In late February 1944, the USS Grayback was at the height of her power and the edge of her fate. Fresh off a string of devastating attacks in the East China Sea, she had already sunk tens of thousands of tons of Japanese shipping and earned her place among the most successful submarines of the war. But success has a way of narrowing your options. By February 25, she had only two torpedoes left. Ordered home to Midway, she would have to pass near Okinawa, through waters thick with patrol aircraft and escort vessels. Instead of slipping quietly away, her captain chose to strike one last time. It would be her final act.

In this episode of Patrol Reports, we walk through the Grayback’s last week at sea, from triumph to disappearance, and the decades-long mystery that followed. This is not just the story of a submarine lost, but of eighty men who never came home, and the long silence that finally ended.

The USSVI Bremerton Base remembers the US Submarines lost in the month of February

On a January morning in nineteen forty four, a small town in Ohio learned how the war really worked. Not through headlines about victory, but through a quiet notice. A sailor was missing. No details. No explanation. Just absence.

That sailor had been aboard USS Corvina.

Corvina was new, capable, and sent on her first war patrol into some of the most dangerous water on earth. She never came back. Eighty two men went down with her in a single night south of Truk Lagoon. In the vast arithmetic of the Pacific War, Corvina occupies a narrow line. She was the only American submarine lost to an enemy submarine in World War Two.

That fact matters, but it is not the heart of the story.

This is not about rarity. It is about people, machinery, chance, and silence. About what the ocean takes, and what history remembers.

This is the story of USS Corvina, and the crew that remains on Eternal Patrol.

She was built to disappear, and that may be the most important thing about her.

In the long shadow of the Cold War, USS Benjamin Franklin did not chase enemies or make headlines. She waited. Silent, hidden, and relentlessly prepared, she carried a responsibility that most Americans never saw and rarely thought about. As one of the last of the “41 for Freedom,” she formed the quiet backbone of a strategy that bet the nation’s survival on submarines no one could find and crews no one would ever know.

Named for Benjamin Franklin, born January 17, 1706, a man who understood that real power works best when it does not announce itself, this submarine embodied the same philosophy beneath the sea. For nearly three decades, she stood watch through Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident, evolving with the times while never changing her purpose.

This is the story of a warship whose greatest victories were the wars that never came.

The USS Alexander Hamilton was built to operate in silence, and for three decades that silence carried enormous weight. Commissioned in 1963 at the height of the Cold War, she was part of the Forty One for Freedom, a fleet designed to make nuclear war unthinkable by making retaliation unavoidable. From patrols out of Rota and Holy Loch to Arctic operations beneath the ice, the Hamilton spent her life doing the least dramatic thing imaginable, staying hidden and staying ready. Along the way she evolved, upgrading from Polaris missiles to the more powerful Poseidon system, adapting as technology and strategy shifted around her. When treaties and geopolitics nearly ended her career, chance intervened, giving her a second act as a training and aggressor submarine in the Pacific. This is the story of a ship that lasted longer than planned, worked harder than advertised, and proved that endurance, not spectacle, often defines history.

In the early months of the Pacific War, American submarines were sent to sea with imperfect weapons, incomplete intelligence, and almost no margin for error. There was no polished doctrine yet, no comforting sense that victory was inevitable. What there was, instead, were crews learning in real time what survival would require.

On this episode of Patrol Reports, we return to the night of February 3, 1942, when USS Searaven made the transition from lifeline to hunter. Running on the surface in the Molucca Strait, her crew depended not on electronics or automation, but on human eyesight, trust, and judgment under pressure. A single lookout’s report, a commanding officer’s decision, and a few seconds of courage would decide the fate of both hunter and hunted.

This is a story about how submarine warfare actually worked before it was refined, before it was romanticized, and before it was safe. It is about the moment when darkness, discipline, and nerve collided, and the Silent Service found its footing in a very loud way.

The USSVI Bremerton Base remembering the US Navy Submarines lost in the month of January

We remember the :

USS S-26

USS S-36

USS Argonaut

USS Scorpion

USS Swordfish