PODCAST · history
Patrol Reports
by FTB1(SS) David Ray Bowman
Podcast stories from the US Navy Submarine Force - 1900 to todayBrought to you by the Bremerton Base of United States Submarine Veterans, Inc
Episodes
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A Night off Korea
USS Croaker (SS-246) stalks a coastal freighter by radar, launches four torpedoes, and closes to within 400 yards of a three-masted schooner. It is October 23, 1944, off Korea’s west coast, and a recurring gun malfunction is about to complicate the night’s fighting. In this episode of Patrol...
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Down She Goes, and Up She Comes: USS Hawkbill and the Silent Service Comes Home
October, 1945. Portland, Oregon. Just weeks after Japan's surrender, USS Hawkbill (SS-366) prepared to do something extraordinary. Before a crowd gathered along the Willamette River, the World War II submarine submerged beneath the muddy waters, leaving behind a blanket of flowers honoring the...
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Sentinel of the Palawan Passage
How did two American submarines help open the Battle of Leyte Gulf and strike a devastating blow against the Imperial Japanese Navy? On October 21, 1944, as American forces fought to liberate the Philippines, USS Darter (SS-227) was patrolling the dangerous waters near Palawan Passage. Commander...
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Missed Her By *That* Much...
On October 20, 1943, deep in enemy waters off Japan, USS Tarpon (SS-175) was closing in on one of the Imperial Japanese Navy's most valuable assets: an aircraft carrier. But this was no chance encounter. American naval intelligence had intercepted Japanese communications, providing Commander…
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Narwhal Delivers
USS Narwhal (SS-167): The Secret Mission to Negros | October 19, 1944 On October 19, 1944, just one day before General Douglas MacArthur's forces landed on Leyte, an American submarine surfaced off the coast of Japanese-occupied Negros Island. Her mission wasn't to sink enemy ships. It was to...
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Into the Center of the Convoy: USS Raton (SS-270), October 18, 1944
Nine enemy ships. Scattered escorts. One American submarine. And a commander willing to take an extraordinary risk. On the night of October 18, 1944, USS Raton (SS-270) found herself with an opportunity few submarine commanders would dare attempt. Somewhere off the coast of Luzon, a Japanese…
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Silent Service, Tragic Destiny | USS Shark SS-314
October 17, 1943. At the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, the United States Navy launched USS Shark (SS-314), a new Balao-class submarine destined for combat in the Pacific. Just one year and one week later, Shark and all 87 men aboard would be lost. In this episode of Patrol…
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Tollng of the Boast for April
USS Pickerel USS Grenadier USS Gudgeon USS Snook USS Thresher
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Tolling of the Boats - March (Video)
Remembering the US Submarines and men lost in the month of March: USS F-4 USS H-1 USS Perch USS Grampus USS Triton USS Tullibee USS Kete USS Trigger
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Grayback's Finale
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…
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Tolling of the Boats - February (Video)
The USSVI Bremerton Base remembers the US Submarines lost in the month of February
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Silence At Truk
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,...
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Benjamin Franklin SSBN-640
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...
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Alexander Hamilton SSBN-617
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…
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Cat's Eyes
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...
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Tolling of the Boats - January (Video)
The USSVI Bremerton Base remembering the US Navy Submarines lost in the month of January
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Tolling of the Boats - January
We remember the : USS S-26 USS S-36 USS Argonaut USS Scorpion USS Swordfish
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Samuel Rayburn SSBN-635
The USS Sam Rayburn was built for a job no one ever wanted her to do, and that is precisely why she mattered. In the tense years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, American strategy shifted away from spectacle and toward survival. Submarines like Rayburn were designed to vanish beneath the ocean and...
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS George C. Marshall SSBN-654
The USS George C. Marshall was built for a kind of war that everyone hoped would never happen. No battles, no victories, no headlines, just long months of silence beneath the sea, carrying consequences too large to ever be used lightly. In this episode of Dave Does History, we step inside the…
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Woodrow Wilson SSBN-624
The USS Woodrow Wilson was built to disappear. Not in disgrace, not in secrecy, but in purpose. She was one of the original Forty One for Freedom, a ballistic missile submarine whose job was to slip beneath the ocean and make sure the unthinkable never happened. For more than thirty years, she…
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Sea Devil vs Hawaii Maru
There are stories from the Pacific War that settle into the mind with a kind of heavy clarity. They do not shout. They do not demand. They simply sit there and remind us that the ocean has a long memory. Today we are stepping into one of those stories, the night when USS Sea Devil went hunting in...
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Bonefish Strikes
The story of USS Bonefish on November 29, 1943, is the kind of moment that captures the strange rhythm of submarine warfare. Long stretches of waiting and watching suddenly turn into a burst of violence that decides everything in a few minutes. Bonefish had been working her way through the Flores...
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We Sank Their Battleship
On this episode of Patrol Reports we return to one of the most remarkable moments in the entire Pacific submarine campaign. The date is November twenty first 1944. The place is the dark and storm driven waters of the Formosa Strait. The submarine USS Sealion is running on the surface through…
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Subs Going Bump In The NIght
The Barents Sea was gray and angry on November 15, 1969. Beneath those frigid waves, two nuclear submarines—one American, one Soviet—found themselves in a dance of shadows that neither captain intended to finish with a crash. The USS Gato, an American attack submarine built for silent hunting…
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Not the Caine
In the film The Caine Mutiny, we are told that there has never been a mutiny aboard a United States Navy ship. That is true, at least by the letter of the law. But there have been moments that tested the courage, discipline, and endurance of those who serve beneath the waves. This is the story of...
