During World War II, America faced monumental challenges, and countless brave individuals stepped up to defend freedom. This episode uncovers the remarkable saga of Rear Admiral Fred Warder, a legendary submarine skipper whose daring exploits in the Pacific Theater earned him a Navy Cross and the unforgettable nickname, “Fearless Freddy.” A true American hero, Warder commanded the USS Seawolf, navigating the treacherous waters of the Pacific and embodying the unwavering spirit of the “Silent Service,” a crucial force that quietly turned the tide of the war.
Though not a giant of a man, Warder was a force to be reckoned with, known for his determined chin, piercing eyes, and an ability to punch far above his weight—both in battle and even in family stories! As “The Artist of Submarining,” he and his courageous crew were responsible for sinking immense amounts of Japanese shipping, a vital contribution that helped secure victory. This is a powerful story of grit, ingenious tactics, and the profound sacrifices made by those below the waves, showcasing the extraordinary character found in Our American Stories.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
00:00:46 Speaker 2: Here’s Greg Hengler.
00:00:48 Speaker 3: There are many incredible stories of courageous men, incredible battles, and heroes during World War II. Rear Admiral Fred Warder, a submarine skipper whose exploits in World War II won him a Navy Cross and a nickname he detested, was average-sized, possessed firm lips, a determined chin, with piercing blue eyes under narrowed lids, and a smooth face. Warder graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Class of 1925, received his master’s in Marine Engineering at University of California, Berkeley in 1934. He was married and the father of four children. Having narrowly avoided the attack on Pearl Harbor, Rear Admiral Warder took charge of the USS Seawolf and set out for the seas of the Pacific to wreak havoc on Japanese shipping and quickly became known as the Artist of Submarining. Warder fought his enemy hard, but he also respected and loved him. Let’s begin our deep dive into this story with Submarine Warfare Guru John Gorham.
00:02:00 Speaker 4: I attended church here in Baltimore, Grace Bible Baptist Church, and one of our church members mentioned that she had an uncle named Freddy Warder. And I said, I said, ‘Did you say Freddy Warder?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘You mean like U.S. Submarine Captain Freddy Warder?’ And she says, ‘Yes, how’d you know? Nobody knows that.’ I said, ‘Oh no. To the contrary, he’s the ultimate submarine warrior from World War II. He’s just it. Most people don’t know this, but the vast majority of tonnage that was sunk during World War II enemy Japanese tonnage was done by the submarine fleet, what’s known as the Silent Service. These men paid the ultimate price, but something like fifty-five percent of all surface supply shipping to the Japanese, both warshipping and Merchant Marine, were sunk specifically by submarines. So these guys, to me, are the heroes. They were a very small, efficient crew that punched way beyond their weight.
00:03:02 Speaker 3: Fred Warder really did punch way beyond his weight, even at family gatherings. Here’s Fearless Freddie’s cousin, Warder Lynn.
00:03:13 Speaker 5: I just know that if there was going to be a brawl, Fred was going to, you know, punch out the biggest man in the room, and he was going to hit him good the first time, so we didn’t have to go back. Fred wasn’t that big, you know, and his brother Frank was big and I had broad shoulders, and he was, you know, it looked to me like he was at least a foot or maybe more taller than Fred. And Frank was an FBI agent. Fred just knocked him out. He got to that first punch, and that was it. And Fred was gone and Frank was down and out. And my mother said to my father, ‘John, why do your relatives always have to pass out in our room?’ And my father said, ‘Pass out? Nothing, that’s a KO from Fred.’
00:03:58 Speaker 2: It was he, not, so it seemed to.
00:04:01 Speaker 5: Me that Fred fought with men the way he fought the war.
00:04:05 Speaker 6: You know.
00:04:05 Speaker 5: He was the little guy that had to get the big guy, and he had to get him with one punch and knockout.
00:04:10 Speaker 3: Here’s another one of Fred’s cousins, Hugh Fordyce.
