Story is based on the history of the USS Irex SS-482.
 
The twenty-five or thirty Tench-class submarines built and completed between 1944 and 1946 represented an improvement over the previous Gato and Balao classes only in regard to a better arrangement of ballast tanks and interior machinery. The only visible difference was in their armament. The first of the class was the U.S.S. Tench SS-417, which was commissioned on 6 October 1944. Most of the class, including the Irex, did not enter service in sufficient time for a war patrol.
 
On 2 October 1944 the Irex's keel was laid at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Her displacement was 1570 tons on the surface and 2416 tons submerged. Her length was 311.8 feet overall and 307' at the waterline (later reported as 308'). She was 27.4' at the beam and had a draft of 16'5". Facing aft was a 5"/25 deck gun, and there was originally two smaller 40 mm. cannons, one located on a chin mount below the bridge and the other on the cigarette deck extension of the bridge deck aft of the shears. On many fleet boats this cigarette deck was removed in order to reduce the silhouette of the shears, but not for a while the Irex.
 
The crew complement was apparently meant to be six officers and sixty enlisted men, but the Tench Class was supposed to be 80-90 altogether, and the Irex in 1947 was said to have 80 men, and in the 'fifties, 84.
 
Second Printing Edition (January 1, 2007)
Hardcover: 159 pages