Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.-Soviet Submarine War - Hardcover

Reed, W. Craig

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061806765 ISBN 13: 9780061806766

Publisher: William Morrow, 2010

Synopsis

“Red November delivers the real life feel and fears of submariners who risked their lives to keep the peace.”
 —Steve Berry, author of The Paris Vendetta

W. Craig Reed, a former navy diver and fast-attack submariner, provides a riveting portrayal of the secret underwater struggle between the US and the USSR in Red November. A spellbinding  true-life adventure in the bestselling tradition of Blind Man’s Bluff, it reveals previously undisclosed details about the most dangerous, daring, and decorated missions of the Cold War, earning raves from New York Times bestselling authors David Morrell, who calls it, “palpably gripping,” and James Rollins, who says, “If Tom Clancy had turned The Hunt for Red October into a nonfiction thriller, Red November might be the result.”

About this title

About the Author

Born into a Navy family on the island of Guam, W. Craig Reed served as a U.S. Navy diver, submarine weapons technician, and special operations photographer deployed on nuclear fast-attack submarines. He lives in Silicon Valley, California.

From the Back Cover

Few know how close the world has come to annihilation better than the warriors who served America during the tense, forty-six-year struggle known as the Cold War. Yet for decades their work has remained shrouded in secrecy. Now, in this riveting new history, W. Craig Reed, a former U.S. Navy diver and fast-attack submariner, provides an eye-opening, pulse-pounding narrative of the underwater struggles and espionage operations between the United States and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that brought us to the brink of nuclear war several times.

Red November is filled with new revelations and never-before-reported stories that take you deep beneath the surface and into the action during the entire Cold War period from 1945 through 1992. Reed served aboard submarines involved in espionage operations, and his father was a top naval intelligence specialist intimately involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reed is one of the first authors to obtain in-depth interviews with dozens of navy divers, espionage operatives, submariners, and government officials on both sides (including several Soviet submarine captains), who describe the most daring and decorated missions of the conflict, including the top-secret Ivy Bells, Boresight, Bulls Eye, and Holystone operations. Other events, whose full details have not been made public until now, include:

• The harrowing underwater cat-and-mouse chase in October 1962 that almost resulted in the firing of nuclear-tipped torpedoes by Soviet Foxtrot subs and could have started World War III
• The alarming collision between the submarine USS Drum and a Soviet Victor III–class sub (an incident the author experienced firsthand), the American boat's remarkable escape, and the all-out effort by enemy forces to hunt her down in 1981
• The role the author's father played in developing a highly classified, state-of-the-art system for detecting enemy subs that was instrumental in helping President Kennedy force Premier Khrushchev to back down at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis
• And the storm and resulting engine failure that trapped the USS Seawolf on the sea bottom during an espionage mission in Soviet waters that nearly took the lives of 190 sailors in 1981

Transcending traditional submarine, espionage, and Cold War accounts with its level of detail and first-person perspective, Red November is an up-close examination of one of the most dangerous periods in world history and an intimate look at the lives of those who participated in our country's longest and most expensive underwater war.

Reviews

Reed's personal experience as a navy recon diver, submarine weapons technician, and special ops photographer informs every page of this exhaustive and fascinating account of submarine technology and warfare from the end of WWII through the cold war. The author's father, William J. Reed, a navy communications specialist, helped develop the hardware that made possible long distance frequency direction finding that allowed listening stations to pinpoint the far away locations of ships or submarines. These HFDF stations, called "Huff Duffs," were instrumental in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Reed presents a vast cast of interesting characters and a daunting array of scientific technology, but manages to keep the material understandable, fresh, and exciting as befits a book devoted to the underwater world of high stakes submarine warfare. Decades-long gag orders keep participants from revealing really up-to-date secrets, though it's chilling to learn that from 1995 to 2005 the Chinese navy has launched 31 nuclear submarines.
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This history of the cold war beneath the sea reads very much like a thriller. Reed and his father were both personally involved in it as electronic experts aboard submarines—a key specialty, because the key technology employed was sonar, which became ever more sophisticated. At the beginning, in the early 1950s, the U.S. had a clear technological advantage, which it lengthened with the introduction of nuclear power. But the Russians got off to a faster start than is commonly believed, and from around 1960 to the present, each nation's navy has had to look over its shoulder to mark the progress of the other. As the narrative proceeds, we encounter the (allegedly) unsuccessful mission of the Glomar Explorer, the possible loss of the Scorpion to Soviet retaliatory action, the Ivy Bells operation to tap underwater Soviet telephone lines, and of course, the infamous Walker espionage affair, here depicted as nearly costing America the cold war. A little technical for rank tyros, but for serious submarine buffs, a feast. --Roland Green

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061806765
• ISBN 13: 9780061806766
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400