The Barents Sea was gray and angry on November 15, 1969. Beneath those frigid waves, two nuclear submarines—one American, one Soviet—found themselves in a dance of shadows that neither captain intended to finish with a crash. The USS Gato, an American attack submarine built for silent hunting, and the Soviet K-19, a ballistic missile boat already infamous among sailors as “the Widowmaker,” collided 200 feet below the surface. No lives were lost, no missiles fired, but for a few long seconds, the Cold War trembled on the edge of disaster. What followed was a cover-up so complete that even the men who served aboard Gato rarely spoke of it for decades. The “Barents Bump,” as it’s come to be called, was one of the closest peacetime encounters between nuclear powers that could have turned catastrophic.

In the film The Caine Mutiny, we are told that there has never been a mutiny aboard a United States Navy ship. That is true, at least by the letter of the law. But there have been moments that tested the courage, discipline, and endurance of those who serve beneath the waves.

This is the story of one such moment. In November 1943, deep in the Makassar Strait, the crew of the submarine USS Billfish found themselves fighting not only the enemy above but fear within. Their commanding officer lost his nerve during a relentless sixteen-hour depth charge attack, leaving his men to face the unthinkable.

For sixty years, the truth of what happened aboard Billfish remained buried in silence. Only decades later would the full story come to light, revealing not rebellion, but a different kind of bravery, born in the darkest depths of war.

In the years after World War II, the U.S. Navy faced a new kind of threat. The kamikazes were gone, but the sky itself had become the enemy. Long before satellites and airborne warning planes, the Navy turned to an unlikely solution. It pulled its old fleet submarines out of mothballs and refitted them with radar, turning hunters of the deep into sentinels of the sky.

These were the radar picket submarines, known by the mysterious designation SSR. They formed a short but fascinating chapter in Cold War history, watching for danger from beneath the waves. In this episode, we’ll explore how the program called Project Migraine transformed boats like USS Requin and USS Burrfish into the Navy’s earliest early-warning systems. It’s the story of ingenuity, frustration, and adaptation in an age when America’s eyes had to look not just across the seas, but far above them.

Today on Patrol Reports, we surface the story of the USS Will Rogers, the last of the “41 for Freedom.” She was a silent sentinel of the Cold War, built to carry peace through the threat of unimaginable power. From her first patrol in 1967 to her final days in the early 1990s, the Will Rogers stood watch in the deep, unseen but never idle.

Her namesake, the American humorist and philosopher Will Rogers, once said he never met a man he didn’t like. It was a fitting name for a boat that carried the burden of deterrence, trusting that her very presence would prevent the unthinkable.

Join us as we look back on her construction, her patrols, and the men who lived and served aboard her. This is the story of the last of her kind, and the quiet peace she helped preserve beneath the waves.

The USS Daniel Boone took her name from one of America’s most enduring legends, the frontiersman Daniel Boone. Born on November 2, 1734, in Pennsylvania, Boone became a symbol of courage, exploration, and rugged independence. He blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap, opening the way for settlers into Kentucky, and his adventures in the American frontier made him a folk hero even in his own lifetime. Boone fought in the French and Indian War and later in the Revolutionary War, defending frontier settlements against British-allied forces. Though often romanticized in later tales, the real Boone was a man of endurance and adaptability, traits that mirrored the submarine that bore his name. Just as the frontiersman explored uncharted lands to secure a future for his people, the submarine Daniel Boone explored the depths of the sea to safeguard a nation standing watch in an uncertain age.

In this episode of Patrol Reports, we surface the story of the USS James K. Polk—a submarine that lived two very different lives beneath the waves. Commissioned in 1966 at the height of the Cold War, Polk carried the nation’s most powerful weapons on sixty-six deterrent patrols, vanishing for months at a time to keep the peace through silent vigilance. When the Cold War ended, she was reborn, trading missiles for Dry Deck Shelters and special operations missions as an attack submarine. From nuclear deterrence to covert warfare, her service tells the story of how the Navy adapted to a changing world without ever losing its edge. Today, only her sail remains, standing tall in New Mexico as a monument to the men who served aboard her—and to the submarine that evolved with the times while guarding the nation in silence.

In the dark depths of the Cold War, one submarine carried the name of a Founding Father who believed peace could be preserved only through strength. USS John Adams, SSBN-620, was a Lafayette-class ballistic missile submarine built to ensure that no enemy would dare start a war it could not finish. From her launch in 1963 to her recycling in 1996, she patrolled the oceans unseen, part of the silent shield that kept the balance of deterrence intact.

This episode tells her story, from her keel laying at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to her long patrols from Holy Loch and Rota, Spain. It is a tribute to the men who lived and served in the quiet tension of the nuclear age, and to the enduring legacy of the name John Adams, a symbol of vigilance, principle, and devotion to the cause of liberty beneath the waves.

Welcome to Dave Does History, where we surface the forgotten stories beneath the waves. Today, we turn our periscope toward the USS Theodore Roosevelt, SSBN-600, a submarine that carried the name of a president who believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Launched in 1959 at Mare Island, she embodied the dawn of a new kind of strength, one that stayed hidden under the sea but kept the peace through quiet vigilance. For two decades, her crews sailed in silence, guardians of the Cold War’s uneasy calm. This is the story of the boat that bore Roosevelt’s name, and of the men who kept watch in the deep so that the world above might never see the fire they carried.