World War II Database

Full Title: War Beneath the Waves: A True Story of Courage and Leadership Aboard a World War II Submarine

In 1943, in the Makassar Strait, American submarine USS Billfish underwent a devastating depth charge attack. Finding his senior officers incapacitated by exhaustion and fear, diving officer Lieutenant Charlie Rush took command of the ship and ordered the ingenious escape route, backtracking its course of maneuvers in the past few hours so that previously leaked oil became the submarine's cover rather than a tool that could be used by the enemy to track down the location of the boat. During war time, taking command of a ship the way he did was an act of insubordination so severe that he could have ended up facing the firing squad. However, this action could have been what saved the submarine and its crew. Not only it went unpunished, it also led to his award of the Navy Cross medal decades later.

With War Beneath the Waves, author Don Keith attempted to tell this intense story. At every turn, his narratives were so hauntingly descriptive to the point that I was hanging on to each word as the sailors were hanging onto the bulkheads with each depth charge blast. A great storyteller, Keith translated Rush's memories, supported by ship logs of USS Billfish and sister ship USS Bowfin, into a dramatic tale worthy of the silver screen - wherein laid the small problem. As I traversed through the book, I gained the sense that the story was much more so a memoir of Charlie Rush rather than a historical account of USS Billfish's journey through the Makassar Strait, and Keith did not explicitly make that point clear. Had this been a work done in the manner of a history book, should the story of the skipper, Lieutenant Commander Frederic Lucas, who had been described as incompetent as a submarine commander, be told as well, especially when Rush and Keith was challenging his very reputation?

I had reviewed this book in its audio book format. The narrator Stephen Hoye read the book at a great pace, making even the small number of sections filled with technical language easy to follow.

Despite the criticism above, Keith still presented an inspiring memoir of a gallant submariner. This story drove home the notion that only the collective courage and training of the crew, led by decisive officers, allowed a submarine to successfully complete war patrols and return to port safely.