The U-boat that shouldn’t have been there
In the fall of 1991, deep wreck diver John Chatterton found a German U-boat under 230 feet of water off the New Jersey coast where no U-boat had ever been recorded sunk. According to all the history books, it simply couldn’t be there.
It took Chatterton and fellow diver Richie Kohler six years, multiple dives to recover artifacts, exhaustive record searches through the National Archives and the Naval Historical Center, multiple trips to Germany, the solicitation of an endless anecdotal history from other divers, U-boat crew members, their relatives and U-boat historians, and above all a mutual devouring obsession to solve this enigma at the heart of Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers.
But that’s just the plot on which hang the other, even more gripping stories, the ones about the price of friendship, the testing of character, the insanity of war, the writing of history, the human love for mysteries and the equally human need to solve them, and through it all an over-the-shoulder look into the claustrophobic and sometimes fatal world of deep wreck diving.
Book Review Monday Chatter Uncategorized Robert Kurson Shadow Divers U-boats
I read this book years ago and loved especially as it took place off the coast of NJ not far from where I live. I loved learning the history of U-boats in WWII but even more the authors passion and dedication learning the names of those that died and contacting their families so they finally would know the fate of their loved ones.