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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 359
EAN num: 9780785822264
ISBN number: 0785822267
Label: Chartwell Books
Manufacturer: Chartwell Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 176
Printing Date: January 30, 2007
Publishing house: Chartwell Books
Sale Popularity Level: 817869
Studio: Chartwell Books
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Product Description:
As millions have come to know from such immensely popular books and movies as The Hunt for Red October and U-571, the world of submarines is secretive and dangerous. On the ocean floor lie over a century and a half of subs, lost both in war and in peace. Now, for the very first time, the individual stories of these sunken ships are woven together to create an amazing history of underwater warfare and exploration-and the price that hundreds of subs and thousands of sailors have paid. In gripping text and powerful images (including state-of-the-art contemporary underwater photographs), Lost Subs chronicles the fate of some of the most famous subs in naval history-from the sinking of the Confederate Army's sub Hunley to the recent loss of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk. With a wealth of archival material, modern and period photographs, and stunning paintings by renowned Titanic artist Ken Marschall, this definitive illustrated history brings to life the museum of submarines resting in their underwater graves and the submariners on 'eternal patrol.' And it vividly re-creates the missions to explore and raise many famous sunken subs, including the Hunley and the Kursk-missions sometimes as fraught with peril as any wartime duty. Filled with mystery, drama, and daring, and as current as today's headlines, Lost Subs is a powerful, true thriller.
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Rated by buyers 
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This book allows us to share , in a powerful manner , the lives of the men and women who risk their lives aboard submarines. It is a remarkable compilation of chronological facts , a history of submarines , if you will , accompanied by a treasure trove of phptographs , paintings , and technical illustrations, which will, to say the least, satisfy both our curiosity , and stimulate our imagination .An astonishing accomplisment in such a small volume.
Rated by buyers 
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This book commences with a foreword by Dr Bob Ballard and contains examples of the artwork by Ken Marschall found within some of Ballard's own books. With such credentials, I began reading the work with great expectations. Overall, it is a good read and some readers will probably learn something they did not previously know. The question is whether or not we can trust what is written!
What is lacking is the correct detail of the subject in hand. In short, this author seeks to get away with a peripheral overview of some of the world's greatest submarine stories. It is only when the reader comes across a specific subject he knows well (in my case, the loss of HMS Royal Oak in 1939) that we find far too many errors. Prien never claimed to have sunk HMS Repulse. It is a well-established fact he never mentioned the Repulse at any time - not even in his log. During his very first attack on the Royal Oak, Prien aimed one torpedo to pass in front of the Battleship's bows to strike another vessel moored in the far distance. That torpedo, however, struck the Royal Oak's anchor chains and exploded. When he mounted his second attack, therefore, Prien was genuinely under the impression he had sunk that distant vessel - which he had not identified.
On his return to Germany, it was the Goebbels and Nazi propaganda machine that put a name to that other ship and publicly announced Prien had sunk both the Royal Oak and the Repulse. This was because the Repulse had been photographed moored in Scapa Flow a few days before Prien's attack and was missing from the post-attack photographs. What the German high command did not know, however, was that HMS Repulse had sailed for Rosyth for a refit where she arrived at 0946 hrs on the day Prien entered Scapa Flow. That ship in the distance, incidentally, was HMS Pegasus.
On the up side, the artwork, photographs and readability all score well. On the down side, my problem is that perennial complaint about accuracy of information. If the details pertaining to the attack on HMS Royal Oak are incorrect (and there are more errors!), then it is difficult to trust anything written elsewhere. Quite frankly, this book might just as well be categorised under "fiction." Altogether, I was left with the indelible impression this author seeks to include the names of more established (and more reliable) authors in a bid to give false credibility to his own work.
NM
Rated by buyers -
Lost Subs isn't heavy-duty history by anyone's standards. Skimming lightly over material covered more completely in scholarly books, Lost Subs allows its pictures to do the heavy lifting, and what a wise choice that is! Lavishly illustrated, Lost Subs covers wrecked boats of every era, and provides limited, but relevent background on each era along with discusion of the individual wrecks. Drawings, paintings, and photos bring to ghostly life boats both famous and obscure.
To this former submariner, this book feels more like a tour of historic graveyards, complete with colour commentary on the 'lives, times, and families' of the deceased boats, than it does academic 'History.' All submariners fear ending their lives on the bottom of the sea, though we don't discuss it much. This book shows another side to such an fate, in the remembrance of those who come after. These boats, these gravestones in the deep, punctuate and anchor that remembrance.
If you want scholarly depth, or stirring stories of war, go elsewhere. If you want to remember the lost or reflect on the fate of the men who trusted their lives to the deep, then Lost Subs is the book for you.
Rated by buyers -
If you are looking for a quick overview of the history of submarines and submarine disasters, "Lost Subs" provides several hours of interesting reading.
The book describes the historical development of the submarine, from Bushnell's Turtle and Fulton's Nautilus, through the Hunley, the Holland, and the U-boats of the two World Wars, and on to the nuclear boats of the Cold War. The text is filled with photographs of submarine wreckage and rescue efforts, dramatic paintings of submarines at sea, and diagrams showing how sumarines work. Especially interesting is a detailed recreation of the CSS Hunley's pyrrhic victory against the hapless USS Housatonic during the American Civil War, together with some interesting speculation about why the Hunley sank after its successful attack.
The book's main weakness is that it surveys a big field that has been thoroughly covered in other works. If you enjoy digging into the details, this book may disappoint you. But if you like your maritime narratives to be accompanied by dramatic and often moving photographs and paintings, "Lost Subs" will be a very enjoyable adventure.
If you would like to explore the subject in more detail, try:
Peter Hutchhausen, "Hostile Waters" (a near catstrophe when a Soviet boomer experiences a missile tube failure);
Brayton Harris "The Navy Times Book of Submarines: A Political, Social and Military History" (everything you always wanted to know about the history of submarines, from the 1620s on)
Edwin Gray, "Few Survived: A History of Submarine Disasters" (the title says it all)
John Craven, "The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea"
Sontag & Drew, "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage" (hard to put down)
Hicks & Kropf, "Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine"
Rated by buyers -
From the Civil War submarine Hunley through the 2000 sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk, this 176-page medium format book has eight chapters about the loss and subsequent discovery or recovery of several famous American, Russian German, Japanese, British, Australian and Israeli submarines. By far the best feature of the book is the large quantity of well-reproduced paintings and photographs. There are terrific paintings depicting nighttime images of the CSS Hunley stalking the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor in 1864 and dramatic paintings of German U-Boats stalking their prey in the stormy WWI-WWII Atlantic. The most unique and haunting images are underwater photographs of sea growth-encrusted submarines taken on research and archeological expeditions around the world. There is a small bibliography, list of relevant websites and source for each reproduced painting or photo.
I recommend this book. While not providing full details on any of these famous incidents (virtually all the submarines are the topic of at least one full book and numerous articles) this book is a good overview for anyone interested in naval and submarine history. It makes a photographic/painting supplement for the more demanding submarine researcher or buff.
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