Stalking the Red Bear – Book Review
A Chronicle of a Submarine Spy Mission to the Barents Sea
Jun 11, 2009
In Stalking the Red Bear, Peter Sasgen, author of three previous books about submarines (two fiction, one nonfiction), tells the story of Captain "Hunter" commander of the Sturgeon-class submarine "Blackfin." The name of the boat and the captain are fictional to protect the identities of the participants in this account taken from real life during the cold war of the 1970's.
The book's striking cover image, showing a black submarine moving through murky waters, whispers, "read me." Submarine stories can make good reading for those interested in military history or for people who enjoy a good adventure. Unfortunately, Sasgen misses the mark with this one.
The Blackfin's Mission
Sasgen gives fair coverage to the life of a U.S. submariner. From the difficulties of family life and the stresses of extended deployments incommunicado for months at a time, to the tension of trying to operate in enemy waters without detection—it's all there. It's the mission though, that is the focus of the book.
As critically important as the mission no doubt was (and continues to be), it just isn't very interesting. There are no crash dives, no near collisions with enemy ships, no harrowing escapes from depth charge attacks, no critical malfunctions that test the crew's skill and daring to the absolute limit.
The captain is very pleased with himself for identifying a Soviet sub that had previously been picked up by the U.S. underwater listening network, so the sounds of the sub could be correlated with the type of sub. Thrilling. The Blackfin proceeds to snoop around the Barents Sea sneaking up on subs and ships, collecting vast quantities of electronic, communications, video and sonar data.
On one occasion Hunter manages to cruise directly beneath a Soviet nuclear sub scanning it with his periscope video equipment to gain intelligence on the sub's external features. That's a pretty neat trick. It is amazing that Soviet technology and operational doctrine was so lame that U.S. subs could do this sort of thing virtually at will without detection. This aspect is accentuated by sections that purport to give accounts of the action from a Soviet sub commanders perspective.
The best part of the book comes near the end of the mission, when the Blackfin is ordered to collect data on an upcoming Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile test. It's almost exciting—almost.
A Good Idea that Doesn't Work
Sasgen's writing style is so passive that all the excitement of the journey is lost. The reader should have "been there" with the crew, but instead it reads like something that happened to someone else, and there is no chance to become immersed in the story. There are too many clunky sentences, with multiple clauses—often set off by long strings of text between dashes—that can make the reader forget where the sentence was going in the first place.
The fact that the sub, the commander, and all the dialog are fictionalized takes away a lot of potential interest. It is understandable that the identities of the boat and crew should be protected. Even though you know the people existed and the mission really happened, the condensed time scale and "just so" sequencing of events leave a nagging thought that it's just not close enough to the real thing. This is unfortunate, because it may very well be an outstanding glimpse of life aboard a sub on a secret mission. Stalking the Red Bear is well researched, but it doesn't make good reading.
The three appendices, which recount other submarine adventures from the Second World War and the Cold War, are a lot more interesting than the tale of the Blackfin's mission. For a really good read about cold war covert submarine operations, Blind Man's Bluff by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew is much more satisfying.
References
Stalking the Red Bear, 2009, Peter Sasgen, St. Martin's Press, NY, ISBN-13 978-0-312-38023-6, ISBN-10 0-312-38023-2
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