On a dark night in 1943, a wounded submarine captain, unable to climb down off his own bridge, gave a two word order that killed him and saved all 80 of his men. The order was "Take her down," and it became one of the most sacred phrases in the United States Navy. His name was Commander Howard Gilmore, and here is the moment. On the night of February 6, in the southwest Pacific, Gilmore had his submarine, the USS Growler, running on the surface in the darkness, stalking a Japanese convoy for an attack. Then a Japanese escort ship spotted them and swung around to ram, charging straight out of the black. Gilmore reacted instantly, ordering a hard turn to strike first, and the Growler smashed into the enemy ship at speed, a collision violent enough to crumple 18 feet of the submarine's bow over to one side. At that same instant, the Japanese crew raked the Growler's exposed bridge with machine gun fire. The officer of the deck and a lookout were killed outright, and Gilmore himself was cut down, badly wounded on his own bridge. Now understand the situation. A submarine's bridge is a tiny platform on top of the conning tower, and to dive, the crew scrambles down a hatch into the hull and seals it. The wounded men who could still move began dropping down the hatch. But Gilmore, hit and unable to climb down, understood the arithmetic instantly. The submarine was still on the surface, exposed, being fired on, and every second it stayed up it might be sunk with every man aboard. The only way to save the boat was to dive right now. But you cannot dive with the hatch open, and he could not reach the hatch. So he gave the order that would kill him and save everyone else. Clinging to the bridge, bleeding, he called down into the hull, "Take her down." He was ordering his own crew to seal the hatch and submerge the submarine while he was still on top of it, knowing it left him on the surface to die. His officers hesitated at the sheer horror of the command. Then they obeyed their captain. They closed the hatch and took the Growler down. Gilmore was never seen again. The battered submarine survived, submerged, and limped home, alive because her captain had traded his life for hers in the space of a few seconds. Howard Gilmore became the first submariner of the war to receive the Medal of Honor, and his final order, "Take her down," lives on in the United States Submarine Force as the ultimate expression of a commander who put his crew and his ship above his own life.