NONFICTION

From the beginning, the destinies of the World War II-era submarines USS Sculpin and USS Sailfish were intertwined.

Both were constructed at the Portsmouth Naval Yards in Maine; their crews knew each other and often mingled. When the Sailfish, known as the Squalus upon launch in September 1938, sank during tests in 1939, half the crew was rescued by the Sculpin. She was raised, refit and re-commissioned as the Sailfish.

This was the first tragedy that would befall the sister subs. The last would see the sinking of the Sculpin and then the destruction of the Japanese ship carrying the survivors -- destroyed by the torpedoes of the Sailfish.

In "A Tale of Two Subs," Jonathan J. McCullough intertwines the story of these two submarines and their courageous crews with that of Lt. Commander John Cromwell and his knowledge of the Navy's code-breaking operation, Hypo, which had a huge impact on the demoralization of the Japanese navy.

The narrative, truly a story that captures the irony and tragedy of World War II, covers the breadth of the war in the Pacific -- from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the days after Japan's surrender -- as seen by the crews of the sister subs. It's a unique structure for a work of history, but McCullough tells all three stories in an unusually dramatic way.

"A Tale of Two Subs" reads like a novel, and many more historical writers should study how McCullough uses dramatic devices to make our past come alive.

More than any Hollywood movie, McCullough's story puts the reader right inside the submarines. You can smell the men's sweat; the stale cigarette smoke; and the sweet, salty tang of ocean air when the hatches are opened, cleansing the ship. More importantly, McCullough gives us a visceral glimpse of the precarious conditions aboard a submarine even under the best of conditions.

His writing is clean and mostly clinical, not dry at all, even during long technical-exposition passages that don't advance the plot but explain what we need to know. But his prose occasionally falls prey to a modern tendency to spell out sound effects -- SH SH SH SH or bang bang Bang! -- which is a deleterious side effect of Hollywood's influence on the American public and on literacy.

But that is not a big problem here. The book as a whole is as solid as it could be. This is a story that deserved to be told, which eventually deserves dramatic treatment. If "A Tale of Two Subs" isn't soon adapted for the silver screen, it should be.

Where's a producer when you need one?
Rus Wornom is a novelist and co-op advertising and vendor support coordinator in The Times-Dispatch's retail advertising department. Contact him at hwornom@timesdispatch.com.