Slade Deville Cutter (November 1, 1911 – June 9, 2005) was a career U.S. naval officer who was awarded four Navy Crosses and tied for second place for Japanese ships sunk in World War II.

[1] "An all-American football player, he achieved instant fame as a first classman when he won the 1934 Army-Navy game with a first-quarter field goal.

[2] Cutter was Executive Officer of USS Pompano (SS-181) under LCDR Lew Parks when she left Pearl Harbor on her first war patrol on 18 December 1941, just 11 days after the Japanese attack.

Only two days out of Pearl Harbor, Pompano was sighted by a U.S. patrol plane, which attacked, and called in dive bombers from the nearby USS Enterprise (CV-6).

[2] After an inevitable depth-charge attack and with fuel draining relentlessly from the oil leak, Pompano returned to home base on 31 January 1942.

After the boat returned, Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood (Commander, Submarines, Pacific Fleet, COMSUBPAC) relieved McGregor for not being aggressive enough.

Heading for the East China Sea, he drew first blood on the 29th, 30th, and 31st, when Seahorse sank three trawlers with gunfire south of Japan."

Entering the East China Sea and bearing for the Korea Strait, Cutter sank two more ships, then returned to Pearl Harbor on 12 December.

Arriving in the patrol area, he received a message from HYPO, alerting him to a convoy of two freighters and three escorts, which he located visually on 21 January.

Harassed by the escorts and accompanying aircraft, Cutter nonetheless kept Seahorse in trail of the remaining Japanese for another 48 hours and attempted another attack just after midnight on 1 February.

Amid the ensuing depth charge attack, Cutter's men heard both torpedoes hit and the now-familiar sound of exploding gasoline drums.

She departed Pearl Harbor on 16 March 1944, and near Guam on 8 April came across a Japanese supply convoy, damaging two vessels that subsequently sank.

A week later, Seahorse found another convoy 45 miles[clarification needed] west of Saipan and sank another freighter, refueling in New Guinea returning to Brisbane, Australia, on the 11th.

His biographer, Carl Lavo,[10] described Cutter as having an abrasive style with superior officers, which may well have cost him selection for promotion to rear admiral.

Especially controversial was his effective challenge to Adm. Hyman Rickover, claiming the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), was "strictly a test vehicle.

Cutter was named athletic director at the Naval Academy in the late 1950s, in an effort to encourage popular football coach Eddie Erdelatz to resign.

Lavo said Erdelatz was running a "professional-style football program" but too few players were opting to remain in the Navy after graduation because of his reputed disparaging of the service.