The Terrible Hours: The Greatest Submarine Rescue in History | 
| Authors: Peter Maas, Peter Mass
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  128 reviews
Sales Rank: 246381
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0060932775
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.916345
EAN: 9780060932770
ASIN: 0060932775
Publication Date: March 2001
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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
Product Description
On the eve of World War II, the Squalus, America's newest submarine, plunged into the North Atlantic. Miraculously, thirty-three crew members still survived. While their loved ones waited in unbearable tension on shore, their ultimate fate would depend upon one man, U.S. Navy officer Charles "Swede" Momsen -- an extraordinary combination of visionary, scientist, and man of action. In this thrilling true narrative, prize-winning author Peter Maas brings us in the vivid detail a moment-by-moment account of the disaster and the man at its center. Could he actually pluck those men from a watery grave? Or had all his pioneering work been in vain?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 123 more reviews...
 Major Disappointment April 24, 2008
I love reading these type books and hearing these stories, but "The Terrible Hours" was difficult to get thru and was more of a tribute to Swede Momson than the actual rescue of this doomed submarine. I found myself skimming thru pages of technical mumbo jumbo about Momson's experiments in order to read about the actual rescue itself.
And the lack of a few diagrams of the interior and exterior of the Squalus, made the book all the more difficult to really understand and grasp the entire story.
 Diver's Story May 23, 2007
I have been a (US Navy qualified) diver since 1958. Momsen has been a household name for years but I had never heard his story. This book filled that gap. Great story, well told.
I suspect most anyone would find this a good read but divers will find it facinating.
Another Great American Story March 28, 2007
The story if Charles "Swede" Momsen is another one of those that few people know of, but should. This book is really more about the life of Momsen and not just the rescue of the Squalus. Though it was one of the crowning achievments of his extraordinary life, and perhaps his proudest moment, the rescue of the Squalus started well over a decade before the ship was even built. Momsens tenacity in developing diving, and submarine rescue devices for years before the sinking is what made the rescue possible at all. The Terrible Hours does an excellent job at informing you of the history of the development of the tools and techniques that were used by Momsen and his crew to rescue the 33 survivors of the doomed (without Momsen) sub.
Not given near the coverage of Squalus rescue, but propbably an achievment that saved much more than 33 lives, was Momsen's work on torpedo exploders and submarine attack techniques that had to have saved hundreds or thousands of American lives in WWII.
The book is an excellent read and I highly recommended to fans of submarines, diving, and rescue. If those things don't interest you, the humanity of the story will.
20th Century Benjamin Franklin: Charles "Swede" Momsen February 26, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
May 22, 1939, merely a few months before Germany invaded Poland and the world decried the clarions of war, a submarine named Squalus (pronounced `skwaylus') sunk onto the Atlantic floor during a test dive with 58 crew members on board. 33 people survived and waited in darkness and silence, save for the hammering of morse code to let whoever might be on the surface know that they are alive. Peter Maas tells the story of these terrible hours as only a master storyteller can with such great wielding of the language that everything seems to come alive, the people, the vessels, the ocean. Even the cantankerous pontoons make the central character of the story Charles "Swede" Momsen look like Ahab.
If you think of the ratio between the length of the submarine and the depth of Ocean it sunk under was like walking in the swimming pool with water coming up to your chest. But if humans had left the submarine, it would look like ants trying to crawl up from your toes. Humans aren't nearly as lucky as ants in such circumstance due to the nature of our respiratory systems, as well as the chemicals that sustain are being. They all go haywire, so we learn from Maas, and most likely die. Unless we have help from people like Momsen and live.
I picked up Maas' book primarily because the awe and respect it kept mentioning toward a single person, Momsen, in its back cover (how's that for judging the book? ;) and of course because of all the favorable reviews in Amazon on its behalf. Being a student of people I wanted to know more about Momsen and I was not disappointed with his character and everything he did so well: He saved lives. He saved lives while constantly fighting off bureaucratic intransigence. He is one of those few people you meet in life who seem to do well anything they work on; one of those few people you can depend on. These people are not without failure but with abundant perseverance: Learning to overcome failure with an open mind and science, which opens the mind--success awaits to achieve whatever goal. This has been the main theme of all great people of the past, present, and the future.
To have a little bit more appreciation for Momsen's work, I learned that Germany lost 1000 lives (peace and war time combined) in submarines since 1774. In contrast, the United States lost 75 sailors. After having read Maas' book I can safely say this is largely due to Momsen because the number one reason for submarine accidents is due to poor design. Incidentally Squalus's sinking was precisely due to the design of levers and their placement. The very nature of this problem is not far off from modern software problems with poor GUI design. And Momsen's single greatest reason for success was testing, testing, and more testing.
You may ask why I related Momsen to Franklin in my title. Because aside from the scientific, military, political acumen this great man had, he even fixed the Navy's postal service.
 " Reading 'Terrible Hours' are hours well spent" January 29, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the story of the rescue of The Squallus in 1939, near NH. I of course have heard of the Squallus, and though I worked at Bupers for almost 10 year, I had never heard of "Swede" Momsen, who headed up the rescue. This is compelling reading. My Aunt felt this book was better than the "Perfect Storm" (At least the ending was happier). This is very compelling reading.
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