Emergency Deep

Emergency Deep recounts the experiences of a nuclear attack submarine commanding officer in the U.S. Navy at the height of the Cold War. Captain Alfred (Fred) Scott McLaren, USN (Ret.) takes the reader on a journey that in a sense completes the narrative of his career in submarines. His previous effort, Silent and Unseen: On Patrol in Three Cold War Attack Submarines, told the story of his early experiences as a junior and mid-career officer. In this fascinating new memoir, McLaren focuses on his tour in command of the USS Queenfish (SSN 651), a ship he also served on as executive officer. Although Emergency Deep covers some of the same period and material as his first book, Unknown Waters: A Firsthand Account of the Historic Under-Ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish, McLaren seeks to place that voyage in the broader context of the Cold War. He integrates Arctic exploration as one aspect of the ongoing if unseen conflict at sea between Soviet and U.S. submarine forces. McLaren succeeds admirably in meeting his stated goal of demonstrating the importance of his command philosophy and crew training in the preparation for and successful execution of at least six Cold War clandestine missions.McLaren is uniquely qualified to tell the story of submarine command at sea during the Cold War. Although he shares the distinction of submarine command with an elite cadre of officers who came of age during the era of nuclear training under the stern eye of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, McLaren is equally at home in academia, having earned a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1986 with a dissertation titled “Analysis of the Under-Ice Topography in the Arctic Basin as Recorded by USS Nautilus in 1958 and USS Queenfish in 1970.” He was also elected president and ultimately president emeritus of the Explorer Club and the American Polar Society. McLaren brings both perspectives, Cold Warrior and dedicated explorer, to this narrative of his trials and triumphs in command of USS Queenfish from September 1969 to May 1973.For the uninitiated, Emergency Deep provides a truly gripping description of life on a U.S. nuclear attack boat during the Cold War. The number of similar efforts is growing, from Blind Man's Bluff about the cat-and-mouse game with Soviet submarines, to Rickover and the Nuclear Navy about the culture of the submarine community, and Surface at the Pole about submarining in the Arctic, as well as many others. Yet McLaren manages to provide an amazing level of detail and just the right perspective so that any submariner will recognize and remember the painstaking exactness of “Rig for Dive,” the tension of operations when rigged for “Ultra Quiet” in close proximity to an adversary submarine, or the terror of a jam dive or emergency deep ordeal when the survival of the ship or crew are at stake.Some readers might be put off by the apparent callousness that Maclaren and the submarine community displayed when taking corrective action against those who were found to be remiss in their duties. We see this for example in the removal of his first executive officer and later his navigator and operations officer over different watch standing failures that risked the ship. However, readers should be assured that was and still is the culture of the submarine force. Training and second chances are routinely offered, but there is little tolerance for negligence or those who cannot stand up to the pressure when the lives of the entire crew depend on individuals doing their jobs correctly. As a counterpoint, McLaren obviously cared deeply for his officers and crew, sharing with the reader small details of their daily lives, from bringing young officers to full qualification to protecting the crew while out on leave in foreign ports. But McLaren never lets the reader forget that submarining is, of necessity, a demanding profession.Emergency Deep is divided into four parts. In the first, McLaren recounts his preparation both at Naval Reactors under Admiral Rickover and at sea as a prospective commanding officer. As he makes clear in noting a failure rate of one in four, the high standards of the submarine force applied just as much to those who would command as to the officers and crew. The second part recounts the mission by USS Queenfish to explore the Arctic and Siberian continental shelf. This section is the most derivative of McLaren's earlier book Unknown Waters but is much more gripping in its operational detail about the mission. It may be worth the read just to learn what it is really like to back out of an “ice garage” under the polar ice cap (hint: terrifying!) or operate with perfect depth control with only a few fathoms beneath the keel to the bottom of the ocean and the same to the ice above. The third part recounts the clandestine intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions the USS Queenfish undertook against the Soviet Navy, and compares favorably with tales of submarining off the Kuril Islands in close proximity to Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk during the Second World War. This is where McLaren's narrative really comes alive with the near wartime realities of the Cold War under the ocean.Finally, in part four McLaren shifts gears. He recounts the difficulty of losing his crack crew to normal personnel rotations and then having to train a new crew for the next set of missions. In reality, this is a constant pressure in the U.S. submarine force, with its heavy reliance on the expertise and judgment of the officers and crew. It is also a very human and poignant story, as McLaren shares his personal pain when his beloved “Reine de la Mer” fails an engineering inspection or otherwise does not live up to his exacting standards. Still, operational tempo was high during the Cold War, and with scant margin for error there was no real option but success. USS Queenfish eventually returned to duty on yet another successful clandestine mission before McLaren turned over command, scarred but deservedly proud of the boat's accomplishments.As with McLaren's previous efforts, Emergency Deep is engrossing and worth reading. Even if the chronological format feels a bit like the narrative of a mission report, that feature also makes the book an outstanding resource for students of nuclear submarining in the Cold War. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to understand the intersection of undersea exploration and clandestine operations that were a feature of the Cold War north of the Arctic Circle

Aeronautics · Cold war · Political science · Submarine · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · Engineering · History · Law · Polar Research and Ecology · Geology · Oceanography

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