We Were Pirates: A Torpedoman's Pacific War Review

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(More customer reviews)When I picked up We Were Pirates I expected a firsthand account of the Pacific War with a ghost writer and what I found was that two men have edited and woven Chief Robert Hunt's diary into We Were Pirates. While well written I found myself wishing I was reading Chief Hunt's diary with commentary by Chief Hunt. At one point Hunt by mistake fires a torpedo then the authors kept on talking about a leak in the torpedo room. It seems likely that the torpedo went through the outer torpedo tube door and damaged the tube causing the leak but the authors lack of knowledge of submarines is shown here. The authors spend too much time on Hunt's time ashore and not enough exploring the war patrols or bringing in other material supplementing Hunt's diary. the pressures of the war patrols would be far more helpful than the exploits of Chief Hunt's letting off steam. The purpose of a good History is to explore causes in order to understand the consequences, I found myself skipping over the beach portions of the book.
The end of the book became difficult to read because the main author Robert Schultz goes into first person account of hero worship for Chief Hunt and while interesting the purpose of reading this book is to know about Chief Hunt experiences not Dr. Schultz's. It is a very irritating trend in recent histories to have the author imbed themselves into the narrative. In the end it was an easy read but a book that I can't say added much to the submarine history library. It is a shame we couldn't have Chief Hunt's words and experience firsthand.

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A sailor's extraordinary experiences on an American submarine in the Pacific are candidly reported in this eyewitness account of war from a torpedoman's perspective. Robert Hunt managed to survive twelve consecutive war patrols on the submarine USS Tambor. During the course of the war, Hunt was everywhere that mattered in the Pacific. He stood on the bow of the Tambor as it cruised into Pearl Harbor just days after the devastation of the Japanese air raid, peered through binoculars as his boat shadowed Japanese cruisers at the Battle of Midway, ferried guns and supplies to American guerilla fighters in the Philippines, fired torpedoes that sank vital Japanese shipping, and survived a near-fatal, seventeen-hour depth-charge attack. For exceptional skill and proficiency at his battle station Hunt received a commendation from Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. This WWII torpedoman's account of the war offers the rare perspective of an enlisted seaman that is not available in the more common officer accounts. To capture and recount the progress of the Pacific War through Hunt's eyes coauthors Robert Schultz and James Shell examined the young submariner's war diary, as well as crew letters, photographs, and captains' reports, and they also conducted hours of interviews. Their vivid descriptions of the ways in which sailors dealt with the stress of war while at sea or on liberty show a side of the war that is rarely reported. The fact that Hunt's submarine was the first of a new fleet of World War II boats and the namesake of a significant class adds further value to his remarkable story.

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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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Eight Survived: The Harrowing Story of the USS Flier and the Only Downed World War II Submariners to Survive and Evade Capture Review

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(More customer reviews)Eight survived is another title to make Admiral O'Kane's 'Clear the Bridge' soar. This one is barely readable and is barely a one star book. The author is not familiar with nautical terminology. The skipper of the sub is ordered to "anchor at a dock", is standing on the "floor" of the conning tower, and the crew's compartment has a steel "floor". Campbell opens the book with an involved description of the Flier going aground at Midway. The chapter screams for a chart of the Midway atoll to put some coherence in the chapter and it isn't there. All we know is that the channel is narrow and difficult and the Flier skipper, who supposedly has fourteen years' experience at sea, totally bungled the approach. The sub runs aground and in attempting to set the anchor in a heavy sea, a seaman is lost overboard and drowned and several others come close to drowning.
To pad the word count Campbell digresses with character vignettes that just don't fit into the narrative which is shaky enough. We have no interest in the men mainly because the war patrol events aren't clearly defined and the result is both stories lack involvement and coherence. My thought is that Mr. Campbell doesn't want to clutter the book with a lot of submarine lingo which is a criticism of O'Kane's book. Clear the Bridge has a compelling story that moves and is involving and we are quite willing to work with O'Kane when he discusses, clappers and angles on the bow, etc. This story dumbs down the action to generalities that insult the intelligence of the reader with a minimal knowledge of submarine warfare.
The writing style is plodding and formulaic. Two or three subject-verb-object declarative sentences in a row. Then a compound sentence with a subordinate clause. This would be good high school level non-fiction writing since the author did the research. He doesn't cite O'Kane's Clear the Bridge in his bibliography and he should read it. The gaps in Eight Survived may become more visible to him and his next effort may benefit. This book will remainder very soon and be available at a very low price right after Christmas.

