1/4/2024 0 Comments Lingr st peteThe subtitle of the book is The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine’s Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. With this as prelude, let me comment on recently published Red Star Rogue, by Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond. Red Star Rogue: The Day We All Almost Died And if somebody wants to “think about the unthinkable,” whether it is Peak Oil or submarine warfare, my mind is open. If I pick up a good book about submarines, I most probably will have a hard time putting it down. The main virtue of Buff’s writing, in my view, is his willingness to, as Herbert Kahn once characterized it, “think about the unthinkable.” In this politically correct age, somebody has to go there. But having mentioned author Buff and a couple of his books, I should also point out that I think his geopolitical vision of who will be fighting whom in the future is way off base. Buff definitely knows his submarine technology, as well as his sonar equations and calculations of blast effects. Buff’s futuristic accounts of submarine warfare, complete with ceramic-hulled vessels fighting low-yield nuclear battles at sea, are set in books with titles such as Crush Depth and Deep Sound Channel. Tom Clancy’s outstanding book The Hunt for Red October comes to mind, as does the remarkable detail of submarine operations discussed in his later work Red Storm Rising.Īnd while I am discussing fictional books about submarine operations, I should not neglect to mention Joe Buff, a prolific writer in the past few years. But I am not permitted to say which is which.” Such is the nature of dealing with the highly classified world of military operations beneath the seas.īeyond the historical accounts or the history-based novels, there is also the submarine realm of technological fiction, which ofttimes approaches science fiction. How much is history? One of my Navy acquaintances, and one who is intimately familiar with the subject matter of the book, has this to say: “About 80% of the book is true. The book is filled with tales that will just plain blow your mind. If you want to know something about submarine operations of more recent vintage than the Second World War, there is Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Drew. It is great history and tells a great story. Gene Fluckey, about the exploits of the USS Barb while under his command during the conflict with Japan. There is Lothar-Gunther Buchheim’s Das Boot, about a war patrol of a German submarine in WWII, and the source for the screenplay of the thrilling movie of the same name. But over the years, I think that I have read most of the great books about those remarkable ships. There are a lot of books about submarines, and I will not say that I have read them all.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |