Conveys in dramatic detail the high-risk and 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 waters of the Russian Far East and also off Vietnam. This book is a riveting and deeply human story that illuminates the intensity and pressures of commanding a nuclear attack submarine in some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable. McLaren focuses on operational matters, both great and small. Based on his own notes and records as well as discussions with former officers and shipmates, McLaren 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, tactics, and culture-details that 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.

In Silent and Unseen, veteran submarine commander Captain Alfred S. McLaren describes in riveting detail the more significant events that occurred early in the Cold War during his seven years, 1958-1965, on board three attack submarines: the USS Greenfish (SS-351), USS Seadragon (SSN-584), and USS Skipjack (SSN-585). Through myriad stories and anecdotes, his book focuses on the development of attack-boat tactics and under-ice exploration techniques. The commanding officers that a young submarine officer serves with will determine how well prepared he will be to assume his own command years later. This was particularly true in attack submarines, during the early high-risk years of the Cold War. They were continually at sea, and each reconnaissance and intelligence collection mission was of potentially great, and sometimes extraordinary, value to the government of the United States of America. The missions more often than not required closing of the potential enemy to collect the intelligence desired, generally within weapons range. But, unlike a war patrol, the U.S. attack boat had to remain completely undetected; then withdraw as silently and unseen as it approached. Greenfish was one of the most successful Pacific diesel submarines when McLaren served aboard her as a watch and weapons officer during an era when she and other diesel boats executed all Cold War missions and overseas deployments. McLaren then reported to Seadragon in time to serve as a watch officer, as she became the first nuclear submarine to transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Arctic Ocean. En route, she examined the underside of icebergs, conducted the first underwater survey and passage through the Northwest Passage, and surfaced at the North Pole. He subsequently served as diving officer, an engineering department division officer and as weapons officer during a series of Cold War missions and a lengthy Western Pacific deployment. Silent and Unseen concludes with a recounting of the author's experiences as diving officer, navigator, and chief engineer on board what was then world's fastest and most advanced submarine, USS Skipjack (SSN-585) during the Cuban Missile Crisis, two Cold War missions, and the very intensive and exciting period of new tactical and weapons development which followed to counter a rapidly emerging Soviet nuclear submarine threat.