nuclear

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.

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.

This is not a work of documented history; the events described were drawn from undocumented personal recollection. It was written as a rebuff to BLIND MAN'S BLUFF written two years earlier which had exposed his activities working with the Polaris missile project.

Thus, he endeavors to present the facts by one who was involved from the very beginning on a four-decade program of undersea intelligence which must remain secret.

Our government is releasing highly classified information via the Internet, not just in Washington, but in Huntsville, AL where the Redstone Arsenal (full of missiles) is located. I discovered this a few years ago from the secretary of one of the high offices. Her job was to enter this information so that anyone anywhere in the world could have access to this important research which should have remained secret.

This book does not expound upon some of the projects, but now it is available to the public and to foreigners. Just because the Soviet Union has fallen apart, that does not mean there are not other foes who can use this intelligence against us.

John Craven lives in Hawaii and has met with a group of the former submariners for a breakfast gathering the past twenty three years to recall things which are better left unsaid. To wish it had not received the notoriety will be too late to protect this nation's safety.

The index helps to find the references he makes to the action taking place under the oceans. It would have been better if he had used the history of this program as a basis of a fictional account. That way, no one would know what is true and what not.