Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II

In 1991, weekend scuba divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler discovered a World War II German U-boat 230 feet below the surface in the Atlantic Ocean, sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey. The submarine's interior contained twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones buried under decades of sediment, but no identifying marks or artifacts that could reveal which U-boat it was. Official records indicated no sunken U-boat should exist at that location. Over the next six years, an elite team of divers pursued the mystery of the submarine's identity. Chatterton and Kohler, initially rivals, developed a deep friendship and sense of connection with the drowned U-boat sailors. As their dives became increasingly dangerous and their marriages strained under the pressure of their shared obsession, some team members did not survive to learn the answer. Robert Kurson's account documents this quest, describing both the thrills and emotional complexity of the divers' experience confronting the ocean's dangers.