Where Divers Dare: The Hunt for the Last U-Boat

by Randall Peffer

Overview

In the tradition of Shadow Divers, this is the gripping true account of the search for German U-boat U-550, the last unfound, diveable wreck of a U-boat off the United States coast, and the battle in which it was sunk.
 
On April 16, 1944, the SS Pan Pennsylvania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-550 off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. In return the sub was driven to the surface with depth charges, and then sent to the bottom of the ocean by three destroyer escorts that were guarding the naval convoy. For more than sixty years the location of the U-boat’s wreck eluded divers.
 
In 2012, a team found it—the last undiscovered U-boat in dive-able waters off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, more than three hundred feet below the surface.
 
This is the story of their twenty-year quest to find this "Holy Grail" of deep-sea diving and their tenacious efforts to dive on this treacherous wreck—and of the stunning clash at sea that sealed its doom and brought the Battle of the Atlantic to America’s doorstep.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698168961
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	465,177
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Randall Peffer is the author of eight nonfiction books, most with a nautical angle, as well as nine crime/suspense novels. His first book, Watermen, is a documentary of the lives of the Chesapeake's fishermen. It won the Baltimore Sun’s Critic’s Choice Award and was Maryland Book of the Year. His novel Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues was a Lambda Award finalist and has been optioned for film by producer Barr Potter of Tripod Entertainment. The son of a career naval officer, Peffer holds a 100-ton masters license and has logged over one hundred thousand miles at sea, mostly in traditional working vessels. Peffer teaches writing and literature at Phillips Academy, Andover.

Editorial Reviews

02/29/2016
In this well-told tale of real adventure at sea, Peffer (Seahawk Burning), a novelist and travel writer, deftly combines WWII military history with an exciting account of a group of deep wreck divers searching for one of the most elusive and sought-after prizes: the sunken remains of the German submarine U-550, thought to be the last remaining undiscovered U-boat wreck reachable by divers. Peffer opens with the WWII battle between the U-boat and Allied ships that ends with the sinking of U-550, and the rescue of a small number of the German crew. Decades later, in July 2012, after years of research, a group of expert deep wreck divers discovers the boat off the Massachusetts coast. Over a period of months, they execute dangerous dives to 330 ft. below the surface to document their discovery. Through close examination of the wreck and interviews with the surviving participants of the battle, the divers determine that the official U.S. government account of the fight is inaccurate. Peffer conveys the tension, fear, and exhilaration of deep wreck diving in this uncomfortable true story of bravery, compassion, and death that characterized the violent last hours of U-550. Agent: Doug Grad, Doug Grad Literary Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Peffer ably conveys the lures and danger of the sport of deep-wreck diving…[and] tempers the excitement of coming upon a “virgin wreck” with the dreaded responsibility of learning what happened to the lost crewmen…A nicely handled work that moves back and forth between the two narratives and provides suspense and also a sense of compassion for the victims.”—Kirkus Reviews

“In this well-told tale of real adventure at sea, Peffer…deftly combines WWII military history with an exciting account of a group of deep wreck divers searching for one of the most elusive and sought-after prizes: the sunken remains of the German submarine U-550…[A] true story of bravery [and] compassion.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2016-01-27
A documentation of the sinking of the German U-550 on April 16, 1944, in the North Atlantic and the gutsy American crew of deep-sea divers who finally located it in 2012. Working closely with the team of divers assembled by New Jersey attorney Joe Mazraani to locate the lost German submarine, crime novelist and journalist Peffer (Screams & Whispers, 2011, etc.) has fashioned an intriguing look at what happened the night the U-550 tracked the U.S. convoy of oil tankers leaving New York Harbor bound for England. After firing at one of the tankers and sinking it, the German U-boat was struck by the convoy's accompanying destroyer escorts and sunk, south of Nantucket Island—to the loss of 40 German crewmen, although 13 were rescued, one of them the captain, the battle-hardened Klaus Hänert. The German submarine, launched from a U-boat base at Kiel, Germany, was one of the last of the Type IXC/40 long-distance cruisers to be employed by the German Reich, much beleaguered by April 1944 and no longer the threat that it had been two years before in the North Atlantic. (Five thousand Allied ships were sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic, notes Peffer.) The author re-creates a kind of Das Boot camaraderie among the German crew stuck inside the "iron coffin" while also delineating the Allied convoy system and the sense of peril involved in being pursued by a menacing submarine. Moreover, Peffer ably conveys the lures and danger of the sport of deep-wreck diving, where avoiding nitrogen narcosis and oxygen toxicity requires huge, costly precautions that are always taken in moments of excitement or precipitous action underwater, resulting in many deaths. Peffer tempers the excitement of coming upon a "virgin wreck" with the dreaded responsibility of learning what happened to the lost crewmen. A nicely handled work that moves back and forth between the two narratives and provides suspense and also a sense of compassion for the victims.

Kirkus Reviews