In October 1944, the USS Tang fired its 24th and final torpedo of the patrol, and the weapon circled back and sank the submarine. This episode follows Commander Richard O’Kane, a veteran of the aggressive USS Wahoo, as he pushed a Balao-class boat to its limits: firing from 500 yards, surviving a dive past the 612-foot gauge, rescuing 22 downed airmen near Truk, and sinking ten ships in a single patrol.

The conversation also confronts the sinking of the Tamahoko Maru, an unmarked ship carrying Allied prisoners of war, and the technological blindness that made such losses possible. It then covers O’Kane’s decision to enter the Formosa Strait alone, the night surface attacks that caused two Japanese ships to collide, the Mark 18 gyroscope failure, the only known combat use of the Momsen lung, and the nine survivors pulled aboard a Japanese frigate alongside the sailors they had just attacked.

• Why firing torpedoes from 500 yards risked duds and depth charges
• What happens to a submarine hull past its test depth
• How O’Kane drove the Tang inside a transport ship’s turning circle
• Why the Mark 18 electric torpedo circled back and struck the aft torpedo room
• The Momsen lung escape from 180 feet and the Tang’s eternal patrol legacy