When the US entered WWII, Hollywood's studios suddenly became ultra-patriotic and they made a ton of propaganda films aimed at bolstering the war effort. Some were very good...a few were very poor...such as "Submarine Raider".
The story begins just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Soon after you see a Japanese aircraft carrier heading towards Hawaii, the ship blows up a nearby yacht and then sends a fighter plane out to strafe the survivors. What they don't realize is that an American submarine is nearby...and the captain of the ship is baffled as to why the carrier would attack a yacht. However, they soon get word that this and other Japanese carriers just attacked Pearl Harbor...and so the captain is determined to find the carrier and destroy it.
The basic story isn't bad and much of the acting decent. However, it's essentially a cheap B from Columbia and the Japanese are essentially cartoonish (such as pilots who laugh hysterically while bombing civilians) and their airplanes defy all the rules of aeronautics...such that if they REALLY could have flown this way (making tight u-turns, landing every second or two on the carrier, etc.) they would have won the war in a month! Additionally, the film promotes the commonly accepted myth that evil spies ('fifth columnists') abounded in Hawaii and this laid the groundwork for folks in the US accepting the internment of the Japanese-Americans.
Overall, a real mixed bag. The crew of the sub consists of some decent actors but one-dimensional writing make this a film that simply hasn't aged well.