Batfish, the Champion "Submarine-Killer" Submarine of World War II

The book gives detailed accounts off the goings on in and around the batfish. The book tells you all about the 7 war patrols it goes on and how it gets the grand and glorious title of hunter-killer sub. The writer was actually on all 7 war patrols. It is just a personall account of what happens and keeps you guessing what will happen to them next.It also tells how it got to its final resting place. It is a very good book.Be ready for some action. Good reading.

This review is based on the 1982 paperback edition comprising 276 pages, ten photographs, no charts and no maps. Author Hughston E. Lowder was a plankowner, radio operator and sonar operator on the USS Batfish (SS-310, a thick-skinned boat of the Balao class) for the full duration of its seven war patrols. He describes the boat and crew members as typical, not great. In under two years she earned a Presidential Unit Citation, nine battle stars, sank fourteen enemy ships and damaged two others. In four days in February 1945 she sank three of the four enemy submarines then in Philippine waters. The book presents the facts in a well written readable style with many excerpts from official logs and reports. As the radio operator young Lowder was ideally placed to monitor official traffic and to know what was happening at most times under the boat's three different skippers. The reader can feel the boredom of uneventful patrols, the frustration caused by days and weeks of heavy weather, the nuisance of finding sampans when the boat surfaced, the thrill and disappointment of taking on the Yamato, and the satisfaction of putting down enemy marus and combatants. This is a very good book and I found it impossible to put down.