Submarine Disasters

The Confederate submarine Hunley holds numerous firsts for submarines including being the first to sink an enemy vessel when she sank the USS Housatonic, a steam powered Sloop-of-War. A less enchanting record held by the Hunley is that she sank three times, killing all or nearly all of her crew each time. After the first two times, how would you have tried to convince the next crew to even get aboard? At that, the Hunley was not the first submarine to sink. That seems to have been the Maria, an English boat sinking on June 20, 1774. The last seems to have been the Chinese submarine No. 361 with 70 crewmen killed on May 3, 2003. All in all, the United States Navy has had about 650 submarines, of which about 65 have sunk. This book discusses the submarines that have sunk, and page after page cover the boats that have been sunk in collisions, fires, human and mechanical errors, and even some due to enemy action. On page 106 a table begins of submarine accidents, it runs across four large pages of small type. And at that it doesn't cover all the boats lost. For instance a friend of mine was on the USS Snook. When he came back from their 8th war partrol in 1945 he went into the hospital with appendicitis. While in the hospital the Snook went out on her ninth patrol, from which she never returned. The Snook remains 'on eternal patrol' as those guys say. The last quarter of the book covers escape from damaged, sinking or sunken submarines including the work that has been done in cooperation by all the world's navies. All in all, an excellent book on an interesting subject.