What are your favorite submarine novels?

[novagator]

I am pretty sure most people will say Hunt for Red October, but besides that one, what else is in your collection?

[anonymous]

Favorite novel? Run Silent, Run

Favorite novel? Run Silent, Run Deep (didn't like the movie version...)
Clancy is good, but he focuses on the technical details whereas Run Silent focuses more on the human side. Odd opinion from an engineer....

[tabledancer]

I liked Kilo Class by

I liked Kilo Class by PATRICK ROBINSON and Lone Wolf by Timothy P.Mulligan
T.D.

[novagator]

Thanks keep'n coming.

I read this

Thanks keep'n coming.

I read this one book called Seawolf and don't remember the author.

It was 300 pages building up to the big conflict that was over in 5 pages. A total waste. I will see if I can dig up the book.

[wayne frey]

Rising Tide.
Also Blind Man's

Rising Tide.
Also Blind Man's Bluff, fo course.
Both hard to put down........

[dietzer]

My favorites are "Thunder Below"

My favorites are "Thunder Below" by Eugene Fluckey, captain of the USS Barb, a WWII fleet sub, and "Under Pressure", which is the story of the sinking of the S5, and the crew's battle for survival.

If you haven't read these, you need to!

Carl

[boatbuilder1]

My favorites
Danger's hour by james

My favorites
Danger's hour by james francis
a chilling story about a collission of US fast attack shadowing a Soviet alpha, (fiction) but none the less a great book
and the other book is a historical re-telling of the squalus and charles sweede momson I forget the title

charles

[mike byers]

Hey Charles

That's "The Terrible Hours"

The

Hey Charles

That's "The Terrible Hours"

The name of the author escapes me just now, but he's also written the biography of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.

[tom dougherty]

Mike, it's Peter Maas who

Mike, it's Peter Maas who wrote "The Terrible Hours". A related book is "Back from the Deep" by Carl LaVo.

The "USS Seawolf" book is by Patrick Robinson. I found this book to be poor, as one of the key plot points is the Seawolf is captured by the Chinese after it fouls a cable and "wraps the cable around the Seawolf's massive propeller". Say what? It has a pumpjet. That's a D minus for being unprepared with your homework, Mr. Robinson! Also the characters list is in the front, extremely long, and they are extreme caricatures. For example, you know which one will foul up 100's of pages before the person actually does. Ditto another book of his that I read.

I recently started "Deep Sound Channel" by Joe Buff. Requires a major suspension of belief, as the year is 2011 and the technology is more like 50-100 years in the future, rather than 6. The hero (again, not very well developed character, all pure goodness, very one dimensional) is tooling around in a ceramic hull super submarine that operates at at least 10,000 ft depth. I mean, seriously, that would be almost an 8 fold increase in operating depth over current submarines. I hate to think of the air pressure you would need just to blow ballast. So how do you make a large ceramic hull, anyhow?? Do you fire the entire thing in a giant kiln? I can't recall Electric Boat having any plans to build these real soon....

The "bad guys" are a reconstituted reactionary South Africa, aided by Germany and the South Africans also have a super submarine (you know the leading submarine technology coming out of South African....) that holds up in a dive well past 2500 meters (that's 8200 ft...). In the course of events, the evil submarine attacks convoys to Europe with nuclear torpedoes (just like the Battle of the Atlantic....on steroids). The two submarines also toss numerous nuclear torpedoes at each other and survive close in nuclear explosions. The chief bad guy is clearly a villain in the Snidely Whiplash class, who does everything dastardly but twirl his moustache ends. I got about half way through and gave up, the characters and plot were just too unbelievable, more like a videogame. I just couldn't take it seriously anymore. Maybe the villain does twirl his moustache later in the book.


This is a good discussion around books, although technically, novels are fictional, so we are straying a bit with several of the suggestions, but keep'em coming!!



Edited By Tom Dougherty on 1122692981

[tom dougherty]

My list would include]Novels

"Dust on

My list would include]Novels[/b]

"Dust on the Sea" by Edward L. Beach. A seamless follow-on to Run Silent, Run Deep. Very compelling, yet somehow less known than Run Silent.

"Silent Sea" and "Final Harbor", both by Harry Homewood. Excellent WWII submarine dramas.

"The Boat" (Das Boot") by Lothar Bucheim. The basis for the movie....

Non-Fiction]
My list for an imaginary university major in "Submarine History & Technology"

Fleet Submarines-course #101-102 (8 credit course, 2 semesters, midterm & final exam)

"US Submarines through 1945" by Norman Friedman
"Silent Victory" by Clay Blair. Simply the best...
"United States Submarine Operations in World War II" by Theodore Roscoe. Technical history of the Fleet boat.
"The Fleet Type Submarine" NAVPERS 16160. Now available on CD-ROM. The whole sub, every system, how to work it. Don't try to operate a fleet sub without it!
"The Fleet Submarine in the US Navy" By John Alden. The technical history.
"Unrestricted Warfare" James F. De Rose. The top US sub commanders in WWII, and how they came about.
"Wahoo" and "Clear the Bridge" by Richard H. O'Kane. Submarine warfare by the master.
"Thunder Below" by Eugene Fluckey. How it's done right and with great aplomb without getting anyone on board hurt.
"Submarine Diary" by Corwin Mendenhall. Officer on the Sculpin & Pintado.

