Book sales soar as sub rescue effort heats up

Naval Submarine League Update
July 05, 2002

From: Bill Decker bdecker@shentel.net
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2002 9:00 AM

 Book sales soar as sub rescue effort heats up Author of novel to sign copies today at Nautilus museum

 By Robert A. Hamilton - More Articles

  Published on 07/03/2002

Groton - After he finished his novel about the rescue of U.S. Navy sailors from a disabled submarine in March 2000, retired Royal Navy Surgeon Cmdr. James Francis offered it to a few publishing houses  that politely rejected it. 

"My publisher sent me an e-mail saying that one publisher didn't think the story was realistic," Francis said. "Three weeks later the Kursk went down, and my agent got on the phone to New American Library  and said, 'Are you sure you don't want this book?' " 

After a torpedo malfunction blew a hole in the bow of the Kursk, a Russian submarine, in August 2000, almost two dozen men were trapped 350 feet below the surface, a situation similar to the one in  Francis' novel, "Danger's Hour." 

The novel has sold 100,000 copies in the United States, Australia and  England. A German translation is due out this fall, a Japanese publishing house plans to publish it next year and three Italian  houses are bidding for the rights to it in that country. 

"I gave a copy to the retired surgeon general of the Royal Navy to review, and he told me, 'This should be required reading for all submariners,' " said Francis, who will sign copies of the book from 1 to  3 p.m. today at the Submarine Force Library and Museum.  

"Submariners who have read it have said it brings out an issue that should be discussed. The problem is, people don't like to talk about failure."

The U.S. Navy has redoubled its efforts to improve submarine rescue in the last couple of years, but Francis, who is putting the finishing touches on his second book, said the timing of "Danger's Hour" was  coincidence.

Francis, who came to this country to attend the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society meeting in San Diego last week, where he taught a one-day course on diving medicine, still consults for a number of organizations on health and safety issues for divers, and has written extensively for academic journals and textbooks.

He sees two areas of critical research for the undersea force in the coming years: improving the ability to communicate with a disabled boat; and improving the ability of crewmen, particularly in the propulsion spaces, to survive in a crippled submarine until help arrives.

"Danger's Hour" centers on the fictional USS Tulsa, which is struck and sunk by the Russian submarine Gepard during a surveillance operation in the icy Norwegian Sea, trapping crewmen who survive nine days in a freezing environment with oxygen levels dropping.

Francis was a senior scientist in the Royal Navy, attached to the U.S. Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory in Groton for two years in the 1990s, and has conducted extensive research into  surviving in a downed submarine.

He said that for many years, U.S. submarines spent about 80 percent of their time on deployment tracking Soviet missile submarines in deep water, where an accident would send them careening thousands of feet, well past the submarine's "crush depth." Submarine rescue gear was a low priority. 

"When your mentality is, 'If we go down we're all dead anyway,' why even give it a second thought?" Francis said. "But with the new world order, much more time is spent in rescuable and escapable waters." 

Today, submarine crews spend most of their time in near-shore areas, gathering electronic intelligence, deploying Special Forces and launching cruise missiles. In the event of an accident, there's a much greater likelihood that crewmen could survive in a submarine sent to the bottom. 

 The Navy is currently installing submarine escape and immersion equipment on all its submarines, which would enable crewmen to exit a submarine and ascend to the surface from more than 600 feet. 

Below that depth, submariners would develop decompression sickness on their way up. That threshold eventually could be significantly increased. Research is underway in the use of compressed gases in breathing equipment and drugs that cleanse the body of nitrogen, Francis said. 

Francis said two issues raised in his book continue to be a concern for the submarine community. The most important is communication with a disabled submarine. A new type of beacon deployed on  submarines will be valuable for finding crippled boats, he said, but more must be done to boost communication once help arrives. 

In addition, he said, submariners trapped in a compartment with no food or spare clothing could quickly succumb to the cold or starvation. The solution could be as simple as vacuum-packing clothes and  placing high-energy snack bars in compartments throughout the ship.  "Those wouldn't take up a lot of space," Francis said. "And it would keep submariners alive until help arrives."