Crazy Ivan: A True Story of Submarine Espionage Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is an exasperating book. Author Craig Reed gives the reader just enough details to keep him on the hook, then glosses over other incidents and examples from his career that would have made this book a much bettter read. Rather than tell the whole story, he cuts seeminly at random from anecdote to anecdote.
Towards the end of the book, Reed has left the Navy after an "incident" he was "inadvertently drawn into, which resulted in Captain's mast [discipline]...one that I was eventually cleared of." Well, what happened, Craig? First you've left the Navy, and one chapter later, you're back in, on a better boat, on another spy mission -- what happened in the interim? It's this sort of material that would have given the reader a better look at Navy life, instead of one painted with broad brush strokes.
For a more balanced and far more readable look at submarine life, I recommend Andrew Karam's "Rig Ship for Ultra-Quiet." Reed may be a brave and patriotic Navy diver, but he still could have benefited from a better editor.

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No other U.S. Navy Diver, photographer or spy has taken pictures of any Soviet submarine from as close proximity as did W. Craig Reed of the Soviet Victor III that almost ended his life. CRAZY IVAN chronicles this true story and reveals intimate details about near-death underwater espionage missions once classified at the highest levels of Top Secret..."When I enlisted...I had no idea I would become a Navy Diver assigned to nuclear fast attack submarines conducting underwater espionage operations with U.S. Navy SEAL teams. I had no idea that I would accidentally become embroiled in a Top Secret Codeword program that would take me 400 feet down into the black, cold waters just off the coast of Soviet Russia, where sophisticated listening devices were strapped to a Soviet communications cable.I also had no idea that I would be called upon to take close-proximity espionage pictures of the Soviet's most lethal attack boat, resulting in one of the Cold War's most devastating collisions between a U.S. and Soviet submarine. A never before revealed accident that nearly cost the lives of 130 sailors."