Verne Marshall of the Cedar Rapids Gazette started the No Foreign War Committee.
Katsonis, together with its sister ship, Papanikolis (Υ-2), formed the first class of Greek submarines ordered after the First World War. It was built at the Gironde Bordeaux shipyards between 1925-27, and commissioned into the Hellenic Navy on 8 June 1928. Its first captain was Cdr Κ. Arvanitis.[1] Under the command of Cdr Athanasios Spanidis, she participated in the 1940-41 Greco-Italian War, carrying out four war patrols, and sinking one vessel, the 531-ton Italian freighter Quinto, on December 31, 1940. After the German invasion of April 1941, together with the rest of the fleet, Katsonis fled to the Middle East, from where she would operate during the next years, with the British pennant number N 16. On 2 July 1942, she was damaged while exiting a dry dock at Port Said.
After overhaul, under the command of Cdr. Vasileios Laskos, she went on further three patrols in the Aegean. During these patrols, Katsonis ambushed and sank a German minelayer in the port of Gytheio on 2 April 1943, the Spanish 1,500-ton merchant vessel San Isidoro off Kythnos three days later, and the freighter Rigel near Skiathos on 29 May.[2] On September 14 however, while trying to intercept a German troop transport, she was attacked and sunk by the German submarine chaser UJ-2101. 32 men of the crew, including Cdr Laskos, went down with her, and 15 were captured. Among them was Konstantinos Stamoulis, a survivor who was considered dead for decades. However, Lt Eleftherios Tsoukalas, the ship's XO, and petty officers Antonios Antoniou and Anastasios Tsigros, managed to swim for 9 hours and reach Skiathos. There they hid and eventually managed to return to Egypt and rejoin the Greek fleet.[3]