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The incredible wartime saga of the only American submarinersto survive the sinking of their ship and evade enemy capture in WWII On the night of August 13, 1944, the U.S. submarine Flier struck a mine in the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines as it steamed along the surface. All but fifteen of the more than eighty-strong crew went down with the vessel. Of those left floating in the dark, eight survived by swimming for seventeen hours before washing ashore on an uninhabited island. The story of the Flier and its eight survivors is wholly unique in the annals of U.S. military history. Eight Survived tells the gripping story of the doomed submarine and its crew from its first patrol, during which it sank several enemy ships, to the explosion in the Sulu Sea. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and on a visit to the jungle where they washed ashore-where a cast of fascinating characters helped the U.S. sailors evade the Japanese-Douglas Campbell fully captures the combination of extraordinary courage and luck that marked one of the most heroic episodes of World War II.

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Battle Surface: Lawson P. "Red" Ramage and the War Patrols of the USS Parche Review

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(More customer reviews)Steven Moore's analysis of the men and action on the Parche (SS384) is better than mine, and I was an officer on the Parche for all six war patrols.l

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Cmdr. Lawson Paterson Red Ramage was among an elite group of just seven U.S. submariners who were awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II and the first not to die in the course of his heroic exploits. He was honored for his actions in the Pacific on the night of 31 July 1944 when he kept his submarine, USS Parche, on the surface and defiantly charged into the midst of a large Japanese convoy. Ramage's close-in, furious surface rampage became the talk of the submarine force, both in terms of its boldness and its destruction of the enemy shipping. Remarkably, Parche's crew had managed to reload their torpedo tubes while their skipper twisted and turned the boat through the chaos of machine gun bullets, exploding heavy shells, and Japanese ships trying to ram them.To tell Parche's dramatic story, author Stephen Moore draws on recently discovered wartime diaries and interviews with dozens of veterans, who add rich details to the official record. Readers learn what it was like on patrol in the Pacific to endure the terrors of torpedo attacks and depth charges, as well as learn how they relieved the stress of combat on liberty. The only book to focus exclusively on Parche and the incredible Red Ramage, it offers a rare, up-close look at the actions of the legendary World War II submarine, whose conning tower and periscopes are on permanent display in Pearl Harbor.

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Hellions of the Deep Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is an excellent reference source for anyone interested in the development of American torpedoes during WW2 and is highly recommended.
The reason for the four star rating is because the work contains some minor errors and is unclear in some more important areas. OK first the minor errors. Page 68 describes hydrogen peroxide as "H2O2O". Funny when I received my degree hydrogen peroxide was H2O2. Next the line drawing on page 42 illustrates what is known as a "steam" type torpedo and yet the illustration is labelled with an electric motor as being the propulsion unit even though the illustration contains no batteries. It does show the air and fuel flasks of a "steam" type torpedo and the description accompanying the drawing is consistent with a "steam" type torpedo. Actually, although small, the drawing shows what appears to be a turbine and bevel gear unit- again consistent with a "steam" type torpedo engine- even if they are labelled as an electric motor.
OK So much for the minor errors. I consider them unimportant as they in no way detract from the value of the book and any skilled reader can easily compensate.
The problem comes on page 48 where the Japanese "Long Lance" type 93 torpedo is described as being driven by "liquid hydrogen peroxide". Although not a US torpedo this book is so authoritative and well written that all its disclosures clearly carry weight. Given the state of the art in the 1930's I would tend to believe that compressed pure oxygen gas was used in the type 93(ie not H2O2) and indeed a number of web pages support this view. (search for yourself to check this out).
Unfortunately the author does not help matters as at page 135 he says "during the war the japanese skippers preferred the "oxygen" hydrogen peroxide torpedoes". Now although when hydrogen peroxide decomposes it does produce oxygen as well as high temperature steam it is a different chemical species to oxygen and within the naval world an "oxygen torpedo" is one that uses compressed O2 gas. A peroxide torpedo is a peroxide torpedo. I have been unable to track down the authors references for the peroxide Long Lance but from the book they do not appear to be primary sources. Given that the Japanese Long Lance had twice the speed and around five time the range of the best US torpedo and came as an almighty shock to the allies I would have preferred some more details from the author to support his views on the Long Lance.


