In 1963, Alister McClain published a novel about a spy satellite that fell from orbit and landed in a place where almost nobody could get to it. Almost.

The book and the 1968 film, tell the story of the race by an American atomic-powered attack submarine to get to the ice pack and land a team of Special Ops forces to retrieve the capsule before the weather clears and the Soviets can drop their airborne troops to do the same thing. There are submarines*, spies, confusion, double-crossing, star athletes and Rock Hudson. When everything is said and done, the film that everybody is chasing after is destroyed. After all of that effort and blood, nobody had anything.

Which is pretty much a metaphor for the Cold War anyway.

Imagine my surprise to learn that a few years after the novel and the movie, a US spy satellite dropped its film canister out of orbit, only to have its parachute fail and the canister plunged into the Pacific Ocean**. The race was on to recover it before the Soviets could get wind of the potential intelligence coup and to keep them as in the dark about it as