An aging nuclear submarine—A lockout saturation-diving system—A handful of daredevil heroes! " Over the past few decades, action-adventure stories about submarines and diving have become a popular genre. Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler come to mind as exemplars. But Robert Williscroft really raises the bar with this book. Not only is he an outstanding writer, but he is also a 'doer,' having participated in the events described in Operation Ivy Bells ." —Captain Don Walsh USN, PhD, USN Submersible Pilot #1, Officer in Charge  Bathyscaph Trieste , 1959-1962 Saturation Dive Team Officer-in-Charge Mac McDowell faces his greatest challenge yet, leading the team into a critical Cold War mission. With a security clearance above Top Secret, Mac and his off-the-books deep-water espionage group must gather Russian intel to avert world war. Join nuclear-submariner Mac as he extreme-dives to a thousand feet, battles giant squids, and proves what brave men can achieve under real pressure, the kind that will steal your air and crush the life out of you.  Operation Ivy Bells: A Mac McDowell Mission  updates the popular bestseller by Robert G. Williscroft, a lifelong adventurer who blends his own experiences with real events to craft a military thriller that will take your breath away. Diving to 1,000 feet—I didn't know that was possible. 8-foot-long Humboldt squid coordinating their attack with flashing color displays. Reminds me of the raptors in "Jurassic Park." Incredible! What really gets me, though, is that what these guys did actually shortened the Cold War. Imagine locking out of a submarine on the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk and tapping into Soviet underwater communications cables, or picking up spent soviet experimental missile parts from the seafloor. Or intercepting a communication about the pending assassination of Gorbachev, which Reagan revealed to Gorbi in their Reykjavik summit. It doesn't get better than this! This is a novel, but it is also a semi-autobiographical telling of what the author did during the Cold War. I challenge anyone to separate the fictional from the actual elements of this story. As Capt. Don Walsh, the explorer who took the Bathyscape Trieste to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, commented on the cover, unlike Tom Clancy (whose books I love), Robert Williscroft has been there and done that. Criminy, what a story! —Cliff Hyatt, Attorney Magnificently written! A powerful and riveting account of the cold war fought beneath the oceans by the world's most famous enemies. Bristles with the same hair-raising authenticity that launched The Hunt for Red October to world notoriety. The factual and detailed descriptions are so realistic they submerge you deep in the ocean depths and make you feel a part of the sub's crew on a remarkable mission told by veteran submariner, Robert Williscroft, who details an almost unimaginable war of nerves under the most trying conditions, and of the men who possess the incredible capabilities to carry out this mission. —Martin H. Bloom, Former President The Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles Robert Williscroft has produced quite a sea story, a colorful and enjoyable work that explains one of the little-known successes of the cold war, with plenty of fascinating detail about submarine and diving operations. Tom Bowman, NPR Pentagon reporter To quote NBC's epic WWII TV series, "VICTORY AT SEA" VOL# 21, Full Fathom Five : "The most complex, most compact, most deadly ship of war, ton for ton ever conceived by man is the submarine." The US Navy submarine service was able to destroy Japan's ability to produce war material by sinking 1,392 ships, over 6 million tons of its merchant marine, thus sinking the Empire of Japan. After WWII, starting with the USS Nautilus SSN-571 and her historic January 17, 1955, message, "Underway on Nuclear Power," clearly signaled a new era for the submarine service. No longer were submarines just surface vessels that could temporarily dive for limited time periods. Now the submarine was a true underwater warrior that could stay submerged almost indefinitely. It did not take long during the Cold War for the powers that be to realize the convergence of stealth and potential unlimited submergence time could be used to very good measure for covert spying missions. These underwater covert intelligence missions would reach their zenith during the 1970s under the Top Secret "Operation Ivy Bells." During these audacious missions the nuclear submarines Halibut , Seawolf , and Parche with special crews of saturation divers from Submarine Development Group One in San Diego, actually tapped Soviet underwater telephone cables on the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk and harvested Soviet missile parts right under the nose of the Russians. This was heady and dangerous stuff that the author of this historical novel Robert Williscroft puts into perspective with his lively and informed writing style. Williscroft relates Halibut's initial