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Ultimately, World War II was the first war won by technology, but within only a few weeks after the war began, the U.S. Navy realized its torpedo program was a dismal failure. Submarine skippers reported that most of their torpedoes were either missing the targets or failing to explode if they did hit. The United States had to work fast if it expected to compete with the Japanese Long Lance, the biggest and fastest torpedo in the world, and Germany's electric and sonar models. Hellions of the Deep tells the dramatic story of how Navy planners threw aside the careful procedures of peacetime science and initiated "radical research": gathering together the nation's best scientists and engineers in huge research centers and giving them freedom of experimentation to create sophisticated weaponry with a single goal--winning the war.The largest center for torpedo work was a requisitioned gymnasium at Harvard University, where the most famous names in science worked with the best graduate students from all around the country at the business of war. They had to produce tangible weapons, to consider production and supply tactics, to take orders from the military, and, in many cases, also to teach the military how to use the weapons they developed. World War II grew into a chess match played by scientists and physicists, and it became the only war in history to be won by weapons invented during the conflict.For this book, Robert Gannon conducted numerous interviews over a twenty-year period with scientists, engineers, physicists, submarine skippers, and Navy bureaucrats, all involved in the development of the advanced weapons technology that won the war. While the search for new weapons was deadly serious, stretching imagination and resourcefulness to the limit each day, the need was obvious: American ships were being blown up daily just outside the Boston harbor. These oral histories reveal that, in retrospect, surprising even to those who went through it, the search for the "hellions of the deep" was, for many, the most exciting period of their lives.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Unrestricted Warfare: How a New Breed of Officers Led the Submarine Force to Victory in World War II Review

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(More customer reviews)This book offers the novice reader an interesting insight to a number of the better-known US submarine skippers of World War Two. I would tend to agree that the book is much narrower in scope than the title suggests but for all that it still offers an exciting account of submarine warfare as experienced by the US Navy in the Pacific. It was revealing to read an account of a war crime committed by crew-members of one American submarine but I suppose that this just goes to show how war can brutalize even the best of men.
Overall I found the book interesting and engaging but it did not grab me as fully as previous accounts that I have read on submarine warfare. I did enjoy the accounts of what became of the men in the book after the war. The account of the sinking of the `Tang' was well done and it really did bring home to the reader how tragic the end of a submarine could be.
One minor point that spoilt my reading of this otherwise well written and presented book was that at times I felt the author was belittling the efforts of German U-boat crews, only Americans could do the job properly. Overall though I came away after reading this book thankful of the efforts of these brave men. I hope that if by reading this book people come to realise how many young men lost their lives for the benefit of us all.

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Unrestricted Warfare reveals the dramatic story of the harsh baptism by fire faced by U.S. submarine commanders in World War II. The first skippers went to battle hamstrung by conservative peacetime training and plagued by defective torpedoes. Drawing extensively from now declassified files, Japanese archives, and the testimony of surviving veterans, James DeRose has written a fascinating account of the men and vessels responsible for the only successful submarine campaign of the war. They clearly charted a new course to victory in the Pacific.ADVANCE PRAISE FOR UNRESTRICTED WARFARE"James DeRose has done an excellent job-- surprisingly so, in view of his lack of true WWII submarine experience. He obviously contacted everyone he could find who served on one of the three boats he concentrated on, and he read, as well, everything he could find that was written about them. . . . DeRose shines by his interpretation of events as the Japanese must have seen them. . . . His reconstruction of how Wahoo came to her end may well be pretty close to correct. . . . He does the same with Tang."-CAPTAIN EDWARD L. BEACH, USN author of Submarine! and Run Silent, Run Deep"An outstanding addition to the literature of the Silent Service. . . . The depth of research is wonderful. . . . This is fine history . . . that rivals Blair's Silent Victory."-PAUL CROZIER, sitemaster, "Legends of the Deep" (www.warfish.com) Web site on the USS Wahoo"I knew all of the book's main characters quite well. . . . I am also completely familiar with submarine operations in the Pacific. With that background I couldn't fail to thoroughly enjoy DeRose's book. It is well written and has the right feel."-CHESTER W. NIMITZ JR., rear admiral, USN (Ret.)"Sail with American submariners into tightly guarded Japanese home waters; undergo the horror of a depth charge attack; experience the thrill of victory with some of the U.S. Navy's ace submarine skippers. All this--and much more--is contained in James F. DeRose's compelling Unrestricted Warfare. No one interested in the naval side of World War II should be without it."-NATHAN MILLER author of War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II

