72 Hours, Frank Pope
72 Hours, Frank Pope
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

72 Hours

Author: Frank Pope

Narrator: Sean Barrett

Unabridged: 9 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Orion

Published: 03/29/2012


Synopsis

5 August 2005. On a secret mission to an underwater military installation 30 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 24 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 and real-life story of one of the most dramatic rescue missions of recent years.

Read by Sean Barrett

(p) 2012 Isis Publishing Ltd

About Frank Pope

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.Visit Frank Pope's website http://frankpope.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/papafranco.

About Sean Barrett

Sean Barrett has narrated many television documentaries for the BBC and Discovery Channel, notably THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY, WALKING WITH BEASTS, and GREAT LIVES. As a member of the BBC Radio Rep, he has appeared in hundreds of radio plays, and played Father Gillespie in the BBC Worldservice / BBC7 serial WESTWAY throughout its eight year-run. As a film and television actor he has appeared in pieces as diverse as TWELFTH NIGHT and FATHER TED, and he is a doyen of audiobook reading, with acclaimed recordings of authors ranging from Chaucer to Beckett and in 2012 recorded Antony Beevor's THE SECOND WORLD WAR.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Julian

Written like a taught thriller, this highly readable true story chronicles the tense international rescue effort to save seven Russian submariners from a certain and lonely death, below the cold seawater off a deserted coastline. The book neatly weaves in the history of submarine rescue as teams from......more

Goodreads review by Angus

The perfect balance between suspenseful rescue story and intriguing submarine rescue history textbook. Really great at conveying complex military/naval concepts and dramatizing the harrowing story.......more

A suspenseful, true-life tale......more

Goodreads review by Andrew

Detailing the rescue of a slightly lesser known Russian submarine disaster off their east coast (the Kursk disaster, and the loss of all hands, having only taken place 5 years prior), and the international rescue team that managed to rescue the sailors in this instance. With is story having a much ha......more