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| Source: Amazon.com |
Blind Man's Bluff: The
Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher
Drew
Life under water for us air-breathing mammals is tough. This is the second book I’ve read in recent months that deals with post-WWII submarine operations, and the story just doesn’t get much rosier. Blind Man’s Bluff covers the whole spectrum of the Cold War submarine conflict, an undeclared war that was carried on by the United States and the Soviet Union for over fifty years. Forget proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, this was the real cold war gone near hot.
The book I read before this one that dealt with Cold War submarine antics was titled Red November. Blind Man’s Bluff covers some of the same ground as that book, but not to the detail that it did on certain subjects. Blind Man’s Bluff is really more of a general overview of the entire Cold War (and a little beyond), rather than lingering on Red November's specifically covered topics. It discusses early U.S. disasters with our war-weary post WWII diesel-powered fleet, the growing tensions from the race to develop nuclear powered and then nuclear armed subs, the operations that led to U.S. Navy cable tapping in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea (both right in the Soviet Union’s backyard, and both within what the Soviets claimed to be their territorial waters), and the lowering of safety specs that led to disasters such as the loss of USS Thresher and later USS Scorpion (the latter being one that the authors dwell on for considerable time due to the fact that an official explanation for that vessel’s destruction has not been established, at least not to my present knowledge).
As I’ve said, the book dealt with a vast array of topics that are part of submarine operations. Shady details that must have been fairly recently declassified on subjects such as the aforementioned cable tapping ops are covered. Regarding cable tapping, basically the U.S. Navy was listening in on high level Soviet communications between their command authority and the units at critical bases like Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok in the Pacific and also between the bases in the Barents Sea and Moscow.
Also as I mentioned, the Scorpion disaster was discussed at length as well. The USS Scorpion was lost with all hands in the late 1960s or early 1970s (I forget the date now, though it would be easy enough for the blog reader to look up if he/she chose). Sontag and Drew explore the theory that a faulty design of torpedo that was in service at the time, the Mark 36 type, accidentally armed itself while on the storage rack in the Scorpion’s torpedo bay. The situation, if I am describing it correctly, is called a “Hot Run” in the torpedo room, and could lead to a disastrous explosion if appropriate steps are not immediately taken. Other submarine captains reported similar problems to the one that may have led to the loss of the Scorpion, and it is easily plausible that this situation was what caused the boat to go down in deep water. There is another book in my anticipated reading pile that postulates the theory that the Scorpion was actually destroyed by a Soviet attack. Since the actual details of the Scorpion's loss are unknown - it was in deep water when it sank and out of contact - I’ll have to see what that book says and compare it to Blind Man’s Bluff’s argument. I’ll fill you in when I get to that one, one of these days.
Speaking of deep water, the book also discusses the attempt to salvage a Soviet “Golf” class ballistic missile submarine by the CIA in the late 60s. The famous billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes build a ship known as the Glomar Explorer that was used to attempt a recovery, but an accident while the operation was underway led to the recovery of only a part of the sub (and must have been tremendously expensive, when the damage tally on the enormous crane that was used for the operation was taken). The publicity that came about during this operation, and U.S. intelligence efforts to keep the story under wraps, was also part of the story.
The first incident that Sontag and Drew write about was the USS Barbel, and is notable. The Barbel was involved in a collision, which was a rather common occurrence between US and Soviet ships during the Cold War, and even afterward, as an incident between the USS Grayling and an unidentified Russian Delta III ballistic missile sub in 1993 which sparked a small international incident between the U.S. and the newly formed Russian Republic. The Barbel collided with a freighter carrying arms near North Vietnam during the early years of the Vietnam War. The story of the Barbel made for a compelling beginning to the book, as the experiences of the sailors and the attending loss of life from rough seas and ship-borne hazards really drew me into the story.
The book was truly a good one, and I can’t really think of anything about it that I didn’t like. As I noticed in an Amazon.com blurb for Blind Man’s Bluff, it's like a spy thriller novel but the materials covered really happened. Some of it is nail-biting, some is nerve-rattling - such the account of Soviet active sonar pings on the hull of a U.S. submarine as it attempts to escape from a risky mission near the Russian coast - and some of it stretches the bounds of credulity. There were a couple of instances where I found myself saying: they didn’t really do that, did they? The gall of some of the sub drivers discussed makes you wonder how we didn’t end up all glowing radioactive dust from a massive nuclear weapons exchange brought about by a “incident” involving two opposing submarines. In the final analysis, I’d say this book shouldn’t be missed if you are at all interested in US Naval operations during the Cold War, and especially if you enjoyed Tom Clancy’s early novel The Hunt for Red October. Good stuff!