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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 Ice Diaries: The True Story of One of Mankind's Greatest Adventures Review

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(More customer reviews)Having been blessed to be a crewman in US Nautilus on all three of her Arctic cruises, one in 1957 and two in 1958, with the last successfully gaining the North Pole, I'm familiar with all the details. However, it was such a pleasure to read our late skipper's recent and highly updated accounting of those wonderful days. Anderson's first book,'Nautilus 90 North', written just after the Polar trip of 1958 was also a great read, but of necessity, omitted much of the background information and intrigue that led up to all these trips, especially the 1957 trip. Capt. Anderson was one of the most remarkable and humble men I've ever had the privilege to know, and as was his nature, always put the interest of the crew and ship before himself. This is reflected in his writings and as I read 'Ice Diaries', I could hear his soft Tennasee accent speaking right off the pages. Anyone who has an interest in history, the sea, the Navy, or especially submarines, will enjoy this book. It is a complete accounting of our adventures across two years of under ice excursions and I highly recomend it. It should be on every school library shelf in the country. John C. Yuill

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Now, for the first time, the captain of the submarine USS Nautilus tells the newly declassified story of his ship's desperate Cold War race beneath the polar ice pack.The Cold War was in full swing. The Soviet Union had just successfully launched Sputnik, and President Eisenhower badly wanted to redeem the reputation of the US as technologically superior. "Operation Sunshine" was the answer: under top-secret orders, the Captain and crew of one of the first nuclear submarines, the USS Nautilus, crossed under the North Pole and became the first naval vessel to forge all the way under the polar ice pack to emerge near the former Soviet Union. Readers will voyage along with Captain Anderson as he shares newly declassified stories of his sub's encounters with terrible storms, fire in the hold, collisions with ice, broken compasses, and more.

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United States Submarines Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an outstanding, lavish history of the U.S. submarine: if only one submarine history were to be chosen as a comprehensive library reference, it should be this. A team of historians, authors and Naval experts contribute to this title, which holds over 300 pages of text and photos. Black and white and color photos embellish essays that contrast submarine history with today's modern vessels, providing a unique and lavish display. Suitable for special gifts, United States Submarines is a recommended pick for any interested in military history in general or submarine development in particular.

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Anchors and Eagles Review

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(More customer reviews)Paul Adkisson has for the first time to my knowledge placed in print the way it was in a Navy defending the Republic in the 50's, 60's and 70's. It is hard hitting and pulls no punches. He writes from the perspective of a steam engineer. Totally believable. Early on in Adkissons book I could smell the stack gas and fuel oil, hear the scream of forced draft blowers, feel the unbearable heat in the main engineering spaces that was borne by all, the heaving/rolling deck of a '2100' FLETCHER class destroyer and the feeling of no privacy in cramped/close living quarters. In a way that no other author for me has been able to, Adkisson describes life in the Navy as experienced by all who put to sea for foreign shore in those three decades. I said all!
Did I say totally believable? Well,.....I was reading about myself, I lived it! I salute a fellow engineer and a brother Chief. 4.0! BRAVO ZULU! On a scale of one to ten; 9.95.
Master Chief Adkissons book, Anchors and Eagles; is about a Navy that I married and came to love. A Navy, a sailor and an era that will never exist again in the annals of future naval history.

