As a newly retired 24 year Submarine Veteran, I'm just as excited as the next guy when confronted with anything that speaks to submarining. Plus I knew who Craven was, knew what he'd meant to the Navy and knew he was current, so it was with great anticipation that I picked up his book.

It was interesting enough, but still in the end I felt a little unfulfilled. My submarine career pretty much encompasses the second half and end of The Cold War, and I guess I expected to see a little more of me and my comrades in Craven's work which is subtitled, "The Cold War Battle Beneath The Sea", accompanied by a dashing photo of a 688 class nuclear submarine on it's dustcover.

Craven writes in great, sometimes scientific detail, about the various Navy and marine programs and investigations he was involved in. But there is not a lot discussion of actual operational submarining, in contrast to Sherry Sontag's and Christopher Drew's "Blind Man's Bluff", and this may be where the reader gets mislead. There may be security reasons, or maybe operational submarine discussion of the period isn't interesting to anybody but us submariners who were there, but a reader looking for that will be disappointed.

But there IS room for "Blind Man's Bluff" and "The Silent War" in your submarine library. While Sontag and Drew have taken a lot of flack for their book, it IS much more a story of the submarines, the crews, and the missions than anything else current. Craven writes from a much more "above it all" perspective and his topics and discussions deal more with their strategic impact on submarining, than with the actual submarining itself.

The one REAL negative of Craven's work is his propensity for tooting his own horn and patting himself on the back.
It starts at the very beginning and continues unabated throughout the book. The personality and demeanor that we see of him in all the television pieces on submarines, shines through on every page of the book. He did make an invaluable contribution to submarines, the Navy, and our nation, but he's gotta give us a break.

Maybe if he'd titled his book, "My Story", with a portrait of himself wearing a tiny little set of civilian dolphins, we would have been better prepared for what we were getting into.

Gene Brockington, San Diego, California

44 of 49 found the following review helpful:


Insight into the personalities of the players  Apr 14, 2001 By H. Paul Greenough
Two books on submarine operations during the Cold War are on the market. The earlier, Blind Man's Bluff, has a copyright date of 1998, while the more recent, The Silent War, has a copyright date of 2001. The authors of Blind Man's Bluff refer several times to John Craven, auther of The Silent War, while Craven refers to Blind Man's Bluff in several places, sometimes to question its analysis.

The Silent War was written by one of the principles in submarine circles during the Cold War, John Craven. As such, he is in the paradoxical position of knowing more of the details than the authors of Blind Man's Bluff, while being bound by security regulations to say less. As a result, his book presents an interesting picture of the personalities involved, and an occasional interesting technical tidbit [two examples: big waves can be created on demand by driving a large ship at high speed - and turning it abruptly at the last second; materials have a critical temperature, below which they become brittle, rather than flexible.] - but less operational detail.

The book is written in the first person and with a sense of excitement that one would expect from an author having lived through the experiences personally. Despite stumbling over an occasional cliché or misspelled word, the writing is competent to very good.

Which to read? If you want to know what happened, I'd go for Blind Man's Bluff. Its content overcomes the better writing and sense of presence of The Silent Sea. If you want to know something about the people that made it happen, I'd go with The Silent War.

23 of 24 found the following review helpful:


An Excellent Companion to "Bluff," Is this the Murky Truth?  Aug 13, 2001 By D. Smith "former National Security Analyst"
Few people knew of John Pina Craven before the publication of "Blind Man's Bluff" in 1998, shedding light upon the life and work of the man who has left a mark nearly equal of Hyman G. Rickover's upon the silent service. "Bluff" wasn't perfect, however, relying upon partially declassified documents and (sometime anonymous) personal accounts of submarine espionage operations during the Cold War.

Now, Craven has written his own account of his service with the U.S. Navy. Though he avoids discussing some of the accounts found within "Bluff," due to classification concerns, he does provide a number of details previously unpublished, as well as his unique insight into Cold War submarine operations.

Some of his accounts are somewhat questionable, given contradictions with previously published accounts, which again, brings up his concerns over revealing sensitive information.

The only thing lacking from the book is illustrations or pictures of any kind, which seems odd given the wealth of published images on the subject. Furthermore, a peek into Craven's personal photo collection would be fascinating.

Overall, a highly-recommended book for those interested in submarine and Cold War history.

13 of 14 found the following review helpful:


The Truth is Stranger than Fiction  Mar 29, 2001
I met John Craven last night at a book signing in Annapolis. He is clearly a brilliant man with a tremendous amount to say -- too much of which has remained secret for too long. The truth about what was going on during the Cold War is beyond the wildest imagination of the most gifted of fiction writers; the fact that we were able to avoid open conflict with the Soviets is indeed a miracle. Craven's book, while a bit technical in the first few chapters, becomes a real page turner -- I couldn't put it down and finally reached the end around 3AM. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in submarines, the Cold War, military history or global politics.

9 of 9 found the following review helpful:


Interesting view from the top  Sep 16, 2003 By A. A Slezak "Incredulous Reader"
I have read several stories about the cold war but I never seemed to get the big picture that I got from this book. I thought this was going to be a book mostly about submarine warfare. I was surprised at all of the other missions that were connected to special operations.

It starts out and tries to explain the reasons for deterances and how to utilize them against an enemy. He seems to tell us in this part that we had to have enough to make the enemy take notice but not too much where they felt they had no choice but to make a first strike.

The methods that he tells about next where, first the Polaris missile system the problems with the original missile and the benefits and problems of the fuels that they used. After the missile was successful Dr. Craven told about how the Polaris originally had one mega ton warhead and later they figured out how to use MIRVs for a greater deterrence. At this point he tells some personal information about how he got to be head of the program.

The story then went into the loss of the Thresher and the possible causes but at this point the story changes and leaves submarines for deep submergence projects.

First you learn about the deep submergence rescue vehicle but it is vague on what it does. If you saw the movie the Hunt for Red October you would have a better idea. Next you learn about Sealab I & II and all the problems they had there. I would not have thought that these were so clandestine if I had not read this book. At this point you learn about saturation diving and the problems and benefits of the programs.

The next part is more interesting where you learn more about the submarines Seawolf, Whale and Halibut. The only problem is that I have learned more on the history channel than I have in this book because it does not talk about any specific missions. When it talks about the Trieste bathyscaphe the book only references it to talk about how they were going to use the Trieste II as a spy weapon.

The fisherman's friend was an interesting story about the lost nuclear bomb and what the fisherman tried to get for that find. The book mention's what they had to do to recover it and what lessons they learned to increase their capabilities under the sea. This knowledge leads to the NR-1. This book does not talk much about the NR-1 if you want to read a good book on it read Lee Vyborny's account in Dark Waters: An Insider's account of the NR-1, the cold war's undercover nuclear sub. At this point he tells about how he had to deal with Rickover and the type of man that Craven thought he was.

Craven follows this with the story of the two missing submarines and how they had to go and find them. I was surprise that they were able to pin point both of these subs with some acoustic recording from back in the early 70s. This was the most interesting part of the book when Dr. Craven thinks that the reason for the missing Soviet sub is that it was a rogue that was firing a missile at Hawaii but the fail safes caused an explosion and sunk the sub. I had never heard that story before.

The remainder of the book describes the debacle of the Glomar Explorer, how this Soviet spy was after him for years and the ending of the cold war.

I can recommend this book if you are looking of an overview of the political strategy used in our military during the cold war. If you are looking for an adventure novel telling you about one of the exciting projects in detail then I think you would be disappointed.

As you can tell I enjoyed the book but there were many unanswered questions that left me wanting more.

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