00:04:14 Speaker 6: Freddie was the oldest of my Uncle Hugh’s family. They had eight children, and he was the oldest. And Freddie was valedictorian in his high school graduating class. I remember as always had having a big smile; he had a quick wit about him. His mother was Irish, you know, and he would make jokes about Catholics, and even though he was a Catholic, him job.
00:04:43 Speaker 5: No one in our family ever called Uncle Fred Fearless or Freddie. He was known as the Admiral, Uncle Fred, Fred. And when my grandmother was feeling particularly stern, Frederick, especially when he was teasing her about drinking, or about being Catholic or something.
00:05:04 Speaker 7: Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
00:05:31 Speaker 3: Hugh’s former aide to Rear Admiral Fred Warder, Don Olmer.
00:05:35 Speaker 8: Well, the instructions that came out from the Commander of the Pacific Fleet were, first off, it was the announcement that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and the only instructions they gave were, ‘Conduct yourself accordingly.’ And then shortly after, a message came out saying, ‘Engage, attack, and sink all enemy shipping encountered.’ That was very simple.
00:06:01 Speaker 4: Back in those days, the United States had already tried to stop the Japanese from colonizing and invading the mainland of China and Korea. A lot of misbehavior by the Japanese Empire in these areas that they quote-unquote colonized, they basically invaded them and abused the citizens of the nations of Korea and China.
00:06:26 Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to the story of Fearless Freddy Warder, and it’s just underappreciated—the role that the submarine played in World War II and beyond, and the risks these guys, mostly guys, took. It was all volunteer, always was and is, because it is unique duty, submarine duty, and it’s dangerous, and, well, only certain types need apply.
00:06:51 Speaker 2: If you’re claustrophobic, it is not a job for you.
00:06:54 Speaker 1: When we come back, more of the life of Fearless Freddy Warder. And we already the guy, don’t we? But wait until you hear the rest of this story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, and I’m inviting you to help Our American Stories celebrate this country’s two-hundred-fiftieth birthday, coming soon.
00:07:38 Speaker 2: If you want to.
00:07:38 Speaker 1: Help inspire countless others to love America like we do, and want to help us bring the inspiring and important stories told here about a good and beautiful country, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Any amount helps. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we continue with Our American Stories and the remarkable story of Fearless Freddy Warder.
00:08:17 Speaker 2: Let’s return to the story and to Greg Hengler.
00:08:21 Speaker 3: Here’s Stephen Trent Smith, author of “Wolfpack,” the American submarine strategy that helped defeat Japan.
00:08:29 Speaker 9: In the late 1920s, Fred went to the Submarine School in New London, Connecticut, and after that he was junior officer on a number of U.S. Navy submarines. And in 1939 he was the commanding officer at the commissioning of the USS Seawolf and remained commanding officer of the boat until 1943. War clouds started gathering around 1940, and his submarine was sent to the Pacific and eventually to the Philippines along with a number of other U.S. submarines. His submarine was at the Cavite Naval Yard in Manila Bay in the Philippines. On December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the Philippines, they destroyed a couple of submarines not too far away from him. He got her underway and left Manila Bay and was sent on patrol in the Northern Philippines off the coast of Luzon, the East Coast of Luzon, near a town called Aparri. He saw a destroyer outside of Aparri, the harbor there, and he went to attack it. But then he stumbled on a seaplane tender that was in the harbor, and he decided to attack that, and he got a really good. He made a really good approach. He had everything all set up. He fired four torpedoes from his forward tubes, and none of them exploded. So he turned tail because the destroyer was going to come after him, set up for stern tubes to fire at the seaplane tender, and they fired those, and none of those exploded. And the only thing that exploded that day was Fred Warder, who was furious about the bad torpedoes, and that became a scandal during World War II that for the first couple of years of the war, the torpedoes did not work reliably, and he was just fit to be tied about that.
00:10:26 Speaker 3: Here is Rear Admiral Fred Warder.
00:10:30 Speaker 4: ‘Had torpedoes, we could have made a damn fly an effort. That we did not have a good torpedoes.’