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Submarine Stories: Recollections from the Diesel Boats Review

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(More customer reviews)This book consists of 58 short chapters, each describing some event or advance in the development of US Navy conventional submarines. It covers the entire period of US diesel boat operation, from the early pre-WWI days up to the last of the "B-girls", USS Blueback, decommisioned in the late 1980's, and the Dolphin, lasting into the 21st century. The individual chapters can be read in 10-15 minutes, but each is a careful vignette of some interesting aspect of submarine life onboard these boats. The author list is spectacular: Slade Cutter, Lawson Ramage, Eugene Wilkinson, Edward Beach, Roy Benson, Paul Schratz, Robert Dornin, John Alden, Robert McNitt, Richard Laning, Waldo Lyon, and Joe Williams, among others.
One of the earliest chapters is a letter written by Theordore Roosevelt (yes, the president), in which he describes his reaction to a trip in the USS Plunger, and gives the order that granted submarine duty pay. The WWI L-boats get a chapter, and the operations in conjunction with the British subs are discussed. The S-boats, O-boats, Far East Service, and inter-war submarine losses are covered in their own chapters. Designing the fleet submarine as well as the Torpedo Data Computer get their own chapters, as does submarine detailing in the era before computers tracking of assignments existed. The Squalus rescue is covered from the standpoint of one of the divers.
The bulk of the chapters cover incidents and stories from WWII. Along the way, we hear from Slade Cutter about life under Lew Parks on Pompano, and what it taught him about submarine command. These chapters also include such notable actions as the exploits of USS Drum, in which the author, Adm Maurice Rindskopf, describes his duty as decoding officer of the ULTRA broadcasts. Told that a Japanese ship will appear at a particular location, he dons a garish yellow Hawaiian shirt. They subsequently find and sink the ship. On the next patrol, the codes come in again, and he again puts on the shirt in anticipation. The crew, figuring it is a good luck charm, immediately put on their own yellow Hawaiian shirts they have all purchased. There are tales of wolfpack operations with Parche, Hammerhead and Steelhead, as told by "Red" Ramage. The USS Darter runs aground after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and all efforts to free her fail. She is finally abandoned, with the crew rescued by the Dace. Balancing these war incidents, are insights into life during that period: reservists at submarine school, crossing the equator, sub sailor's liberty and the experience of being a black submariner. Limited to the mess steward role during WWII, black submariner Hosey Mays stays with the Navy after the war, and eventually becomes rated as an electrician and makes chief.
The post war- Cold War era also gets coverage. Operations under the ice from diesels explorations up to Nautilus are covered by Dr. Waldo Lyons, the visionary scientist who foresaw submarine arctic operations. The experiences with the converted Guppy submarines, with a competition to see who can surface at the steepest angles (72 degrees was captured on film). Regulus missiles at sea are covered in two chapters, with one detailing operations during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The disastrous GM "pancake" rotary diesel engines of the Tang class get a chapter, complete with a nice picture of the offensive engines. The design and performance of the amazing Albacore, with its Body of Revolution hull have a place in the book. There are numerous other chapters all with fascinating stories to tell.

I found that the pacing of the book was excellent, with different stories and viewpoints interwoven among the varied chapters. A sparse but careful selection of black and white photos accompanies each chapter; some of the men and some of the machines. All in all, an excellent book with "bite-sized" stories that all add up to a superb history of the diesel submarine force.


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Culled from many never-before-published narratives and oral histories conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Naval Institute, Submarine Stories presents nearly five dozen first-person accounts from men who were involved with gasoline- and diesel-powered submarines during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The story of these boats, their technological evolution and tactical value, is also the story of the men who went to sea in them. The accounts illustrate the human aspects of serving in diesel boats:the training, operations in peacetime and war, liberty exploits, humorous sidelights, and special feelings of bonding and camaraderie that grew among shipmates.Included here are some familiar names.Slade Cutter, who earned four Navy Crosses as a skipper in World War II, describes the process that made him a capable submariner. Dennis Wilkinson, first skipper of the nuclear-powered Nautilus in the 1950s, tells of being in the first missile-firing submarine in the 1940s. Robert McNitt recalls his experiences as executive officer to Medal of Honor skipper Gene Fluckey. Among the other submariners who present their personal memories are Jerry Beckley, contemplating the possibility of firing nuclear missiles during the 1962 Cuban crisis; Hosey Mays, describing what it was like to be a black man in a boat with a nearly all-white crew; Paul Foster, discussing the sinking a German U-boat in World War I; and Wayne Miller, explaining the enormous satisfaction he felt when he earned his silver dolphins.

