Plumbers of the Deep

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE BOAT by LOTHAR-GUeNTHER BUCHHEIM 463 pages. Knopf. $10.

Consider the nature of the underwater hero. Neptune, Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, even Marvel Comics' Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, have all shared the brooding yet tempestuous personality often associated with fallen angels. The modern heir of these model wetheads is the submarine captain, particularly the German U-boat commander of World War II. With his beard, shabby sweater, and a little help from Hollywood, he cuts a theatrical figure that falls somewhere between cruel, cynical buccaneer and psychiatrist on summer vacation.

Literary Gimbals. Lothar-Guenther Buchheim served on U-boats as a documentary journalist working for the Nazi government. Now the author resurrects that darkly romantic image in a novel that two years ago was a controversial bestseller in Germany. Whatever Buchheim's intention, his commander, a dour 30-year-old invariably referred to as the Old Man, comes off as the foreman of a band of master plumbers who seem to spend most of their time wrapped around greasy tubing talking about their alley-cat sex lives.

The soldier as a morally lobotomized professional is a familiar 20th century item. Indeed, pride in professionalism has too often become the true refuge of the scoundrel. Yet Buchheim skillfully dodges these issues by casting his book as documentary, fly-on-the-wall fiction. Its amount of factual authenticity about the 220-ft. submarine and its innards is mesmerizing. Technical data about pressure hulls, diesel engines, electric motors, torpedoes and underwater navigation form a web of fascinating distraction. The incessant diving, ogling of manometers and Papenberg gauges, and the flooding and blowing of ballast tanks run like a litany throughout the book. Buchheim employs some tricky literary gimbals to keep himself balanced between feelings of revulsion and respect for the men aboard this stifling tunnel of dead metal. He is adept at flattening his prose in the manner of much postwar German writing, creating an ironic though pat Goetterdaaemerung or adding a horrific touch of 1920s expressionism.

The 50-man crew of the submarine are an unappealing lot. They are first encountered at their home port, St.-Nazaire, in Occupied France, taking a final orgiastic gulp of life before setting out on Atlantic patrol. The time is 1941.

U-boats no longer prowl unchallenged.

Losses are mounting. By the end of the war only 10,000 of Hitler's 40,000 underwater raiders will have survived.

The Old Man is a superb tactician who can play hound or hare with equal skill.

He is imperturbable, whether sinking Allied shipping or riding out depthcharge attacks. He is also impenetrable.

Writes Buchheim: "Attack so as not to be destroyed. 'Submit to the inevitable,' seems to be his motto." In truth, the Old Man's fatalism seems more than a bit ersatz. He never talks politics, but he openly derides the martial rhetoric of his Nazi superiors. The impression left is that if the stuff turned out by Jo seph Goebbels' propaganda ministry read more like Joseph Conrad, the Old Man would have more happily embraced the inevitable.

The Boat is an exciting adventure yarn, full of battle tension and long bouts of boredom on long patrols. But as a novel, its characters are considerably less alive than the technology that en cases them. Even at an incredible 900 rivet-popping feet beneath the Atlantic, there is the uneasy feeling of bobbing rudderless on the surface.

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