They are the ultimate unseen deterrent in modern warfare. Thousands of tons of steel, missiles, torpedoes, and men, lurking silently hundreds of feet underwater, able to lie off any coastline and unleash a devastating hail of destruction with pinpoint accuracy. They are the true masters of the oceans, bringing hostile military sea traffic to a standstill, striking swift and unseen, and slipping away in an instant, ready to do it all over again at a moment's notice.
Edited by best-selling author Larry Bond, Crash Dive collects the best non-fiction excerpts about the mighty submarines and the crews that man them. From the tough Gato-class boats that harassed the Japanese Navy during World War II to the cat-and-mouse games played by U.S. and Soviet submarines during the Cold War, Crash Dive will take you inside the silent but deadly world of the military submarine.
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Former naval officer and best-selling thriller writer Bond offers a smorgasbord of excerpts from published narratives of submarine warfare. They range from the opening stages of WWII ("First Blood," about the Asiatic Fleet sub S-39) to "Improving the Breed" (Russian submarines successfully challenging NATO antisubmarine forces). In between are American, German, and British submarines sinking ships (at least once, a friendly one) and rescuing POWs in WWII. Here, too, are Nautilus' trail-blazing voyage under the North Pole, the disastrous voyage of the Soviet K-219, and intelligence missions in the deep Pacific. In short, a feast for submarine buffs. Sizable naval collections may already own many of the better-known volumes Bond excerpts, and to those this anthology may serve as a tantalizing introduction. --Roland Green
Review
"Nobody alive knows more about submarines and submarine tactics than Larry Bond, the designer of Harpoon. In addition, he's one hell of a writer, which he proves once again in Cold Choices."
—Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassin
"Larry Bond's new submarine thriller, Cold Choices, sends The Hunt for Red October, Das Boot, and Run Silent, Run Deep straight to the bottom of the sea! A nuclear fireball of a thriller!"
—Douglas Preston, New York Times bestselling author of Blasphemy
"Forget everything you've ever heard about submarine novels! The sub battles in Cold Choices will have you biting your nails, shaking in your shoes and gasping for breath. The King of the 21st Century Sub Thrillers is back."
—David Hagberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Expediter
About the Author
Larry Bond is the author of several bestselling military thrillers, including Cold Choices, Dangerous Ground, Red Phoenix and the Larry Bond's First Team and Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising series. He was a naval officer for six years, serving four on a destroyer and two on shore duty in the Washington DC area. He's also worked as a warfare analyst and antisubmarine technology expert, and he now writes and designs computer games, including Harpoon and Command at Sea. He makes his home in Springfield, Virginia.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
BATFISH
from Submarine!
by Commander Edward L. Beach
We begin our tour with an excerpt from Submarine! byone of the most famous and decorated naval heroes of the twentieth century, Commander Edward L. Beach (1918–2002). Commissioned as an ensign in 1939, he attained the rankof commander before his retirement after twenty- seven years ofnaval ser vice. He served throughout World War II in the Paci.ctheater, participating in the battle of Midway, and overseeingtwelve combat patrols that sank forty- five enemy vessels. Afterward, he served on nuclear submarines, and commanded the USS Triton on its record- breaking submerged voyage around theworld. He was awarded numerous honors and decorations for his valiant ser vice, including the Navy Star, the Silver Star Medal, twoPresidential Unit Citations, the Legion of Merit, and the National Defense Ser vice Medal. After his retirement, he wrote both .ction and non.ction, including the classic novel Run Silent, Run Deep, which was made into a .lm in 1958, and his autobiography,Salt and Steel: Reflections of a Submariner. He was also the coeditor of three editions of the Naval Terms Dictionary and wrote numerous articles periodicals ranging from American Heritage to National Geographic. The Naval Historical Foundation HistoryPrize has been renamed the Commander Edward L. Beach Prize in his honor. It takes a certain kind of man to write about the everyday happenings aboard a submarine on war patrol, and make it as real asif you were standing right beside the men as it happened, and fewdo it better than Commander Beach. This excerpt is no exception, detailing the sixth war patrol of the USS Bat.sh, and bringing home the cramped, crowded, tense conditions under whichits captain and crew played a deadly game of hide- and- seek with enemy submarines during the latter part of World War II.
USS Batfish got under way from Pearl Harbor on December 30, 1944,on what was to be her sixth war patrol. It was also to be one of theepoch- making patrols of the war, one whose in.uence may be discerned even at this late date. Her skipper was Commander J. K. Fyfe, a NavalAcademy graduate of the class of 1936, who had already built up an outstanding record of successful submarine action. From the time when the PCboat escorting her out of Pearl Harbor was dismissed until she arrived atGuam, Jake Fyfe kept his ship at .ank speed. He, in common with mostsubmariners, saw no reason for delay in getting into the war zone, except thenecessity of conserving fuel. The capture of Guam removed that necessity,insofar as the .rst leg of the trip was concerned. After leaving Guam orSaipan it usually paid to be a bit conservative, in case you ran into a longchase, or were given a prolonged special mission.On January 9, 1945, Bat.sh arrived at Guam, and on the next day she departed en route to an area north of the Philippines. On January 12 shesighted what was probably her .rst enemy contact on this par tic u lar patrol,presaging the turn which the whole patrol would subsequently take. Aperiscope suddenly popped out of the water some distance ahead. Since youdon't stick around to argue with an enemy submarine which has the drop onyou, and since, besides, Jake was in a hurry to get to his area where he wasscheduled for immediate lifeguard ser vices, he simply bet on everything shewould take and got out of there. Sightings of Japa nese periscopes by ourboats were fairly numerous during the war. The Japs never learned how doubly cautious you must be when stalking one of your own kind; we neverlearned a lesson better.
