Bravest Man FROM THE PUBLISHER
This is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist William Tuohy's powerful story of Richard O'Kane, America's undersea ace of aces. It is also the tale of a few fearless men, submariners all, set against the backdrop of the U.S. submarine war in the Pacific. This gruelling battle beneath the waves saw 10 million tons of Japanese shipping sunk by U.S. submarines, but the cost to the U.S. Navy was terrifying. One in five of its boats was destroyed -- the highest casualty rate of the entire U.S. armed services. But the fight against a determined enemy was only half the battle. U.S. Navy command problems were kept secret from the men, and in a scandalous disaster, submarines were provided with torpedoes that failed in action.
O'Kane participated in the most dramatic war patrols of the Pacific War, and rescued the largest number of carrier aviators from under the guns of the Japanese. In a final irony, at the end of its fifth successful patrol, USS Tang was sunk by its own torpedo. The dramatic escape of nine survivors, including O'Kane, makes for compelling and uneasy reading.
Tuohy skillfully mixes the heat of battle action with the antics of the tough skippers and their crews to relive an age when heroism was in fashion, a time of threat, danger, challenge and sacrifice.
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