Slade Cutter, who died Thursday at 93 in Annapolis, Md., was a submarine commander whose exploits during World War II included the sinking of 19 Japanese ships, tying him for the second-highest tally among submariners.

Much decorated, and aptly named, Cutter was a Naval Academy standout in boxing and football. During the annual Army-Navy game on December 1, 1934, played in a driving rain at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, Cutter kicked a barefoot 30-yard field goal from a small mound of mud in the first quarter. The ball “passed squarely between the uprights and landed on a black derby belonging to an inebriate in the end zone,” the Washington Post reported. Navy won the game, 3-0, its first victory over Army in 13 years.

Cutter saw war as similar to sport. “Sports make you offensive minded,” he told the Associated Press in 1942, not long after he and the crew of the USS Pompano had narrowly escaped Japanese depth charges off the coast of Honshu. “After all, this war is much like a game. … Take a submarine crew. It’s nothing but a big team, each doing his job, all working together.”

He sported a 22-0 record in intercollegiate boxing matches, where he fought as a 225-pound heavyweight. “Boxing is the finest sport for teaching a man to think on his feet in the midst of distractions,” he told the AP.

Cutter grew up on a farm near Aurora, Ill. Perhaps oddly for a man who would distinguish himself in battle, the first competition in which he won distinction was as a flutist. An often-told story about him held that his parents refused to let him play high school football, but Cutter insisted it was simply because he loved the flute too much to make time for sports. He won a national preparatory school championship in flute in 1929,then ended up playing fullback on a league championship team. At the Naval Academy, Cutter made All-American playing left tackle and was a good enough player to be named to the College Football Hall of Fame.

Cutter served aboard the battleship USS Idaho for three years and then attended submarine school. His first patrol, during which he was executive officer of the USS Pompano, began just days after Pearl Harbor. Although the Pompano was damaged by friendly fire when American forces mistook it for a Japanese vessel, the submarine managed to reach the Marshall Islands, where it torpedoed a Japanese transport.

After two more patrols in the Pompano, Cutter was transferred to the USS Seahorse, which began its first patrol August 3, 1943. After the Seahorse’s original commander proved insufficiently aggressive, Cutter was named commander. Heading for the East China Sea in late October, he sank three trawlers with gunfire. A few days later, near Japan’s Inland Sea, the Seahorse – unintentionally in concert with two other U.S. subs – attacked a large Japanese convoy with nine torpedoes, sinking two freighters. In all, the Seahorse sank four major ships totaling 19,750 tons on its first patrol under Cutter, according to official Navy records.

Cutter’s second patrol, to Palau in early 1944, was no less successful. The Seahorse sank five ships totaling 13,716 tons, including the Japanese freighter Toku Maru and the steamer Toei Maru. The ships were torpedoed during an epic 80-hour chase in which the Seahorse dodged harrying aircraft and depth charges from escort vessels.

Cutter next took the Seahorse to the Marianas with the mission of preventing the Japanese from reinforcing Guam and Saipan. Among the five ships the Seahorse sank was the Japanese submarine I-174, which was sighted on the surface. The Seahorse abruptly lost depth control during the attack and although a loud boom was heard, it was some time before the kill was confirmed.

Cutter’s last kills came in the aftermath of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, also known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” in which the Japanese lost three of nine aircraft carriers. Sailing as part of a “wolf pack” of three submarines, the Seahorse was responsible for sinking five more ships totaling 17,321 tons between June 27 and July 4, 1944.

Cutter was then given command of a new submarine, the USS Requin, but the war ended as the submarine cruised toward Japan on its first patrol.

Cutter later achieved the rank of captain and commanded the heavy cruiser USS Northampton, the flagship of the U.S. Second Fleet. He held a variety of naval appointments, including commander of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center and director of the Navy History Museum in Washington, D.C. His reputation as an outspoken critic of Navy policy and technology may have helped block his chances of advancement. Cutter retired from the Navy in 1965 to teach math at the Southern Arizona School for Boys in Tucson. He retired as headmaster of the school in 1971.

Commenting on his wartime record aboard the Seahorse, Cutter told Undersea Warfare, a Navy magazine: “The crew got the job done. I was merely the coordinator. They were brave and talented, and I never had to be reckless. I thought of the lives of those fine men, and frankly, I was aboard too.”

Among Cutter’s decorations was the Navy Cross with three gold stars in lieu of additional Navy Crosses, one for each of the patrols he made as commander of the Seahorse.

Slade Deville Cutter
Born in November 1911 in Chicago; died June 9 at a retirement community in Annapolis, Md., of heart failure; survived by his wife, Ruth, a son and daughter, nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.