Silent Service

Meet the U.S. Navy submariners of WWII--hunters who lived under the sea in cramped and claustrophobic quarters as they stalked their victims. We'll see how Navy designers struggled to achieve a submarine design that ultimately proved to be the best underwater craft to fight in the war. Included are stories of the Squalus, whose crew was the first to be rescued from a disastrous sinking, and the Argonaut, the largest submarine built until the advent of nuclear subs in the 1950s.

They were self-reliant individualists who forged a deadly team, and the initiative of individual submarine captains proved instrumental in the American victory in the Pacific. We'll see how trendsetters like Dudley Morton and Richard O'Kane brought new ideas to submarine warfare, showing that aggressive strategies, like surface running, were the best way to sink the most enemy ships. Sam Dealey, a submarine captain known as "The Destroyer Killer", is also featured.

Only a few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy experienced a failure of critical technology--the torpedoes that armed its fleet of submarines were defective. The ensuing debacle ranks as one of the great near disasters of WWII. We'll see how the exigencies of war clashed with entrenched bureaucracies and egos of the naval ordnance establishment. After two years of frustration the submariners prevailed and with effective weapons went on to achieve remarkable results.

Examines the evolution of the strategy and tactics used by U.S. submarines in the war against Japan. Conceived as scouts for the surface fleet, the fleet of boats of the "silent service" found their true calling as heirs to the commerce-raiders of the American Revolution and Civil War. By embracing the once-condemned practice of "unrestricted submarine warfare", these stealthy predators of the deep virtually swept the Pacific of Japanese maritime shipping.