00:10:43 Speaker 3: Here again is former aide to Rear Admiral Fred Warder, Don Olmer.
00:10:48 Speaker 8: So Admiral Warder knew that the torpedoes were not working well. So he actually went into a place called Davao Gulf, and there was a ship that was anchored there. But he was fire torpedoes at this ship. So one of the torpedoes went under the ship, okay, went up on the beach and exploded. So that was one, you see, ‘it’s my fault at s-torpedo’s fault,’ and then he fired two more and was against the side of the ship, and they didn’t explode, so that that kind of confirmed that. And then another when he fired, and it was an erratic run called a circular run. The rudder is going to lock over in one position, it makes a circle run, and the circle run would bring it right back to about where the machinery compartment is. That we both a ship up. We did lose a couple of submarines, by the way, but but not the Seawolf. When Warder anticipated this, and he had sonar people listening, he knew it was a circle run. He went down so that the torpedo passed overhead and came back up again, and he fired a couple more torpedoes, and then he finished the ship off.
00:11:54 Speaker 3: Here again is Submarine Warfare Guru John Gorham.
00:11:58 Speaker 4: What they did was the Japanese preset. If you’ve seen in the movies, they looked like fifty-five-gallon drums being rolled off the back of the tail of a corvette or a destroyer, and they were just basically loaded up with TNT. They would drop to a certain predetermined level based on, and the sensor that was used was a depth sensor based on water pressure, and then they would just blow up. And if you had, if your submarine vessel was nearby, when one of those blew up, the shock was such that it could break open the hull, or weaken it, or wrinkle the skin and do all kinds of damage. The vast majority of anyone’s submarines that were lost during the war were lost to depth charges.
00:12:42 Speaker 8: He talked to me one, to him, about depth-charge evasion, and the way he put it to me, he said, ‘Well, you’ve got to understand that what this Japanese destroyer, the enemy destroyer’s doing, is he’s making a noise and he’s listening to the echo.’ Well, the more aspect that you show that ship, the stronger the echo. So basically what he would always do is turn and point directly toward the ship, and that gave him the most narrow aspect. And even though it meant that he was going right toward this guy that was trying to get him, the echoes were were just coming back strong. They would come back weak, which would indicate that the submarine was much further away. So the guy would go overhead, and he’d go racing out there and bang, bang, bang, the charges that go off, and that was the time. Then he would make his course change or maneuver in order to put distance between him and that destroyer.
00:13:46 Speaker 4: The strategy the United States Navy had with our submarine service was to go after the merchant marine because they were easy targets. They were soft targets we could sink down; they couldn’t fight back. It allowed our American submarine fleet to last a little longer. It’s a little more dangerous when you go after a Japanese warship because they can fight back. And the most deadly warships were corvettes and destroyers because the destroyers are very shallow-draft vessels. If you attempt to fire at a torpedo at it—well, at least at a corvette. A corvette’s even smaller than a destroyer. Corvettes are so shallow that torpedoes go underneath, and you have to be a very good shot to take out a destroyer with a torpedo. The vast majority of American submarine commanders wouldn’t tangle with the destroyer, but that’s not the case with Freny Warder.
00:14:40 Speaker 9: Submarine commanders were a breed apart. A lot of them had a strong streak of independence. They didn’t like being pushed around by admirals and/or captains, you know, and the Submarine Service gave them that kind of freedom because when a submarine left port, they had virtually no contact with the admirals and the captains. It was all up to the submarine commander. They didn’t have anybody breathing down their necks.
