Conveys in dramatic detail the high-risk, covert operations of a nuclear attack submarine during the zenith of the Cold War
Captain Alfred Scott McLaren served as commander of the USS Queenfish (SSN 651) from September 1969 to May 1973, the very height of the Cold War. As commander, McLaren led at least six major clandestine operations, including the first-ever exploration of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf: a perilous voyage detailed in his previous book Unknown Waters.
Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander conveys the entire spectrum of Captain McLaren’s experiences commanding the USS Queenfish, mainly in the waters of the Russian Far East and also off Vietnam. McLaren offers a riveting and deeply human story that illuminates the intensity and pressures of commanding a nuclear attack submarine in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
Relying on his own notes and records, as well as discussions with former officers and shipmates, McLaren focuses on operational matters both great and small. He recounts his unique perspectives on attack-submarine tactics and exploratory techniques in high-risk or uncharted areas, matters of leadership and team-building and the morale of his crews, and the innumerable and often unforeseen ways his philosophy of command played out on a day-to-day basis, with consequences that ran the gamut from the mundane to the dire and life-threatening.
Readers are also treated to significant new information and insight on submarine strategy, maneuvers, and culture. Such details illuminate and bring to life, with both great humor and gravitas, the intensity and pressures on those engaged in covert missions on nuclear attack submarines.
List of Figures Acknowledgments
Preface
Prologue: Change of Command
Part I. 1969
Chapter 1. Prospective Commanding Officers School, Washington, DC
Chapter 2. Prospective Commanding Officer, USS Queenfish
Chapter 3. Commanding Officer, USS Queenfish
Chapter 4. The Pacific Northwest
Part II. 1970
Chapter 5. First Cold War Mission
Chapter 6. Initial Patrol Area
Chapter 7. A Golf II-Class SSB
Chapter 8. An Echo II SSGN and Other Submarines Encountered
Chapter 9. Pearl Harbor to the Pacific Northwest
Chapter 10. En Route to the Arctic Ocean
Chapter 11. To the North Pole
Chapter 12. Toward the Siberian Continental Shelf
Chapter 13. Severnaya Zemlya and the Laptev Sea
Chapter 14. Across the Laptev Sea
Chapter 15. North of the New Siberian Islands
Chapter 16. The Malevolent East Siberian Sea
Chapter 17. The Chukchi Sea
Chapter 18. Nome and the Voyage Home
Chapter 19. Pearl Harbor
Part III. 1971
Chapter 20. Local Operations
Chapter 21. A Cold War Mission and Preparations for WestPac
Chapter 22. WestPac Deployment
Chapter 23. The Big Event
Chapter 24. Off Again!
Chapter 25. Yokosuka, Japan
Chapter 26. Our Third Cold War Mission
Chapter 27. Zaliv Petra Velikogo
Chapter 28. Yokosuka Again
Chapter 29. Yankee Station, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Guam, and Home
Part IV. The Hard Years, 1972 and 1973
Chapter 30. Final Months in Command
Chapter 31. The Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination
Chapter 32. Genesis
Chapter 33. Final Deployment to WestPac
Chapter 34. Last Cold War Mission
Chapter 35. Yokosuka and Hong Kong
Chapter 36. Services to Seventh Fleet and Vietnam
Chapter 37. Guam and Return to Pearl Harbor
Epilogue
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index
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