Quote:
Originally Posted by Reinhard Dietz
You're serious, aren't you? I thought I had seen others make reference to this, but I kind of wrote it off as a joke.
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Yup. I'm serious. In pre-war exercises, a commander who managed to get his periscope seen by the "enemy" stood a very high chance of being relieved of command. The submarine was thought of as a scouting unit for the fleet. As most of the US fleet was still sitting in Pearl Harbor, the submarine force took up the slack. The early skippers showed very little success, and were soon replaced by younger, more aggressive officers. These younger officers also had the advantage of having been on actual war patrols under the pre-war skippers. They knew what would work, and what wouldn't.