USS Sea Tiger was a fictional submarine presumably named for the barracuda. No vessel of the United States Navy has been given that name, but the 1959 movie Operation Petticoat, starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis, and the short-lived 1977-1978 television series of the same name, were set aboard a fictional Sea Tiger. According to the movie's dialogue, Sea Tiger was commissioned in 1940.
The name may come from the actual WWII-era submarine USS Sealion (SS-195), which like its film counterpart, was sunk at the pier at Cavite Navy Yard, the Philippines, on 10 December 1941 with the loss of 5 crewmembers.
The Sea Tiger in the movie was portrayed by three different American Balao-class submarines:
- Queenfish (SS-393), in the opening and closing scenes (c. 1959), in which the "393" on the conning tower is visible,
- Archerfish (SS-311), for all the WWII scenes where the boat was painted the standard gray and black,
- Balao (SS-285), for all the scenes in which Sea Tiger was painted pink.
Famous quotes containing the words sea and/or tiger:
“If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,
Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,
Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,
I would leave no saint’s head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The tiger in the tiger-pit
Is not more irritable than I.
The whipping tail is not more still
Than when I smell the enemy
Writhing in the essential blood
Or dangling from the friendly tree.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)