Slade D. Cutter
Slade Cutter was a football player for the US Naval Academy Midshipmen before becoming a submarine ace in WWII. Cutter was an All-American at Navy in the 1930s and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1967. He joined the battleship USS Idaho after graduation in 1935. He joined the submarine service in 1936 and was serving as the executive officer on the USS Pompano by 1941. After three war patrols on the submarine, he was assigned as the executive officer to the USS Seahorse, SS-304, which was still under construction.
Seahorse's commanding officer was relieved after the ship completed its first war patrol due to a lack of aggression toward the enemy. In October 1943, Cutter was given command of the ship. During his four war patrols, he sank almost 142,000 tons of Japanese commerce, including the enemy submarine I-274. Submarine-on-submarine attacks were relatively rare during the war, contrary to popular belief.
Cutter stayed in the Navy after the war, retiring in 1965 as a Captain. He received the Navy Cross, the service's second highest award, for each of his four war patrols in Seahorse during WWII. According to some, he never attained flag rank because of his open contempt for deskbound senior officers, including Hyman Rickover, which disqualified him from command in the emerging nuclear navy.
- Date/place of birth: November 1, 1911, Oswego, Illinois, USA
- Date of death: June 9, 2005, Annapolis, Maryland, USA
- Awards: Silver Star, Bronze Star Medal
- Sink more than 142,000 tons of ships (21 ships)
