WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Retired Navy Capt. Edward Latimer Beach, 84, a highly decorated World War II submariner and author died Sunday at his home in Washington, of cancer, his family said.
Beach's best known work was his 1955 novel, "Run Silent, Run Deep," about submarine war in the Pacific. The book, which provides a vividly realistic view of the U.S. Navy's deep sea war against the Japanese navy, also explored questions concerning the limits of ethical conduct in border-line situations of warfare. The novel was subsequently adapted into a movie starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. In addition, Beach wrote 11 other fiction and non-fiction works as well as numerous articles about various aspects of Navy life and naval affairs.
A 1939 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he completed 12 submarine war patrols, five of them as second-in-command aboard the USS Trigger and Tirante. The latter submarine's crew distinguished itself in action off the coast of Quelpart Island, just south of the Korean peninsula, when it sank three ships in a daring raid in shallow waters only miles from the enemy coast. For this exploit the Tirante's skipper, George L. Street, was awarded the Medal of Honor, while Beach received the Navy Cross.
Beach was given command of the submarine USS Piper, in the closing days of the war and its first patrol ended with the Japanese surrender.
Beach received a total of 10 decorations for gallantry in combat. He documented his combat experiences, together with those of many other wartime submariners, in his 1952 chronicle, "Submarine."
Although proud of the achievements of his fellow naval officers and crew members in the submarine service, Beach was a critic of the service. In his 1995 book, "Scapegoats! A Defense of Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor," Beach carefully documented his case that Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Gen. Walter C. Short were wrongfully blamed for being caught off-guard at Pearl Harbor. He attributed disaster to the failure of Pentagon officials in Washington to transmit vital warnings to the Pearl Harbor commanders in time to prepare for the Japanese assault.
A second, even sharper critique that Beach made of naval bureaucracy concerned the failure to provide submarines with reliable torpedoes. Because of a defective auto-navigational system, these torpedoes had a deadly tendency to turn around in mid-course and attack the subs that had launched them! Beach estimated eight U.S. submarines were lost because of faulty torpedoes.
Following the war, Beach served in staff positions, first as the Navy's aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Omar Bradley, and from 1953 as an aide to President Dwight Eisenhower, acting as liaison between the Navy and the White House.
In 1960, Beach commanded the twin-reactor nuclear submarine Triton in her epic circumnavigation of the world: an entirely submerged, 84 day, 41,000-mile voyage that still stands as an all-time record. The Triton's voyage was chronicled in his 1962 book, "Around the World Submerged."
After his retirement in 1966, he held the Stephen B. Luce Chair of Naval Science at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and then for eight years served as staff director of the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee.
From 1977 onward, Beach continued writing, authoring among other works a historical study entitled "The United States Navy -- 200 Years" (1986), and the more personal "Salt and Steel: A Submariner's Memoir" (1999). He had recently completed editing the autobiography of his father, also a Navy captain, which will be published next year under the title "From Annapolis to Scapa Flow."
Beach will be buried in Annapolis, Md., directly across the street from Beach Hall, headquarters of the U.S. Naval Institute Press, dedicated in 1999 as a tribute to father and son.
Beach is survived by his wife, Ingrid, sons Edward A. and Hugh S., daughter Ingrid A., sister Alice, and four grandchildren.
