Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific [Hardcover]

Roger C. Dunham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1996

Dubbed the hunt for Red September, this operation involved the desperate search for a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine that exploded and disappeared in the depths of the Pacific in 1968.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Spy Sub is the tale of a top-secret submarine named Halibut that lowered miles and miles of special cable along the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in order to investigate a sunken Soviet sub. The mission was such a success that the Halibut itself received a Presidential medal in a secret ceremony. It's a true story, even the part about the sub getting a medal. Roger C. Dunham, a nuclear-reactor operator on board the Halibut during the mission, provides a firsthand account of an aspect of Cold War espionage that has only recently begun to surface. To this day, the Pentagon refuses to acknowledge such missions, in all likelihood because they are still going

From Publishers Weekly

For nearly three decades, the U.S. Navy has maintained a tight security net around one of the most successful military operations of the Cold War: the treacherous undersea hunt in the late 1960s for a Soviet "Echo" class submarine, carrying nuclear missiles, that had sunk in the Pacific. Recently, the Pentagon cleared Dunham, who helped hunt for the sub, to tell the story, albeit in greatly curtailed form. So much secrecy still surrounds "Operation Hammerclaw," in fact, that Dunham reveals neither the true name of the American sub (here called the Viperfish) dispatched to find the Soviet craft, nor why the mission was so vital. But no matter: Dunham, a physician and medical thriller author (Final Diagnosis, 1993, etc.), spins a tense, nuanced tale that induces squirms of discomfort as he writes of the dangers of life on board a sub, not the least of which is what happens when a sub dives beyond its "crush depth." Interwoven among such terrifying events as a water leak and a man being washed overboard in the darkness are some of the more surreal aspects of sub duty. There is a memorable episode of mass seasickness, for instance, during which the ill celebrate their discomfort by lighting up cigars. Would-be Captain Nemos and other fans of undersea adventure will enjoy this vigorous memoir. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: Naval Inst Pr; 1St Edition edition (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557501785
• ISBN-13: 978-1557501783
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,764,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much like "The Cruel Sea". This is how it was., January 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific (Hardcover)

I was a "khaki" (an EOOW) on a 637-class boat in the Jimmy Carter years, with service that included two special operations, a Presidential Unit Citation and an 18-month nuclear refueling overhaul. I often still wake from uncomfortable "submarine dreams" even now, some twenty years after I left the service to go to graduate school. This is the book I will give my son to show him what it was like down there.

Ignore the junk on the dust jacket: it has almost nothing to do with the book and its strengths. "Spy Sub" has much more in common with "The Cruel Sea" (Nicholas Monsarrat's classic story of WWII convoy duty) than it has in common with "The Hunt for Red October", and what it has in common with Monsarrat makes it far more authentic than the Clancy novels. If you're thinking about signing up for sub duty, then you need to read this book to see what you're heading into.

If you're looking for a fast-paced, Hollywood-style "space opera of the undersea", however, this is definitely <<not>> the book for you. Read Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and "Red Storm Rising" instead, if that is the case. You'll be entertained a lot and even informed a little. I enjoyed them, too. Just keep in mind that Clancy is a fiction writer whose professional task is to focus on the glamorous and ignore the rest.

Of all the submarine books I've seen and read, "Spy Sub" captures the stone cold sober reality of service aboard a nuclear submarine the best. It shows what it;s really like aboard a nuc boat most of the time, even on a spec op: studying, qualifying, standing watch, performing mountains of required preventive maintenance, keeping your temper in tight spaces, standing watch some more, noticing patterns before they became problems, fixing things that broke, going back on watch yet again, studying to qualify for the next higher watchstation on your off time, and just generally tending to the part of the mission that is your job, so the ship can do its job. Most of it isn't at all glamorous, and almost all of it is very hard work.

I'm not at all surprised that Petty Officer Dunham went on to medical school and a successful career as a physician after he finished his tour of sub duty. The men in dungarees I served with stood head and shoulders above most of my university classmates, and I watched many of them go on to spectacular careers in civilian life. If you read this book carefully and think about it, you will understand why that was so. There is no other experience on this planet that rubs your nose in the details of physical (and psychological) reality quite as thoroughly as service on a nuc boat. The only other experience that might come close is service as an astronaut on an Apollo moon shot.

It's not for everybody. But it's an unbeatable education. Read this book to see why.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Of all the sub stories I've read...this is one of them., July 9, 2003

By 

M. Gentry "subslug" (Fort Worth, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spy Sub: A Top-Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific (Paperback)

There are a lot of great submarine stories to read and this is one of them, unfornately it's just not told in the book. I never give up on a submarine book and I kept toughing it out untill the end ...hoping there would be some substance but it never happens. You keep thinking it's building up to a great finish but the last chapter is a give up and then it's over. Do yourself a favor.......do like the author did, skip this one.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening, but mistitled., December 6, 1999

By 

Spencer K. Stephens (Rockville, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific (Hardcover)

Anyone hungry for disclosure of super-secret details of cold war sub missions will be disappointed. The author acknowledges that he was a nuclear reactor operator and knew virtually nothing about the missions of his sub, the mysterious, one-of-a-kind USS Halibut. However, Dunham provides an insightful, human picture of what it's like to earn one's dolphins, graduating from the "non-nuke puke" status of a freshman submariner. He describes well the rituals, difficulties and patterns of a life spent underwater, with no view of sunlight, for two months at a time. For that, he deserves great credit.