An ebullient, consistently engrossing memoir of submarine service
in WW II's Pacific theater and during the Korean conflict. An
Annapolis grad (Class of '39), Schratz was a junior officer on the
Iceland-based cruiser Wichita when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Transferring to the silent service, he won his golden dolphins and
spent the rest of his war, from early 1943 on, mainly in hostile
waters off Japan. All told, the subs on which he sailed sank or
damaged over 63,000 tons of enemy shipping; on their combat
patrols, the close-quarters craft also laid mines, helped rescue
more than a half dozen American airmen, and even took one prisoner.
After V-J Day, the author was among those assigned to the hairy job
of demilitarizing (i.e., disarming and/or blowing up) submarines
built by the Japanese for suicide missions. Schratz did not get a
command of his own until after the guns fell silent. Ironically,
his first was the I-203, a high-speed enemy vessel he skippered
back to Hawaii. The author returned to subs as captain of the
Pickerel; after a record-breaking underwater cruise from Hong Kong
to Honolulu, it carried out a clandestine photoreconnaissance of
Korea's eastern shoreline during the early phases of the so-called
police action. A graceful writer, Schratz is as adept at conveying
the ties that bind the gallant brotherhood of submariners as he is
at recounting the hell-and-high-water realities of surface as well
as underseas engagements. If the old salt were still on active
duty, his vivid log would rate him an E (for excellence). The text
is complemented by eight pages of combat and candid photos. (Kirkus
Reviews)
A fascinating personal memoir of underwater combat in World War
II, told by a man who played a major role in those dangerous
operations. Frank and beautifully written, Submarine Commander's
breezy style and irrepressible humor place it in a class by itself.
This book will be of lasting value as a submarine history by an
expert and as an enduring military and political analysis. In early
1943 the submarine USS Scorpion, with Paul R. Schratz as torpedo
officer, slipped into the shallow waters east of Tokyo, laid a
minefield, and made successful torpedo attacks on merchant
shipping. Schratz participated in many more patrols in heavily
mined Japanese waters as executive officer of the Sterlet and the
Atule. At war's end he participated in the Japanese surrender,
aided the release of American POWs, and had a key role in the
disarming of enemy suicide submarines. He then took command of the
revolutionary new Japanese submarine I-203 and returned it to Pearl
Harbor. But this was far from the end of Schratz's submarine
career. In 1949 he commissioned the ultramodern USS Pickerel, the
most deadly submarine then afloat, and set a world's record in a
21-day, 5,200-mile submerged passage from Hong Kong to Honolulu.
With the outbreak of the Korean War, the Pickerel was immediately
sent to Korea to participate in secret intelligence operations only
recently declassified and never before revealed in print. Schratz's
broad military experience makes this a far from ordinary
memoir.
General
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