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Slade Cutter: Submarine Warrior Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was a used book for a very attractive price. I could not tell it from a brand new book when I unwrapped it. It is a great true story of one of the many submarine exceptionals from the Pacific theater of WWII. Thanks amazon.
DJF

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Slade Cutter's heroic feats as an athlete and World War II submarine commander left an indelible mark on the U.S. Navy. From a humble upbringing on a Depression-era farm in Illinois, he became one of America's most formidable and decorated officers of the war, earning four Navy Crosses and a Presidential Unit Citation as the commander of a submarine in the Pacific that sank twenty-three ships. His brilliant tactics and unusual exploits are the stuff of legends, yet no biography has been previously published about him. Now, with complete and exclusive access to Cutter, who lives in Annapolis, journalist Carl LaVO presents a remarkably candid portrait of the storied captain. He draws on countless interviews with Cutter and with many of his shipmates and admirers, as well as a few detractors. Cutter's own views about his naval career and the inner ticking of the Navy's hierarchy are always forthright and make a unique and memorable contribution to the official record. The biography also pays welcome attention to Cutter's athletic achievements at the Naval Academy in the 1930s. A charter member of the College Football Hall of Fame, he single-handedly beat Army in 1935 to end a thirteen-year losing streak for the midshipmen. An undefeated collegiate heavyweight boxer often compared with the great Joe Lewis, Cutter says he never regretted turning down an offer to become a professional and vie for the world heavyweight championship. The book offers a parade of colorful figures that played a role in Cutter's life, from his pre-Annapolis days to his post-war cruise aboard the nation's first atomic sub, his stint as the Academy's athletic director, and service as captain of a cruiser in the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba. LaVO's honest account of this national hero and Cutter's own insights into the Navy of the mid-twentieth century make exciting reading for a broad range of readers. 15 photographs. Bibliography. Index. 6 x 9 inches.

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October Fury Review

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(More customer reviews)Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Peter Huchthausen provides an "I was there" account of the Crisis from alternating perspectives of U.S. Navy destroyer crews attempting to enforce a blockade of Cuba and Soviet submarine crews that unknowingly stumble into the largest antisubmarine warfare force ever assembled during the Cold War. In 1962 Huchthausen was a junior officer on the American destroyer USS Blanding which hunted the Soviet submarines and inspected Soviet freighters withdrawing from Cuba with ballistic missiles.
Other sources provide better overviews of the strategic and political aspects of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the unique aspect of October Fury is the story, based on Huchthausen's interviews with former Soviet submarine officers, of what happens to four Foxtrot Class submarines when the USSR attempts to move them from their base near the Artic Circle to the port of Mariel in Cuba. The Foxtrot crews, unaware of the larger ongoing Soviet deployment of land-based ballistic and surface-to-air missiles, bombers and other forces to Cuba that will soon trigger the Crisis, depart the Kola Peninsula in early September 1962, with orders to make their way to Cuba while avoiding detection by American forces at all costs. As the submarines near the Bahamas in mid-October the U.S.-Soviet face off over Cuban-based nuclear weapons has commenced and the Foxtrots receive orders to cancel their voyage to Cuba and deploy instead to combat patrol stations in the Atlantic and Caribbean . The rest of the book details action over several days as the Soviet submarines vainly try to remain undetected while American destroyers and aircraft hound them mercilessly, trying to force them to surface and withdraw. There are several tense encounters between the Soviet submarines and their American tormenters that nearly result in actual combat.
Huchthausen's writing would benefit from more editing to eliminate wordiness and repetitions (we're told three times that a pre-Crisis American military exercise was called "Ortsac, which is Castro spelled backward") and some of the dialog wording sounds improbable. The one small-scale chart showing the area of ocean and islands where the destroyer-submarine confrontations take place is grossly inadequate to help readers follow vessel movements as each side jockeys for advantage. And the former destroyer officer should have asked a submariner to edit the descriptions of submarine operations to correct some terms and details.
Despite these shortcomings, I greatly enjoyed October Fury and recommend it to everyone interested in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cold War military topics, submarine adventure and signals intelligence (SIGINT). Huchthausen's depiction of the Soviets' ambitious intended military deployment in Cuba and the operations of the Soviet Navy and its submarine crews will fascinate Cold War buffs. Readers won't want to put down the dramatic, detailed, back and forth descriptions from submarine and destroyer crew perspectives as the Crisis builds up and fades away. This story has the potential to make a great movie. A Foxtrot submarine like those in this book is currently on display to the public in Seattle...

