Ghosts of Bungo Suido
A Novel
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A thrilling WWII adventure set in a submarine in the Pacific, by the Boyd Award-winning author of Pacific Glory
In late 1944, America's naval forces face what seems an insurmountable threat from Japan: immense Yamato-class battleships, which dwarf every other ship at sea. Built in secrecy, these ships seem invincible, and lay waste to any challengers. American military intelligence knows of two such ships, but there is rumored to be a third, a newly-built aircraft carrier, ready to launch from Japan's heavily-defended and mined Inland Sea. Such a ship would threaten U.S. Pacific forces, allow Japan to launch air attacks against the U.S. mainland, and change the course of the war.
No American submarine has penetrated the Inland Sea; five boats and their crews have perished in the Bungo Suido strait. Lieutenant Commander Gar Hammond—an aggressive, attacking leader with a reckless streak—is now captain of a new submarine. Hammond may be the navy's only hope to locate and stop the Japanese super-ship before it launches . . . if it even exists.
P.T. Deutermann's previous World War II adventure, Pacific Glory, won acclaim from readers and reviewers, and was honored with the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, administered by the American Library Association. In Ghosts of Bungo Suido, Deutermann presents another sweeping, action-filled WWII novel, based on a true event from the Pacific theater.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Military novelist Deutermann, known for action-packed WWII naval fiction (Pacific Glory), has created by far the best entry in his Sea Stories series. Commander Gar Hammond, skipper of the U.S. submarine Dragonfish, enjoys an enviable reputation in the Pacific theater circa 1944 as a maverick officer, unorthodox and audacious in his approach to harassing Japanese shipping and irreverent toward myopic armchair admirals. He and his crew are assigned a secret suicide mission: to penetrate the deadly Bungo Suido strait into Japan's Inland Sea and sink a new aircraft carrier. They also have a passenger aboard: a middle-aged Japanese prisoner with a mysterious task to perform at Hiroshima. Gar's brilliant, bold attack plan almost succeeds, only to go awry and place him at the enemy's mercy. Deutermann's gritty descriptions of the technical and tactical complexities of submarine warfare, the heavy demands of command leadership, and Japan's inhuman treatment of Allied POWs are historically accurate and superbly presented. Best and most suspenseful, however, is a tense postwar epilogue in which Gar must deliver an account of his conduct under fire. This is marvelous military fiction; fast-paced, exciting, and utterly convincing.