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Eyes on the Skies
In the years after World War II, the U.S. Navy faced a new kind of threat. The kamikazes were gone, but the sky itself had become the enemy. Long before satellites and airborne warning planes, the Navy turned to an unlikely solution. It pulled its old fleet submarines out of mothballs and…
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Will Rogers SSBN-659
Today on Patrol Reports, we surface the story of the USS Will Rogers, the last of the “41 for Freedom.” She was a silent sentinel of the Cold War, built to carry peace through the threat of unimaginable power. From her first patrol in 1967 to her final days in the early 1990s, the Will Rogers…
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Daniel Boone SSBN-629
The USS Daniel Boone took her name from one of America’s most enduring legends, the frontiersman Daniel Boone. Born on November 2, 1734, in Pennsylvania, Boone became a symbol of courage, exploration, and rugged independence. He blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap, opening the…
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS James K. Polk SSBN-645
In this episode of Patrol Reports, we surface the story of the USS James K. Polk—a submarine that lived two very different lives beneath the waves. Commissioned in 1966 at the height of the Cold War, Polk carried the nation’s most powerful weapons on sixty-six deterrent patrols, vanishing for...
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS John Adams SSBN-620
In the dark depths of the Cold War, one submarine carried the name of a Founding Father who believed peace could be preserved only through strength. USS John Adams, SSBN-620, was a Lafayette-class ballistic missile submarine built to ensure that no enemy would dare start a war it could not…
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Theodore Roosevelt SSBN-600
Welcome to Dave Does History, where we surface the forgotten stories beneath the waves. Today, we turn our periscope toward the USS Theodore Roosevelt, SSBN-600, a submarine that carried the name of a president who believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Launched in 1959 at Mare...
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS George Bancroft SSBN-643
George Bancroft was one of the great figures of nineteenth-century America, a historian, diplomat, and the founder of the United States Naval Academy. More than a century later, the Navy honored him by giving his name to a vessel that represented the cutting edge of Cold War deterrence. USS…
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The Sorcerer Strikes
In the autumn of 1944, the submarine USS Aspro slipped out of Fremantle and into the vast expanse of the South China Sea. This was her fifth war patrol, a mission that would test the nerves of her crew and the steel of the boat against Japan’s desperate efforts to keep its sea lanes open. For…
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Jack's Silver Star Moment
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…
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From Harbor Tragedy to a Resilient Legacy: The USS R-6 (SS-83)
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...
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Mrs. Hutchinson's Son - USS Sargo's (SS-188) Fifth War Patrol
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.…
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS John Marshall SSBN-611
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...
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41 Cold War Sentinels: USS Henry L. Stimson SSBN-655
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....
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The Last Act of the USS O-9 Submarine Tragedy
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...
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How America’s First Submarines Launched the Silent Service: USS Plunger SS-2
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…
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In the Silent Depths: The Fighting Life of USS Gurnard
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...
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41 Cold War Sentinels - USS Von Steuben SSBN-632
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...
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USS Guavina’s Fierce Attack - September 15, 1944
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.…
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Growlers Legendary Down-the-Throat Torpedo Attack of September 12, 1944
On September 12, 1944, the USS Growler and her crew faced one of the most extraordinary days in submarine history. Operating as part of a wolf pack in the waters between Formosa and Luzon, Growler found herself in the middle of a heavily guarded Japanese convoy. What followed was a series of bold...
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A Cold War Legacy and 21st Century Vanguard: USS Michigan
This episode takes us beneath the surface, into the hidden world of one of the Navy’s most formidable submarines. USS Michigan was commissioned on September 11, 1982, as part of the Ohio class, carrying the weight of America’s nuclear deterrent during the darkest days of the Cold War. Later, she...
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The Turtle vs. HMS Eagle: America’s First Submarine Attack in the Revolutionary War
Special Guests Lena and Graham from the Patrol Reports Podcast join us today to talk about the first US Submarine attack in history… during the Revolutionary War… On the night of September 7, 1776, New York Harbor looked like a wooden forest, crowded with the towering masts of the Royal Navy. The...
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USS Paddle and the Tragedy of Shinyo Maru
Welcome to another episode of Patrol Reports, where we bring you the stories of the Silent Service in World War II. Today we follow the USS Paddle on patrol during the first week of September 1944, a mission that would become one of the most tragic chapters of the submarine war in the Pacific.…
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The Silent Prowler and the Submarine School Graduate: USS Cod’s War Patrols 2 and 3 through the Eyes of Calvin Baker
The USS Cod was one of the Silent Service’s proud hunters in World War II, a steel prowler built to stalk and sink the ships that kept Japan’s war machine alive. Commissioned in June of 1943, she quickly entered the fight in the South China Sea and the waters off Java and Luzon. Aboard her during...
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USS S-5: The Sunken Submarine That Cheated Death off Cape May
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...
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USS F-4 Raised from the Depths: How the U.S. Navy Salvaged Its First Lost Submarine on August 29, 1915
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.…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Podcast stories from the US Navy Submarine Force - 1900 to todayBrought to you by the Bremerton Base of United States Submarine Veterans, Inc
HOSTED BY
FTB1(SS) David Ray Bowman
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How many episodes does Patrol Reports have?
Patrol Reports currently has 52 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Podcast stories from the US Navy Submarine Force - 1900 to todayBrought to you by the Bremerton Base of United States Submarine Veterans, Inc
How often does Patrol Reports release new episodes?
Patrol Reports has 52 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Patrol Reports?
Patrol Reports is created and hosted by FTB1(SS) David Ray Bowman.
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