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Old 05-05-10, 12:35 PM   #624
Kazuaki Shimazaki II
Ace of the Deep
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Just read A. Terenov's Under Three Flags, The Saga of the Submarine Cruiser K-43/Chakra, English version.

(Don't bother looking it up in Amazon. It's just not there. www.books.ru has it, for around 1000 rubles - very roughly US$25, not counting shipping. The good news is that they ship overseas, the bad news is that the order screens are 100% Russian, with no English).

Most of the book is on the author's experiences as he prepares and trains for the job of teaching officers from another (India) and is very interesting. Frankly, I'll prefer more stories of Terenov's earlier career, but the book was originally intended for a Russian audience (written in Russian to boot!) and presumably talk of the standard Russian system would be a lot less interesting to them than to us. Nevertheless, it is one of a handful of views from Russian commanders that made it all the way to an English translation, and if you cut out those whose views have been irreversibly soured by having an accident happen on their boats, perhaps the only one.

The weak part is at the back, where the author tries to compare the Soviet and Indian naval systems. His points have some merit but are poorly argued in my opnion. For more details, see my fuller review here.
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