Review by Booklist Review
An expert in the history of small military units (e.g., The Bedford Boys, 2003) tackles his smallest unit yet: the nine survivors of the USS Tang, a submarine sunk off the China coast in 1944 by a circular run of her own last torpedo. The survivors included both those, among them Captain Richard O'Kane, who were washed off the bridge when she sank and those who swam up from 180 feet down to join their comrades in surviving until morning. Picked up by the Japanese and subjected to nearly a year of exceptionally brutal treatment, all nine lived to return home and resume their lives, despite physical and psychological scars. Kershaw has researched exhaustively, including interviewing the last two living survivors, and written compactly the portrait of nine Americans who rose to heroism and of a ship that well deserved its status it was the most successful combat sub in the Pacific theater as a legend in the naval history of World War II.--Green, Roland Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Popular historian Kershaw (The Bedford Boys) chronicles the extraordinary WWII heroism of the crew of the USS Tang, "the deadliest submarine operating in the Pacific," in this spellbinding saga. The Tang's captain, Cmdr. Richard O'Kane, was a celebrated maverick whose "contempt for the enemy was absolute." He was offered the opportunity to operate alone in the dangerous Formosa Strait, and the boat's crew sank 13 ships on "one of the most destructive patrols of the war." But the last torpedo malfunctioned and boomeranged on the Tang, killing half the crew instantly and sinking the sub. The explosion threw O'Kane and several others into the ocean, but most of the rest were trapped below; only nine of 87 survived. They were picked up by a Japanese patrol boat and taken to a POW camp, tortured and starved. O'Kane, who earned the Medal of Honor, weighed only 88 pounds when liberated. Relying on interviews with survivors and oral histories, and writing with his customary verve, Kershaw delivers another memorable tale of uncommon courage. 16 pages of b&w photos. 100,000 first printing; 10-city author tour. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Kershaw (The Few, 2006, etc.) fashions a gripping, novelistic account of the U.S. submarine Tang's tragic final patrol. By August 1944, the Tang, a state-of-the-art torpedo-laden vessel under the guidance of Commander Richard O'Kane, had proven itself a formidable hunter of Japanese shipping. The tide was turning against the Japanese in the Pacific, as effective American technology allowed submarines to sink far below the surface to evade depth charges. In just four patrols, the cocky, ambitious, New Hampshire-born O'Kane had engineered the sinking of 17 ships. He was eager to embark on his fifth patrol, to the perilous enemy-lined Formosa Strait. By early October, the Tang had weathered an ominous typhoon, as well as a fall by the commander that left him with a broken foot. Once in the strait, the submarine successfully sank a convoy of Japanese cargo ships, emptying most of its torpedoes. Incredibly, the last torpedo, Number 24, boomeranged and headed straight back to strike the Tang. Half of the 87-member crew were killed instantly. When the fatally wounded submarine hit bottom, a handful of men miraculously escaped to the surface through the torpedo tubes. (They were equipped with Momsen Lungs, which took carbon dioxide from the air they exhaled, enriched it with oxygen and recycled it.) After floating for hours in the water, nine survivors, including O'Kane, were picked up by Japanese lifeboats. Surprisingly, the vengeful Japanese did not kill them outright, though they endured a harrowing period of captivity, subjected to interrogation, torture and starvation. On August 28, 1945, 19 days after the U.S. atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki, the men were rescued by a U.S. destroyer. Stitched together from first-person accounts, Kershaw's action-packed, character-driven narrative of this extraordinary crew's exploits concludes with a poignant wrap-up of the survivors' later years. Reads like the best suspense fiction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
