Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew

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

  Within twelve hours, two aircraft carrier battle groups were sent from Yokosuka and the Philippines to corner the trawler. A day or two later, the trawler was boxed in outside of Okinawa. By now, the Navy had gotten the State Department involved, and messages were flying back and forth between U.S. diplomats and high-ranking Soviets. Finally, the trawler captain, who had stared down the American ships, dropped the torpedo over the side. Attached was a note, written in English, deft and to the point. The captain simply said the torpedo had come alongside his ship. To Naval Intelligence officers looking on, it seemed as though the Soviet was saying "look what I found," as if he had just landed a big fish and it was the most natural and innocent thing in the world.

  Death in the Norwegian Sea

  In the late summer of 1985, the USS Baltimore (SSN-704) was sent to watch a Soviet Zulu IV sub in waters just above Norway. The U.S. Navy knew that the 1950s-vintage diesel sub was a research boat, one that had been seen loitering in the area before. The Baltimore prepared to make a pass beneath the Zulu when the American submariners saw a cable, about as wide as a man's arm, dangling from the Soviet sub. Then, through a murky underwater periscope view, they saw the Soviets lowering an open underwater sled with ballast tanks on either side. On the sled were one or more divers wearing suits reminiscent of those designed for outer space, with air hoses connected back up to the submarine. Silence was ordered on board Baltimore as the Soviet sled moved toward the ocean floor. Men were ordered to wear their rubber shoes, not to slam doors. The ice machine was turned off. So was the bug juice machine. The only thing left running in Baltimore's mess was the coffee-maker.

  Soon, sonar reported the sound of what seemed to be digging in the sand, three hundred feet below the surface. Listening in on the Zulu's own onboard intercom, the Baltimore's crew realized that the Soviets were looking for an underwater communications cable.

  Naval Intelligence officials knew that there was such a cable there, one running from Murmansk to northern England that had been laid in the days of the czar. It wasn't used anymore, and the Soviets had to have known that. Perhaps the Soviets were practicing. Perhaps they were preparing to try to match the U.S. cable-tapping feat that had been exposed a few years earlier. Or perhaps they were practicing to disrupt the cables that connected the U.S. SOSUS nets.

  The oceans were rough, with swells reaching as high as thirty feet. Still the Zulu loitered, and still the Baltimore watched from one day to the next. On the third day, all sounds of digging, all noise in fact, stopped. Baltimore was inched closer and her crew realized that there was now a cable dangling from the Zulu, with no sled attached. It had been lost, presumably with its divers.

  A stunned silence reigned on Baltimore. "I remember that everyone in the conn turned around and looked at each other," one crew member said, adding that it no longer seemed to matter which side anybody was on. "It was more like we realized a submariner was dead."

  Notes

  This hook is based primarily on several hundred interviews we conducted with submariners, government officials, and intelligence officials, most of whom we cannot name. We do use names where we can. We also relied on many sources of public information to verify our facts and put them into historical context. Among other things, we consulted declassified patrol schedules of the subs in Navy archives, dug up published Naval Intelligence reports, and read numerous articles and books.

  Throughout the hook, we relied on several standard reference works for basic information about the history, size, and capabilities of different classes of submarines. Among them were various editions of Guide to the Soviet Navy and The Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, both written by the well-known naval analyst Norman Polmar and published by the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, Maryland. We also consulted various editions of Jane's Fighting Ships and other publications of the authoritative British company Jane's Information Group Limited.

  For a more detailed understanding of submarine tactics and technology, we also relied on Norman Friedman, Submarine Design and Development (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1984); Richard Compton-Hall, Sub Versus Sub: The Tactics and Technology of Underwater Warfare (New York: Orion Books, 1988); and Norman Polmar, The American Submarine (Annapolis, Md.: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1983). Handy resources for most submarine hull numbers were the United States Submarine Data Book, prepared by the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut, and a list of all nuclear-powered submarines distributed by Electric Boat Company, a division of General Dynamics Corporation. We obtained records of the awards granted to individ ual submarines from the official Navy awards office at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.

