A Missed Signal Summary and Analysis

In May, 1993, Kohler and Chatterton return to the submarine wreck with Bill Nagle and several other divers. They retrieve several more artifacts, but none of them have any distinctive identification marks. One item, an oxygen tank that is part of an emergency escape device, is stamped April, 1945, which narrows down the date of the sub.

Bill Nagle's health declines seriously during the diving season of 1993 and he is hospitalized for internal bleeding caused by his alcoholism. After he is released he continues to drink and dies from the bleeding.

One morning Chatterton receives a letter from a defense official in England named Robert Coppock, who has become interested in the mystery. Coppock writes that the U-869, the boat on which Horenburg had been a radioman, was originally ordered to the East Coast of America to patrol the...