This is your standard WWII or really any “war” book. Well researched, copiously cited, factually accurate, etc. But that comes with the usual downside of these works. Repetitive, dry, and unimaginative.
There are hundreds of books like these. The best of them provide new insight and bring overlooked topics to the reader’s attention. The worst simply regurgitate facts from an encyclopedia in a new sequence of words. This book falls somewhere in between. There is little analysis or contemplation here. The back 80 pages of the book recount the life of POWs in Japan and not the submarine actions themselves.
The coverage of the Drum, Silversides, and Tang is well chronicled and detailed but falls quickly into a series of “it fired its forward torpedoes, they missed, they fired again, they hit, the sub dove, it survived depth charges, 10,000 tons were on the bottom”. A recount of the impact of submarine warfare in the Pacific—yes. A chronical of each of these subs important actions as well as their commanders? Yes. Something more than a repetition of dates and actions? No. One could sit down and read through all of the after action reports issued by each commander and come away with the same information.
A book, even non-fiction, to be truly informative, valued, and retainable must do more than what Scott did here. The bravery of the mariners involved deserve a bit more than a laundry list of junk and freighter sinkings along with cliche retelling of the terror of depth charges. You don’t get that here.