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Fatal Dive

Solving the World War II Mystery of the USS Grunion

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

No radio distress call ever crackled from the submarine USS Grunion. In 1942, under the fog of World War II, the vessel simply vanished without a trace. For nearly sixty-five years, only a dead silence lingered regarding the fate of the sub and its seventy-man crew—until now. Here author Peter F. Stevens reveals the incredible true story of the search for and discovery of the Grunion—as well as the navy's shocking and willful cover-up of the submarine's baffling disappearance. The Grunion was discovered in 2006 after a decades-long search by the Abele brothers, whose father commanded the submarine and met his untimely death aboard it, but one question remained: What sank the USS Grunion?

Now, for the first time ever, Fatal Dive reveals the answer: one of the Grunion's own missiles. The navy knowingly sent the Grunion out with faulty torpedoes, and Fatal Dive reveals damning and never-before-published government documents that provide irrefutable evidence of its shameful cover-up. Intriguing and explosive, Fatal Dive finally lays to rest one of World War II's greatest mysteries.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 21, 2012
      One of the enigmas of WWII was the fate of the USS Grunion, the submarine carrying a crew of 70 men that vanished without a trace in 1942. Stevens (The Voyage of the Catalpa) charts the Navy career of the sub’s skipper, Jim Abele, from his 1926 Annapolis graduation through to WWII. With Abele in command, the $6 million Grunion was launched on December 22, 1941, carrying the Navy’s new top-secret MK 14 torpedoes. Abele, other skippers, and even the Navy itself were unaware of the weapon’s most dangerous defect: a “circular run” that caused it to boomerang, striking the very sub that had fired it. When news of its disappearance arrived, “the families of the Grunion’s crew experienced shock, denial, despair,” yet in the decades that followed, Abele’s sons were unable to unravel the mystery of the sub’s fate. A scrap of Japanese paper, sold in 1998 for $1 in a Denver antiques shop, was later posted on a military history Web site, eventually leading to the sub’s location and expeditions to find it at Kiska, Alaska. The families’ emotional reactions and the “tapestry of happenstances” involved in the discovery is suspenseful, while Stevens’s speculative description of the sub’s plunge to the ocean floor makes for a chilling conclusion. Color and b&w photos.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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