Life under water for us air-breathing mammals is tough. This is the second book I’ve read in recent months that deals with post-WWII submarine operations, and the story just doesn’t get much rosier. Blind Man’s Bluff covers the whole spectrum of the Cold War submarine conflict, an undeclared war that was carried on by the United States and the Soviet Union for over fifty years. Forget proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, this was the real cold war gone near hot.
The book I read before this one that dealt with Cold War submarine antics was titled Red November. Blind Man’s Bluff covers some of the same ground as that book, but not to the detail that it did on certain subjects. Blind Man’s Bluff is really more of a general overview of the entire Cold War (and a little beyond), rather than lingering on Red November's specifically covered topics. It discusses early U.S. disasters with our war-weary post WWII diesel-powered fleet, the growing tensions from the race to develop nuclear powered and then nuclear armed subs, the operations that led to U.S. Navy cable tapping in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea (both right in the Soviet Union’s backyard, and both within what the Soviets claimed to be their territorial waters), and the lowering of safety specs that led to disasters such as the loss of USS Thresher and later USS Scorpion (the latter being one that the authors dwell on for considerable time due to the fact that an official explanation for that vessel’s destruction has not been established, at least not to my present knowledge).
As I’ve said, the book dealt with a vast array of topics that are part of submarine operations. Shady details that must have been fairly recently declassified on subjects such as the aforementioned cable tapping ops are covered. Regarding cable tapping, basically the U.S. Navy was listening in on high level Soviet communications between their command authority and the units at critical bases like Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok in the Pacific and also between the bases in the Barents Sea and Moscow.
Also as I mentioned, the Scorpion disaster was discussed at length as well. The USS Scorpion was lost with all hands in the late 1960s or early 1970s (I forget the date now, though it would be easy enough for the blog reader to look up if he/she chose). Sontag and Drew explore the theory that a faulty design of torpedo that was in service at the time, the Mark 36 type, accidentally armed itself while on the storage rack in the Scorpion’s torpedo bay. The situation, if I am describing it correctly, is called a “Hot Run” in the torpedo room, and could lead to a disastrous explosion if appropriate steps are not immediately taken. Other submarine captains reported similar problems to the one that may have led to the loss of the Scorpion, and it is easily plausible that this situation was what caused the boat to go down in deep water. There is another book in my anticipated reading pile that postulates the theory that the Scorpion was actually destroyed by a Soviet attack. Since the actual details of the Scorpion's loss are unknown - it was in deep water when it sank and out of contact - I’ll have to see what that book says and compare it to Blind Man’s Bluff’s argument. I’ll fill you in when I get to that one, one of these days.
Speaking of deep water, the book also discusses the attempt to salvage a Soviet “Golf” class ballistic missile submarine by the CIA in the late 60s. The famous billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes build a ship known as the Glomar Explorer that was used to attempt a recovery, but an accident while the operation was underway led to the recovery of only a part of the sub (and must have been tremendously expensive, when the damage tally on the enormous crane that was used for the operation was taken). The publicity that came about during this operation, and U.S. intelligence efforts to keep the story under wraps, was also part of the story.
The first incident that Sontag and Drew write about was the USS Barbel, and is notable. The Barbel was involved in a collision, which was a rather common occurrence between US and Soviet ships during the Cold War, and even afterward, as an incident between the USS Grayling and an unidentified Russian Delta III ballistic missile sub in 1993 which sparked a small international incident between the U.S. and the newly formed Russian Republic. The Barbel collided with a freighter carrying arms near North Vietnam during the early years of the Vietnam War. The story of the Barbel made for a compelling beginning to the book, as the experiences of the sailors and the attending loss of life from rough seas and ship-borne hazards really drew me into the story.
The book was truly a good one, and I can’t really think of anything about it that I didn’t like. As I noticed in an Amazon.com blurb for Blind Man’s Bluff, it's like a spy thriller novel but the materials covered really happened. Some of it is nail-biting, some is nerve-rattling - such the account of Soviet active sonar pings on the hull of a U.S. submarine as it attempts to escape from a risky mission near the Russian coast - and some of it stretches the bounds of credulity. There were a couple of instances where I found myself saying: they didn’t really do that, did they? The gall of some of the sub drivers discussed makes you wonder how we didn’t end up all glowing radioactive dust from a massive nuclear weapons exchange brought about by a “incident” involving two opposing submarines. In the final analysis, I’d say this book shouldn’t be missed if you are at all interested in US Naval operations during the Cold War, and especially if you enjoyed Tom Clancy’s early novel The Hunt for Red October. Good stuff!
And a parting comment:
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| Source: LOL Snaps.com |
Because you never know who is really crazy and who is just faking sanity really well.
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