Operation Ivy Bells: A Mac McDowell Mission

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

A super-secret, off-the-books spy organization; a security-clearance starting at Top Secret and going up; an attack by giant squid during a thousand-foot dive while breathing an exotic gas; a cat’s whisker escape from death during a 3-day decompression—and that’s just the first two chapters of Operation Ivy Bells, before the action really gets underway.

In a fast-paced, personal narrative, J.R. “Mac” MacDowell details a breathtaking series of events during a top-secret intelligence gathering operation at the height of the Cold War. Riding the nuclear submarine Halibut, Mac and his saturation diving team surreptitiously enter Soviet-controlled Sea of Okhotsk to install a tap on an underwater communications cable at 400 feet, and narrowly escape death when a storm snaps Halibut’s anchor cables. They retrieve missile parts from a Soviet missile-test splash-zone, getting caught in a sonar-web set by the crafty skipper of an old Soviet diesel submarine. Later, Halibut is outfitted with skids so she can sit on the bottom. Mac and his team attach a 12-thousand-pound recording pod to the cable. In the missile splash-zone, they lock in deadly underwater combat with Soviet divers.

Halibut finally returns home without ever publicly revealing their crucial contribution to winning the Cold War.

© 2025 Starman Press (Lydbog): 9781968367206

Release date

Lydbog: 12. juli 2025