The fate of the USS Flier is one of the most astonishing stories of the Second World War. On August 13, 1944, the submarine struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Sulu Sea in less than one minute, leaving only fourteen of its crew of eighty-six hands alive. After enduring eighteen hours in the water, eight remaining survivors swam to a remote island controlled by the Japanese. Deep behind enemy lines and without food or drinking water, the crewmen realized that their struggle for survival...
From unpromising beginnings in March 1942, the submarine base at Fremantle became a vital part of the Allied offensive against Japan. Pushed back from the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies, American submariners, accompanied by small numbers of Dutch, retreated to Fremantle on the remote west coast of Australia as a port of last resort. Far from their prospective patrol areas and their own supply lines, they had little reason to feel optimistic. Thanks largely to a welcoming civilian...
Only seven U.S. submariners earned the Medal of Honor in World War II. Sam Dealey, the USS Harder's commander, was one of them. His honor was awarded posthumously after the entire crew was lost off Bataan during a depth-charge attack in August 1944 by a Japanese convoy. The Harder's fighting spirit is legendary, and its record of sinking a total of eighteen enemy ships (with a tonnage in excess of 55,000) made Dealey one of the top five submarine skippers in the war. During a single...
