Silent sailing

James Calvert began his career in the U.S. submarine fleet immediately after graduating from the Naval Academy at Annapolis. In 1943, he was assigned to the attack submarine USS Jack as a naval lieutenant and gradually worked his way up to become a top torpedo targeting operator. With the submarine Jack completed eight combat cruises in the Pacific. Her crew sank fifteen Japanese ships and at the end of the war she was the ninth most successful by tonnage sunk.

The author gives a faithful, detailed and exciting account of submarine operations in the Pacific against the Japanese - the pursuit and sinking of tankers, ammunition ships and troop transports. The commander of a convoy that Jack crossed sent a radio message to Tokyo that a "pack" of submarines had attacked him. Although the main theme of the book is the actual battle with the Japanese and its tactics, the reader will also learn a lot of interesting technical information about the way submarines were operated at that time. These include passages on dealing with the unreliable torpedoes that were a major weakness of the US submarine fleet at the beginning of the war. At the end of the war he was transferred to the submarine USS Haddo, with which he completed his last combat operation.

Calvert also recalls experiences ashore between combat cruises, including an unfinished flirtation with a young Australian woman. His memoirs culminate in an unauthorized trip to Tokyo just after the Japanese surrender, which nearly ended his naval career because he violated the rules of occupation.

James Calvert was one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Navy in World War II. After the war, he commanded a nuclear-powered U.S. submarine with which he surfaced at the North Pole, served as chief of the Annapolis Naval Academy, and finally as commander of the 1st Fleet in the Pacific. He was going into the reserves as a vice admiral.

The book contains 8 pages of black and white pictorial appendix.