Submerged
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About
The author graduates from an elite university and enters the submarine service in the mid-1980s when rhetoric between the US and USSR threatens to turn the Cold War hot. He encounters an unforgiving world where US and Soviet submarines hunt each other unseen and unheralded in the ocean depths and in which minor mistakes can result in catastrophe. On four classified missions to the Mediterranean Sea, the North Atlantic, the Barents Sea, and the North Pole, he gradually and painfully learns the trade of a nuclear submarine officer in a world few people know of and even fewer have experienced.
These missions exert a heavy personal toll. At sea, the submarine crew exercises total radio silence and the rescue buoy is welded fast to the hull, ensuring that their families will never know if a catastrophe occurs. During these missions, his young wife suffers a miscarriage and later gives birth via emergency C-section, all while the author is at sea and unaware. While she undergoes these trials alone, the sub conducts missions vital to the security of the United States. Far from home, in the unforgiving depths, they track adversary submarines in dangerous games of cat and mouse where a mistake could result in a collision, flooding, and death. A storm damages the sub on the way to the North Pole, jeopardizing the ability to surface through the ice. They finally do so, after weeks of transiting through underwater ice canyons of pressure ridges capable of rupturing the hull on impact. While under the ice the crew suffers a poison gas leak and has to find a hole to surface quickly or perish.
The main theme of the work is growth. As the author journeyed to the ends of the earth and the depths of the ocean, he also made a personal journey from a sniveling boy-man to an apex predator of the deep. Sub-themes are how men and women cope with adversity, and how when things are at their worst, people are at their best. It is a tribute to the human spirit, especially the men who sailed these ships, and the families who loved and supported them.
Praise for this book
“Submerged is a novel that will not only get you inside of a nuclear submarine during the cat and mouse games at the end of the Cold War, it will get you inside the head of the people who did the actual day-to-day living in a nuclear submarine. The detailed reality of this experienced and well-written narrative is far more interesting than the best of Tom Clancy’s novels.”
"Rausch takes the reader deep underwater with his chilling account of life as an officer onboard a United States submarine. A life so demanding, exhausting and sometimes terrifying, is captivating reading for all."
“Rausch has written a highly engaging memoir of his 12 years of service on a fast attack submarine in the US Navy during the last decade of the Cold War. The writing is excellent and the subject matter fascinating. The book illuminates an aspect of military life that is utterly foreign, not only to civilians, but to most people who've served in the military. The psychological challenges and privations of sub service are unique and extremely challenging.”
“In Submerged Rausch has managed to blend fascinating technical insights with brave personal reflections in his account of the challenges he faced in his journey to become a nuclear submarine captain. It gives the reader a rare glimpse into the courage and resilience required beneath the ocean's surface in a truly authentic and entertaining way. It had me captivated from start to finish.”