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