Sub: An Oral History of US Navy Submarines [Paperback]

True tales of life and death as told by those who fought in the briny depths.

From the undersea warfare of World War II through the Cold War stand-offs in the deep to the cutting-edge technology of the modern U.S. Navy, submarines have evolved into the front line of our nation's defense at sea. And the men who sail them have become heroes above and below the waves. These are their stories.

Compiled from interviews and recollections from submarine veterans and accompanied by detailed photos and illustrations of both man and machine at work, Sub is a gripping chronicle of undersea warfare as told by those who know firsthand what it means to drop through the hull of a boat, to sink into the dark, freezing waters of the deep-and to have death never more than one torpedo away.Mark Roberts is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Strike Force Baghdad, Precision Strike, and Sub.

“SURFACE! SURFACE!”

We blew out the tanks and were able to get part of the way up. The pharmacist’s mate was able to close the lower conning tower hatch, which stopped the water from coming down into the control room. However, before we fully surfaced, we had flooded the pump room, and taken in about a foot and a half of water into the control room.

As a result we lost all hydraulics, radar—we didn’t have any surface coverage. The air search radar was the only electronics we had because it was up in the control tower, above the water.

What was really bad was that we couldn’t make air to breathe, and we had to survive on the air we had in the bottles. Each compartment has a way to open and close the ballast tanks, so we had to do hand dives into the compartments to reach those valves. We were crawling around in dark compartmentlÃ?