This page started as a photo essay about United States Submarines beginning with the year 1900 and working up to and through the year 1940. It has turned out to also be about the men who sailed these submarines.

We do not remember most of these mens names you will see on these pages but I have tried to pull their faces out of the crowd. Where the mans name is known I use it.

These sailors were the boys down the street, around the corner, out on the farms, the high school football heroes and, yes, even the geeks of their time, but they became one of the elite, one of that 1% that made the cut and became a United States Submariner. The best of the best of the United States Navy.

It is important to remember that the submarines were just steel and machinery. It was the men who brought them to life and made them live. It is the men that gave them the romance, the mystery and the mystique.

I have included a number of first person accounts on a some of the pages for a number of the boats of what life was like aboard an "S" or "R" or even a "K" boat. Also what it was like being bombed on Sealion at Cavite harbor in December 1941. All this is most valuable since the men who sailed these boats are rapidly making their own "eternal patrols". Preservation of these verbal images is important.

Sailors, rest your oar! Stand relieved, we have the watch. ...and Thank you!