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

Red November has the verve of a good Tom Clancy novel, but it’s all true. Based on the author’s experience as a submariner and navy diver, along with interviews of submarine veterans on both sides of the Cold War, Red November reveals the heroism of life under the waves, and how close we came to nuclear war.

The author’s father helped develop a key technology called Boresight, which triangulated burst transmissions from Soviet submarines. During the Cuban Missile crisis, four Soviet attack submarines carrying nuclear torpedoes represented the biggest threat to the American quarantine. Boresight vectored anti-sub warfare groups. For tense days, the fate of the world rested in the hands of four Soviet captains and political officers: men sweltering and covered in heat-rashes, passing out from CO2 levels, frightened of their failing equipment and bombardment by ‘signalling depth charges’. These men had a button which would make the Americans go away, and also precipitate an all-out war. We’re here because they declined to end the world.

Even if the submarine Cold War wasn’t a shooting war, it was plenty dangerous. American captains sailed extremely aggressively, passing within a handful of meters of their Soviet counterparts to collect intelligence and be in a position to destroy enemy boomers before they could launch their missiles. This resulted in several collisions, including one between USS Drum and K-324 that the author was present for.

And of course the crown jewel of the secret war was Operation Ivy Bells, where US submarines penetrated into the Vladivostok harbor to tap a submarine cable, at least until a disgruntled NSA employee blew the entire program.

Red November is a thrilling, slice-of-life history, of a secret war!