00:15:07 Speaker 4: Everybody was required to go on seven patrols, and generally the custom was for a captain not to press his luck, just like in Vietnam when a guy was down to his last month, they didn’t go out on any scary patrols. You don’t want to risk a guy’s life if he’s made it through a whole year, and no, you don’t want to push your luck at the last minute. But Warder is Warder, and he’s determined to make this very last of his patrols count. He was on his way back from the Palau Islands, and he discovered another anchorage or an area where there was a tremendous amount of activity. He sailed in a torpedo, and he was able to sink a three-thousand-ton ship. Then he sank a transport. This is very valuable because not only is it tonnage, but it’s Japanese fighting troops, men that will never make it to shore and threaten American lives. A seven-thousand-ton transport. That was a tremendous prize that he got. Then again he was able to torpedo again. On his way coming home, he was able to torpedo another ship to the tune of three thousand tons. So that means he sank thirteen thousand tons in one patrol. That’s more than the majority of sub captains ever sank in their entire career of seven patrols in the South Pacific. That’s how Freddy Warder got that name, Fearless Freddy. He was the last boat out on patrol, leaving the Java Sea area, very low on fuel, very low on food provisions. The men were smoking coffee grounds rolled in toilet paper because they’d been out of cigarettes for a while. They’re low on torpedoes. But Freddy Warder wasn’t about to go back to his base with unspent torpedoes. Ridiculous! He’d never do that. He found out that the Japanese had invaded the Christmas Islands, about two hundred miles south of Java, and he took his boat down in that way. He decided he just patrolled the area, cruise around, see what’s going on. As he approached Flying Fish Cove—that’s the one where the Japanese had their anchorage—it was an absolute submariner’s dream. Four cruisers lined up in a row, lined up in a row.
00:17:26 Speaker 1: And when we come back, we’re going to hear the rest of this remarkable story. Thirteen-thousand tons in one patrol, the Artist of Submarining, the ultimate submarine warrior. And we’re talking about Fearless Freddy Warder. Again.
00:17:40 Speaker 1: This is Our American Stories, always telling the stories of our fighting men and women.
00:17:46 Speaker 2: More after these messages.
00:18:08 Speaker 1: And we continue here with Our American Stories, and let’s return to Greg Hengler and his story about Rear Admiral Fearless Freddy Warder. Here again is Submarine Warfare Guru John Gorham.
00:18:20 Speaker 4: He found out that the Japanese had invaded the Christmas Islands, about two hundred miles south of Java, and he took his boat down in that way. He decided he just patrolled the area, cruise around and see what’s going on. As he approached Flying Fish Cove, it was an absolute submariner’s dream. Four cruisers lined up in a row, lined up in a row. He got in close, and destroyers recognized him right away. He heard the pinging. But he fired off four torpedoes at a cruiser that was about one thousand yards away, and that’s about as close as a submariner will ever want to get to his target. So he fired these four torpedoes. As soon as he was convinced that he had sunk that ship. He dove low, and his logbook reports that the Japanese were very effective in placing their depth charges.
00:19:14 Speaker 3: So he stayed low.
00:19:15 Speaker 4: And he waited overnight, the next day, and he slipped out of the cove. The next day, he slipped back in, and the Japanese, of course, were alerted to him. They were on patrol. But he was able to maneuver in again and nail a second cruiser, and again he was depth-charged, fled the area, waited until later on that afternoon he came back in, and he struck a cruiser a third time. Captain Warder comes in the very next day again because he wants to finish off this juicy collection. He’s down to just two torpedoes left. They’re on attack mode now because they’re just patrolling the area. That water’s boiling with ships going back and forth looking for him. He slips in because he’s determined to use up his last torpedoes. There’s one more cruiser left. It’s flying the pennant of the admiral of the squadron, and he says, ‘I’m going to take this guy off.’ So he fires his last two torpedoes at the cruiser, and he hits them, but in the meantime, the destroyers got perilously close to him. He dove down deep, and he endured nine hours of depth charges from multiple patrol boats, corvettes, destroyers. Unbelievable! That may be the record for the United States Navy for this submarine fleet. And during nine hours of well-placed depth charging, and he says in his logbook, he says, ‘My men were really at the end of their rope,’ and he realized he had to go, and there’s no point in staying around. He had no more torpedoes. He’s already taken out all four of the capital ships that were anchored at Flying Fish Cove. And he returned home.
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