One of the foremost pleasures of working in the field of naval history is the opportunity to know a number of the history-makers. Thus it was enjoyable during the week of the Army-Navy football game to sit down for lunch with Captain Slade Cutter. He now lives in a retirement community near Annapolis. In part, we were celebrating his 90th birthday, which was a few weeks earlier. Whenever he’s asked for his birth date, Cutter quickly rattles off a digital reply: “11-1-11.”
Cutter was dressed for the meal in natty garb: colorful plaid trousers, red necktie set off with a tie tack fashioned of the gold- dolphin submariners’ insignia, a gold Naval Academy crest on the breast pocket of his blue blazer, and a lapel pin that featured two dark blue rectangles bisected by a vertical white stripe. The latter was a miniature replica of the ribbon for the Navy Cross. Cutter earned four of them—plus two Silver Stars and a Bronze Star— for heroism during World War II. It was an element of chance that got him into submarines in the first place.
He turned 18 two weeks after the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression. He managed one year of higher education at tiny Elmhurst College outside Chicago, but the family finances could send him no further. Fortunately, a family friend arranged for a loan so he could attend Severn School, a preparatory institution near Annapolis. While there he played football under Paul Brown, who would later become famous as the founder and coach of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.
At the Naval Academy, Midshipman Cutter was an All-American tackle in football and a formidable varsity boxer. (A framed photo of Cutter in his boxing stance adorns my office wall.) In the 1934 Army-Navy game, he kicked a field goal to win the game, 3-0. He was an instant celebrity, because it was the first time the Midshipmen had beaten the West Point team in football since 1921. One of Cutter’s most appealing characteristics is a sense of modesty. He downplays the importance of the kick, saying it was early in the game when no pressure was on. He was so skilled as a boxer that there was talk of his turning pro, but he wisely concluded that an officer’s commission was a more valuable commodity at that stage of life. (At age 90 he still gets his exercise; he swims or rides a stationary bike nearly every day.)
His first choice upon graduation in 1935 was a commission in the Marine Corps, but the quota was filled before his turn came. He considered aviation, but he was over the weight limit of 193 pounds necessitated by the small airplanes of the era. He served his initial service in the battleship Idaho (BB-42), and came to admire a number of ship’s officers who had served in submarines. So, partly by process of elimination, he got into submarines.
Cutter’s first skipper, Lieutenant Commander Lew Parks in the Pompano (SS-181), was unusually aggressive for a pre-World War II submariner. When Cutter moved on to serve as executive officer of another boat, the Seahorse (SS- 304), he was under a commanding officer who was far more timid and far more typical of his contemporaries. Cutter urged the commanding officer to be more aggressive in going after Japanese ships, to make the sort of attacks he had learned from his mentor. The captain’s reaction was a poor fitness report for Cutter and a recommendation that he be disqualified from submarine duty.
For his part, Cutter was on the verge of putting the skipper on report for failing to engage the enemy when opportunities were apparent. That proved not to be necessary. Seniors in the chain of command understood the problem. They relieved the previous captain and made Cutter skipper of the Seahorse in his place. The situation turned around immediately. The new captain made one successful patrol after another, thus earning those four Navy Crosses. Postwar tabulations credited him with sinking a total of 19 ships with a combined tonnage of 72,000. Though obviously pleased by his success, Cutter is quick to put it into perspective. He says he was truly fortunate in his timing, and in that he is correct. He had command after the early-war torpedo problems had been solved and before the Japanese targets had been swept from the sea.
After the war, he was Naval Academy athletic director and was involved in the recruiting of another well-known football player, Roger Staubach.
I got to know Cutter nearly 20 years ago when one of his classmates, Captain K. G. Schacht, recommended that I do his oral history. Cutter was amazingly candid in the interviews. Among other things, he explained that he had been given a cruiser-like command that had been an admiral-maker for his predecessors, but he just missed out at selection time. He was philosophical about not being chosen for flag rank himself and harbors no bitterness. And he was reflective as well. I remember in particular his discussion of the fact that one in five U.S. submarines did not come back from patrol. At times he had doubted that he would survive the war. Typically, the diesel submarines of the era operated on the surface at night, then submerged in daytime. Sometimes Cutter looked up into the morning sky, as the dawn was breaking, and wondered whether he would still be alive to see the twilight stars come evening. He made it through those days and the many years since then. I’m delighted that he is still around to tell of his adventures.