Customer Reviews

The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea

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Just finished John Craven's book, "The Silent War".

As a newly retired 24 year Submarine Veteran, I'm just as excited as the next guy when confronted with anything that speaks to submarining. Plus I knew who Craven was, knew what he'd meant to the Navy and knew he was current, so it was with great anticipation that I picked up his book.

It was interesting enough, but still in the end I felt a little unfulfilled. My submarine career pretty much encompasses the second half and end of The Cold War, and I guess I expected to see a little more of me and my comrades in Craven's work which is subtitled, "The Cold War Battle Beneath The Sea", accompanied by a dashing photo of a 688 class nuclear submarine on it's dustcover.

Craven writes in great, sometimes scientific detail, about the various Navy and marine programs and investigations he was involved in. But there is not a lot discussion of actual operational submarining, in contrast to Sherry Sontag's and Christopher Drew's "Blind Man's Bluff", and this may be where the reader gets mislead. There may be security reasons, or maybe operational submarine discussion of the period isn't interesting to anybody but us submariners who were there, but a reader looking for that will be disappointed.

But there IS room for "Blind Man's Bluff" and "The Silent War" in your submarine library. While Sontag and Drew have taken a lot of flack for their book, it IS much more a story of the submarines, the crews, and the missions than anything else current. Craven writes from a much more "above it all" perspective and his topics and discussions deal more with their strategic impact on submarining, than with the actual submarining itself.

The one REAL negative of Craven's work is his propensity for tooting his own horn and patting himself on the back.
It starts at the very beginning and continues unabated throughout the book. The personality and demeanor that we see of him in all the television pieces on submarines, shines through on every page of the book. He did make an invaluable contribution to submarines, the Navy, and our nation, but he's gotta give us a break.

Maybe if he'd titled his book, "My Story", with a portrait of himself wearing a tiny little set of civilian dolphins, we would have been better prepared for what we were getting into.

Gene Brockington, San Diego, California

Two books on submarine operations during the Cold War are on the market. The earlier, Blind Man's Bluff, has a copyright date of 1998, while the more recent, The Silent War, has a copyright date of 2001. The authors of Blind Man's Bluff refer several times to John Craven, auther of The Silent War, while Craven refers to Blind Man's Bluff in several places, sometimes to question its analysis.

The Silent War was written by one of the principles in submarine circles during the Cold War, John Craven. As such, he is in the paradoxical position of knowing more of the details than the authors of Blind Man's Bluff, while being bound by security regulations to say less. As a result, his book presents an interesting picture of the personalities involved, and an occasional interesting technical tidbit [two examples: big waves can be created on demand by driving a large ship at high speed - and turning it abruptly at the last second; materials have a critical temperature, below which they become brittle, rather than flexible.] - but less operational detail.

The book is written in the first person and with a sense of excitement that one would expect from an author having lived through the experiences personally. Despite stumbling over an occasional cliché or misspelled word, the writing is competent to very good.

Which to read? If you want to know what happened, I'd go for Blind Man's Bluff. Its content overcomes the better writing and sense of presence of The Silent Sea. If you want to know something about the people that made it happen, I'd go with The Silent War.

Few people knew of John Pina Craven before the publication of "Blind Man's Bluff" in 1998, shedding light upon the life and work of the man who has left a mark nearly equal of Hyman G. Rickover's upon the silent service. "Bluff" wasn't perfect, however, relying upon partially declassified documents and (sometime anonymous) personal accounts of submarine espionage operations during the Cold War.

Now, Craven has written his own account of his service with the U.S. Navy. Though he avoids discussing some of the accounts found within "Bluff," due to classification concerns, he does provide a number of details previously unpublished, as well as his unique insight into Cold War submarine operations.

Some of his accounts are somewhat questionable, given contradictions with previously published accounts, which again, brings up his concerns over revealing sensitive information.

The only thing lacking from the book is illustrations or pictures of any kind, which seems odd given the wealth of published images on the subject. Furthermore, a peek into Craven's personal photo collection would be fascinating.

Overall, a highly-recommended book for those interested in submarine and Cold War history.

I met John Craven last night at a book signing in Annapolis. He is clearly a brilliant man with a tremendous amount to say -- too much of which has remained secret for too long. The truth about what was going on during the Cold War is beyond the wildest imagination of the most gifted of fiction writers; the fact that we were able to avoid open conflict with the Soviets is indeed a miracle. Craven's book, while a bit technical in the first few chapters, becomes a real page turner -- I couldn't put it down and finally reached the end around 3AM. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in submarines, the Cold War, military history or global politics.

