Arthur Baudzus was 10 years old when Hitler came to power in Germany, and only 23 when the war ended. In this faxcinating memoir, Baudzus recalls growing up in the small East Prussian town of Lyck. Following and apprenticeship as an electrician, Baudzus went to work in a shipyard, where his job building and repairing U-boats made him exempt from conscription. Despite this, he eventually volunteered for the Navy and for submarine service.

Assigned to the U-859 as a last-minute replacement, Baudzus spent six months in the cramped U-boat as it slowly made its way from the Baltic port of Kiel, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up through the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean to the Japanese held port of Penang. Less than an hour from port, a torpedo from HMS Trenchant brought an abrupt end to the voyage. Baudzus and 19 others managed to escape from the sunken boat, and he spent the next 24 hours floating in the Malacca Straits.

In his exciting new novel of submarine warfare in World War II, author J.T. McDaniel takes the reader from the builder's yard in Connecticut, on through acceptance trials, and out to the Pacific fleet with the crew of the new fleet submarine Bacalao. Present during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bacalao quickly sets out on an ill-fated first war patrol, where some officers learn more than they might like about themselves, and enemy depth charges nearly end the boat's career.

As the war progresses, so do the men in Bacalao's crew. One, Lieutenant Lawrence Miller, will go the farthest until, in the end, it will be his skill and luck that determines everyone's fate.