Dark Waters: An Insider's Account of the NR-1, the Cold War's Undercover Nuclear Sub - Softcover

Vyborny, Lee; Davis, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451211618 ISBN 13: 9780451211613

Publisher: New American Library, 2004

Synopsis

A former crewmember offers a detailed description of the U.S. Navy's top-secret, four-hundred-ton submarine, an expensive, dangerous vessel with a custom-built miniature nuclear reactor designed as a secret weapon during the Cold War. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

After nearly forty years, the most closely guarded secret of the Cold War is revealed...

The White House stated that it was officially created to explore the "diverse species of marine life." Only a select group of men knew the truth. Among them were the twelve submariners chosen to embark on the first missions of the NR-1 - one of whom was Lee Vyborny. This is his story.

In 1966, when the United States lost a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Spain, retrieving it took eighty days and at least three deep-diving submersibles. The unacceptable length of time it took to avoid a near disaster gave Admiral Hyman Rickover, the "father of the nuclear navy," an irrefutable reason to forge ahead on the development of the craft he'd been working on for more than a year. One that could do the job again if needed - and much more. With every aspect of its conception and its abilities overseen, studied, and scrutinized by Rickover, his intensely personal project would be a 400-ton submarine equipped with a custom-built miniature nuclear reactor and designed to dive deeper than any other submarine, traversing the untouched ocean floor on Goodyear tires. Such depths would also mean that the crew would be cut off from all possible rescue should something go wrong. It was impossibly expensive, extraordinarily dangerous, and, as a secret weapon, completely unarmed! . For the American military, the state-of-the-art submersible, christened the NR-1, would be the most closely guarded - and revolutionary - secret of the Cold War.

Through eyewitness accounts from the engineers and the original crew - all of whom were trained to do everyone else's jobs - and from the NR-1's conception through its initial decade of operation to its still-active performance today as one of the oldest U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarines still in service, "Dark Waters" lifts the cloud of mystery from one of America's best kept secrets with the full story told here for the first time. It recounts not only the incredible, classified missions of the men aboard the secret submarine, but the human aspects as well; the rigorous mental and physical training, the clashes of personalities, the pride in and heart-stopping fear of pushing the technological envelope, and the thrill of going where no man had gone before - to pull off the impossible and beat the odds time and time again.

About the Author

Lee Vyborny has been involved with U.S. Navy submarines for over 30 years, serving as one of the original crew members of the NR-1. He was an instructor at the Nuclear Power Training Unit, a Navy diver, and later a design and production engineer at General Dynamics and program manager at Sperry. Don Davis has written or co-written 11 books. Three of his books were New York Times bestsellers. He has been a news correspondent for over 20 years.

Edition details

• Publisher: New American Library
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0451211618
• ISBN 13: 9780451211613
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256