Reading this gives a very hopeful tone to a pretty hopeless situation.<p>Visiting the USS <i>Pampanito</i> in SF recently, I read a plaque that said, while the US submarine force in WWII formed only 1.5% of the Naval force, it was responsible for something like 55% of confirmed kills of Japanese shipping. The tradeoff was that the submarine force suffered about a 30% loss rate.<p>Pretty brutal odds, knowing that you have a one-in-four to one-in-three chance of never getting off that boat.