The Terrible Hours: The Man Behind the Greatest Submarine Rescue in History (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

May 23, 1939. Television was being advertised for the first time to American consumers. Europe was on the brink of war as Hitler and Mussolini signed an alliance in Berlin. These were the days before sonar and before the discovery of nuclear power revolutionized submarine design. Dependent on battery power, submarines were actually surface ships that "occasionally dipped beneath the waves." If a sub went down, "every man on board was doomed. It was accepted that there would be no deliverance."

Swede Momsen was, according to master storyteller Peter Maas, the "greatest submariner the Navy ever had," and he was determined to beat those odds. Momsen spent his career trying to save the lives of trapped submariners, despite an indifferent Navy bureaucracy that thwarted and belittled his efforts at every turn. Every way of saving a sailor entombed in a sub--"smoke bombs, telephone marker buoys, new deep-sea diving techniques, escape hatches, artificial lungs, a great pear-shaped rescue chamber--was either a direct result of Momsen's inventive derring-do, or of value only because of it." Yet on the day the Squalus sank, none of Momsen's inventions had been used in an actual submarine disaster.

In The Terrible Hours, Maas reconstructs the harrowing 39 hours between the disappearance of the submarine Squalus during a test dive off the New England coast and the eventual rescue of 33 crew members trapped in the vessel 250 feet beneath the sea. It's also the story of Momsen's triumph. Under the worst possible circumstances, Momsen led a successful mission and helped change the future of undersea lifesaving. Not only has Maas written a carefully researched and suspenseful tribute to a true hero, in the process he has salvaged a long-forgotten, riveting piece of American history. --Svenja Soldovieri

From Publishers Weekly

Maas, best known for his chronicling of the urban underworld (Underboss, Serpico, etc.), takes readers underwater for a thrilling account of the world's first rescue of a submarine. Before WWII, submariners were second-class citizens. Worse, until Charles "Swede" Momsen came along, it was standard procedure to treat downed subs as irretrievable. Fortunately for 33 men aboard the Squalus, Momsen had developed and tested pioneering rescue equipment (often at the risk of his own life) and was ready with his crew when the sub sank to a depth of 243 feet off Portsmouth, N.H., on May 23, 1939. While the captain of the Squalus kept the air slightly toxic so that his crew stayed drowsy and therefore docile, Momsen lowered his huge pear-shaped diving bell until it made contact with the sub's deck, then began to bring the men up in groups. Bad weather threatened, and then, on the last ascent, the cable tangled, and the final group of men had to be lowered to the ocean floor again and there await repairs. To the amazement of the surface crew, who had telephone contact with the occupants of the bell, they maintained morale by singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." Unfortunately, 26 men had been drowned in the first few minutes of the sinking, and their bodies were not retrieved until the Squalus was recovered 113 days after the mishap. Maas anchors the gripping story in Momsen, whom he portrays as a larger-than-life hero, a brainy, brave iconoclast of the kind one associates with action movies. It's a white-knuckler of a readAbut it's not for the claustrophobic. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; First Edition edition (September 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060194804
• ISBN-13: 978-0060194802
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #318,391 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book is a MUST read!, November 29, 1999

By A Customer

This book is a MUST read for anyone interested in U.S. Navy history. Maas's account of the loss of the USS Squalus & subsequent rescue efforts is exceptionally well done. The reader truly feels what it must have been like for the 33 crewmen trapped in their crippled submarine at the bottom of the North Atlantic as they prayed for rescue. The book also provides a biography of U.S. Navy officer "Swede" Momsen. Often at the risk of his own life, & sometimes with minimal support from the Navy, Momsen developed the deep-sea diving devices that made it possible to attempt the rescue.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unknown Til Now, But One of the Century's Best, December 13, 1999

By	Douglass T. Davidoff "IndyDoug" (Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Peter Maas gives us a tale that brings the heretofore unknown Swede Momsen to the forefront of the American heroic tradition. In describing how Momsen performs the first deep sea rescue of a marooned submarine crew, Maas tells a first-class tale. He describes how Momsen became one of the Navy's best officers, often not by blindly saying "yes," but more often by challenging conventional wisdom and practicing relentless innovation -- even when it was not welcome or understood. He risked his life many times. The rescue of the crew of Squalus off the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire, is enough of a story to merit a place for Momsen. But Maas proceeds to describe Momsen's entire naval career, which includes a hand in bringing about nuclear submarines and even a stint at solving the worst problem in the entire fleet -- namely, bringing order to the Navy's worldwide mail. Momsen has been dead for more than 30 years, but his life and work are a story about leadership, innovation, practical organization politics, and being personally effective. It's a great book, a real page-turner. The only drawback is an occasional spell of technical briefing which produced nothing more in me than a desire to skip a few pages and return to the spellbinding story of this man's life's work.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravery, fear, courage - and the lessons of history., December 9, 1999

By	Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

Peter Maas has a gift. His words make men and women whom we'll never know personally come alive. In his telling of the tale of the Squalus, Maas also provides a shocking glimpse into the rigidity of the pre-World War II Navy, presents a picture of domestic life that we no longer enjoy (and probably are worse off for it) and the willingness of men to willingly endure danger. It is also the story of one very brave, very determined man who fought a stolid bureaucracy in order to save the lives of his comrades. Maas' reporting - and that's what it really is - is solid. He never gets into phony histrionics, but his descriptions of the reality are frightening - you can imagine the terror of being trapped in a submarine, 240 feet below the surface, not knowing if you will be dead or alive in a matter of hours. Maas also captures the unassuming and unfailing courage of the rescuers who fight inadequate equipment, foul weather and fate itself. The Terrible Hours is adventure of the most terrifying kind because it recounts a reality most of us could never endure.

Jerry