In the thirty-eight years of the United States Naval Submarine Service no United States submarine had ever sunk an enemy vessel. With the ignition of the Second World War the poorly equipped and poorly trained Silent Service, nicknamed for the limited access of the media to the actions and achievements of the submarines, would be thrust into the position American submariners had longed for. The attack on Pearl Harbor left the United States Navy with few options for retribution. The three remaining aircraft carriers were to be “the last line of defense.” Commander Stuart S. Murray made the precarious situation clear to his skippers, captains, upon sending them on their first war patrol. He stressed the importance of smart sailing by warning them not “to go out there and win the Congressional Medal of Honor in one day. The submarines are all we have left.” We entered the war with 55 submarines, 27 at Pearl Harbor and 28 at Cavite in the Philippines. At first our submarine strategies lacked ingenuity and failed to use our subs to their full potential. United States subs were assigned to reconnaissance, transporting supplies, and lifeguard duty, picking up downed airmen and sailors. They were even, on occasion, sent to rescue high profile Americans on the run from the enemy or from islands under enemy siege. Although their ability was, unfortunately, wasted in our entrance to the Pacific Theater the Silent Service would soon gain the recognition its men yearned for.
America was not the only one who suffered casualties during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan lost five midget submarines and nine of the men who piloted the small, war submersibles. The tenth man, Ensign Sakamaki, became our first Japanese WWII prisoner of war. Jap...
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...g nations. World War II was the beginning of a proud and illustrious history. American submariners achieved something few believed they could. In the face of adversity, they wrote “one of the greatest chapters in the history of naval warfare.”
Works Cited
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Japanese stood their ground and on December 7,1941.The surprise attack on the Americans that destroyed or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded at Pearl Harbor(document
The Battle of Pearl Harbor was one of the most atrocious events that happened in U.S. history. On December 7, 1941, Japan made a surprise aerial attack on the United States naval base and airfields at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than two thousand Americans died and a thousand two hundred were wounded. Eighteen ships were badly damaged, including five battleships. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt with the support of the Congress, declared war on Japan. It led United States’ official involvement in World War II. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because of a deteriorating relationship with the U. S. The “New World Order”, expansion and resources, and economic sanctions were factors that conducted to another disaster on the Second World War.
The book opens with K-129 at a position of “24 degrees N and 163 degrees west,”(11) this places the submarine northwest of the US naval base at...
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was one of the most atrocious attacks to have ever happened on American soil, starting with disagreement on the Potsdam declaration. Japan’s greed for more land and industrial materials led the Japanese to make a plan to keep the United States out of the war, which consisted the use of kamikaze pilots and bombs to destroy our aircraft carriers and boats in an attempt to control the Pacific. While leaving the drowning, and dead bodies of thousands of American seamen and battleships at the bottom of the sea, seemed to be a good idea to the Japanese; America joined World War II and introduced the first nuclear weapons as reprisal for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Had the Japanese agreed to an unconditional surrender and end to militarism during the agreement on the Potsdam declaration, the introduction to nuclear weapons and the death count wouldn’t have been so high and devastating on both the American and Japanese sides.
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Whether fortunately or unfortunately, the limits of innovation are often put to the test. In the case of a submarine launched to sea in 1938, the USS Squalus, bad luck proved disastrous. Within minutes of a test dive, twenty-six men drowned. Years later, Peter Maas compiled the known information about the tragedy into The Terrible Hours: The Greatest Submarine Rescue in History. Over the heartbreaking journey of hopelessness to hope, crisis to survival, and depths to ascension, Maas weaves the sad tale depicting the unknown dangers that technology possesses.
On December 7,1941 Japan raided the airbases across the islands of Pearl Harbour. The “sneak attack” targeted the United States Navy. It left 2400 army personnel dead and over a thousand Americans wounded. U.S. Navy termed it as “one of the great defining moments in history”1 President Roosevelt called it as “A Day of Infamy”. 2 As this attack shook the nation and the Japanese Americans became the immediate ‘focal point’. At that moment approximately 112,000 Persons of Japanese descent resided in coastal areas of Oregon, Washington and also in California and Arizona.3
Lawson, Robert L., and Barrett Tillman. U.S. Navy Air Combat: 1939-1946. Osceola, WI: MBI Pub., 2000. Print.
It’s a beautiful sunny morning, on a tropical island that everyone would love to take a vacation at. It’s approximately 6:00 am, December 7, 1941, when a first group of 181 kamikaze planes attacked; targeting key naval bases stationed at Hawaii; a sustained crippling of U.S. naval forces for about 6 months. The death toll was 2,500. Out of the 9 battleships, 8 were heavily damaged by the assault on Pearl Harbor and out of the 8, three were unrepairable, USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, and the USS Utah. 160 aircrafts were put out of commission, and nearly 130 were heavily damaged. This was the first incident in which there was an act of war, committed on U.S. soil, outside of the American Revolution and the Civil War. The world was at war, and the U.S. remained neutral until now. Before the attack, the U.S. was in great debate whether to enter the war or to stay out of it. The act of war forced the U.S. into the War and triggered a controversial debate in whether to retaliate against Japan with the use of nuclear arms.
Von Der Porten, Edward P. The German Navy in World War II. New York: Thomas Y.
19 February 1945 marked the beginning of one of the fiercest and bloodiest; and more decisively, the most strategically important battles fought during World War II. A total of 6,821 U.S. Marines had lost their lives, along with 19,217 wounded over the five-week span of the battle for Iwo Jima. Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers on the island, only 212 were taken prisoners. “Iwo Jima was the only battle by the U.S. Marine Corps in which the overall American casualties (killed and wounded) exceeded those of the Japanese, although Japanese combat deaths were thrice those of the Americans throughout the battle (O'Brien, 1987).”
“The Captain” America in WWII. America in WWII, Web, 2013. Retrieved on February 11, 2014 from http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/the-captain/
"The War at Sea." World War I Reference Library. Ed. Sara Pendergast, Christine Slovey, and Tom Pendergast. Vol. 1: Almanac. Detroit: UXL, 2002. 123-136. World History in Context. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.