Grant, James Edward "Caribbean Patrol"

Far-fetched serial set in the Caribbean during the early days of America’s entry into World War 2, when Nazi U-boats were, seemingly, attacking and destroying Allied tankers at will. Young, rich ne’er do well John Alden Miles Standish, who had been banished from Annapolis and then flunked out of all better the Ivy League universities, enlists in the Navy and makes it through Officer’s Training School only to be assigned to what appears to be a rustbucket of an oil tanker, the fictitious JOHN B. LASSITER. Ah, but this being Liberty Magazine, appearances are deceiving. In a potboiler right out of a boy’s adventure novel, the LASSITER is really a secret U.S. Navy vessel, armed to the teeth, which patrols the Caribbean looking for — and destroying German submarine’s which think she’s an easy target for destruction. Along the way Standish encounters — and falls in love with — a beautiful blonde. There are enough plot turns and improbable coincidences to rate this one as a sort of seagoing “Perils of Pauline.” Tale’s end finds Standish back with his blonde after single-handedly destroying (with hand grenades!) a “monster” submarine the size of a destroyer that had menaced them.