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Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage Review

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(More customer reviews)Imagine if you will that you are onboard a US Navy submarine that has just snuck into Soviet territorial waters to spy on what the other side's navy is doing. From the sonar members of the crew can listen to the screw noise and learn turn counts that identify different Soviet Naval ships and submarines that are plying the seas around you. Your submarine-in this case the USS-Tautog (SSN-639) is here to gather intelligence on Soviet cruise missile submarines that could pose a threat to US carriers. Your captain, in this case Commander Buele G. Balderston drove his sub deeper into Petropavlovsk whereupon they collided with a Soviet Echo-II class attack boat. This was 1970, the half way point in the Cold War, one of three accidents that year, and all of them chronicled in Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew and Annette Lawrence-Drew's `Blind Man's Bluff-The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage'.
While the title may sound like some cheesy hack banged the book out and filled it with questionable information, `Blind Man's Bluff' takes the moderate approach, the authors admitting that sometimes the information is sketchy at times, and speculate on what probably happened, corroborating information from those directly involved aids in fleshing out the true stories told within the book. It details the disastrous first attempt to spy on the Soviets in 1949 when disaster struck the ill-fated USS-Cochino when one of it's batteries exploded, leaving the submarine to flounder in sixteen foot swells before eventually sinking off the coast of Norway. It's crew was rescued by her sister ship, the USS-Tusk, but not before six crewmen were killed-drowned in the stormy seas.
The book also talks at some length about Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the man who singlehandedly created a nuclear navy for the United States. It details Rickover as being a power hungry, arrogant and petty man who made or broke careers as he saw fit, and someone who demanded to know about any projects `his' boats were involved with. Evidence, whether it be technical or personal, is often presented in anecdotal form, often amusing and always enlightening. It praises the Navy as often as it chastises it and allows the reader to develop their own opinions on whether an action was right or wrong.
However, with regards to the 1968 sinking of the USS-Scorpion, it attacks the establishment-the Navy and her departments for a cover-up that has gone on for thirty-two years. When the Scorpion went down, she was in such a sorry state of repair, that one crewmen had been removed over fears expressed in letters written to his superiors. However, it wasn't the fact that Scorpion seemed to be falling apart that caused her to sink, rather a defective torpedo battery leaking within a torpedo and cooked off the 350 lb HBX warhead contained within the weapon that caused her to go down. Memos written from the Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Center told of the defective batteries, but were ignored. At first the Navy announced she may have been sunk by the Soviets, then recounted that in order to deny the torpedo theory-stating steadfastly that there was no way a weapon could `cook off' while inside a submarine.
As well the authors attack, and rightfully so, the CIA for their $500 million boondoggle of the American public for the Glomar Explorer fiasco-code named Project: Jennifer, the Glomar Explorer was the CIA's massive ship that was used to hoist an antiquated Soviet Golf-class diesel electric missile submarine out of sixteen-thousand feet of water 1,700 miles north-west of Hawaii. The submarine had sunk, probably due to the same problem that sank the Cochino-an exploding battery. Suffice it to say that Glomar Explorer utterly failed to raise the sub more than 3000 feet, at which point the grapples failed and the Golf fell almost a mile where it shattered to bits on the ocean floor. This didn't stop the CIA from trying again a year later in 1975, and succeeded in raising only 20% of the sub-minus the three nuclear missiles it carried, minus any code books and minus any usable technology. It was this singular event that led to the CIA being scrutinized and stripped of much of its vaunted power.
From submarine delivered wire tapping pods being delivered into Soviet waters to listen in on undersea telephone cables to Snorkel Patty and her collection of hundreds of dolphin pins, `Blind Man's Bluff' delivers humor, excitement, and an easily readable glimpse into the shadowy and very often murky depths of Navy Intelligence, its operations and its people. The book is personable and detailed, fulfilling its criteria of being both informative and entertaining making it a fine addition to anyone's library who is interested in submarines, the US Navy or espionage in general.

