This was a fantastic book about a gripping story - part mystery, part history, with more than a little bit of life thrown in. The story of several divers who discover a u-boat 60 miles of the coast of New Jersey - that's right, a NAZI FRICKING SUBMARINE that was so close the submariners in it could have THROWN bombs at us if they wanted, let alone launching torpedoes... and one that was utterly unknown until the 1990s.

The book takes you beyond just the facts of the finding, into the lives of the divers who first located, then risked their lives to return to the wreck again and again until they had found out what it was and verified what lay within. It takes you into the complicated world of deep sea technical diving - a terrifying world where you either knew someone who had died or knew someone who knew someone who had: never more than a few steps away from the grim reaper in a world man is specifically not designed to go.

The book was riveting, frightening, emotional, elated all in stages, and I cannot recommend it enough.

A fascinating read that illustrates the length people will go to follow their passions.

This abridged audio tape was absolutely thrilling to listen to. It tells the story of divers who find a U-boat off the coast of New Jersey and then try to identify it. Until they do, they call it the U-Who.

Part of what made it interesting for me was that I never want to dive. I am a shore person. I'll settle for splashing my ankles in the waves.

In basic training in Texas, I went with three other guys to the Gulf of Mexico. We rented four oxygen tanks to dive with. No way I was going to go through with it, but I had to preserve my manhood, so I I kept complaining about my tank did not work. Turns out, two of the others did the same thing. Only one of us actually went out under the ocean for about 30 minutes till we were about ready to call rescuers to get his body. He came back and told us how wonderful it was. We still stayed on shore complaining the tanks did not work. No regrets about that one.

Submarines have always enthralled me. And scared me. I cannot imagine having the courage to be cooped up in a vulnerable piece of machinery that is always in danger of being overthrown by the forces of Poseidon. Now add to that the real wartime experience of fear and having to outrun the enemy and the enemy’s relentless barrage of depth charges. This book is about many things, but at its core, it’s about the discovery of a sub that went missing in World War II.

In 1991, two scuba divers discovered a sunken vessel just off the New Jersey shore of the United States. After continuous dives, they realize it has to be a German U-Boat after opening the hatch and finding a torpedo, but the big question is, which one? No one wants to admit that an enemy submarine was that close to American civilians, so the quest to discover the submarine’s identity takes on the main part of the book. It becomes an obsession for the divers and their team, and they title the shipwreck, “The U-Who”, until the real identity is revealed.

Along with having to counter the disbelief of the United States in the discovery of a German submarine in a place it wasn’t supposed to be, the book details the obsession that takes over as the men try to find out the true identity of the sub. Tragedy takes place, as it usually does, when divers have accidents. And when the submarine is finally identified, it means re-adjusting the final voyage of the U-Boat and the day it met its death, just three months before the end of the war.

I never lost interest in the telling of this historical event, because it combined the story of the divers, the history of U-Boats, and the red tape of government bureaucracy. While the sunken vessel was part of the enemy fleet, the reader wants to put its crew to rest, in having their families finally know what happened to the sons, fathers, and brothers who disappeared one night beneath the Atlantic ocean.

Book Season = Autumn (frayed nerves)

This is why I read. A tale that has it all mystery, brotherhood, heartbreak and passion.

i actually cannot believe this story is real! what a captivating account of deep sea diving (of which i had absolutely no knowledge of). i never expected to learn so much from this book. it was also a great reminder that our perception of history is often not as accurate as we think. i loved reading about the friendship between chatterton and kohler - i literally want to meet them. talk about two insanely impressive and driven individuals.

This is an action-packed adventure story. An adrenalin thrill. Make sure that is what you want before you start.

It is also a non-fiction book about the discovery of an unidentified submarine where none was said to exist. Which submarine was it? Who were the men that discovered it? What was done to discover its provenance and how it came to be there? Who were the dead men on that U-boat? That is the theme of this book. It can be tackled in several ways, two of which are to make it into a thrilling adventure story that will scare you sh*t~ess or through a calm, balanced presentation of known facts. Yeah, the latter is a bit more of an academic approach. What are you looking for? This is purely a matter of preference and/or mood.

