USS Flasher: America's Deadliest Sub

The USS Flasher, hull number two forty-nine, was launched here at Groton's Electric Boat shipyard in nineteen forty-three, and went on to become the highest-scoring American submarine of World War Two. In six war patrols across the Pacific, Flasher sank twenty-one Japanese ships totaling more than one hundred thousand tons of shipping, a record no other US sub matched. She stalked tankers, destroyer escorts, and freighters through the South China Sea and the Philippines, running on diesel on the surface and battery power below.

The Navy awarded her six battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. Flasher returned to New London in nineteen forty-five. The boat was eventually scrapped, but her conning tower stands as a memorial in Groton as testament to the workmen and crew who made Electric Boat's subs the terror of the Pacific.