Dating to season 1 in 1957, this episode of “The Silent Service” is entitled “The Searaven”. The plot is about an American submarine that attempts to save 33 Australian soldiers from Timor Island, by becoming a “sitting duck”. The episode was directed by Jean Yarbrough and written by Milton Geiger. The cast includes Chet Marshall, Robert Christopher, Bill Phipps, Jim Goodwin and
Dave Ketchum.
Like most of the Silent Service episodes, this dramatization was based on fact. USS Searaven (SS-196), a Sargo-class submarine, conducted her third war patrol in the vicinity of Timor Island of the Netherlands East Indies, from 2 April to 25 April 1942. On 18 April, she rescued 32 Royal Australian Air Force men from enemy-held Timor, an act for which two of her officers were awarded the Navy Cross. Five days later, fire broke out in her main power cubicle, immobilizing Searaven completely. Snapper assisted her into port in Australia.
USS Searaven was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the sea raven, a sculpin of the northern Atlantic coast of America. Her keel was laid down on 9 August 1938 by the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine. She was launched on 21 June 1939 sponsored by Mrs. Julianna B. Cole, wife of Cyrus W. Cole, Commandant of the Portsmouth Navy Yard ; and commissioned on 2 October 1939, with Lieutenant Thomas G. Reamy in command.
The Silent Service was a documentary styled anthology series about the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet and their missions during World War II and the Korean War. Every episode was fact based and the realism of the show was elevated by the use of actual combat footage from the files of the United States Navy.
The stories, which varied between the South Pacific during World War II, the Atlantic campaign and the Korean War, were the brainchild of Rear Admiral Thomas M. Dykers, himself a submariner, who retired from the Navy in 1949 after 22 years of service. Admiral Dykers also did an intro piece for each episode, narrated the action and filmed a closing segment, usually with a member of the crew of the submarine that was highlighted on that particular episode.
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