Few clashes in the annals of modern warfare are more exciting than the confrontation of submarine and surface craft. What has been a quiet but deadly cat-and-mouse game may erupt into a tumult of fury, perhaps aided by strange technical devices, planes, bombs, and well-placed depth charges, and suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted. Before the chase ends there is the possibility that the sub may be disabled and its crew forced to abandon ship. Even before disaster struck at Pearl Harbor, key United States Navy personnel gave considerable thought to unique problems presented by enemy prisoners of war taken in this fashion on the high seas. In mid-1941 the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) dispatched Lieutenant Harry T, Gheradi, a 35-year-old reservist, to London to study British interrogation methods, and in October of that year a joint Army-Navy committee decided the U.S. Army would be responsible for final custody of POWs. The Navy, these gentlemen concluded, should turn over enemy personnel "as soon as practicable" after their capture to the Provost Marshal General's Office which would operate all prisoner of war camps.

For obvious reasons, the Navy took the lead in establishing centers where enemy personnel, especially German U-boat officers and enlisted men with technical skills, could be questioned. On Dec.18, 1941, the Secretary of the Navy approved the creation of special interrogation units, and three weeks later his Army counterpart concurred. They decided that two joint facilities would be set up, one on the East Coast near Washington, D. C., and the other in California. During succeeding weeks various officers visited two imposing estates, "Swannanoa" near Charlottesville, Virginia, and "Marwood"