1942

L. Ron Hubbard returns to the United States from Australia and in the summer assumes command of convoy escort YP 422 in Boston. He attends submarine chaser school in Miami and commands the subchaser PC 815 in the North Pacific, where he engages enemy submarines in two separate encounters off the coast of Oregon. He also instructs at the Small Craft Training Center in San Pedro, California, is a navigation officer aboard the USS Algol, and attends the US Navy School of Military Government at Princeton University. As the war enters its final months, he is sent to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, to receive care for injuries sustained during the war.

At Oak Knoll, he conducts a series of experiments dealing with the endocrine system and discovers that, contrary to long-standing beliefs, function monitors structure in the relationship between thought and the body. He begins to help fellow veterans “who had not survived the war too well.”