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Originally Posted by Nightmare
As the war progressed the Japanese started routing their shipping to hug the coastlines (source: “Clear the Bridge” by Richard O’Kane). This put US submarines in the position to have to go into shallow waters to have any chances of hitting anything. Everybody knows that a submarine in shallow water can quickly become a dead submarine. The Pacific may be the deepest ocean, but a lot of it is relatively shallow. USS Tang only sits in 180 feet of water in the Formosa Strait.
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That's true, according to what I read in "Red Scorpion", which dealt with the war patrols of the USS Rasher. The author's father served aboard that boat from construction & commissioning right up to the end of the war.
In her first few war patrols she was assigned to patrol the Borneo/Sulawesi/Celebes area. The skipper found that many ships would hug the coast as close as they could, and find shelter (if any could be found) in a harbour during the night.