Down periscope! Dive!  Dive!" is the cry of the submarine's captain as submarine and her crew seek to sink beneath the waves before the enemy spots them.  Many books and movies have this scene.  In Strike of the Sailfish, this scene plays out several times as the Sculpin and the Sailfish search the Pacific Ocean for prey.

 

As the title states, Strike of the Sailfish is the intertwined tale of two submarines - the Squalus and the Sculpin.  The tale starts when the Squalus sank during a test dive in 1939 killing half the crew.  The Sculpin happened to be in the area and helped in rescuing the crew and recovering the boat.  The Squalus was refitted and renamed the Sailfish in May 1940 before getting a new crew and reentering the fleet.  

After United States entered the war, both submarines were sent to the Pacific to attack Japanese shipping.  Each submarine suffered through the teething issues of dud torpedoes, bad warheads, and plan bad luck.  But by 1943, better weapons had arrived and the submarines started coming into their own.  But when the Sculpin attacked a convoy near Truk on November 19, 1943, her luck ran out and she was sunk. Part of the her crew were captured and taken to Truk and then transferred via aircraft carriers to Japan.  But on December 3-4, 1943, the Sailfish as part of a wolfpack attacked this convoy in the midst of a typhoon and sank the aircraft carrier Chuyo. I took three separate attacks to sink it.  George Rocek was the only Sculpin sailor onboard the Chuyo to survive.

Strike of the Sailfish provides a very gritty look at World War II submarine warfare through the lenses of two U.S. submarines and the stories of their crews.  Stephen Moore provides plenty of details of a submariner's life and the plight of submariner POWs alongside the various attacks and other duties the submarines performed.  If you enjoy reading about WW II naval action, pick up this title.  It will not disappoint!