Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage

Appendix A SUBMARINE COLLISIONS

Throughout the cold war, there were dozens of submarine accidents as boats that relied on sound for sight came as close as they dared to the enemy-sometimes too close. None of these accidents were as severe as Tautog's collision with Black Lila, but even a relatively minor hump by a four-thousand-ton vessel is enough to send men and their craft reeling. Here are some of the other incidents caused when submarines sent on spec ops by the United States and Great Britain slammed into or were hit by Soviet subs and ships or other vessels.

This list includes collisions that were confirmed and others considered probable. Some have never been disclosed before.

While Swordfish (SSN-579) was on a surveillance mission off the Soviet Pacific coast, a Soviet sub apparently attempted to surfacefrom directly below. The American boat was at periscope depth when it suddenly shook from an impact. One crew member recalls that the officer at the conn looked through the scope and saw "running lights"-lights along port and starboard that a sub might turn on as it surfaced. By the time the Swordfish itself came to the surface, the ocean was clear; the crew assumed that the Soviet sub had dived hack down.

One former Navy intelligence official clearly remembers an incident in which a U.S. sub got tangled up with a Soviet destroyer in the Barents Sea. He wasn't sure, but believed that the sub was the Skipjack (SSN- 585). He was certain, however, that the American boat came home with "a propeller gouge on the sail." This may be one of the incidents that Seymour M. Hersh mentioned in the New York Times in May 1975, when he described an unnamed Holystone sub that was damaged when it surfaced underneath a Soviet ship in the midst of a Soviet fleet naval exercise. Hersh also reported that the sub suffered damage to its conning tower and escaped despite a search by Soviet vessels.

The Medregal (SS-480) smashed into, and crippled, a Greek cargo freighter that was under surveillance because it was suspected of carrying supplies to enemy forces in Vietnam. The accident happened in the Gulf of Tonkin when the diesel sub was being driven by a temporary commander. The Medregal's regular skipper had broken his neck diving into a swimming pool during a port stop in the Philippines.

The Barbel (SS-580), one of the last diesel subs the Navy built, collided with a freighter suspected of carrying arms near a port on Hainan Island, China, across the Gulf of Tonkin from North Vietnam. The force of the collision tore the sail planes from the sub, probably lodging parts of them in the ship's hull. The collision was hard enough that Barbel was forced down, hitting bottom about one hundred feet underwater. The Vietnamese later reported that the freighter had sunk when it hit a submerged object.

Indeed, the Barbel collision was especially upsetting to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara because he had earlier instructed Navy leaders to keep U.S. subs out of the area to avoid inflaming tensions. Barbel remained submerged, backed away from the freighter and left without checking what happened to the sailors on the ship.

The Marshall (SSBN-654), a Polaris missile sub, was clipped by a Soviet sub in the Mediterranean Sea. The Americans knew the Soviet sub was there but couldn't move their massive boat away fast enough. Crewmen say the collision was "a glancing blow" but noted that it still left a gash in Marshall's forward starboard ballast tank.

Russian Navy officials say this was the first collision involving a NATO surveillance sub and a Soviet nuclear boat in the Barents Sea. They told our Russian researcher, Alexander Mozgovoy, that the Soviet sub was operating normally when suddenly it began listing starboard, its hull shaking. The crew quickly surfaced and through the periscope sighted another submarine's silhouette. With the conning tower hatch now jammed, the Soviets used a sledgehammer to open it, and it was several minutes before the commander could climb outside to the bridge. By then, the waters were clear. Back at base, repair crews discovered a hole in the outer hull so large that one of the sub's officers said "a three-ton truck could easily" have driven through. Judging from small bits of red and green glass and metal fragments stuck in the wreckage, the Soviets concluded that they had been hit by a foreign sub. Soviet intelligence later discovered that a British diesel sub had pulled into Norway with a damaged sail around that time. However, the Soviets also believe they could have been hit by a U.S. sub.

The sail of the Gato (SSN-615) was scraped by the hull of the Soviet Hotel-class missile sub known as Hiroshima when Hiroshima passed over the American boat. The men on Gato heard a dull grind as the subs bumped. Despite Soviet Admiral Gorshkov's wish that Gato's corpse be recovered, the sub escaped and nobody on hoard was hurt (see chapter 7).

