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The Terrible Hours : The Man Behind the Greatest Submarine Rescue in History | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Maas
Creator: Kevin Conway
Publisher: HarperAudio
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $11.00
You Save: $14.00 (56%)
New (4) Used (13) from $1.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  128 reviews
Sales Rank: 1719424
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0694522104
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.916345
EAN: 9780694522101
ASIN: 0694522104
Publication Date: October 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Still in shrinkwrap. From a smoke-free home. ASHoc Buy two or more items from me at the same time and receive discounted shipping.
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Amazon.com Review
Like a tough old salt holding forth in a dockside pub, Kevin Conway narrates this riveting maritime drama in a raspy voice well-weathered by sea spray and Lucky Strikes. Chronicling the true story of 33 American sailors trapped aboard a sunken submarine just prior to World War II, author Peter Maas uncovered the unsung hero behind their attempted rescue, Navy officer Charles "Swede" Momsen. A deep sea visionary, Momsen's unorthodox theories and unproven inventions represented the lost men's only hope. "For someone whose formal education had shaped him for duty as a line officer in the US Navy, Momsen was getting into pretty deep water." Conway does an excellent job of portraying the various crew members without turning character into caricature and knots the nerve-wracking, claustrophobic tension of this ill-fated mission in the back of your throat. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --George Laney
Product Description
On the eve of World War II, America's newest submarine plunged helplessly to the North Atlantic bottom during a test dive. Miraculously, thirty-three crew members still survived. While their wives and girlfriends waited in nearly unbearable tension on shore, their ultimate fate would depend on one man. In this thrilling true narrative of terror, heroism and courage in the depths of a malevolent ocean, prizewinning author Peter Maas brings us in vivid detail a blow-by-blow account of the disaster and its uncertain outcome. The sub was the Squalus. The man was a U.S. Navy officer, Charles "Swede" Momsen, an extraordinary combination of visionary, scientist and man of action. Until his advent, it was accepted that if a submarine went down, her crew was doomed. But Momsen, in the face of an indifferent, often sneering naval bureaucracy, battling red tape and disbelieving naysayers every step of the way, risked his own life again and again against the unknown in his efforts to invent and pioneer every escape and rescue device, every deep-sea diving technique, to save an entombed crew. With the crippled, partially flooded Squalus lost on the North Atlantic floor, Momsen faced his personal moment of truth: Could he actually pluck those men from a watery grave? Had all his work been in vain? The legacy of his death-defying probes into our inner space remains with us today, and in this depiction of the perseverance and triumph of the human spirit, Swede Momsen is given his rightful place in the pantheon of true American heroes.
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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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