By Norman N. Brown
The Associated Press

In the early days of the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union managed to restrain themselves from using their newly acquired nuclear weapons despite the climate of mutual suspicion and mistrust. But they continued to develop their military, naval, air and missile hardware in the event there was another war.

The astounding technological advancements achieved in weaponry during those years inspired vast changes in strategy and tactics throughout the military, especially in the area of submarines.

Rising Tide by Gary E. Weir and Walter J. Boyne fills a large gap in the literature about Cold War submarines. While there have been many books about the postwar navies and submarines of the United States and its Western allies, this is one of relatively few written about the Russian fleet.

Weir and Boyne, naval and aeronautical historians, offer a fascinating and fluid narrative of the Cold War from the perspective of the navies of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. They examine those services from the highest levels of naval command to the officers and crew of the submarine fleet.

Rising Tide early on describes the important differences between U.S. submarine development efforts and those of the Soviets.

Soviet submarines were well designed, but construction was shoddy and unreliable. This was often due to inflexible relations between the navy and the construction complexes, a system in which accountability was often sidetracked.

In the United States, the quest for improved submarines and weapons advanced at a pace that assured maximum safety for crewmembers. The Soviets, however, did not consider the well-being of their subs' crews, who toiled under conditions that compared unfavorably with those of their U.S. counterparts. Soviet subs had no air conditioning, and inadequate food refrigeration and drinking water supplies. They also subjected sailors to the risk of radiation leaks from inadequately tested mechanisms.

The Soviets, in their haste to develop a submarine arm equal to that of the U.S. Navy, often employed very dangerous chemical elements and hazardous nuclear engineering techniques that the Americans had already evaluated and rejected. Soviet submarines suffered frequent accidents and losses, both at sea and in port, during the Cold War years. However, as the authors point out, morale of the crew was high; there were many noteworthy, competent figures among them, and many instances of heroism and self-sacrifice.

The book details the cat-and-mouse games played by fleets of the two opposing navies, the development of evasion and pursuit techniques, and the plans and movements of submarines during the Cuban missile crisis and other confrontations, all from the Soviet perspective.

Rising Tide underscores that -- despite the varying degrees of political hostility during the Cold War and the handful of close calls between naval units at sea -- war was avoided. This despite the fact that the Soviet naval command, to avoid being held responsible, gave its submarine commanders responsibility for deciding when and if to "pull the trigger" that might start a third world war.

This worthwhile book concludes with a summary of Red Star Rising at Sea, a history of the Russian and Soviet navy by Adm. Sergei G. Gorshkov, the longtime commander in chief of its submarine arm.