I love that Tom Clavin name-checks his sources in RUNNING DEEP. By that, I don’t mean that he lists them in the endnotes. He actually names the authors and their books within the narrative or in footnotes. If you’re an avid reader, it’s always nice to get a good literary recommendation.

One of the books mentioned here is UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand, an excellent World War II biography about Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner turned Army lieutenant turned prisoner of war. RUNNING DEEP focuses primarily on Richard “Dick” O’Kane, the captain of the USS Tang, who ends up imprisoned in the same POW camp in Japan as Zamperini. Clavin takes advantage of this coincidence to tell his story and that of the other well-known prisoner, “Pappy” Boyington, a Marine aviator who was played by Robert Conrad in the 1970s television show “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

"RUNNING DEEP is an effective introduction to the USS Tang and her men --- and thus ideal for anyone starting to learn about this period in history."

After finishing the book, I pulled my copy of UNBROKEN off the shelf and checked the index. There was no mention of O’Kane or any of the other USS Tang survivors who shared Zamperini’s torment in the hellish prison camp. So I appreciated learning more about this harrowing story from their perspectives.

At times, though, RUNNING DEEP reads as if Clavin doesn’t have faith in his source material. If that's the case, there’s no real basis for it. The story that he intends to tell --- the intertwined tales of O’Kane and the USS Tang --- is highly dramatic, with one pugnacious sailor and one well-trained crew taking on the might of the Japanese navy. It seems like a natural narrative to follow, but the limitations of the format soon become apparent.

The problems go hand in hand. World War II submarine actions follow a pattern: it spots a convoy on radar, submerges, sneaks in close to a Japanese tanker or freighter, and shoots torpedoes in its direction --- which then either work (kaboom!) or don’t work (oops!). This is then followed by Japanese destroyers converging on the submarine and dropping depth charges.

If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because it’s been fodder for so many Hollywood movies. The irony here is that the missions of the USS Tang were so successful that their cinematic retelling has managed to turn the actual warfighting into almost a cliché. What’s more, because O’Kane and his crew were so good at what they did, telling their stories involves a fair amount of repetition. “They came on in the same old way,” Wellington said of Napoleon at Waterloo, “and we beat them in the same old way.” Writing about sustained excellence, especially repetitive sustained excellence, is difficult. The narrative arc demands a reversal, some sort of adversity, or else the reader gets bored.

O’Kane and his men would experience reversal and adversity, which Clavin handles expertly. But he also tells different stories, talking about the history of the submarine and other matters that aren’t central to the narrative. While I understand why he took this approach, the result is a book that seems oddly unfocused --- firing on all cylinders at one point and then moving in another direction before wandering back to the actual story.

While it doesn’t quite manage to do what it ostensibly set out to do, RUNNING DEEP is an effective introduction to the USS Tang and her men --- and thus ideal for anyone starting to learn about this period in history.