Book description
August 5th 2005. On a secret mission to an underwater military
installation thirty miles off the coast of Kamchatka, Russian Navy
submersible AS-28 ran into a web of cables and stuck fast. With 600 feet
of freezing water above them, there was no escape for the seven crew.
Trapped in a titanium tomb, all they could do was wait as their air
supply slowly dwindled. For more than twenty-four hours the Russian Navy
tried to reach them. Finally - still haunted by the loss of the nuclear
submarine Kursk five years before - they requested international
assistance. On the other side of the world, Commander Ian Riches, leader
of the Royal Navy's Submarine Rescue Service, got the call: there was a
sub down. With the expertise and specialist equipment available to him,
Riches knew his team had a chance to save the men, but Kamchatka was at
the very limit of their range, and time was running out. As the Royal
Navy prepared to deploy to Russia's Pacific coast aboard a giant Royal
Air Force C-17 airlifter, rescue teams from the United States and Japan
also scrambled to reach the area. On board AS-28, the Russian crew shut
down all non- essential systems, climbed into thick thermal suits to
keep the bone-chilling damp at bay and waited, desperate to eke out the
stale, thin air inside the pressure hull of their craft. But as the
first of them began to drift in and out of consciousness, they knew the
end was close. They started writing their farewells. 72 Hours tells the
extraordinary, edge-of-the-seat, real- life story of one of the most
dramatic rescue missions of recent years. Frank Pope is the Ocean
Correspondent of The Times and presenter for the BBC. Previously he
worked on underwater expeditions all over the world under the auspices
of Oxford MARE (Maritime Archaeological Research and Excavation Unit),
including the excavation of Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship HMS
Agamemnon. He divides his time between London and Nairobi.
