Unrestricted Warfare: How a New Breed of Officers Led the Submarine Force to Victory in World War II

Product Description

Unrestricted Warfare reveals the dramatic story of the harsh baptism by fire faced by U.S. submarine commanders in World War II. The first skippers went to battle hamstrung by conservative peacetime training and plagued by defective torpedoes. Drawing extensively from now declassified files, Japanese archives, and the testimony of surviving veterans, James DeRose has written a fascinating account of the men and vessels responsible for the only successful submarine campaign of the war. They clearly charted a new course to victory in the Pacific.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR UNRESTRICTED WARFARE

“”James DeRose has done an excellent job– surprisingly so, in view of his lack of true WWII submarine experience. He obviously contacted everyone he could find who served on one of the three boats he concentrated on, and he read, as well, everything he could find that was written about them. . . . DeRose shines by his interpretation of events as the Japanese must have seen them. . . . His reconstruction of how Wahoo came to her end may well be pretty close to correct. . . . He does the same with Tang.””-CAPTAIN EDWARD L. BEACH, USN author of Submarine! and Run Silent, Run Deep

“”An outstanding addition to the literature of the Silent Service. . . . The depth of research is wonderful. . . . This is fine history . . . that rivals Blair’s Silent Victory.””-PAUL CROZIER, sitemaster, “”Legends of the Deep”” (www.warfish.com) Web site on the USS Wahoo

“”I knew all of the book’s main characters quite well. . . . I am also completely familiar with submarine operations in the Pacific. With that background I couldn’t fail to thoroughly enjoy DeRose’s book. It is well written and has the right feel.””-CHESTER W. NIMITZ JR., rear admiral, USN (Ret.)

“”Sail with American submariners into tightly guarded Japanese home waters; undergo the horror of a depth charge attack; experience the thrill of victory with some of the U.S. Navy’s ace submarine skippers. All this–and much more–is contained in James F. DeRose’s compelling Unrestricted Warfare. No one interested in the naval side of World War II should be without it.””-NATHAN MILLER author of War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II

From Booklist

IBM-exec-turned-historian DeRose focuses on officers associated with the legendary USS
Wahoo. Headed by Dudley W. Morton and his executive officer, Richard O’Kane, they included George Grider, author of the classic
Warfish (1958), and Roger Paine, DeRose’s principal informant. Numbering about a dozen in all, they did more than their share to establish the aggressive submarine tactics used in the war against Japan. Some of the material DeRose presents will be familiar to all but naval-history novices, but by drawing on oral history and untapped Japanese sources, DeRose adds considerably to readily available knowledge on his subject. For example, DeRose discloses that most of the men in the water attacked by
Wahoo during a controversial episode of Morton’s career were Indian POWs being shipped to New Guinea as slave laborers. DeRose also provides a balanced account of the small-group politics of submarine command and a harrowing one of the last hours of the men trapped aboard
Tang, which was sunk by one of her own torpedoes.
Roland Green

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From the Inside Flap

At the outbreak of World War II, the performance of America’s growing submarine fleet was handicapped by the conservative peacetime training of its commanders. Avoiding risk and evading detection by the enemy were emphasized over engagement in combat. A new type of aggressive, daring leadership was needed. Unrestricted Warfare dramatically documents the transformation of the “Silent Service” into the deadliest fighting force in the Pacific theater.The initial focus is on Dudley “Mush” Morton, who virtually seized command of the submarine Wahoo, breaking ingrained patterns of tentative leadership. Morton devised com