Submarine!

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Aside from the thousands of officers and enlisted men of the United States Navy and the United States Submarine Forces, I am indebted to:

Captain Edward L. Beach, USN, my father, who many years ago also wrote about the Navy;

Donald Kennicott, forty years with Blue Book, who first put me in print and kept me there — as he has so many others;

Helen Grey, editor and adviser, who helped make this book a reality;

Henry Sell, of Town & Country, who provided the spark;

Jonathan Leff, editor at Henry Holt & Company; and

Ingrid, my wife, who would still like a ride in a submarine.

Commander Edward L. Beach, in SUBMARINE! tells a story which not many men survived to tell. All too often the careers of our most daring submarines and submariners were terminated, after weeks of prayerful watching and waiting back at ComSubPac’s operating base, by the issuance of that fateful message, “Overdue, presumed lost.” Thus were written the epitaphs of Trigger, Wahoo, Seawolf, Harder, Albacore, Tang, and some twoscore more of those silent gray ships which carried the war to the enemy and held the line while the Fleet licked its wounds, and shipyards beat pruning hooks and plowshares into replacements for Pearl Harbor losses. Three hundred seventy-four officers and three thousand one hundred thirty-one enlisted men gave their lives in a submarine offensive that finally swept enemy shipping from the Pacific, yet Ned Beach, veteran of twelve war patrols, providentially was spared to recapture for us the moments of triumph, desperation, quiet humor, and numbing fear which were the daily portion of those devoted warriors.

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