Nothing Friendly in the Vicinity

Claude Conner weaves a compelling tale of his experiences in the Pacific aboard the USS Guardfish, one of the Navy's top-scoring World War II submarines. Tragically, the Guardfish also was the only submarine to sink another American warship in a little-known friendly-fire accident against the USS Extractor. This well-documented memoir chronicles Guardfish's Hollywood-like war actions, including her perilous forays into Japanese-controlled harbors, daring rescue of personnel from a Japanese-held island, near catastrophic flooding of the submarine's conning tower, depth-charge attacks, and much more. The author includes rare firsthand accounts by a dozen Extractor survivors who describe actions leading up to their encounter with the submarine, the actual sinking of the ship, their rescue, and their subsequent treatment by Navy officials. Conner examines the chain of events that led to the regrettable sinking and offers details of the Court of Inquiry that followed and for which he testified as a witness. This book was highly recommended by World War II historian Clay Blair when first published in 1999.