I have read several stories about the cold war but I never seemed to get the big picture that I got from this book. I thought this was going to be a book mostly about submarine warfare. I was surprised at all of the other missions that were connected to special operations.

It starts out and tries to explain the reasons for deterances and how to utilize them against an enemy. He seems to tell us in this part that we had to have enough to make the enemy take notice but not too much where they felt they had no choice but to make a first strike.

The methods that he tells about next where, first the Polaris missile system the problems with the original missile and the benefits and problems of the fuels that they used. After the missile was successful Dr. Craven told about how the Polaris originally had one mega ton warhead and later they figured out how to use MIRVs for a greater deterrence. At this point he tells some personal information about how he got to be head of the program.

The story then went into the loss of the Thresher and the possible causes but at this point the story changes and leaves submarines for deep submergence projects.

First you learn about the deep submergence rescue vehicle but it is vague on what it does. If you saw the movie the Hunt for Red October you would have a better idea. Next you learn about Sealab I & II and all the problems they had there. I would not have thought that these were so clandestine if I had not read this book. At this point you learn about saturation diving and the problems and benefits of the programs.

The next part is more interesting where you learn more about the submarines Seawolf, Whale and Halibut. The only problem is that I have learned more on the history channel than I have in this book because it does not talk about any specific missions. When it talks about the Trieste bathyscaphe the book only references it to talk about how they were going to use the Trieste II as a spy weapon.

The fisherman's friend was an interesting story about the lost nuclear bomb and what the fisherman tried to get for that find. The book mention's what they had to do to recover it and what lessons they learned to increase their capabilities under the sea. This knowledge leads to the NR-1. This book does not talk much about the NR-1 if you want to read a good book on it read Lee Vyborny's account in Dark Waters: An Insider's account of the NR-1, the cold war's undercover nuclear sub. At this point he tells about how he had to deal with Rickover and the type of man that Craven thought he was.

Craven follows this with the story of the two missing submarines and how they had to go and find them. I was surprise that they were able to pin point both of these subs with some acoustic recording from back in the early 70s. This was the most interesting part of the book when Dr. Craven thinks that the reason for the missing Soviet sub is that it was a rogue that was firing a missile at Hawaii but the fail safes caused an explosion and sunk the sub. I had never heard that story before.

The remainder of the book describes the debacle of the Glomar Explorer, how this Soviet spy was after him for years and the ending of the cold war.

I can recommend this book if you are looking of an overview of the political strategy used in our military during the cold war. If you are looking for an adventure novel telling you about one of the exciting projects in detail then I think you would be disappointed.

As you can tell I enjoyed the book but there were many unanswered questions that left me wanting more.

It is unusual for an author in his 70's to write memoirs of very secret and critical projects. The main events go back to the 50's and 60's and most of Craven's peers and colleagues are long retired or dead. Craven appears to be a substantive scientist, and the book is written certainly from his point of view. Just his reinterpretation of the events around the Glomar Explorer make this an interesting read. Since everything was top secret or higher, we will never really know the truth, and I would doubt that any historian or biographer will ever be able to dig out many of the events in these most secret programs he discusses. However, any older engineer that knew a bit about these things at that time will find the book worthwhile.

When I made a quick first pass through the book, I was not so impresssed, but then doing a second, more serious read I liked what I saw. What some would consider self-centered, others would view as the confidence needed in a scientist and administrator to get things done. Due to the secrecy of the programs, there is a lot held back, and I thought this took some carefulness in the writing that would make some topics appear disjointed. I presume Craven had a diary and notes and a good memory to be able to play back some of these events, and again I would be puzzled by how many notes can you keep when everything is top secret.

I found this a good read, but I have a historical interest in technology events of that period. If you have similar interests, you will not be disappointed.

I confess that I know and admire the author. I had the privilege to be a part of several of the major projects he managed and talks about. Taken together with "Blind Man's Bluff" , a tip-of-the-iceberg recounting of the submarine force in action, this "tell as much as I am allowed" tale of the technical and leadership story behind the operational triumphs fills in many of the blank spots in the story of how the Cold War was won without firing a shot! Like many of the participants in this saga, I am not free to speak openly about what was done in those programs during the Cold War. Suffice it to say that, just as I gave my wife and each of my sons a copy of "Blind Man's Bluff", I am giving them copies of "The Silent War".

