Edward L. Beach (1918–2002)

In December, 1941, when the Japanese launched their attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, both the naval and air bases were hit hard. We're almost all aware of the fact that much of the pride of the Navy -- its battleships, heavy cruisers and other great ships of the line were either completely destroyed or so badly damaged that it would be months before they would be seaworthy.

However, despite all the damage done that day, the Japanese neglected to hit a small area of show more Pearl. This negligence would haunt them for the next few years, and help to win the War for the Americans.

Huh?

Yes, that's right my reader friends. A little, tiny part of Pearl Harbor was completely untouched, and the boats harbored there were able to wend their way through the wreckage at the Harbor's entry to wreak very serious damage on the Japanese fleet, gather important intelligence from very sensitive areas of the Japanese mainland, and ride roughshod over millions of tonnage of vital supplies that the enemy thought would allow them to conquer the entire Pacific before the U,S, could get into the War.

That area was the Submarine base.

Captain Ned Beach was a very junior officer when World War II began, but he had already chosen the Silent Service to be where he would make his contribution. He would be there to watch and record the exploits of a small corps of brave, gutsy men who kept the enemy at bay until there was, once again, a complete Navy, Army and Air Force in the Pacific.

I got interested in submarines because of a very silly science fiction series called "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." As with every other thing I've been interested in, I went crazy and learned as much as I possibly could about both the history and the science of subs. And this book was a very important part of my education.

Beach was a great writer. He was engaging, funny, and able to take the dullest facts a bout subs and make them interesting. He was also one of Admiral Hyman Rickover's (together with a peanut farmer from Georgia named Jimmy Carter) original group of nuclear submariners. Highly decorated for his service, with two Bronze and two Silver Stars as well as the Navy Cross, there was little this man did not know about his profession and the Silent Service.

If you have any interest in learning how the US gained enough time to rebuild the Pacific Fleet and take the war to Japan, you should read this book. If you simply like great stories, then this book will still be fascinating.

Oh! And if you've ever seen Cary Grant's film "Operation Pettticoat" and remember the letter written to the supply depot requesting toilet paper? Read the real story of that letter here, too. show less

This story of a submarine commander’s exploits in the Pacific campaign of WW2 was very well told . Clearly the author knows his stuff. But by the time I reached the end, I’d forgotten that the story was being told in the first person because it was a transcription of an interview or statement of some kind… not sure that that narrative device worked for me. The vivid first-person narration was sufficient. I was also glad to find this interesting because I’ve been very burned out on show more WW2 literature; perhaps the novelty of the Pacific campaign or the submarines was what kept me going. show less

Very suspenseful. Arctic ice pack. (Somehow my tag got entered as a review.)

Review:
Edward Beach is one of the outstanding writers of submarine naval fiction. This book brings back the characters first met in Run Silent, Run Deep. It is many years later. The war is over, the Cold War has begun. Our heroes are older, and wiser, and now in command of nuclear subs. Under the Arctic ice pack they encounter an enemy determined to stop them from relaying information about a secret installation. show more It's a page-turner, getting more and more suspenseful as the climactic ending nears.. show less

This book, a recent gift from a friend, marks Edward "Ned" Beach"s first foray into the world of writing back in 1952. "Submarine!" is a non-fiction account of submarine warfare in the Pacific during World War II. Beach would become famous with the publication of his first novel, "Run Silent, Run Deep" a couple of years later (along with the release of the eponymously titled movie starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster), but "Submarine!" is a collection of true sea stories about the show more submarine war, some of them autobiographical.

Published by Holt, the book curiously bears six different copyright dates--perhaps some of the accounts have appeared elsewhere. My copy has 18 chapters, preceded by a forward penned by Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, who, as Commander, Submarines, Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC)sent Beach and the boats he writes about on their patrols across the Pacific. Each chapter's title is a submarine's name, with USS Trigger (SS-237) dominating the chapter count with eight, all of which recount the several war patrols Beach experienced in her. Two more chapters, those for USS Tirante (SS-420) and USS Piper (SS-409) detail Beach's remaining war patrols after the author detached from the Trigger. Piper was a late-war construction submarine that was on its first war patrol under skipper Beach that was in Japanese waters when the war ended.

The remaining 8 chapters of the book are a veritable "Who's Who" of famous boats and captains, to include USS Wahoo (SS-238) under LCDR Dudley "Mush" Morton, USS Harder (SS-257) under CDR Samuel Dealey, and USS Tang (SS-306) under LCDR Richard "Dick" O'Kane. All of the book's accounts show Beach using his considerable war experience and knowledge of the officers and sailors of these boats to place his reader aboard each of the boats mentioned, a characteristic Beach was to repeat in his later fictional works. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to differentiate these sea stories from the ones from the pages of "Run Silent, Run Deep" and the later "Dust on the Sea".

It is perhaps inevitable that comparisons are made between "Submarine!" and Theodore Roscoe's classic "Submarine Operations in World War II", published three years before Beach's publication. Roscoe's tome is more comprehensive in that it repackages COMSUBPAC's official history into a shorter format. Roscoe does share some of the personal interest information from the many submarine patrol reports available to the COMSUBPAC historian. However, Beach's account rings more authentic, especially those chapters associated with the boats he sailed in: Trigger, Tirante, and Piper. The war became very personal for Beach with the loss of Trigger on its third patrol after Beach left her, and this tragedy too is most evident in the pages.

"Submarine!" is a great read from a soon to be famous author and submariner, and it is well worth your reading time. show less