Silent Victory was acclaimed by Ned Beach as "an extraordinary book...the definitive submarine history.
"[5] Written by a competent professional historian a generation apart from Roscoe's work, each book casts reflections upon the other.
At the end of each narrative, both authors appended tables of the history of World War 2 from the individual submarine perspective.
The ultimate JANAC assessments were about 50% of Admiral Lockwood's post-patrol judgement, as relayed to him by the commanding officers.
The reasons are various: Richard O'Kane, famous commander of USS Tang (SS-306), asserted that a typographical error in his fourth patrol report gave Tang JANAC-credit for sinking a small escort vessel five miles away from the large maru she did sink.
[7] Roscoe's tables are organized alphabetically by submarine, giving the date and name of each sinking, its size and location, and the commanding officer at the time.
On the other hand, Blair introduces partial credit for ships sunk in cooperative engagements, and while Roscoe gives a table of such occurrences, he makes no special use of its information.
[13] On 26 July 1944, Flasher, in concert with USS Crevalle (SS-291), sank the Tosan Maru, a passenger-cargo ship of 8,666 tons.
Blair's occasional choice to round in "some instances" make his JANAC tabulations not reconcile with the record.
[4]On the other hand, Silent Victory, being 26 years later, lives up to the rest of Beach's acclaim, and shows that it was the work of a professional vice occasional historian : Most importantly, Silent Victory does not shy away from full and complete treatment of the controversial aspects of our submarine campaign: our lousy torpedoes, the discrepancy between claimed and confirmed sinkings, the professional disputations between force commanders.
If there is anything left out, I certainly do not know what it is, for this book gives the whole scene, the good and the bad, the heroes and the failures, the eager and the reluctant.
Rear Admiral Richard G. Voge, USN, had his submarine USS Sealion (SS-195) sunk beneath him at Cavite, Philippine Islands on 10 December 1941.