Why Two Percent Of The Navy Sank Thirty Percent Of Japan’s Fleet

Why Two Percent Of The Navy Sank Thirty Percent Of Japan’s Fleet

At 0230 hours on the morning of October 25th, 1944, Commander Richard Okaine stood on the bridge of USS Tang, watching two torpedoes streak through the dark water of the Formosa Strait. One torpedo ran straight and true toward a damaged Japanese cargo ship. The other torpedo curved left. Its gyroscope had failed. The torpedo was running in a circle. It was coming back toward Tang. Okaane was 33 years old. Naval Academy Graduate Class of 1934. 11 months commanding Tang. In those 11 months, across four completed war patrols, his submarine had sunk more Japanese ships than any boat in the Pacific Fleet. The Navy’s leadership had called submarines a waste of resources before the war. The surface admirals called them sewer pipes. Admiral William Lehey, who would become chief of staff to President Roosevelt, had declared in 1937 that submarines were obsolete weapons with no role in modern naval warfare. Admiral Harry Jarnell stated that submarines would be useful only for reconnaissance and coastal defense. They lacked the range, speed, and firepower to operate effectively in the vast Pacific. When Okain had graduated from submarine school at New London in 1938, his classmates wondered why any officer would volunteer for a weapon the Navy did not believe in. The submarine service was where careers went to die. Officers who wanted to make Admiral commanded battleships or carriers. Officers who wanted combat glory served on destroyers or cruisers. Officers who could not get better assignments ended up on submarines. Okain explained it was not about belief. It was about capability. His classmates wanted to know what capability a submarine had that a battleship or carrier did not. Okain said submarines could approach unseen, strike without warning, and disappear before the enemy could respond. A battleship announced its presence from 20 m away. A carrier needed clear weather and daylight to operate effectively. A submarine could hunt day or night, in any weather, in any seaate. The surface admirals disagreed. They pointed to World War I, where German yubot had sunk merchant ships, but had not changed the strategic balance. The Allies had defeated Germany despite losing millions of tons of shipping to submarines. Convoys and escorts had proven effective against submarine attacks. Sonar technology had made submarines vulnerable to detection and destruction. Modern naval warfare would be decided by surface engagements and carrier battles, not by underwater raiders sneaking around in the dark. The Navy had built submarines anyway, but they had built them wrong. American submarine doctrine in 1941 emphasized scouting for the fleet, not independent operations against enemy commerce. Submarines would locate enemy warships and report their positions. They would screen for enemy

The USS Tang became the deadliest American submarine in World War Two under Commander Richard O’Kane, sinking thirty three Japanese ships and one hundred sixteen thousand tons of enemy vessels across five war patrols in the Pacific Theater. This documentary explores how American submariners overcame defective Mark Fourteen torpedoes, institutional resistance from naval leadership, and Japan’s determined defense to sink thirty percent of the Japanese merchant fleet with less than two percent of the United States Navy’s personnel. Despite submarines being dismissed as obsolete weapons before Pearl Harbor, aggressive commanders like O’Kane developed innovative tactics that transformed underwater warfare and strangled Japan’s economy by cutting critical supply lines carrying oil, iron ore, and food from occupied territories to the home islands. The video examines Tang’s final patrol in the Formosa Strait during October nineteen forty four, the tragic circular torpedo run that sent the submarine to the ocean floor, and the heroic Momsen lung escape by nine survivors from one hundred eighty feet depth who endured ten months as prisoners of war in Japanese camps. Through detailed historical research and firsthand accounts, this story reveals how the American submarine force achieved the highest casualty rate of any military service while delivering decisive strategic results that the Strategic Bombing Survey concluded were instrumental in defeating Japan, proving that individual ships commanded by exceptional officers could change the course of naval warfare and world history.