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perilously close to defeating Great Britain, already reeling under air attack from Nazi Germany.
    Unknown to most people, even to those with more than a passing interest in World War II, is that, like the Battle of the Atlantic, the war waged by American submarines in the Pacific theater against the merchant marine of Axis Japan played a major factor in that country’s defeat. It was, as submarine historian Clay Blair remarked, a war within a war. It was so successful that some have argued it was the liquidation of Japan’s merchant marine and the blockade of the home islands by U.S. submarines, and not the atomic bomb, that ultimately defeated Japan.
    True or not, the facts are impressive.
    By early 1945 Japan’s ability to import raw materials and food had about reached its end. Imports had been strangled by the U.S. submarine blockade of the home islands. According to the postwar Joint Army Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC), American submarines sank 1,314 Japanese merchant ships totaling 5.3 million tons, not including cargoes, while Japan’s merchant marine complement of 122,000 men suffered 116,000 casualties. This was accomplished by a submarine force of roughly 280 submarines, and 50,000 officers and men including staff and support personnel. It was a costly victory: The U.S. lost 52 subs, 41 of them to direct enemy action. Of the approximately 15,000 men who made war patrols, casualties totaled about 3,500. 1 This war of all-out attrition, that is, unrestricted submarine warfare, ranged over eight million square miles of Pacific Ocean, a truly immense area. At the beginning of the war it seemed to the Allies an impossible task to retake this conquered territory from the Japanese. And while the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, had badly damaged the U.S. Pacific surface fleet, it had not damaged the submarine fleet, which began offensive operations on December 8.
    It took time for the U.S. Navy to recover from the attack, but with dogged determination and flexible, aggressive tactics, American subs slowly began to push back the far-flung outer ring of territories that had been captured and garrisoned by the Japanese. To survive, these garrisons required uninterrupted deliveries of food, weapons, and fuel in quantities that could be transported only by Japanese ships that were prime targets for U.S. submarine torpedoes. As ship sinkings mounted, the ring of territories with its fragile network of shipping lanes shrank until it collapsed.
    As they had in World War II, Germany had waged all-out submarine war in World War I, both times taking a huge toll on Allied shipping. As in World War II, British ship losses in World War I had reached alarming proportions. The losses caused Admiral John Jellicoe, First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, to warn that the Germans would win the war unless the losses were stopped and stopped soon. Winston Churchill echoed Jellicoe’s words twenty-five years later. Had the lessons learned by the British from the near disaster caused by the heavy loss of ships in both wars been heeded by the Japanese, the war in the Pacific might have lasted longer than it did. As it was the Japanese badly underestimated how hard it would be to maintain their lines of supply across the vast Pacific against U.S. submarines. To make matters worse, the Japanese had a weak convoy system and a weak antisubmarine force. Unlike the British and Americans in both wars, the creaky and inefficient Japanese convoy escort system could do little to protect ships that U.S. submarines were sinking faster than they could be replaced. By the time the Japanese got around to building an effective antisubmarine force the war had been lost.
    Yet, in the war’s early stages the U.S. submarine force found itself hobbled by an outmoded and conservative war-fighting doctrine that had been formulated during peacetime by submarine officers who had no combat experience whatsoever. It was hardly surprising,