Crash dive by Claude C. Vickrey
QR code
"Crash dive by Claude C. Vickrey" is a naval adventure short story written in the late 1920s. It portrays a submarine training exercise that turns into a perilous emergency, focusing on seamanship, technical failure, and the crew’s ingenuity under extreme pressure. A young submarine officer narrates his first crash dive, where a cascading series of small errors culminates in the chief forgetting to shut the main induction valve. Flooding drives the boat
to the bottom in mud at about one hundred thirty feet with the bow steeply down, trapping the crew and threatening them with dwindling air and chlorine gas from compromised batteries. Realizing they cannot pump out the water, the officers gamble on forcing the stern to the surface: they blow out fuel, oil, and fresh water, shift every movable weight forward, and work hand pumps in darkness as morale frays. After grueling hours they heel the submarine to roughly seventy-eight degrees, chisel through the exposed stern plating, and raise a makeshift distress flag. A Coast Guard destroyer spots the signal and rescues the exhausted men, capping the ordeal with the captain’s dry reply to a command query: “Position Vertical!” (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Download for free
For your e-reader or reading app — Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Calibre etc.
Kindle → Use Send-to-Kindle
Kobo, Nook etc → Transfer via USB
Phone, tablet or computer → Open in a reading app
Other formats & older devices
There may be more files related to this item.
About this eBook
| Author | Vickrey, Claude C. (Claude Claire), 1892-1979 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Gustavson, Lealand, 1899-1966 |
| Title | Crash dive |
| Original Publication | Chicago, IL: Consolidated Magazines Corporation, 1929. |
| Note | Produced from the May 1929 issue of Blue Book magazine. |
| Credits | Roger Frank and Sue Clark |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Submarines (Ships) -- Fiction |
| Subject | United States. Navy -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 76811 |
| Release Date | Sep 4, 2025 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 265 downloads in the last 30 days. |
Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free!