  Prologue

  Much of the history of submarines we cite came from The Ultimate Naval Weapon-Its Past, Present, and Future by Drew Middleton (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976). Chapters 1-4 were invaluable for their insight into the history of submarines, as was Friedman's book and Polmar's The American Submarine.

  Chapter 1: A Deadly Beginning

  Main interviews: Rafael C. Benitez, Harris M. "Red" Austin, and other crew members of USS Cochino.

  In various parts of this chapter, we also drew on the following government documents, articles, books, and other sources:

  Jan Breemer's Soviet Submarines: Design, Development, and Tactics (London: Jane's Information Group Limited, 1989) provides a good description of the advanced German snorkel submarines and how they were divided among the Soviet Union and the Western Allies after World War II. The changes involved in converting America's fleet submarines into snorkel boats such as the Cochino and the Tusk are described in Polmar's The American Submarine and in a "Welcome Aboard" brochure, USS Tusk, in the Tusk file at the Ships History Branch of the Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.

  The U.S. Navy's early fears that the Soviets would build a large fleet of advanced snorkel subs are chronicled in an article by Breemer entitled "The Submarine Gap: Intelligence Estimates 1945-1955," in Navy International 91, no. 2 (February 1986): 100-105. Breemer notes that U.S. intelligence began receiving reports as early as 1948 about Soviet test launches of missiles from the decks of submarines (Soviet Submarines, pp. 88-89). Some of this information comes from declassified issues of the ON] Review, a fascinating internal magazine published each month by the Office of Naval Intelligence from 1945 through 1962. These publications are available at the Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center.

  Information about Operation Kayo comes from "The Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Roy S. Benson," an oral history set down in 1984 and quoted with the permission of Paul Stillwell, the director of history (reference and preservation) at the U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland. It is part of a large collection of oral histories of former naval officers that Stillwell and others have put together. Retired Admiral Robert L. J. Long, a former vice chief of Naval Operations and commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, first mentioned Operation Kayo to us. As a young officer, he served on the USS Corsair and was detached before it accompanied Cochino on the ill-fated mission.

  Deck logs for the USS Sea Dog and the USS Black fin, on file at the National Archives, Suitland Records Center, Suitland, Maryland, show that both made deployments from Pearl Harbor to areas off Alaska's Aleutian Islands in May and June of 1948. Lawrence Savadkin, a World War II submarine hero who was the executive officer of the Sea Dog, described the intelligence goals of their missions in an interview.

  In addition to extensive interviews with Benitez and Austin, we drew parts of our account of the Cochino's final mission and sinking from several documentary sources. The most comprehensive was the declassified version of the Cochino patrol report filed by Commander Benitez on September 8, 1949, which is available at the Operational Archives Branch of the Naval Historical Center. Excerpts from the report also were included in "The Loss of the Cochino," ONI Review (February 1950): 57-66. The Cochino's daily deck logs were lost when it sank, but the logs from the Tusk, the Cors
air, and the USS Toro are on file at the Suitland Records Center.

  The loss of the Cochino made front-page headlines in most large American newspapers in 1949. One of the most detailed articles we reviewed was James D. Cunningham, "Tears and Smiles Greet Cochino and Tusk Survivors at Sub Base; Officers Give Details on Tragedy," New London (Connecticut) Day, September 8, 1949. And a Navy public relations officer, Commander William J. Lederer, interviewed some of the surviving crew members for a dramatic article, "Miracle Under the Arctic Sea" (Saturday Evening Post, January 14, 1950), and for a book, The Last Cruise (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1950). We have drawn only a few details from Lederer's hook that seemed to come directly from the survivors' recollections. But our chapter differs in several crucial respects because both Austin and Benitez said Lederer's account was overdramatized and included information that was purposely altered by the Navy. In fact, Austin wrote a letter to the Saturday Evening Post to complain about these changes, and he saved the responses that he got from both Benitez and Lederer. Benitez wrote to Austin on February 3, 1950, that Lederer's "story as originally written was very far-fetched and what actually appeared was a compromise." Lederer acknowledged in a letter to Austin on March 2, 1950, that the Navy had reviewed his manuscript and that there were "certain things which I `fixed.' For example, I altered the timing of the piece because I didn't want the Russians to be able to measure back and estimate where the Cochino sank; I made small changes in such parts where the truth might make the relatives of men feel had; and I left out certain things which might give clues to confidential means of communicating."

