A Tale of Two Subs: An Untold Story of World War II, Two Sister Ships, and Extraordinary Heroism

Yes, A TALE OF TWO SUBS is about the Silent Service and codebreakers of World War II, but it's more about the Pentagon Bureaucrats who punish every genuine hero, or sabotage every good deed and good idea that comes down the pike during the war. It's about premeditated SNAFUs and Desk Commanders & Apple Polishers jealous of real warriors. I personally enjoyed the diversity of topics in the book. I learned a lot about submarine service and codebreaking. And its all written in a dramatic style that's easy to read and very entertaining. It's a book of fascinating tales NOT charts and graphs and maps and colorless reports. Its a terrific book for vacations or business travel.

Jonathan McCullough has put together a very ambitious, exciting and informative book. He writes with the authority of an old salt--I'm sure due to exhaustive research. How did we win the war with those lousy torpedoes? I felt the claustrophobia of being in a sub under attack. Who knew that it could be so hot in a submarine. One would think that being submerged in water would keep a sub cool. After reading about the Japanese treatment of our sailors I feel a little guilty owning a Nissan. McCullough's info on breaking and then protecting the secret of having broken the Jap code is fascinating. The book holds the ingredients of a great underdog / hero story. What tragedy, the sinking of a vessel carrying your own men. Thank god for men like Captain John Cromwell. A compelling read.

It's argumentative, but let's do it anyway. There were plenty of heroes to go around in the western Pacific theater of operations during World War II. The Army grunts, the Marine Corps gyrenes, the Navy and Army Air Corps fliers and the ones who supported them afloat and ashore come to mind easily. But there was another class of hero who served silently against the might of the Japanese imperial forces on missions made all the more difficult by know-nothing Navy bureaucrats in Washington and a loud-mouth, racist politician from Kentucky. The biggest heroes in the Pacific may have been the volunteers who wore distinctive and coveted pins on their uniforms. The pin shows two dolphins facing inward toward a submarine and testifies to the wearer as a qualified submariner. They were the sailors who slipped quietly out of port, submerged, and went hunting for Japanese ships. They were like no other combatants. Their casualties were the highest of any service during the war. In his first published book, author Jonathan McCullough delivers a graphic account of what it was like aboard American u-boats in the early forties. He writes, "...each dive caused severe pressure changes several times daily, the effect caused searing, exquisitely excruciating headaches that reduced grown men to bedridden wrecks." When subs returned from a tropics patrol of several weeks' duration the crew "...were reduced to skin and bones [because] heat from the engines made the interiors of the boats feel like a blast furnace." Sadly, the natural perils of life underwater and attacks from surface ships above were only part of the problem. The "staffies" in Washington refused to believe that Combat Information Center at Pearl Harbor, commanded by Joseph J. Rochefort, had really cracked the Japanese J-25 code. The office of the Chief of Naval Operations fired one bureaucratic torpedo after another at Rochefort, eventually sending him back to the mainland to skipper a dry dock. The Navy's Bureau of Ordinance was as bad. Appallingly, BuOrd's designers, engineers, and apologists refused to believe the submariners who came back to port feeling betrayed and impotent because their torpedoes exploded after running only a hundred yards, or hit the sides of enemy ships and bounced off. Washington had to be right, the whole fleet of u-boat sailors that had gone in harm's way had to be wrong. One wishes McCullough had written more about the "May Affair" involving Democratic Congressman Andrew Jackson May of Kentucky, Chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs. In May's eyes the enemies were "racially inferior, stupid yellow 'Jap' bastards." During a junket to the Pacific in 1943 May learned in secret briefings that many of the American submarines were escaping from Japanese destroyers and other sub-killers because their depth charges were set to explode at 150 feet below the surface. May promptly held a press conference to tell reporters what he had le

This book is a real page-turner. Its hard to put down, and meshes the various themes beautifully. Like most good books it takes a level of concentration andintelligence, plus some imagination. I hope the public has enough of both to appreciate a real gem of a history book. There are three basic themes - the pairing of the submarines, the code-breaking that was so essential to effective sub warfare, and the personal ties between submariners, even, in this case, between naval neighbors, much to the disadvantage of Cromwell - the knowledge would kill him. The personal touch - what was it like to face depth charges- makes the book real and the service more than admirable. As a child a knew a fearless diver who couldn't bring himself to go down into a sub in the Chicago River, such is the courage it takes to be a submariner. In the end, the fate of the Sculpin crew is sealed almost as a Greek tragedy. Classic stuff.

I bought this on impulse, but once I started reading it I got completely sucked in and read the whole book in 2 or 3 sittings. A fascinating tale full of gut-wrenching twists and turns. The author recounts what it was actually like to serve on a WWII sub in minute detail. It is cleary well-reseached. The descriptions throughout the narrative are oustanding, and the explanations of military terminology and protocol are interesting and easy to understand. Really an amazing story that is well written- truly a tribute to these incredibly brave men.