Qualla: USS S-17

USS S-17: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On February 28, 1942, a U.S. Marine Corps plane dropped a hundred-pound bomb on a periscope cutting through the Caribbean waters near the Panama Canal. The target was an enemy submarine. It was not. The periscope belonged to USS S-17, an American boat on American patrol. Hours later, another Marine plane dropped a second bomb, this time while S-17 sat plainly on the surface. Both bombs missed, and the crew emerged shaken but unscathed. It was not the last time friendly forces would attack her that year, and it was far from the strangest chapter in the long, improbable career of this small submarine.

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USS S-17: Built for One War, Ready for Another

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Lake Torpedo Boat Company laid S-17's keel in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on March 19, 1918, while the Great War still raged in Europe. By the time she launched on May 22, 1920, that war was over. At 231 feet long and displacing 875 tons on the surface, she was compact even by s...

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USS S-17: Across the Pacific and Back

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

S-17 wasted no time. In May 1921, she departed New London, Connecticut, threading through the Panama Canal and crossing the Pacific via California, Hawaii, and Guam to reach the Philippines by December. For the next three years, she operated from Cavite on Luzon, visiting ports t...

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USS S-17: Attacked by Her Own

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pearl Harbor changed everything. Recommissioned on December 16, 1940, as war loomed, S-17 returned to Caribbean patrol. The February 1942 bombing by Marine Corps aircraft was alarming enough, but worse followed. On August 4, 1942, while operating on the surface in the Caribbean, ...

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USS S-17: Final Duty and a Second Life in Fiction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After her repairs, S-17 spent her final active years operating out of New London from September 1942 to July 1944, running training exercises that frequently took her into Casco Bay, Maine. For a boat that had crossed the Pacific and survived bombs from her own side, this was qui...

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