A book about the mysterious disappearance of a submarine during World War Two is on bookstore shelves now, written by an Iowan who lost an uncle on the sub. Author Mike Ostlund, of Iowa City, says he’s heard stories his whole life about the U-S-S Gudgeon and his dad’s brother. Twenty-five-year-old Bill Ostlund, of Webster City, was among the 79 men lost when the warship vanished.
Mike Ostlund says he’s read just about everything there is to read about the sub. Ostlund says in June of 2001, he came across a translation error and thought he might have stumbled across the explanation for the sub’s demise. He says “Three days later, I decided to write the book because I thought Bill and the other submariners on Gudgeon deserved a book.” It became a project that lasted three years and now the book “Find ‘Em, Chase ‘Em, Sink ‘Em” has finally been published.
Ostlund says he interviewed six former Gudgeon submariners and pulled together several World War Two-era interviews with former commanders of the sub along with much other data from the National Archives. After a stop in Hawaii during April of 1944, Gudgeon disappeared while on patrol.
Most Japanese records offered no clues. Ostlund is doing a book signing in Webster City, his hometown, on September 30th and in Des Moines on October 1st. For more information, surf to “Amazon.com” or “www.findchasesink.com”