How did a sixteen year old Arkansas plowboy with an eighth-grade education find his way into the United States submarine service and onto the frontline of America’s naval war against Imperial Japan? For George Jones that path lay through the hardships of the Great Depression, around some of the rules and restrictions of enlistment, and into a Navy unprepared for the battles that lay ahead. During his service on a supply ship in the Asiatic Fleet, he watched the Japanese war machine grind across the Chinese mainland. Hard work, brains, and savvy helped George transfer to the submarine service where he made three war patrols on antique “S” boats and four more on the USS Pogy, a modern fleet-type sub. Firsthand accounts of the seldom told pre-war Navy, of life on a World War I era submarine, and of the terror and triumph of undersea battle are detailed in this autobiographic tale.

George Jones spent his youth in Arkansas working on his family’s hardscrabble farm and searching for opportunities made scarce by the Great Depression. Deliverance came in the form of an enlistment into the Navy. He first served in the Asiatic Fleet near war-torn China. Later, George joined the Submarine Service and sailed on two of the “S” boats, riveted WWI antiques that were called on to meet the challenges of modern warfare as America’s Navy rebuilt after Pearl Harbor. George’s story is one of excitement and danger, comradeship and loss, struggle, and victory. Also a Navy veteran, Stephen Leal Jackson spent eight years in the submarine force. Jackson has published books and articles on the cultural and military history of submarines in the twentieth-century. His unique perspective as both a submariner and historian allows Jackson to provide the reader access to the gripping trials and terrors of the undersea battles of World War II.