I am a sucker for any submarine stories so when I found this book I thought it would be a wonderful and exciting book. After all this is the guy that built or managed most of the projects so surly he is going to have just an arm load of great stories right? Well let me say that it was a good thing he was a good author because the detail is rather thin. He states that he is prohibited from talking about most of the interesting details because he was a participant, not just an investigative reporter. So the book gives the reader a brief overview of the interesting operational items and goes into depth on more of the management issues. Not really what I was looking for.

To be fair to the author he does do a good job in writing the book. Even though there is a limit to the amount of operational "Hunt for Red October" type details in the book, he does make it interesting. I kept thinking the real value to the book is as a companion to some of the many other books out there now that detail some of the stories briefly mentioned in this book. Overall the book was interesting and well written, it was just not a real exciting book.

John Pina Craven was key to helping keep the Cold War cold and eventually collapsing the Soviet Union. His work in the late 1950s for the Special Projects Office under the U.S. Navy led to the development of the first ballistic missile submarines and their missile, the Polaris. Other projects included underwater labs, saturation diving, and searching for lost objects on the seafloor of major importance to national security, including a Soviet ballistic missile sub that went down in the Pacific in 1968. Was it about to fire a nuclear missile at the U.S.? You'll be shocked by his conclusion on the subject. Craven is not a man many people are familiar with, but his work has made headlines many times over. He tells his stories with as much detail as national security will let him, which at times was a constraint that led to stories being oversimplified. His overuse of technical jargon made the book a little hard to understand to a laymen, even one with a rudimentary knowledge of military hardware. All things considered, I walked away from the book feeling a lot more knowledgeable about how our nation prepared for it's defense against the Soviet Union and happy that people like John Craven work for us and not the other side.

I found the book to be far more tease than substance, perhaps necessarily so. The essense of the book is "I spend a lot of years doing a lot of really cool, interesting, super-secret stuff, but most of it is still secret so I can't tell you much about it." To be sure, the general topics are fascinating -- early and potentially fatal flaws in the design of the hull of the Nautilus, developing the Polaris submarine missile program, deep (we're talking really deep, like maybe 20,000 feet or more) submergence vehicles, and human divers operating at several thousand feet or more beheath the surface. But there is very little detail about the technologies themselves, and not much more about how they were employed.

Craven is, admittedly, limited in what he can say since the facts that are of most interest are still highly classified. To the extent he offers much real meat, he does so by referring to other works, while at the same time discounting their accuracy. This raised my interest in the other works, more so than Craven's, even if there's some doubt about their total veracity. It's always more fun to think you know a lot, than to be certain that you don't.

His chapter suggesting that a rogue Russion missle submarine sank in 1968 while attempting to launch a nuclear strike on Hawaii contains the most interesting revelations, if only because it provides some fair amount of detail. Unfortunately, in his scrupulous efforts to avoid revealing still classified information, his manner of presenting the story seems too coy, too confusing, and a little tortured. For example, he first identifies the sub as "probably a diesel powered Golf class ballistic missile boat", and says he saw photographs with its hull number clearly visible, but then expresses surprise (thus implying disbelief) when public interviews of the crew's survivors (on 60 Minutes) revealed it to be K129, a Golf class submarine. Later, he again refers to it as a Golf, this time with no qualification. It would have been far less confusing for him to simply say, "public sources identify it as a Golf class submarine with hull humber K129, but I can neither confirm nor deny that information," instead of taking us through some obscure references that leave us wondering, is it, or isn't it (an issue that is of interest only because he makes it so). And the symmetry of the location of the sinking, 180 degrees longitude and 40 degrees latitude, is of obvious significance, if only because he keeps repeating it, but he gives not the slightest hint why (or, if he does, it's too obscure for me to appreciate).

The book is more satisfying as Craven's unclassified memoirs of his career, and it does have some interesting information about how projects were organized, how a public project served as cover for a covert one that, in turn, served as cover for an even more covert one, and his interaction with some key individuals, primarily Hyman Rickover and Edward Teller. But with all due respect to Dr. Craven, who I'm sure is a brilliant scientist and fascinating personality, he is not of particular interest because of who he is but because of what he did.

In the final analysis, my expectations were too high and too unrealistic about what I was going to learn in this book. Those who start it with more realistic expectations will be more satisfied than I was.