Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion Review

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(More customer reviews)USS Scorpion's sinking remains a controversial topic more than 35 years later. But the focus has always been on the ship and not on the crew, all of whom perished aboard the submarine.
Stephen Johnson deftly weaves the personal stories of crew members with that of the ship itself. Scorpion was a cranky, failure-prone submarine and her crew had to work doubly hard to keep her in service. The never-ending failures and breakdowns caused at least one crew member to transfer off the ship, though his guilt haunted him for the rest of his life.
Along the way we see that the Navy hadn't learned its lesson from the sinking of the Thresher just five years earlier. Though Scorpion had been back-fitted with several "SUBSAFE" modifications, her emergency-blow system remained inoperable due to design defects for the rest of her brief life. The Navy seemed more interested in holding repair costs down, rather than the safety of a nuclear warship and her crew.
Johnson's style is subtle and understated, and is thus more effective at conveying the human tragedy of the sinking than the semi-hype of Sherry Sontag/Christopher Drew ("Blind Man's Buff") or John Craven ("The Silent War").
Those looking for a definitive explaination of the sinking may be disappointed -- as with many technical failures, there are far more questions than answers.
Intriguing, sobering, ultimately very sad, and very worthy. A tribute to those who died beneath the restless sea. Highly recommended.

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Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific Review

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(More customer reviews)I was a "khaki" (an EOOW) on a 637-class boat in the Jimmy Carter years, with service that included two special operations, a Presidential Unit Citation and an 18-month nuclear refueling overhaul. I often still wake from uncomfortable "submarine dreams" even now, some twenty years after I left the service to go to graduate school. This is the book I will give my son to show him what it was like down there.
Ignore the junk on the dust jacket: it has almost nothing to do with the book and its strengths. "Spy Sub" has much more in common with "The Cruel Sea" (Nicholas Monsarrat's classic story of WWII convoy duty) than it has in common with "The Hunt for Red October", and what it has in common with Monsarrat makes it far more authentic than the Clancy novels. If you're thinking about signing up for sub duty, then you need to read this book to see what you're heading into.
If you're looking for a fast-paced, Hollywood-style "space opera of the undersea", however, this is definitely the book for you. Read Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and "Red Storm Rising" instead, if that is the case. You'll be entertained a lot and even informed a little. I enjoyed them, too. Just keep in mind that Clancy is a fiction writer whose professional task is to focus on the glamorous and ignore the rest.
Of all the submarine books I've seen and read, "Spy Sub" captures the stone cold sober reality of service aboard a nuclear submarine the best. It shows what it;s really like aboard a nuc boat most of the time, even on a spec op: studying, qualifying, standing watch, performing mountains of required preventive maintenance, keeping your temper in tight spaces, standing watch some more, noticing patterns before they became problems, fixing things that broke, going back on watch yet again, studying to qualify for the next higher watchstation on your off time, and just generally tending to the part of the mission that is your job, so the ship can do its job. Most of it isn't at all glamorous, and almost all of it is very hard work.
I'm not at all surprised that Petty Officer Dunham went on to medical school and a successful career as a physician after he finished his tour of sub duty. The men in dungarees I served with stood head and shoulders above most of my university classmates, and I watched many of them go on to spectacular careers in civilian life. If you read this book carefully and think about it, you will understand why that was so. There is no other experience on this planet that rubs your nose in the details of physical (and psychological) reality quite as thoroughly as service on a nuc boat. The only other experience that might come close is service as an astronaut on an Apollo moon shot.
It's not for everybody. But it's an unbeatable education. Read this book to see why.

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The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems (Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a little bit dated now, but not horribly so. The cold war ending has slowed down new naval weapon systems. Some of the "new" systems in here never did appear, and other older systems are gone as well. Using this guidebook plus some judicious web surfing is pretty good naval research for the non-specialist. Of course if you need the expensive current editions, you already know that...

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Long recognized as the most comprehensive reference work available on the subject, this guide remains the only complete reference to the weapons currently in service in ships, submarines, and naval aircraft around the world. It is the only book of its type to explain the transformation of the U.S. Navy into a network-centric force, a transformation that has had immense consequences for choices of tactics, weapons, services, and the systems coordinating them. This guide also offers unparalleled coverage of the weapons, sensors, and command systems of the world's navies, both those the U.S. Navy works with and those it may have to fight. Written by one of the world's leading naval analysts, the book describes the weapons and systems in detail and examines the crucial relationship between them. Completely rewritten and newly illustrated, this edition makes a special effort to provide a clear and precise account of how weapon technology has changed to meet the new tactical and strategic challenges facing international naval forces today. Cutting-edge information is found throughout, enhanced by many new and rarely seen photographs and drawings.For example, this volume offers an unusually full account of the "system of systems" under development by the U.S. Navy and the other services to fight future limited regional wars. That initiative includes the changing role of space resources as they affect war on, over, and under the sea. This edition also benefits from the flood of material from Russia, whose weapons and systems are now owned and operated by numerous countries and are likely to be sold to many more. The guide provides uniquely detailed coverage of weapons developed and deployed in the Far East, an area that promises to be the liveliest scene of naval action in the future. Extensive sections are devoted to explaining the intricate workings of sensors and command systems. No other book, or even set of books, offers this sort of material in such accessible form. Its detail and completeness are backed by the authority of a long established professional expert. For the most complete and up-to-date information about weapons in every navy in the world, this is the essential resource - a work that, in effect, can serve as a textbook of modern naval technology.

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Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718-1990 Review

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(More customer reviews)At the time this book was written it surely would have been the best source of information on Russian submarines. The book covers in depth every class of Russian submarine; included are long narratives, specifications, line drawings and photos you will not find anywhere else. About 2/3 of the book covers everything up to the end of WW2. The remainder covers the cold war years. Sadly, much of the information is quite out of date and most systems are referred to by their NATO codenames rather than their actual names, all of which is understandable considering the time it was written. Basically, every piece of information available at the time concerning Russian subs is in this book. If you're a fanatic about Russian/Soviet submarines, this book is well worth the price.

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