Advisor threatening to pull his name from accepted paper that I submitted without his knowledge

You are wrong for putting the name of someone on a paper and submitting it without asking them for permission. Having them as an author communicates to the world that they approved the content and agree with the conclusions. Implicit in that is that they signed off on the manuscript. Some people get angry when this happens even if the paper is fine and they agree with the conclusions. Some don't. This happened to me recently, and even though I didn't agree with the recommendations of the paper, they weren't wrong, scientifically, so I decided to let it go.

You need to figure out a way to smooth this over with your advisor and to work with them to get edits turned around more quickly. That being said, don't lead the discussion by bringing up the turnaround time issue. That's combative.

To complement Bill Barth's answer, here's some concrete tips on how to move ahead in this case:

• First, you need to come to terms with the fact that a very likely outcome is that you do in fact have to retract the paper -- your primary objective here should be to get back on good terms with your advisor, not to publish the paper, because the former is much, much more important for your career in the long run. (If he relents in the end, that's a bonus.)

• Second, what you need to convince him of is that you fully understand how utterly and inexcusably wrong your action was -- no ifs and buts. He needs to be certain that in your (hopefully) long career to come, you will never, ever, do such a thing again.

• Offer to do anything he feels necessary, up to and including writing a very apologetic letter to the editor-in-chief explaining your mistake and requesting to withdraw the paper. No arguing.

• Then, you can try to (carefully) find out if there is any additional reason why he reacted so strongly in this particular case (beyond justly being upset over your scientific misconduct). Does he disapprove of the choice of journal? Does he think the paper is not good enough to be submitted (yet)? All of the above? This way, you might get some constructive feedback out of this mess.

• (If your advisor is not the only coauthor, repeat the above steps for the remaining coauthors -- the earlier, the better.)