Hi Shadow,

I have read all of these books and they are as follows, the ones I think are the best

Thunder Below USS Barb RADM Eugene Fluckey
Wahoo USS Wahoo RADM Dick Okane (My fav of course)
Clear The Bridge USS Tang RADM Dick Okane
Silent Victory All Pacific Subs 2books Clay Blair
Submarine Diary USS Sculpin and others Corwin Mendenhall
BOWFIN USS Bowfin
Silent Running USS Jack VADM James Calvert
Red Scorpion USS Rasher
Final Dive USS Snook
BATFISH USS Batfish
SHINANO USS Archerfish RADM Joseph Enright
Nothing friendly in the vicinity USS Guardfish
Take Her Deep USS Halibut ADM Galatine
Slade Cutter USS Seahorse (He just passed away 9June)

got plenty of factualy books i could recomend

I just re-read 'E. Blanchard Gasaway's 'Grey Wolf, Grey Sea'. It's pretty good, an appropriate 'break-in' for someone new to subs. Although you have to keep in mind that the Type IX boat featured was eventually sunk, so much of the information is either speculation or from former crew who were transferred off and managed to survive the war.

U-977
Hostile waters - True story of a Russian nuclear submarine
blind mans bluff - True stories of US and USSR submarines in the coldwar
Uboat far away from home - True story of U862 around Australian & New Zealand waters during WW2

Just got
"The Last year of the Kriegsmarine May 1944-May 1945" by V.E.Tarrant from the library for £1.70, it looks a good read. :up:

Hostile Waters is good, as is Business in Great Waters (heavy reading though). 'Blind Man's Bluff' is a must read

:up:

We Dive at Dawn, Edwards, Lt. Cdr. K., 1941
Interesting look at British WWI sub missions in the Dardanelles and other theaters. No direct connection with the 1943 movie as I recall it.

Another great one by Bucheim is the coffeetable book
"UBOAT WAR" - Large format, not a lot of text, mainly the photos that he took onboard U-96 when he was a war correspondent -
He was "Lt Werner" more or less in the film.

just bought a new book sea power and space any one read it ? im just starting it so if you have please dont spoil it :D

Rising Tide
 

Just finished reading 'Rising Tide: The Untold Story of Soviet submarines in the Cold War' by Peter Weir and Walter Boyne.

Rating: 3.5 (ouf of 5)

The book offers a glimpse into how the Soviet Navy was led by its commanders and the Politburo in Moscow. If anything, it shows that submariners were just as expendable as any soldier in the Red Army.

The writers, however, have concentrated too much on activities that took place in the 1950s and 1960s, whereas I think that activities and happenings in the 1970s and 1980s were much more interesting due to the Soviet Navy picking up steam in the field of technology. But alas, Weir and Boyne wrote nothing about either the impact of the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal or the crisis of 1984, when NATO held an exercise which the KGB and GRu at first - and wrongly - interpreted as preparations to start a nuclear war.
(As I understand it, Moscow flushed the boomers and rushed them out to the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. But thanks to the bravery of a double agent working at the GRu, the Reagan administration was informed about Moscow's anxiety and quickly made the Politburo understand that it was all an exercise aimed at testing strategic readiness.)

If it hadn't been for the chapter on the sinking of the Kursk, which gives the final explanation on how and why it sank, down to the last bolt of the 65-76 hydrogen-peroxide training torpedo, I would've rated the book 2.5, not 3.5. But even then I have qualms with this chapter, as the writers relied heavily on a bunch of retired Russian submariners for their info - submarines who had retired some time before the Kursk sank.

Other books I read:
- Red Storm Rising, Clancy (cool)
- Blind Man's Bluff, Sontag (informative as hell!)
- Red Phoenix, Bond (hmmmm)
- The Third World War, Hackett (kinda cool)
- The Fifty Years War, Friedman (OK but nothing special)
And no, I won't mention the utter cack written by that DiMercurio-fella

DANG, the forum logged me out cuz of time issue. Sorry ppl, I wrote that piece on 'Rising Tide'.

factual book liners tankers and merchant ships 5/10 because brief but factual and not all the good ships coverd

Just got what has got to be the ultimate book on U-boats. Title is "Ubootwaffe, Kleine Kampfverbände 1939-45", by Waldemar Trojca.
It is 600 pages (!), 50 pages of color plates, many hundreds of photos, line drawings, and a stack of KM grid maps, including one of the entire world. Also has the final fates of every U-boat, and even the locations of all Allied warships and planes sunk/shot down by U-boats.
The book even has the official Kriegsmarine painting regulations for down to every last nut and bolt; invaluable for modelers. This is the best book on U-boats I have ever seen. It's rather pricey at $90 USD, but was worth every penny of it. If you can get past the expense, get this book before it's out of print... :up: