A Tale Of Two Subs

On November 19, 1943, the submarine USS Sculpin slid below the waves for the last time in what would become one of the most remarkable stories in U.S. Naval history. Not only did several crew survive – an rare event in WW II submarine warfare – but several were aboard a Japanese aircraft carrier en route to a POW camp when it was torpedoed and sunk by the Sculpin’s sister ship, the USS Sailfish. At the end of WW II several unlikely survivors told a tale of endurance against these amazing reversals of fortune. For one officer in particular, who knew that being captured could have meant losing the war for the allies, his struggle was not in surviving but in sealing his own fate in an of heroism which culminated in the Medal of Honor. John Phillip Cromwell was one of the few who knew that US Intelligence had cracked Japan’s top-secret codes. If this were were revealed under torture it would force Japanese Naval Intelligence to change the codes, which would potentially change the course of the war, so this book is Cromwell’s story as well.