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From Annapolis to Scapa Flow: The Autobiography of Edward L. Beach Sr Review

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(More customer reviews)Edward L. Beach, Sr., recounts his amazing Navy career. Ten years after he retired, he writes of these events with the clarity of someone who lived them just yesterday. His tale of the Battle of Manila Bay is an excellent first-hand account from a different perspective. The only thing he saw during the battle were the boots of a shipmate in the grating above him, thus his title "The Battle of Irwin's Boots." He tells of the sinking of the Memphis, a cruiser under his command. (His son, Beach, Jr., tells this in a recently published book.) Every account throughout the book is a tale told by this humble sailor that was just doing his job.
It is most incredible that nearly every important Naval and Marine Corps personality of the first half of the 20th century crossed paths with this sailor. Before they made a name for themselves later in life, he knew two future Marine Corps Commandants, four star admirals, CNO's, and Navy Secretaries. He met both Roosevelts, vice presidents, Senators, mayors and other political leaders.
The only drawback of the book (and a minor one at that) is the rather lengthy discussions about his workings in Haiti. These were important issues to the US and to the Navy in the early 1900's and Beach's impact was probably quite large. It just made for some slow reading in the middle of the book. This was not bad enough to change my rating to four stars, but I couldn't pick four-and-a-half.
His son, Edward L. Beach, Jr., (Run Silent, Run Deep) adds just enough comments to provide a little backgound without overwhelming his Dad's words.
This is an excellent autobiography of a man who truly loved the "soul of the Navy" and was very proud to serve his country.

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Down to the Sea in Subs: My life in the U.S. Navy Review

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(More customer reviews)Charles A. Lockwood was one of those giants that you've never heard of, but his story is inspirational in it's breadth, impact, and honesty.
If you're an afficionado of sub-tech, try this: His first submarine was the A-2. What other book takes you for a "guided" tour of one of the first submarines ever built? What book describes what it was like to pilot an actual "Pig Boat," the second submarine ever purchased by the USN?
He takes you through to the B Class. He speaks enviously of the new, larger C Class. Over time we go through the numbers. Post WW-I it's Lockwood who's chosen to pilot a captured U-Boat - and he compares the German technology with his own. The USA comes up short, in his eyes, and he walks you through how improvements are made.
It's awesome.
You prefer straight history? Lockwood took over A-2 at Cavite, and gives a great overview of what life was like in Colonial Manila. His autobiography spans from pre-WWI into the coming of WWII - and then it gets even *more* interesting.
Lockwood, as you surely know if you are reading this, eventually commanded the whole of the US Pacific Submarine force. How he got that gig is a story of government inertia, but eventual common sense, that's worth reading.
His solution of the Torpedo Problem is inspiring, and a classic American Tale.
Down to the Sea In Subs is a story that drips with real patriotism, but no jingoism. He whitewashes nothing, making his praise all the more valuable.
It was Lockwood who met with each sub skipper, and befriended many - only to see them never come back. You feel his pain, you feel his pride. You even feel his envy at not getting to go on a single war cruise (he certainly tried).
I do not write this review to make you jealous, for I know that this book is no longer in print. Nor am I selling my copy, so this isn't an ad.
Instead: if there was ever a book that should be reprinted, it is this one. Send a quick note to the USNI Press. Get this re-released as a bluejacket book.
Down to the Sea in Subs compares very favorably to Pacific War Diary. It is a seminal and important work, and it should be available to all.


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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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