Reading this gives a very hopeful tone to a pretty hopeless situation.

Visiting the USS Pampanito 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.

Pretty brutal odds, knowing that you have a one-in-four to one-in-three chance of never getting off that boat.

That is pretty grim. Better, though, than the odds over the same time period for some WWII bomber crews. Which probably also wasn't the worst job.

>Better, though, than the odds over the same time period for some WWII bomber crews.

Actually, no. Submarine crews suffered the highest percentage of losses across all American armed forces in WW2. See link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_United_States_sub...

What did they compare it to? All aircrews of all aircraft types? B-17 crews in Europe? Something else?

(from November, 2008)