On June 26, 1943, the submarine USS Jack prowled the waters off Japan on her first war patrol. She was young, aggressive, and her crew carried a dangerous confidence. That morning, Jack struck hard, firing a spread of torpedoes into a convoy and sending two ships to the bottom. The crew was elated, convinced they had the war figured out.

But in the shadow of victory came disaster. A Japanese bomber swooped down and dropped a depth charge so close it blew Jack’s stern clear out of the water, wrecked her diving planes, and sent her plunging out of control. In that moment of chaos, with the submarine seconds from destruction, Torpedoman’s Mate Chief Sylvest Kohut fought to free the jammed controls and helped save the boat.

It was a narrow escape, a hard-earned lesson that in war it is always the unexpected that can kill you.

In September of 1921, San Pedro Harbor was the bustling new home of the Pacific Fleet. Battleships filled the anchorage, destroyers patrolled the coast, and tied to the tender USS Camden was the small submarine USS R-6. She was a product of the pigboat era, a generation of submarines built during World War I that were experimental, cramped, and dangerous. On the night of September 26, her crew worked late into the evening preparing exercise torpedoes for the next day’s practice. What began as routine training turned into disaster when seawater suddenly surged into the forward torpedo room. Within minutes, R-6 was gone, resting upright on the harbor floor in just thirty five feet of water. Two men were lost, their names carried forward in submarine memory. This is the story of tragedy, recovery, and resilience in the early years of the United States Submarine Force.

In September of 1942 the submarine USS Sargo left Fremantle on her fifth war patrol, a mission that would take her deep into enemy waters of the South China Sea. For nearly a month she stalked empty horizons, her crew wrestling with leaking exhaust valves and the constant threat of discovery. Then came September 25, when Sargo fired at a Japanese freighter and nearly paid with her own life when one torpedo turned in a deadly circle. The target was finished with gunfire, but the victory was followed by twenty two hours of depth charge attacks that tested every man aboard.

Back in Ava, Missouri, Fireman Second Class E. E. Hutchinson’s mother worried whether her son was even receiving the hometown newspapers she faithfully sent. In time she learned he was, and that he was glad to get them. This is the story of USS Sargo’s fifth patrol.

The USS John Marshall was never meant to be famous. She did not fight great battles or fire weapons in anger. Yet her legacy is important. She shows how the Navy adapted in the Cold War, repurposing old ships for new missions, keeping pressure on adversaries, and supporting allies in ways that never made the papers.

She carried the name of a man who defined the rule of law, and she embodied the paradox of nuclear weapons: built for destruction, but used to keep the peace.

The Cold War was fought in silence as much as in speeches. Deep beneath the Atlantic, submarines carried weapons that no one ever wanted to fire, and crews who lived in a world without sunlight to make sure those weapons remained ready. The USS Henry L. Stimson, SSBN 655, was one of those boats. She was part of the 41 for Freedom, the fleet of American missile submarines that kept the balance of power by disappearing. Her life tells us about the sailors who endured months underwater, the technology that changed with Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident missiles, and the legacy of Henry L. Stimson, the statesman who oversaw the birth of the atomic bomb.

Today we explore the story of the Stimson, from her keel at Electric Boat to her final days at Bremerton, and the quiet victory she represents in the long shadow of the Cold War.

On September 20, 1941, the Navy confirmed what many had feared since that summer. The wreck of the USS O-9 had been found, lying deep off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Three months earlier, on June 20, the old submarine had slipped beneath the waves during a routine test dive and never returned. Thirty-three men went with her, lost in an instant when the Atlantic crushed her beyond her limits.

For weeks, the Navy searched, divers risking their lives, families waiting for word, and oil slicks rising from the sea as the only sign of her fate. By September 20, the exact resting place was fixed, marked forever as the grave of the O-9 and her crew. This story is not about victory in battle, but about sacrifice in training, and the cost of pushing an aging submarine too far. O-9 remains on eternal patrol.

On September 19, 1903, the United States Navy brought a strange little boat into service. She was called USS Plunger, Submarine Torpedo Boat Number Two. At just over sixty feet long, with a gasoline engine that filled her hull with fumes and a single torpedo tube that may or may not have worked as advertised, she hardly looked like the future of naval power. But that is exactly what she became.

Plunger never sank an enemy ship, never fought in a war, and yet she changed everything. She carried a President beneath the waves, trained the first generation of submariners, and even gave Chester Nimitz his first taste of command. The Silent Service traces its roots to her cramped, smelly interior. Today we look back at the short life of Plunger, the boat that helped turn the dream of undersea warfare into a permanent part of American naval history.

On September 18, 1942, the USS Gurnard joined the fleet as one of the many Gato class submarines built to carry the war into enemy waters. She would go on to complete nine patrols across the Pacific, striking hard at Japanese shipping and earning her place among the hunters of the deep. The story of Gurnard is not only about steel and tonnage, but about the men who endured long weeks of silence and sudden bursts of terror as depth charges rained down and torpedoes ran true. From the sinking of the Taiko Maru to the famous attack on the Take Ichi convoy, Gurnard’s history is a tale of survival, determination, and impact far beyond her size. In today’s episode we trace her path through the war, patrol by patrol, and remember what it meant to live and fight inside a submarine during the hardest days of World War II.

The USS Von Steuben was one of the silent sentinels of the Cold War, a ballistic missile submarine built not to fight battles but to prevent them. Commissioned in 1964, she carried her crews into the depths of the Atlantic on patrols that lasted months at a time, unseen and unheard, yet always ready. Her mission was deterrence, to make sure that any enemy understood an attack on the United States would never go unanswered.

The sailors who served aboard lived lives of secrecy and routine, broken by moments of danger and long stretches of monotony. They worked in steel corridors that smelled of machinery and coffee, argued about baseball, stood watch over missile tubes that never opened, and carried on with the burden of responsibility few could imagine. The Von Steuben never fired a weapon in anger, but her very presence helped ensure peace during some of the tensest years in modern history.

On September 15, 1944, the crew of USS Guavina found themselves staring down the kind of target submariners rarely got a shot at. Anchored tight in Sarangani Strait was a Japanese light cruiser, sitting still but bristling with guns and men. What followed was not a quick strike or a clean kill. It was an all-day brawl against the sea, the current, and the stubborn will of a ship that refused to die easily.

In this episode, we’ll take you inside the boat and through the log, minute by minute. You’ll hear how the men fought their way in, fired salvo after salvo, and watched fire and thunder erupt across the horizon. We’ll trace the fear, the sweat, the smell of burning oil, and the relief when the final explosion left nothing but smoke and ruin. This is the story of Guavina’s fiercest fight, and the day she broke a cruiser apart.