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Summary: One of the best if your a Submarine reader.
Review: As a reader of submarine books for over 30 years, I can honestly say this is one of the best books I've opened. Much like those old Tom Clancy books I used to read with big eyes as a kid...all the inside greasy submarine stuff that makes you claustrophobic even in your reading chair! Buy it!
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Summary: The Terrific Hours
Review: This book is a mixture of the historical account of a terrible submarine accident, a terrific rescue without precedence, a dangerous and laborious salvage operation, and a career of wonders and revolutionary achievements.Before Charles "Swede" Momsen made his mind to find ways to rescue his colleagues in the downed submarines, all the submariners' lives are basically expendable by default. Once a submarine was done, the crew was presumed lost -- even the hatches might be just under 20 feet deep of water. The extremely few successful rescues were all due to the incredible luck that might have to be attributed to some divine interventions. Starting in 1929, Momsen designed the "Momsen Lung", an world renown escape apparatus used by the submariners to escape from a downed submarines even till today. He also designed the world's first rescue chamber, which was not too different from the ones that Russian used in the efforts to rescue the ill-fated nnuclear submarine Kursk recently. He also pioneered in defining the norms and disciplines of deep sea diving, and developed the techniques of using helium and oxygen to overcome the problems caused by nitrogen in the deep water. On top of these outstanding achievements, he developed the group tactics successfully used in the submarine warfare against Japanese shipping during the WW2. In 1953, the experimental submarine Albacore, under his tactical propulsion and manuver through U.S. Navy's bureaucracy, set the design basis for the new generation of the attack submarines that we are familiar today.
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Summary: Gripping True Story of an Amazing Man and an Amazing Rescue
Review: If I did not know that this was a true story, I would have believed that Peter Maas wrote a great fiction submarine novel. What the men of the Squalus endured on that submarine, coupled with the genius of Momsen's rescue inventions and the efforts of the Falcon crew, made a gripping true story tale. Peter Maas summed it up best when he referenced to Momsen as a modern era hero. The battles that he fought to overcome the status quo of the Navy with respect to submarine warfare; both in his rescue operations and his WWII or post-WWII efforts, truly render him such. Peter Maas' retelling of the story of the Squalus is a short read, but well worth it. If you enjoyed Hunt for Red October, you will love this book. And this one is real.
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Summary: The Terrible Hours: The man behind the submarine rescue
Review: I see a lot of glowing reviews here. I'll add another. It is difficult to exaggerate how interesting and exciting history can be when it is written like this. Mass knows his subject but more importantly he knows how to stir our imagination. He has combined diving, submarines, and some vivid characters in a ture story more extraordinary than most fiction. The sinking of the SQUALUS in 1939, the rescure of the crew, diving operations, and her eventful salvage were all fraught with danger. Mass covers it all from begining to end. Accruate and poetic.
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Summary: Interesting, Informative, Suspenseful
Review: The author did a great job in delivering the story. It was very interesting and informative. A must read!
Rating:
Summary: A mission to remember
Review: A very well written book, which makes you feel a part of the rescue and salvage mission. Bringing out the hard reality of the adverse conditions faced by swede and his team, specially when technology was not as advanced as today.
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Summary: A riviting story of undersea salvage.
Review: Peter Maas has tackled his somewhat larger than life subject, the late Admiral Charles Momsen, USN, in a commendable manner. Parts of the book have appeared elsewhere, but this is a complete version of Admiral Momsen's work in rescueing the surviving members of the crew from the submarine Squalus which suffered a diving casualty in May 1939 and went to the bottom of the Atlantic. Under then Lieytenant Command Momsen, 33 men were rescued. I know a great deal about the Squalus as my father served in the boat after it was renamed and commissioned as the Sailfish. He joined the boat in 1944 and sailed in her until the end of World War II. So in essence, I grew up with the story of Squalus and the rather checkered career of Sailfish. A neighbor of ours was the sister of one of the divers, Orson Crandall. I found the book to be a good refresher as to the events leading up to and after the sinking and subsequent events. but as a biography of Admiral Momsen, I came away with disappointment. This book is, to me, not the story of Admiral Momsen, but rather the story of one segment of his life. The author touches on his post Squalus career; on duty in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, wof-pack commander later in World War II in the Pacific, commanding officer of the battleship South Dakota and postwar, working on the design of submarines to make them a much more capable undersea weapon. This is all telescoped into 14 pages at the end of the book. It would have been nice to have an index, photos of Admiral Momsen and his family as well as key participants in the story. A list of people Mr. Maas interviewed would have been useful as well. Obviously, he talked to people, it would be good to have then recognized as individuals and not he did in the book, with a general thank you. It wouldn't have been that hard. For someone who had never heard of the sinking of Squalus, this book would have extremely valuable. But as a story of Admiral Momsen, it is rather incomplete; what about his early career, his decision to join the Navy and stay with it. The author touches on this in his final chapter, but given the rest of the story, I think it would have been more valuable to explore Admiral Momsen's early life to put into context, his later amazing success as a submariner, diver and flag officer. It is a good basis, but for an all around picture of Admiral Momsen, one needs to look to other books.
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Summary: a great story, wonderfully written
Review: This is a spellbinder on the order of Into Thin Air or The Perfect Storm. My entire family--wife, daughter, son-in-law--lost sleep over Maas's telling of the Squalus disaster of 1939, as we sat up on successive nights, unable to put it down. If you saw the dreary television movie "Submerged," please note that it was neither based on this book nor on the facts of the Squalus sinking and rescue effort. The movie was a dime a dozen; the book is one in a million.
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Summary: A new untested device saves 33 on Submarine USS Squalus
Review: A yeoman manning the earhones in the control room of the submarine USS Squalus hears the sound of death, "The engine rooms are flooding". The Squalus then plunged into the black depths of the North Atlantic. Lt. Commander Charles "Swede" Momsen was summoned to help with the rescue. This book is about the determination of this one man who engineered the greatest submarine rescue in history.
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Summary: Swede Momsen's story, at last!
Review: If you followed the Russian submarine incident with interest, you must read Peter Maas' book "Terrible Hours". In the year 2000, Russian submariners perished while the whole world watched and waited. In the year 1939, an American submarine, disabled and sitting on the bottom in 250 feet of water, was located and its crew rescued, thanks to the determination and guts of one Swede Momsen. Maas does an excellent job bringing to light the early days of American submarine warfare and his portrayal of the pioneer days of underwater rescue is fascinating. The US Navy wasn't very kind to Momsen in his day. Maas notes that Momsen's efforts to develop and test rescue techniques and equipment were actually frowned upon by the brass. Momsen's accomplishments were achieved mainly on the sly and at great personal and professional risk. "Terrible Hours" is truly a must read, not only for those interested in submarines and submarine history, but for anyone moved by the gripping human drama of crewmen trapped on the ocean floor, waiting, waiting for that tap on the hull.
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