Between January 13 and February 9 Bat.sh had rather a dull time. She wasted two days looking for several aviators who were reported ditched near her track; investigated twenty- eight junks to see what kind of cargo theywere carry ing; dived at occasional aircraft alarms.Then, on February 9, whileshe was patrolling in Babuyan Channel, south of Gamiguin Island, the radaroperator sounds a warning.
Something in his radar arouses his attention— he looks closely— there it is again— and again. It is not a pip which he sees; if it were, he would not wait to sing out "Radar contact" and thereby immediately mobilize the shipfor action. This is something more di.cult to evaluate. A faint shimmeringof the scopes— a momentary unsteadiness in the green and amber cathode ray tubes— which comes and goes. Almost unconsciously he times them,and notices the bearing upon which the radar head is trained each time thefaint wobble in the normal "grass" pre sen ta tion is noticed. A few moments ofthis, and—"Captain to the conn!" No time to wait on ceremony. This par tic u lar lad wants his skipper, and he wants him badly.
A split second later the word reaches Jake Fyfe in his cabin, where he hadlain down fully clothed for a few minutes of shut- eye. In a moment the skipper is in the conning tower.
The radar operator points to his scope. "There it is, sir! There it is again!I just noticed it a minute ago!" The operator is doing himself an injustice;from the time he .rst noticed there was something out of the ordinary to themoment Fyfe himself was beside him could not have been more than thirtyseconds.
The captain stares at the instrument, weighing the signi.cance of whathe sees. This is something new, something portentous— there is a small stirring in the back of his mind— there seems to be a half- remembered idea there, if he can only dig it up— then, like a .ash, he has it! If he is right, itmeans they are in grave danger, with a chance to come out of it and maybeadd another scalp to their belts; if he is wrong, what he is about to do maymake a bad situation in.nitely worse. But Jake knows what he is doing. Heis not playing some far- fetched hunch.
"Secure the radar!" he orders. The operator reaches to the cuto. switchand .ips it, looking questioningly at his skipper.
"What do you think it is?" Fyfe asks the lad.
"It looked like another radar to me, Captain." The reply is given withouthesitation.
"What else?"
The boy is at a loss for an answer, and Jake Fyfe answers his own question:
"Japa nese submarine!"
Submarine vs. submarine! The hunter hunted! The biggest fear of our submarine sailors during World War II was that an enemy submarine might get the drop on them while they were making a passage on the surface. It wouldbe quite simple, really. All you have to do is to detect the other fellow first, either by sight or by radar, submerge on his track, and let go the .sh as he passes. All you have to do is to detect him first!
Our submarines ran around the coast of Japan as though they were in their own backyards. They usually condescended to patrol submerged onlywhen within sight of the enemy shoreline in order not to be spotted by shorewatchers or aircraft patrols, for you can't sink ships which stay in port because they know you are waiting outside. But when out of sight of land, andwith no planes about, United States submarines usually remained on thesurface. Thus they increased their search radius and the speed with whichthey could move to new positions. And it should not be forgotten that the.fty- odd boats doing lifeguard duty at the end of the war were required tostay on the surface whether in sight of land or not! Small wonder that oursubmarine lookouts were the best in the Navy.
United States submariners were, as a class, far too well acquainted withthe devastating surprise which can be dealt with a pair of well- aimed torpedoes to take any preventable risk of being on the receiving end themselves.Submarines are rugged ships, but they have so little reserve buoyancy that atorpedo hit is certain to permit enough water to .ood in to overbalance whatremaining buoyancy there is. Even though the submarine might be otherwise intact, she would instantly sink to the bottom of the sea with most ofher crew trapped inside. Tang was a prime example. Ordinarily there are nosurvivors from sunken submarines, with the exception of the Germans, whohad a habit of surfacing and abandoning ship when under attack.
The submarine, which hunts by stealth, is therefore itself peculiarly susceptible to attack by stealth. But don't make the mistake of underestimatingthe enemy submarine crew. The fact that they are operating a submarine atall indicates that they are picked men, who know as much about the game, inall probability, as you do. The odds are de.nitely even, and it is a question ofdog eat dog. The only advantage lies in superior ability and equipment.
Not counting midgets, the .rst Japa nese submarine sunk by our forces wasthe I-173, which fell victim to the Gudgeon on January 27, 1942.The last such was sunk by the Spike.sh on August 13, 1945. Between these dates twenty-three additional Japa nese subs were destroyed by our own undersea warriors.And we regret to chronicle that some .ve of our own subs, it is thought, wentdown under the periscope sights of Japa nese submarines. Unfortunately the Jap rec ords are so poor that the precise manner in which all of our lost submarine vessels met their doom will never be discovered.The fact remains that our submarines were convinced that the Japs were sending the two- man midgetsout at night, looking for them. And almost every patrol report turned in by ourpeople toward the end of the war rec ords that one or more torpedoes had been.red at them.
The most outstanding record of enemy subs sunk was the one hung up byBat.sh, beginning that fateful February 9.
"Secure the radar!" Jake Fyfe turned to a shocked conning tower crew, andordered crisply, "Battle stations torpedo!"
The helmsman instinctively had already extended his hand in the directionof the ...
Product details
- Publisher : Forge Books; First Edition (April 13, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0765303132
- ISBN-13 : 978-0765303134
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.76 x 1.25 x 9.56 inches
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