German U-Boats- course #201-202 (8 credits, 2 semesters, midterm & final)

"The U-Boat" by Eberhard Rossler. Every design aspect of every U-boat. Lecture & laboratory course
" Hitler's U-Boat War" Vol 1 & 2. By Clair Blair. Everything that happened in and to U-boats and why it happened.
"The Type VII U-Boat" by David Westwood. Everything on board all Type VIIs in detailed drawings.
"Vom Original zum Modell]Japanese Submarines In WWII-course #210 (2 credits, final exam only)
"The Japanese Submarine Force and World War II" by Carl Boyd & Akihiko Yoshida. Operational aspects.
"Submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy". D. Carpenter & N. Polmar. Design history and details.

Soviet Submarines -course #240 (4 credits, midterm & final)
"Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies 1718-1990". By Norman Polmar & Jurrien Noot. Submarine design
"Soviet Submarines-Design, Development and Tactics" by Jan Breemer.
"Soviet Submarines-1945 to the present" by John Jordan.
"Rising Tide" by Gary Weir and Walter J. Boyne. Mostly operational aspects.
"Warships of the USSR and Russia-1945-1995" by A.S. Pavlov
"Cold War Submarines" by Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore. Encyclopedic references of Russian and US designs.
"Hostile Waters" by Peter Huchthausen, Igor Kurdin & R.A. White. Loss of the Yankee class K-219 off the US East Coast. Why you wouldn't want to serve on a Yankee class SSBN.
"K-19" by Peter Huchthausen. The cursed K-19 of 2 separate reactor accidents, AKA "Hiroshima". Why you wouldn't want to serve on a Hotel class SSBN.
"A Time to Die" by Robert Moore. The Kursk loss. Why you wouldn't want to serve on an Oscar class SSGN.
"October Fury" by Peter Huchthausen. Soviet diesel submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Modern US Submarines-technology. Course #310. (4 credits, midterm & final)
"Cold War Submarines" by Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore. Encyclopedic references of Russian and US designs. Technology and decision processes on design.
"US Submarines since 1945" by Norman Friedman. All the technology & decisions on technology
"Submarine Design & Development" by Nomran Friedman. Historical development perspective.
"The American Submarine" by Norman Polmar
"Forged in War" Gary Weir. Submarine design development from the end of WWII to 1960.
"Complete Idiot's Guide to Submarines" By M. DeMercurio. Ignore the title. Only recommended for complete idiots with IQs above 120. Very detailed technical and operational aspects.
"USS Albacore" by Robert Largesse and James Mandelblatt. If you don't know about Albacore, it's an automatic flunk out!

Modern US Submarine Operational Aspects. Course #320 (2 credits, final only)
"Rig Ship for Ultra Quite" By Andrew Karam. Outstanding tale of life aboard a Permit class SSN late in the Cold War .
"Big Red" by Douglas Waller. A detailed account of a patrol aboard an Ohio class SSBN.
"Dark Waters" by Lee Vyborny & Don Davis. Technology of and life aboard the NR-1. Excellent!!!
"Blind Man's Bluff" By Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drews. How the submerged Cold War was fought....a classic!
"The Silent War" by John Craven. Some interesting things about Cold War submarining that can neither be confirmed or denied....
"Around the World Submerged" by Edward L. Beach. Onboard the twin reactor Triton to circumnavigate the globe underwater. Classic by a great writer.

There's more coursework, but I have already gone on too long......



Edited By Tom Dougherty on 1122749264

[maniac05]

My favorite sub novel is

My favorite sub novel is Dangerous Ground(odd name for a submarine book) by Larry Bond. It involves cutting edge ROV(remotely operated vehicle) technology and an international scandal to create a complex plot aboard the USS Memphis, a Los Angeles class attack sub that was scheduled for decommissoning.

My favorite nonfiction sub book is Submarines of the World, an alphabetical list of 300 of the world's most famous submarines. It provides technical specifications, a picture, and a brief synopsis of each sub's career.

Maniac05

[novagator]

I read red phoenix and

I read red phoenix and vortex by Larry Bond, I will have to pick up his new one.

[PaulC]

Tom, if I take the

Tom, if I take the final for Fleet Submarines #101-102 cold turkey and pass do I get the course credit (in the same way Bobby Jones passed the bar)? I would have to add "War Fish" by Grider & Sims to that list of essentials.

I picked up Clancy's "SSN" this weekend at a thrift shop (fiction tie-in with his PC game of the same name). Always thought it was more of a gamer's manual but it is novelization of the game's action scenarios in a fictional US war with China.

Characterization is near zero. The only person who even has a name is the main boat's skipper. However, it is taut in the action described, gave me some insight into SSN tactics, afforded a cursory geography lesson on the South China Sea, and delivered that Saturday matinee thrill of the good guys wiping out the bad guys.

Kind of a literate comic book without the illustrations. Pass the popcorn...

[mike byers]

While it's not a novel,

While it's not a novel, Herbert Werners "Steel Coffins" is brilliant.

[mike byers]

Uh...
That would "iron Coffins"

Uh...
That would "iron Coffins"