  One fact that Lederer did not reveal, of course, was Austin's true mission. Lederer described Austin simply as a "communications technician." Austin's background as an electronic-intercept specialist was first disclosed in "USS Cochino," Cryptolog (Fall 1983); Cryptolog is a publication of the Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association, a group that includes some of the spooks who rode submarines. But that article did not discuss what Austin was trying to accomplish on the Cochino, and our account is the first that reveals the Cochino's role in helping to set off a new era of submarine spying.

  Lederer's article and book also omitted any mention of the faulty foul-weather gear and boots that dragged some of the Tusk crew members to their deaths. This problem was documented in the Tusk log for August 25, 1949. Retired Rear Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey, who was the Atlantic submarine fleet's legal officer at that time, also confirmed in an interview that the foul-weather gear given to the men on the Tusk was "an experimental suit that nobody had tested. But the only thing is when you're in the water, it turns you upside down. And they got hung with their boots up."

  On the Soviet side, we drew our description of the Soviet naval bases near Murmansk from "Kola Inlet and Its Facilities," ONI Review (September 1949). And the Soviets' suspicions that the Cochino was on a spy mission were cited in Associated Press articles that appeared on September 3 and 19, 1949, in the New London Day and on September 21, 1949, in the New York Herald Tribune.

  Chapter 2: Whiskey A-Go-Go

  Main interviews: Former crew members of the USS Gudgeon and other diesel submarines and former top officials from the U.S. subma- rive force, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Naval Security Group, which employed the Russian linguists and other spooks who rode on the subs.

  Government documents, articles, books, and other sources: The dates of the Gudgeon's deployment in the summer of 1957 come from its daily deck logs on file at the National Archives, Suitland Records Center. The logs show how many miles the Gudgeon steamed each day and other basic facts, but they give no hint that it was on an intelligence mission.

  A listing of all of the diesel submarines that made surveillance deployments during the Korean War-and descriptions of the difficulties some encountered with icy weather and primitive reconnaissance equipment-are included in the interim evaluation reports that were prepared every six months during the Korean War by the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. They are in the files of the Operational Archives Branch at the Naval Historical Center.

  U.S. intelligence officials have long believed that a U.S. surface ship sank a Soviet sub that came close to an aircraft carrier attack force in 1951, early in the Korean War, according to two former intelligence officers. The United States was so concerned that the Soviet Navy would try to help the North Koreans that surface ships were under orders to protect U.S. warships by depth charging any possible hostile submarines, and in this case, one force depth charged a suspected Soviet sub and then saw no signs that it had survived. Asked about this, current Russian Navy officials said they knew of no sub losses around the time of the Korean War, and then said it would be too difficult to check navy archives or reach a definitive answer.

  The U.S. Navy itself used one sub in a direct combat role during the Korean conflict, sending the diesel boat, USS Perch (SS-313), to the shores of North Korea in 1950. On board were U.S. troops and sixtythree British Royal marines. Although Perch was detected, commandos managed to hoard rubber rafts and make their way to shore. A bombing raid staged by the United States that night helped draw fire away, while the men landed, blew up a culvert, mined a tunnel, and destroyed a train. One British marine was killed by enemy troops. This tale is well recounted in Submarines at War: The History of the American Silent Service by Edwin P. Hoyt (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1983), pp. 299-303.

  The monthly issues of the ON[ Review provided an excellent source for tracking the rapid growth of the Soviet submarine fleet throughout the 1950s. The information about the Soviet Whiskey crew that was ravaged by gases on a 30-day test came from retired Soviet Navy Captain First Rank Boris Bagdasaryan, who served on that sub and was interviewed by a Russian military reporter, Alexander Mozgovoy, whom we hired to do research for us. The unconfirmed intelligence reports that the Soviets were modifying some of their Zulu-class subs to carry missiles were mentioned in "Developments and Trends in the Soviet Fleet During 1956," ONI Review (secret supplement] (Spring-Summer 1957): 9-10.

