Peffer - Where Divers Dare : the Hunt For The Last U-Boat
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Where Divers Dare : the Hunt For The Last U-Boat: summary, description and annotation
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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-boats wreck eluded divers.
In 2012, a team found itthe 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...
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An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.
Copyright 2016 by Randall Peffer.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY CALIBER and its logo are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
For more information, visit penguin.com.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-16896-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peffer, Randall S.
Where divers dare : the hunt for the last U-boat / Randall Peffer.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-425-27636-5 (hardback)
1. U-550 (Submarine) 2. World War, 19391945Naval operations, German. 3. World War, 19391945Naval operationsSubmarine. 4. ShipwrecksMassachusetts Nantucket Island. 5. ShipwrecksNorth Atlantic Ocean. 6. Underwater archaeologyNorth Atlantic Ocean. 7. DiversUnited StatesBiography. 8. Deep divingUnited StatesHistory. 9. SalvageUnited StatesHistory. 10. World War, 19391945 CampaignsNorth Atlantic Ocean. I. Title. II. Title: Hunt for the last U-boat.
D782.U186P44 2016
940.54'293dc23
2015028313
First edition: April 2016
Jacket design by Rita Frangie.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Version_1
For veteran seamen Mort Raphelson, John Hudock, Robert Ziemer, Albert Nitsche, Hugo Renzmann, Klaus Hnert, Friedrich Torge, and Robert Wilcox as well as their shipmates, and their families.
Bless them all.
The events, the actions of individual men, and the dialogue in this book have been carefully reconstructed from my firsthand observations as well as the stories of the men involved, their families, and eyewitnesses. When necessary and appropriate, I have also relied on an extensive collection of relevant books, websites, military records, and the established protocols of operation and communication on board vessels of the type and vintage of U-550, USS Joyce, and SS Pan Pennsylvania. As with almost all events with multiple witnesses, sometimes the stories about what happened diverge. When such discrepancies arose during my research, I have gone with the story for which there exists the most corroborating firsthand testimony and evidence.
Prologue
July 22, 2012
A black night on the North Atlantic. Joe Mazraanis eyes feel like theyre popping out of his skull as he sits in the steering seat on the dive boat Tenacious. The vessel is lumbering westward at 10 knots, giving off the sour scent of diesel exhaust. Its only about 2240 hours, at night, but it feels like long past midnight. Mazraani squints to see beyond the glow of the chart plotter, the depth sounder screen, the radar, and the compass. More than a few people have noted that when hes at the helm of his dive boat, he puts them in mind of George Clooney in The Perfect Storm.
He has been peering into the gloom for hours, days. Years, if he has to admit the truth about the depth of his obsession for this hunt. He knows that its not rational, but at some point tonight he has started to imagine flailing, beckoning arms, the flashes of white life vests among the dark waves. Then German cries of Helfen sie mir. Help me.
He wonders if hes alone with these ghosts. Or are the other men on Tenacious haunted, too? But, of course, they are. Why would they be out here on such a night so far from land if they were not spellbound, caught in the thrall of the dead, the dying, and the mysteries that surround them? Possibly divers Brad Sheard, Eric Takakjian, and Anthony Tedeschi, sleeping in their forecastle berths, are dreaming of the naval battle that took place here, near the edge of the continental shelf, 70 miles south of Nantucket Island on April 16, 1944. It was a day when the Battle of the Atlantic exploded in chaos on Americas doorstep.
Maybe sonar operator Garry Kozak, curled on the berth behind the steering station on a short break, is picturing the morning when a torpedo from U-550 split open the side of the tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania on this patch of ocean. Maybe as he snores softly, Kozaks seeing the Pan Penn list suddenly 30 degrees to port. Or perhaps hes seeing twenty-five American men from the tanker scrambling into a lifeboat, then seeing the ship capsize.
Maybe divers Steve Gatto and Tom Packer are sharing the same nightmare as they sit side by side on a bench seat, snacking on peanuts and gazing into the sonar monitor on the galley table in front of them. Gatto and Packer have been deep wreck diving buddies for so long, they sometimes feel uncertain where one mans mind leaves off and the others picks up.
Maybe together they are lost in the moments when depth charges from the destroyer escort USS Joyce drive the German sea wolf to the surface. Perhaps they are witnessing the withering attack from three destroyer escorts, hearing the pock-pock-pock of 20mm cannons firing as the Americans shells turn U-550s conning tower into Swiss cheese. Or possibly they are wondering what it must have been like to be one of those German boys who abandoned his sub for the water as the U-boat was sinking. The Americans rescued only thirteen men. That waters so cold. Nobody knows better than divers such as Gatto and Packer how frigid and unforgiving the North Atlantic can be. Theyve witnessed too many men die in these waters for real, not just in a nightmare hijacked from 1944.
Joe Mazraani hears a groan. Its Pirate, his Portuguese water dog sleeping at his feet. Mazraani shivers a little. But its not Pirates groan or the chill of the night air that rattles him. Its this place and its phantoms. If you ask him, hed tell you that you dont want to ever come to a watery graveyard like this without a serious band of brothers. You dont want to be hunting for a lost U-boat far at sea with bad weather coming without the best of shipmates. You sure as hell dont want to be thinking of diving 300 feet down in black waters unless you have someone you really trust to watch your back.
Ashore he works as a criminal defense attorney in New Jersey, but out here hes the captain of Tenacious. Like all of his shipmates tonight, hes not just a man starting to face off with ghosts. Hes a man on a mission. They all are.
This trip marks their second summer of active searching, and the pressures building. While Mazraanis team has been hunting for U-
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