Operation Vela Redux: A Mac McDowell Mission

Your mission: Stop the South African nuclear test!

“The scuttlebutt is when you go to sea with Mac, you're in for a frigging great adventure!"— Professor John B. Rosenman (Ret.), Norfolk State University

In early 1989, ten years following an actual 1979 joint Israeli/South African nuclear test near Prince Edward Islands, known as the Vela Incident, South Africa was negotiating the end of apartheid. The regime had built six nuclear bombs, but had announced to the World it was dismantling five. The regime was also working on a small suitcase nuke. Israeli Intelligence got word of a pending nuclear test on Prince Edward Island and informed the U.S. State department. Working through the Commanders of the U.S. Pacific Submarine Fleet and the U.S. Atlantic Submarine Fleet, the U.S. State Department assigned Mac McDowell, as the new skipper of USS Teuthis, to onload an Israeli Shayetet 13 commando unit in the Falkland Islands and head into the waters near the Prince Edward Islands to get the facts and, if possible, stop any nuclear weapons test.