I picked up this book in the store for the USS Pampinito on Mechanicrawl02008. My grandfather sailed in subs in the Pacific theater in WWII. I was interested in learning more about what his day to day life on the sub must have been like, as he was never one to tell sea tales. This memoir, enriched with the stories of other men serving on the USS Guardfish and USS Extractor gives an idea of the rhythm of difficulty and threat to which the men who served lived and worked.

From the US Naval Institute webpage for the book:

Claude Conner weaves a compelling tale of his experiences in the Pacific aboard the USS Guardfish, one of the Navy’s top-scoring World War II submarines. Tragically, the Guardfish also was the only submarine to sink another American warship in a little-known friendly-fire accident against the USS Extractor. This well-documented memoir chronicles Guardfish’s Hollywood-like war actions, including her perilous forays into Japanese-controlled harbors, daring rescue of personnel from a Japanese-held island, near catastrophic flooding of the submarine’s conning tower, depth-charge attacks, and much more.

The author includes rare firsthand accounts by a dozen Extractor survivors who describe actions leading up to their encounter with the submarine, the actual sinking of the ship, their rescue, and their subsequent treatment by Navy officials. Conner examines the chain of events that led to the regrettable sinking and offers details of the Court of Inquiry that followed and for which he testified as a witness. This book was highly recommended by World War II historian Clay Blair when first published in 1999.