Your story questioning the medals President Marcos awarded to some officers of the USS Gar (Veritas, Feb. 2) ambiguously identifies the USS Stingray as the "first" submarine "which landed an intelligence team in Bangui Bay, Ilocos Norte in August, 1944."

Maybe the first in Ilocandia, but not the first in the Philippines. The USS Gudgeon landed the first such team, Maj. Jesus Villamor and five others, near Catmon Point, Negros, on January 14, 1943.

The USS Narwhal, according to Theodore Roscoe’s abridgment of his United States Submarine Operations in World War II, undertook the most guerilla-support missions, the first in October, 1943, when it landed Lt. Cmdr. Charles "Chick" Parsons, two groups of specialists and 46 tons of stores on Mindoro.

Most of the guerilla-support duties fell to Narwhal and Nautilus, W. J. Holmes writes in Vol. 2 of Undersea Victory. When the volume of traffic went up, Seawolf and Stingray "were added to the supply group."

Neither book mentioned Gar or the USS Thresher which you name among the boats which "served a variety of strategic missions." Roscoe cites the missions of USS Tambor, the USS Trout, the USS Grayling, and the USS Cabrilla -- which you omit.

I wish your writer had taken the time to verify and flesh out the allegations of your unnamed sources.
 

WILSON G. ABAYA