The Cold War, USOs, & the K-219 Submarine Incident

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I read that NOAA has mapped all of the ocean floor. Since I read the supporting evidence for the statements of NASA regarding Mars, and they state that the portions north and south of 86 degrees were interpolated instead of mapped, while NASA broadcasts that the entire surface of mars has been mapped, I know how they lie by omission. So I decided to check whether the reports from the actual craft the did the mapping matched their statements concerning the oceans. Not even close. There are many bands that are three or four hundreds of miles wide that have never been looked at. I'm fairly sure our Navy has mapped most of the China coast and of course the Japanese have as well. But none of this is available to the scientists as it represents classified material.
From what I have been reading I they had extensively mapped the Atlantic through the 60s & 70s. Their publicly stated goal. By extension many, many other areas by implication. Anywhere you might find of use to a nuclear submarine. No doubt classified. Things like the operations in the Sea of Okhotsk occasionally come into the daylight
 

Standingstones

Celestial
Way back in the sands of time I worked at Groton CT as an electronics technician. This would have been the Los Angeles class of subs. This particular sub was over a football field in length. I don’t remember much about my stay there. I do recall standing next to the missile silos and getting a chill through my body. I just hoped they would never be used.

I disliked every day I was there. Groton is all about Electric Boat. I found it to be a dirty, dingy place in the 70s. I stayed but a few months and then came back to PA.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Way back in the sands of time I worked at Groton CT as an electronics technician. This would have been the Los Angeles class of subs. This particular sub was over a football field in length. I don’t remember much about my stay there. I do recall standing next to the missile silos and getting a chill through my body. I just hoped they would never be used.

I disliked every day I was there. Groton is all about Electric Boat. I found it to be a dirty, dingy place in the 70s. I stayed but a few months and then came back to PA.

Probably just as well, that's where all the cancer related asbestos cases started
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
From what I have been reading I they had extensively mapped the Atlantic through the 60s & 70s. Their publicly stated goal. By extension many, many other areas by implication. Anywhere you might find of use to a nuclear submarine. No doubt classified. Things like the operations in the Sea of Okhotsk occasionally come into the daylight

I was on a train in my phone when I wrote the above, a bit limited access. For me anyway, I'm sure a teenager would have no problems.

Yeah, they had a number of public facing programs for oceanographic research. Some were the Man-in-the Sea, SeaLab and Deep Submergence programs on the west coast - you know, where they do their secret stuff out where we've been reporting weird lights and tic tacs. In zero instances were their publicly stated reasons for them the complete story, and virtually always the next level of secrecy was simply a container for something else, much quieter and so compartmentalized that those involved weren't necessarily aware of the 'full truth' whatever that might be. ALL of it was in some way related to the Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine program and the concept of deterrence - not something universally agreed upon for longer than we would be comfortable in admitting.

So did they map the whole kit and kaboodle? No, probably not. But they literally shadowed - often undetected - just about every single thing that the Soviets ever got wet. To sneak into their primary bases around the world you obviously must create some damned detailed maps. In some cases to be active, in some cases to lie doggo.

** I just wrote that so I could use the phrase lie doggo because I get a kick out of it :) **

I mention the Sea of Okhotsk because that's where Halibut and Seawolf literally physically tapped communications cables lying on the sea floor. The equipment they used for that was part of their 2 & 20 strategy - to have capabilities at 2000 and 20000 feet. Only reason we know about it is because the commies accidentally found it. Safe bet there's a bunch they didn't - the Black Sea is a place that would raise eyebrows. Ballsy.

A couple of pop culture references. Fiction with a (small) basis in fact - in Hunt for Red October there were some great scenes with Ramius navigating with his stopwatch through underwater canyons. I'd suspect that level of detail in well travelled areas. Apparently there were a number of defined routes everybody used, and probably still does.

The other reference is something @The shadow knows. <<<< yes, that was intentional :)
Ballard was looking for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion when he found Titanic. Both were highly advanced nuclear attack submarines suddenly lost. It was later determined that the former had a design flaw and the latter possibly sunk by it's own errant torpedo although the speculation was that the Soviets sunk it. Highly aggressive maneuvering and even depth charging was not unknown and not uncommon for both sides.

Incidentally, there are fast attack subs like the Dallas in Red October and their name says it all. They don't carry vertically launched missiles and their mission profiles are very different than the Ohio class missile boats which most certainly do. They are much larger and their job is to put to sea and get lost. Remember that Paul Bennewitz stumbled onto something that was being tested at Monzano and Kirtland ? Yes, I know they are not Navy facilities. One of the things I believe he stumbled on was a revolutionary method to communicate with those subs that was supposed to be undetectable. I guess not.

Ballard was using the NR-1, a Navy designed nuclear research sub and his primary mission was to locate the wrecks of Thresher and Scorpion for further analysis. The Navy was dammed annoyed he found Titanic.

American submarine NR-1 - Wikipedia
‘I discovered the Titanic on a top-secret military operation’: Robert Ballard on finding the most famous shipwreck in history

I know I go on and on about this stuff but I wouldn't unless I thought it relevant to the weirdness we talk about here. Somewhere back in this thread I linked and article that describes some of the things we have repurposed some of the Ohio class subs for. In the context of decades of clandestine development that was equal to Apollo or the Manhattan Project in many ways this is worth at least considering when we look at what came out of the NY Times article in 2017. . We tend to think of super-secret gadgets flying out of Area 51, and with good reason. We pay little or no attention to the ocean, and if we do it's the carriers and surface vessels. There's a reason they call subs the silent service
 
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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Back at it. This time a book from 2009 written by former US and Soviet naval officers and a French naval consultant.
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Just started it and haven't formed an opinion beyond agreeing with their assessment that naval espionage played a far larger role than most suspect from 1945 onward. Couple good quotes I thought were interesting that might generate a bit of interest.

The following pages relate events explaining the critical role of naval intelligence from the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Sensitive archives are usually kept secret until the date of their destruction, while more mundane intelligence papers are generally made available to the public after fifty or sixty years. Declassification initiatives sometimes shorten this delay, most notably in the United States. Personal recollections are often distorted by egotism, political or professional passions, close friendships, hatred, and vanishing memories. Bearing in mind these limitations, the authors present candid accounts depicting key events in the long behind-the-scenes Cold War naval intelligence scramble.”

— Hide and Seek: The Untold Story of Cold War Naval Espionage by Peter A. Huchthausen, Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix
Hide and Seek: The Untold Story of Cold War Naval Espionage

This book also presents new facts about psychological warfare operations, the latest revelations on underwater incursions in Swedish waters, and how the Cold War navies tried to unravel strange encounters that apparently could not be attributed to the other side. Included are the Soviet naval intelligence instructions regarding “abnormal physical phenomena and objects.””

— Hide and Seek: The Untold Story of Cold War Naval Espionage by Peter A. Huchthausen, Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix
Hide and Seek: The Untold Story of Cold War Naval Espionage
 
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