Hell Below

USS Silversides and its swashbuckling skipper, Creed Burlingame, saw their first action in the Pacific in May 1942. More than a dozen patrols later, the sub now rests in Muskegon, Michigan as a museum, an ongoing testament to its extraordinary history. Witness one of Silversides' most dramatic missions: aiding Marines in Guadalcanal by keeping Japanese reinforcements from reaching the island. It's an assignment fraught with depth charge attacks and aerial bombardments that nearly ended the mission and its crew.

Decorated American submarine commander Eugene Fluckey, determined to go out with a bang, defies expectations and returns to USS Barb for one last patrol. On the eastern coast of Northern Japan, Fluckey and his crew push the boundaries of submarine warfare to new limits by launching rockets from their sub and landing a crew of saboteurs on Japanese land in order to destroy a coastal rail line. It's a highly aggressive and ambitious patrol that will forever change the way subs are used in battle.

German U-515 departs from France in 1944, bound for the African Gold Coast to hunt Allied ships. One thousand miles to the south, the U.S. Navy launches a new hunter-killer task force—a tactical combination of destroyers, escorts, carriers, and aircraft—to prevent German U-Boat resurgence. Witness the showdown between U-boat ace Werner Henke and U.S. Navy Bronze Star recipient Daniel Gallery and see how the unrelenting attack of hunter-killer groups changed how the Battle of the Atlantic was fought and won.

Follow HMS Upholder as it battles through rough seas and broken equipment to keep Rommel’s forces from capturing Egypt.

Two submerged subs battle blind in a rare World War II attack that changed subsea warfare forever.

Revisit the Cuban Missile Crisis and see the nuclear battle brewing under the sea’s surface.