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The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945, by Peter Hennessy and James Jinks. London: Penguin, 2015. 864 pages. £30.
The Silent Deep is a tell-all history of the Royal Navy's submarine service since World War II. The authors were granted almost unlimited access to Royal Navy (RN) historical files of submarine operations. The discussion of formerly classified operational surveillance patrols offthe North Cape of Norway and of the trailing of Soviet nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) and nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) is eye-opening. As a former USN submarine commanding officer-and a veteran of eight covert surveillance operations in the Pacific during the Cold War-I was stunned to read about British submarine operations in the "other ocean."
The book is much more than that, though. It begins with a description of the "Perisher" (slang name for the Submarine Command Course), a demanding five-month-long training program for potential submarine commanding officers. Successful graduates normally go on to command; those dropped for lack of demonstrated ability generally leave the submarine service.
The authors describe the startling effect on the Royal Navy of gaining access to German submarine technology at the...