Welcome back to Patrol Reports. Today we’re taking you back to September 1, 1920, when the brand-new submarine USS S-5 went down off the Delaware Capes in what should have been a routine dive. Thirty-eight men were suddenly trapped in what one survivor later called a steel coffin on the ocean floor. Their air was fouling, chlorine gas was forming, and the Atlantic was doing its best to finish them. What followed was one of the greatest survival stories in American submarine history. A desperate plan to tilt the boat, a hole chiseled through thick steel, and a white undershirt on a copper pipe as the signal flag that saved them. The S-5 never made another patrol, but her story endures. This is the tale of disaster, grit, and improbable rescue.

On August 29, 1915, the U.S. Navy accomplished something no one had ever done before: it raised a lost submarine from the ocean floor. The USS F-4, a pioneer of America’s early undersea fleet, had sunk off Honolulu months earlier, entombing her crew in the dark. Salvaging her seemed impossible. The boat lay more than 300 feet down, crushed by pressure and mud, beyond the limits of human endurance at the time. Yet through grit, ingenuity, and some downright stubborn determination, naval engineers and divers pulled off a miracle. Special pontoons were built, cables secured by divers who risked their lives in dangerous depths, and after months of effort, the submarine finally broke the surface on that summer day. It was a moment that changed naval history, proving that even the ocean’s grip could be defied. Tonight, we’ll tell the story of the rise of F-4.

Welcome to Patrol Reports, stories from the history of the United States Submarine Force, brought to you by the United States Submarine Veterans Bremerton Base. On this episode, we journey north—far north—with Captain Jim Harvey, former commanding officer of USS Queenfish (SSN-651). In August of 1985, Queenfish and her crew did what only a handful of submariners had ever done: they surfaced at the North Pole.

Captain Harvey shares the planning, the challenges, and the nerves that come with taking a nuclear submarine under shifting ice and breaking through to daylight. He talks about precision training, the hazards of ice navigation, and the human side of the patrol—everything from Blue Nose ceremonies to ballgames on the frozen surface. It’s a story of teamwork, Cold War tension, and once-in-a-lifetime memories at the very top of the world.

This is Patrol Reports for August 27, 2025.

On August 27, 1944, the USS Guitarro found herself in the thick of Japan’s desperate effort to keep its supply lines open in the Philippines. By that stage of the war, large tankers and freighters were easy prey, so the Japanese turned to smaller intercoastal vessels, hoping their shallow drafts and coastal routes might spare them from American attack. That gamble ended when Commander Enrique D’Hamel Haskins brought Guitarro to the surface under a pale moon and engaged the Nanshin Maru No. 27.

The battle began with torpedoes that missed their mark, but Haskins and his crew refused to let the target slip away. They pressed the attack with deck guns, trading fire in a sharp night action that left the tanker burning and sinking. It was a small ship, but its loss was part of the larger Allied stranglehold that was cutting Japan off from its lifelines.

In the summer of 1958, the USS Queenfish was not chasing enemy shipping or slipping through Pacific patrol zones. Instead, she was tied up in San Diego Harbor, carrying out the routine but necessary duties that kept the submarine force sharp. For her crew, it meant a long stretch of daily operations that rarely made headlines but defined the rhythm of Navy life. Torpedoes were offloaded, equipment was checked, and berths were shifted from one buoy to another as the boat prepared for her next assignment.

On August 25, Queenfish made her move from the North Bay to a berth between buoys 15 and 16, edging closer to the naval base and her scheduled dry docking. These movements were as much a part of the submarine’s story as any war patrol. In many ways, the quiet days in port told more about the life of a submarine sailor than the moments of combat.

In late August of 1944, USS Ronquil, a brand-new Balao-class submarine, made her first serious mark in the Pacific war. After weeks of drills, training, and shakedowns, the crew finally got their chance at combat in the waters north of Formosa. What they found was a massive Japanese convoy, heavy with cargo ships and bristling with escorts. For a green boat on her first patrol, it was a dangerous assignment.

Over the course of two days, August 23 and 24, Ronquil went head-to-head with the enemy, launching multiple torpedo attacks under cover of night and slipping away from the depth charges that followed. When the smoke cleared, two Japanese attack cargo ships had gone to the bottom and others were left damaged. For the men aboard Ronquil, it was the proof they needed that their boat could fight and survive. This was only the beginning of her wartime story.

The USS Batfish (SS-310) earned her reputation later in the war as the submarine that destroyed three enemy subs in just three days, a record that still stands. But before that legendary patrol, Batfish carved out her place in the Pacific with a series of bold and dangerous actions that tested her crew and her skipper, Lieutenant Commander John K. Fyfe.

One of those moments came on August 23, 1944, during her Fourth War Patrol near Palau. Acting on a contact report, Batfish closed in on Velasco Reef and discovered what looked like a naval junkyard. Japanese ships were stranded on reefs, patrol craft buzzed in circles, and planes kept watch overhead. In the middle of this chaos, Batfish lined up a warship and struck hard.

This is the story of how Batfish and her crew turned a trap into an opportunity, and left Velasco Reef with a victory.

In 1928, the submarine force found itself caught between tragedy and transformation. The year opened with the lingering sorrow of the USS S-4, lost after colliding with the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding. Her crew of forty never came home, though their struggle and the desperate attempts to save them gripped the nation. Salvage teams fought the sea for months until the boat was finally raised, and the lessons of that disaster would change the Navy forever.

Across the Atlantic, Italy’s F-14 sank in the Adriatic after a collision, her crew poisoned by deadly gas before rescuers could reach them. These twin losses deepened the submarine’s reputation as an “iron coffin” and forced naval leaders to face hard questions about safety, technology, and even the value of submarines themselves. Out of grief and controversy, new ideas began to take shape, including the first steps toward devices like the Momsen Lung.