  The encouragement of regular Navy officers to receive intelligence training and thus engage in the world's "second-oldest profession," one with "even fewer morals than the first," appeared in the article "Postgraduate Intelligence Training: An Avenue to Rewarding Service," ONI Review (August 1957): 337.

  President Eisenhower's hesitancy about approving U-2 flights in the mid-1950s is described in chapter 2 of Graham Yost's Spies in the Skies (New York: Facts on File, 1989), a book about the evolution of U.S. spy satellites.

  We drew some background details about the Gudgeon's captain, Norman G. Bessac, from his official biography on file in the Operational Archives Branch at the Naval Historical Center.

  The Soviet version of "Hansel and Gretel" was cited in "Trends in Communist Propaganda," ONI Review (May 1955): 226. The Soviet offers to American pen pals to swap pictures were mentioned in "Security Control of Technical Data," ONI Review (April 1951): 127.

  The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was commissioned on September 30, 1954, and sent out its historic message, "Underway on nuclear power," at the start of its first training deployment on January 17, 1955. The USS Seatcol f became the second nuclear-powered sub to go into service when it was commissioned on March 30, 1957. The personal background and political savvy of Admiral Hyman Rickover is well covered in two excellent books: Rickover: Controversy and Genius, a full-scale biography by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), and The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference, a memoir by one of Rickover's former associates, Theodore Rockwell (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1992). The adventures of the Nautilus in becoming the first submarine to reach the North Pole are chronicled in Nautilus 90 North, a book written by its second captain, Commander William R. Anderson, with Clay Blair Jr. (New York: Harper & Row, 1959).

  Middleton's The Ultimate Naval Weapon notes that the World War II fleet boat named the USS Gudgeon (SS-21 1) also
had a major success: it was credited with the first American kill of a Japanese U-boat.

  The Soviets' August 26, 1957, announcement of their first successful intercontinental ballistic missile test is mentioned in "Soviet Scientific and Technical Developments, 1957," ONI Review (May 1958): 214. It also is discussed in Peter Pringle and William Arkin, SLOP: The Secret U.S. Plan for Nuclear War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983).

  A series of Navy press releases about the Gudgeon's trip to circumnavigate the globe and take part in Eisenhower's "People to People" program are in the file on the Gudgeon at the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park in Honolulu.

  One of the young officers on the USS Wahoo when it was caught near a Soviet beach in 1958 was William J. Crowe Jr., who rose to become an admiral and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. He described the Wahoo's perilous encounter with the Soviets in his memoir The Line of Fire: From Washington to the Gulf, the Politics and Battles of the New Military (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993).

  Russian military officials now say there were several reasons they showed greater restraint in dealing with spy subs than spy planes. Soviet warships dropped low-capacity "drill bombs" instead of full depth charges, officials told our researcher Alexander Mozgovoy, in case American subs like the Gudgeon had made navigational errors and found themselves in Soviet territory accidentally. The Russian officials also said that the smaller, grenadelike charges were used in keeping with their regulations for warning foreign submarines encroaching upon their territorial waters, rules that included this method of signaling them to leave.

  Some of the hysteria about the possibility that Soviet subs were coming close to American shores in the late 1950s was fueled by U.S. Representative Carl Durham, a Democrat from North Carolina who chaired a joint House-Senate committee on atomic energy. He was quoted in an Associated Press dispatch on April 14, 1958, as saying that 184 Russian submarines had been sighted off the U.S. Atlantic coast in 1957 alone. Mrs. Gilkinson's sharp eye for foreign submarines was reported in the "Monthly Box Score of Submarine Contacts," ONI Review (January 1961): 38. The man from Texas was mentioned in "Monthly Box Score of Submarine Contacts," ONI Review (January 1962): 27.