Living with the Torpedo: Anti-Submarine Warfare, Command, and Shipboard Life in the US Navy During World War II

Living with the Torpedo is the only World War II memoir written by a US Navy officer who fought the years-long Battle of the Atlantic against Hitler’s U-boats from the decks of destroyer escorts and PC boats. Today, seven decades later, George Sotos still dreams the sounds and emotions of his years living with the torpedo threat. In this captivating book, he tells you what that time was like, and how the human element formed the foundation of successful American submarine hunting during the war.

More than a mere recounting of events, Living with the Torpedo brings to life the tactics, procedures, people, and feeling of small-ship action against a determined and capable adversary. Readers will marvel at the transformation, in less than five years, of a college senior who had never seen the ocean into a task-unit commander in control of three combat-tested warships – a progression unlikely to be repeated in a modern navy.

Now used as a teaching text at the US Naval Academy, Living with the Torpedo is the first volume in Captain Sotos’ two-volume memoirs of a US Navy career that lasted from 1940 to 1972 and included six commands afloat plus multiple shore-based commands. The just-completed second volume, Flagship Captain, was published in 2021 and is available on Amazon.