submarine
3 vessels
Gato-class Submarine
The Gato class fought the submarine war that strangled Japan. American submarines comprised less than 2% of the Navy's personnel and sank over 55% of Japan's merchant tonnage. The cost was staggering. 52 US submarines were lost during the war. 3,505 submariners killed. That's a 22% casualty rate, the highest of any branch of the US military in any war. One in five men who went on patrol in a fleet submarine did not come home. The Gato class bore the brunt of this campaign, running long patrols from Pearl Harbor and Australia into Japanese-controlled waters, operating alone, with no rescue if things went wrong.
Type VII U-boat
The Type VII was the workhorse of the German U-boat fleet and the most produced submarine class in history. Seven hundred and three were built. They nearly won the Battle of the Atlantic — in 1942, U-boats were sinking Allied merchant ships faster than they could be replaced. Churchill later wrote that the U-boat threat was 'the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war.' The Type VII was not a good submarine. It was cramped, slow underwater, and limited in range compared to American fleet boats. But it was cheap, quick to build, and deployed in numbers that overwhelmed Allied defenses until 1943, when improved radar, Ultra intelligence, and escort carriers turned the tide. Of roughly 40,000 men who served in U-boats, 30,000 died. A 75% fatality rate — the highest of any branch of any military in WWII.
USS Nautilus (SSN-571)
USS Nautilus made every submarine that came before her obsolete in an afternoon. On January 17, 1955, her commanding officer signaled "Underway on nuclear power," and the entire calculus of submarine warfare changed. Before Nautilus, a submarine was a surface vessel that could hide underwater temporarily. Battery life measured in hours. Speed submerged was a fraction of surface speed. Nautilus could stay submerged indefinitely, at high speed, limited only by the crew's food supply and psychological endurance. On August 3, 1958, she became the first vessel to reach the geographic North Pole, transiting beneath the Arctic ice cap. The message: "Nautilus 90 North." Everything the nuclear submarine fleet became, every ballistic missile submarine sitting on patrol right now ensuring nuclear deterrence, started with this boat.