Descent Into Darkness: Pearl Harbor, 1941: A Navy Diver's Memoir - Hardcover

Edward C. Raymer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0891415890 ISBN 13: 9780891415893

Publisher: Presidio Press, 1996

Synopsis

A tribute to the audacious Navy divers who performed the almost super-human deeds that served to shorten the war.

About this title

About the Author:

 

From Publishers Weekly:

Within hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Raymer, an enlisted man, was on a plane headed from San Diego to Oahu. His primary mission: to act as chief diver in the operations to rescue men trapped in sunken battleships. Removing bodies, recovering material and raising the ships themselves could, and would, come later. In this compelling memoir, Raymer describes the multiple hazards of working inside wreckage-strewn warships under the handicaps imposed by available diving technology. Courage was at least as important as competence as the number of dives mounted and the law of averages shifted against the men who went down. Raymer details many harrowing incidents, including one in which he, an arachnophobe, began to panic when a spider stowed away in his diving suit began to crawl over his face in the middle of a dive. The narrative includes lighter passages as well, especially the depictions of how the divers spent their off-duty hours pursuing food, liquor and women. For all its drama and charm, however, Raymer's memoir is useful above all as a case study of the hands-on, un-bureaucratized approach to problem-solving that the U.S. brought to WWII from the beginning. Photographs and maps not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Presidio Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0891415890
• ISBN 13: 9780891415893
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 214