Ice Station Zebra

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In 2006, the US National Reconnaissance Office declassified information stating that "an individual formerly possessing Corona access was the technical adviser to the movie" and admitted "the resemblance of the loss of the Discoverer II capsule, and its probable recovery by the Soviets" on Spitsbergen Island. Dr Carpenter, who is also a narrator, is revealed as steely eyed secret agent demonstrates the typical MacLean virtues of immense physical endurance, dogged determination and deeply cynical humour. Having obtained a bearing on the station, Dolphin dives again, and succeeds in finding a lead 8 kilometres (5 mi) from the station and breaks through a crack in the ice above.

Dr Carpenter professes to being a doctor with specific training related to submarine and arctic conditions, and manages to convince the Captain, Swanson, and the crew to accept him on board, after confiding in the Captain that the Drift Ice station was in fact a top secret location for monitoring Soviet missiles, whose activities need to be protected. And that's when slowly and steadily, all hell begins to break loose and it comes to light that the accident at the station might not have been an accident afterall.As he was also making his television series The Prisoner during principal photography on Ice Station Zebra, McGoohan had the episode " Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" re-written to have the mind of his character transferred into the body of another character.

I like the military style-font here, the hunched figures in the centre dwarfed by the submarine, which is itself lost in the ice and facing an oncoming blizzard. Dolphin prepares to blow a hole in the ice with a torpedo, but someone has sabotaged the torpedo tube doors and seawater pours in. In January 1967 MGM announced the film would be one of 13 movies it would make during the next year. A series of prefab huts built to house the residents and the equipment have caught fire,and the one remaining intact hut houses the seven starving, frostbitten and wounded survivors. Moments before it is taken, Ferraday activates his own detonator, destroying the film and denying either side the locations of the other's missile silos.

A nuclear submarine, the Dolphin, answers a distress signal to investigate what has happened at a weather monitoring station. From Jon Gilbert's bibliographical archive of Ian Fleming, with his pencilled note and ownership signature. The US submarine moves close to the station, and finding no open water, blows a hole in the ice using a torpedo. Alistair Maclean’s strong point is his ability to evoke the tension and adrenalin of men facing seemingly impossible odds.

The book caused me to think well, and kept me hanging off the suspense cliff reasonably often, and the narrative was engaging. For action it has crash dives, paratroopers, Russian spies, off-course satellites, and a troop of Marines, the average age of whom seems to be fourteen. When the British lose contact with their base in the Arctic, a US submarine takes a British spy to investigate.The nuclear submarine USS Dolphin is a prominent character in the action, this is not a techno-thriller in the Clancy mould. In June 1967, Laurence Harvey and Patrick McGoohan joined the cast as the Russian agent and British agent, respectively. They reach Zebra after a near-impossible trek, and find that eight of the men on the station are dead, while the 11 others are barely alive. Throughout the novel we learn that the fire which erupted on Drift Ice Station Zebra was no accident at all; It turns out that Drift Ice Station Zebra was far more than a meteorologist station; And we will soon learn that not Carpenter nor the survivors are what they seem, and nothing should be taken at Face Value.