There is another issue to be considered. Are you interested in understanding the psychological underpinnings of the prime actors? I don't think the book does that very well. There is a huge difference between knowing "what Mr. X did then and there" and understanding why that person made the choices he made. I never came to understand John Chatterton or Richie Kohler. Not Bill Nagle, nor Chris Rouse, nor Chris Rouse Jr. The book does state what they did but I just do not understand what motivated these guys. What makes them tick. I just do not understand. Perhaps people are simply born different. This book does not provide a psychological study. There are holes in the information if that is what you are after, and this is what I was looking for. One example: the book doesn't explain why custody of Kohler's children was switched between the parents. If we want to understand Kohler we need to know this. Another instance was when we are told how Chatterton’s mother saw to it that he was not allowed to return to Vietnam. We are told she spoke to people. Who? What did John do to fight these decisions? Nothing is said. If you want to understand the person these are important points. These are just two examples, but there are more. The book presents the actions of the people, but I still never come to understand these men.

I highly recommend this book if you want a thrill and are curious about marine warfare during WW2. The facts related to this dive are thoroughly presented, and you will be scared to death. This starts immediately when at the very beginning you learn of the dangers coupled to of deep wreck diving - nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness. Don’t think those are the only two dangers!

The narrator of the audiobook is Michael Prichard. He reinforces the tone of the text. So, if you want to be scared, the audiobook is a great choice.

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At the beginning:
This is scaring me to death!

I absolutely LOVED this book. Nonfiction is generally not my favorite, but this topic is exactly up my alley, and I was SO INTO IT. There were a couple writing quirks that I didn't love, but they weren't close to significant enough to affect my enjoyment, and overall the story was well structured and well developed. It had me on the edge of my seat and chanting quietly to myself at multiple points, and the mystery was fascinating. I gotta find more books like this.

I read this the first time years ago when I was just starting to think about getting into technical diving and it earned 5 stars from me. I decided to re-read it now that I'm routinely doing trimix dives on shipwrecks at the same depth as the U-861; it holds up quite well. I appreciated the book so much more the second time through now that I have a much deeper (heh) appreciation for what is involved when diving deep shipwrecks. It's a great book for the interested non-diver as well; I'd compare it quite favorably to other adventure stories like Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. If the description of the book catches your interest, give it a try; it's a good one!

Incredible! Even if this story were complete fiction, I’d still recommend it. A beautifully written thriller and history lesson.

The connection between the pioneers of deep wreck diving and U-boat men—each facing immense risks underwater but bound by fate and duty—is especially compelling.

This was one of those books sitting on a shelf waiting to be read ( from 2004) and I had heard from various people that it was a great story. But I did not get around to reading it until it was decided that it would be the book for our discussion group to read for this month ( August, 2017). It certainly lived up to the hype as I give it *****!!! It's an amazing story of wreck divers exploring a sunken German U-boat from World War II off the coast of New Jersey. We learn about the dangers of that activity, wreck diving, and that left me wondering how people can involve themselves in something so reckless. The book focuses on two men, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, and, as we learn about the characters of these two men, I begin to understand the motivation. Moreover, we learn about the German submarines and the crucial Battle of the Atlantic of World War II. It's also a true-life mystery as, following dive after dive, the divers fail to find anything that identifies which U-boat it was. Research is also done by the men and they go to Washington, DC, and Germany to try to solve the mystery of the sunken sub. It takes six years--and the loss of three lives--before they are able to learn the identity of the sub-and how it got there off the Jersey shore. A well-told story that is very engaging-- and it still leaves me wondering why men (and women) are willing to risk their lives in their pursuits.

Easiest read ever. I didn’t want to put it down. The story is told so well and truly is a nonfiction adventure, thriller, and mystery all in one. From start to finish, I never knew what could happen next.