Lost Subs: From the Hunley to the Kursk, the Greatest Submarines Ever Lost-And Found

I am very pleased with this book. The images are stunning, the stories are compelling. This is a nice coffee table book that has some reading in it as well. Some of the boats covered are well known by submarine followers but there are a few that are more obscure.

This book allows us to share , in a powerful manner , the lives of the men and women who risk their lives aboard submarines. It is a remarkable compilation of chronological facts , a history of submarines , if you will , accompanied by a treasure trove of phptographs , paintings , and technical illustrations, which will, to say the least, satisfy both our curiosity , and stimulate our imagination .An astonishing accomplisment in such a small volume.

Lost Subs isn't heavy-duty history by anyone's standards. Skimming lightly over material covered more completely in scholarly books, Lost Subs allows its pictures to do the heavy lifting, and what a wise choice that is! Lavishly illustrated, Lost Subs covers wrecked boats of every era, and provides limited, but relevent background on each era along with discussion of the individual wrecks. Drawings, paintings, and photos bring to ghostly life boats both famous and obscure.To this former submariner, this book feels more like a tour of historic graveyards, complete with color commentary on the 'lives, times, and families' of the deceased boats, than it does academic 'History.' All submariners fear ending their lives on the bottom of the sea, though we don't discuss it much. This book shows another side to such an fate, in the remembrance of those who come after. These boats, these gravestones in the deep, punctuate and anchor that remembrance.If you want scholarly depth, or stirring stories of war, go elsewhere. If you want to remember the lost or reflect on the fate of the men who trusted their lives to the deep, then Lost Subs is the book for you.

If you are looking for a quick overview of the history of submarines and submarine disasters, "Lost Subs" provides several hours of interesting reading. The book describes the historical development of the submarine, from Bushnell's Turtle and Fulton's Nautilus, through the Hunley, the Holland, and the U-boats of the two World Wars, and on to the nuclear boats of the Cold War. The text is filled with photographs of submarine wreckage and rescue efforts, dramatic paintings of submarines at sea, and diagrams showing how sumarines work. Especially interesting is a detailed recreation of the CSS Hunley's pyrrhic victory against the hapless USS Housatonic during the American Civil War, together with some interesting speculation about why the Hunley sank after its successful attack.The book's main weakness is that it surveys a big field that has been thoroughly covered in other works. If you enjoy digging into the details, this book may disappoint you. But if you like your maritime narratives to be accompanied by dramatic and often moving photographs and paintings, "Lost Subs" will be a very enjoyable adventure. If you would like to explore the subject in more detail, try:Peter Hutchhausen, "Hostile Waters" (a near catstrophe when a Soviet boomer experiences a missile tube failure);Brayton Harris "The Navy Times Book of Submarines: A Political, Social and Military History" (everything you always wanted to know about the history of submarines, from the 1620s on)Edwin Gray, "Few Survived: A History of Submarine Disasters" (the title says it all)John Craven, "The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea"Sontag & Drew, "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage" (hard to put down)Hicks & Kropf, "Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine"

From the Civil War submarine Hunley through the 2000 sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk, this 176-page medium format book has eight chapters about the loss and subsequent discovery or recovery of several famous American, Russian German, Japanese, British, Australian and Israeli submarines. By far the best feature of the book is the large quantity of well-reproduced paintings and photographs. There are terrific paintings depicting nighttime images of the CSS Hunley stalking the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor in 1864 and dramatic paintings of German U-Boats stalking their prey in the stormy WWI-WWII Atlantic. The most unique and haunting images are underwater photographs of sea growth-encrusted submarines taken on research and archeological expeditions around the world. There is a small bibliography, list of relevant websites and source for each reproduced painting or photo.I recommend this book. While not providing full details on any of these famous incidents (virtually all the submarines are the topic of at least one full book and numerous articles) this book is a good overview for anyone interested in naval and submarine history. It makes a photographic/painting supplement for the more demanding submarine researcher or buff.