Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've read a bunch of special forces bios/memoirs and have come to enjoy the layered aspects of their lives. Pre SEALs, selection, training, operations and then their lives after they leave SEALs (or other special forces). Chalker certainly tried to cover all aspects. We see him in the Army, then the Navy and of course SEALs. His life in the Teams is discussed and his term as Command Master Chief of BUDs. But the most important part is the operations, the results of such heavy selection and training, and yet this is surprisingly absent from One Perfect Op!
With SEAL and Delta Force and other special forces bios/memoirs we often have to give them the benefit of the doubt. They may have taken part in operations that are as yet still classified and can't obviously talk about them. But Chalker makes a point of establishing his timeline and the operations that he had. In fact, according to him he didn't take part in a "hot" operation until Grenada, where he specifically stated that was his first combat ever. Joining the Army in 1971, being discharged and then joining the Navy, SEALs and so on, until Grenada in 1983. 12 years and no combat at all. Okay, this in and of itself is understandable, but when reading about a SEAL and you have to read 140 pages until your first combat and the read is not that interesting. There is only so much training, joking and partying to go over before the read becomes uninteresting.
In fact according to Chalker he went on all of 4 "hot" operations. One in Grenada, two ops that resulted in absolutely nothing, and then one op where he rescued an 18 month old baby with no enemy contact. Not too interesting to read about. Even the selection and training was rather uninteresting as he glossed over everything without too much detail. What saved Chalker's account of his life was Red Cell. His was the first account I've read where we were treated to a much more in depth account of how and why each operation took place. Very insightful account of the elite SEAL team.
There are certainly other bios/memoirs that are more memorable and more in depth. I wouldn't really recommend One Perfect Op unless you had a particular interest in Red Cell. Other than that I would not recommend.
2.5 stars.
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No elite military commando unit since the darkest days of Korea and Vietnam has a more storied history than the U.S. Navy SEALs, a stealth fighting force legendary for its abilities to wage covert war on sea, air, and land. Now former SEAL Command Master Chief Dennis "Snake" Chalker takes us deep inside the celebrated SEAL Team Six for an astonishing, firsthand look at the formation, preparation, and deployment of a crack detachment meticulously trained for an ongoing mission that has become essential to the survival of our nation: counterterrorism.
When Dennis Chalker joined Army Airborne in the early 1970s he was, by his own admission, a fairly typical young man from the Midwest. After his initial tour of duty -- and a brief, unsatisfactory stint as a civilian -- he volunteered to be a candidate for "the Teams," elite Naval Special Forces units known for their "outside the envelope" approach to warfare and their ability to strike any target, no matter how heavily guarded or impossible to reach.
After enduring BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training -- the most rigorous selection process ever devised -- Chalker rose rapidly through the ranks and was personally chosen by "Rogue Warrior" Richard Marcinko for a leadership role in Red Cell. Together they would push special operations warfare to a level it had never achieved before.
From the Granada action to electrifying events in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, Chalker now describes in stunning detail previously classified operations in the war against global terrorism. And at the center of his riveting, compelling, and astonishingly honest account is one remarkable covert mission in which daring, timing, skill, and cunning worked in concert to accomplish what in SEALs parlance is known as a "perfect op": one in which enemy territory is successfully penetrated and the objective achieved without any evidence left behind to indicate that the SEALs were even there.
Never before has a book given readers as spellbinding a look at the detailed inner workings of the U.S. Navy SEALs -- from a mission's planning and preparation to its successful completion. And never has there been a truer, more intimate portrait of the extraordinary brotherhood of warriors who today are on the front lines of the most devastating conflict of our age, the war that America must win.
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