The Sailfish  was a fleet type boat considerably larger than S39 and much more complicated. I had to qualify all over again which was more difficult than the first time. The ship was bigger, had many more systems to learn and we were operating in wartime. I had one advantage. I was assigned to the auxiliary gang which was responsible for many of the systems I had to learn. I finally made it . It wasn’t quite as exciting as the first time but I was proud of the accomplishment. I stayed aboard Sailfish until December 1943 and made 8 war patrols in her. 

It Has Been Said  that a war patrol on a submarine is nothing but days and days of boredom interspersed with a few moments of sheer terror. In a few months the Japanese had pushed the Allied force out of the western Pacific and the American submarine force was carrying the battle to the Japanese forces from Hawaii, Australia and Midway Island. It was nearly 7000 miles from Perth, Australia to the Japanese home islands. It took us a couple of weeks just to get to our assigned patrol area. Those were the days of boredom. 

Once In Our  patrol area which, was a precisely delineated piece of the ocean, we would cruise back and forth looking for targets. If one was sighted it was our job to sink it. Think of a submarine as a gun with one man’s hand on the trigger. That is the captain. Like every piece of a weapon, each member of the crew had a purpose and a job to do, and how well they did it made the difference between success and failure for the captain. Ultimately, however, it all came down to one man.. Most of them were good men and a few were great. Dealy, O’Kane, Morton, Chappel, Davenport to name a few. By the war’s end the seas were pretty well scoured clean of Japanese shipping, thanks to the submarine force and to the carrier air forces of the Navy.