USS DORADO (SS-248): On Eternal Patrol

“We knew we were going to have a rough time with this submarine from the beginning.” Those words were written by Don Wheeler, a former DORADO crewmember who participated in the sea trials, in a letter to the author. DORADO was a U.S. Gato-class submarine, launched on May 23, 1943, set sail for Pearl Harbor via the Panama Canal on October 6, and was lost with all hands somewhere in the Caribbean Sea six days later. This book is quite possibly about one of the worst “friendly fire” incidents in U.S. military history. It is the story of a U.S. submarine attacked by a patrol-bomber aircraft attached to VP-210 out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Within these pages you will read the formal Court of Inquiry that concluded, incorrectly, that the aircrew probably bombed a U-boat that was known to be in the area. Included in this book is the U-214 logbook which shows that they witnessed the bombing of DORADO. In this book is also the story of the author's search for the submarine over a 20+ year period.