Pigboat 39

"Japan has started hostilities, govern yourselves accordingly. That is the message at 0330 on December 8, 1941, found the submarine S-39--a veteran of 16 years on the China station--anchored in the Philippine harbor of Masbate. Pigboat 39 is the gripping story of this venerable submarine and the courage, skill, and suffering of her officers and men. Working together in the tight and perilous confines of the old sub, fighting with her primitive equipment, they manage to sink two enemy ships, then to elude the onrushing Japanese and slip through the Sunda Strait to a temporary haven in Australia, before sailing to further action in the Solomon Islands."