ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Retired Vice Adm. James F. Calvert, a submarine pioneer and author who served in the Navy during World War II before going on to be superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, died Wednesday. He was 88.

Calvert died of heart failure in Bryn Mawr, Pa., said Kemp Battle, his stepson.

After graduating from Annapolis in 1942, Calvert went straight to work on submarines.

He served on the USS Jack for eight war patrols and another on the USS Haddo during World War II. The USS Jack, on which Calvert helped aim the torpedoes, is credited with sinking 15 Japanese ships.

Calvert wrote several books. In his 1995 memoir "Silent Running," Calvert described his experiences in submarine operations in the Pacific during World War II, chasing and sinking enemy ships.

Calvert was the commanding officer of the nuclear-powered USS Skate from December 1957 to September 1959. The submarine became the first to surface at the North Pole in February 1959. Calvert wrote about the experience in a book titled "Surface At The Pole." The trip had been made to test how well a submarine could operate in the Arctic Ocean.

From 1968 to 1972, Calvert served as the 46th superintendent of the Naval Academy, where he put an emphasis on increasing the academy's ability to recruit top civilian faculty members and implemented the academy's academic majors program,