As a Soviet sub passed over Sturgeon (SSN-637) in the Barents Sea the men on board could hear crunching. The Soviet boat had scraped Sturgeon from above and to the left, pulling off metal plates above the conning tower.

In one of the most violent collisions of the cold war, the Tautog (SSN- 639) was rammed by the Soviet Echo II submarine Black Lila off Petropavlovsk. President Nixon was briefed that taped sonar sounds indicated the Soviet sub had sunk, though now her captain has come forward to say that his sub survived (see chapter 7).

After Dace (SSN-607) hit something that rolled her to one side, her men were almost certain they had humped a Soviet submarine in the Mediterranean. Indeed, Naval Intelligence later learned that a Soviet sub pulled into a port soon afterward with the kind of damage that would have been expected from an impact with another sub.

On March 31, 1971, another Holystone sub collided with a Soviet boat, according to Hersh's May 1975 story in the New York Times. Hersh cited a memo addressed to CIA Director Richard M. Helms that put the collision seventeen nautical miles off the Soviet coast.

The Puffer (SSN-652) collided with a Soviet diesel sub in waters near Petropavlovsk when the Soviet boat took an unexpected dive just as Puffer was making one last surveillance pass. Both subs were moving at slow speed, and crewmen on Puffer say it was almost as if the Soviet boat sank on top of them and bumped.

Pintado (SSN-672) collided with a Soviet sub inside Soviet waters in the approaches to Petropavlovsk, according to a story in the San Diego Evening Tribune in July 1975. Both subs were about two hundred feet deep at impact. Crewmen said the collision smashed much of Pintado's detection sonar, jammed a torpedo tube hatch, and damaged a diving control fin. The Soviet sub, a Yankee-class ballistic missile boat, surfaced soon after the crash. The crewmen said that they believed Pintado had gone close to the Soviet harbor to check Soviet undersea defense systems. After the collision, Pintado raced from the scene.

The Madison (SSBN-627) was leaving the U.S. submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland, when she collided with a Soviet attack sub in the North Sea, according to reports by the columnist Jack Anderson and the Norwich (Connecticut) Bulletin in 1975. Madison dove onto the Soviet boat, which was shrouded by the noise of her baffles. One former Madison crew member noted that the Soviet sub was probably one of the Victor class.

This nuclear-powered British attack submarine collided with a Soviet nuclear sub that she was trailing in northern waters close to the Arctic, according to reports a decade later in the British media. One officer said the Sceptre had lost contact with the Soviet boat for as long as thirty minutes before his boat shook. "There was a huge noise," he said, adding, "Everybody went white."

In an especially embarrassing moment, the Augusta (SSN-710) bumped into a Soviet missile sub in the Atlantic while testing a new, highly computerized sonar system that had promised to make it easier to detect other vessels. The accident happened a few days after a Soviet Yankeeclass missile sub caught fire and sank off Bermuda, owing to problems with one of its missile tubes. But contrary to the story told in Hostile Waters, a 1997 Home Box Office movie, Augusta crew members and Naval Intelligence officials say Augusta did not hit the Yankee. Instead, the Augusta collided with a Delta I-class sub. The lingering confusion is the ultimate irony for Augusta's captain, who had once been so confident of his own abilities that he tacked a plaque on his stateroom door endowing himself with the lofty title "Augusta Caesar."

According to Russian Navy officials, the Splendid was surveying a Soviet sub in the Northern Fleet's training range in the Barents Sea when the Soviets noticed and tried to get away. The Russians say that at that point commanders of both subs made maneuvering mistakes, and the Soviet submarine brushed against the Splendid, snagging its towed sonar array. The Soviet sub, possibly one of the huge Typhoon missile boats, made her way back to base, still entwined in the array.

Baton Rouge (SSN-689) collided with a Russian Sierra-class sub near Murmansk. In an unprecedented move, and in response to Yeltsin's complaints, the Pentagon publicly announced that the collision had occurred (see chapter 12).

Grayling (SSN-646) collided with a Russian Delta III missile sub in the Barents Sea. Nobody was hurt, but Clinton was furious that the Navy was still taking such risks (see chapter 12).