Re: Ambushing Iran's subs?


Jack Linthicum wrote:
Mark Test wrote:
<ken_wood56@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1156613548.730771.163490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

pigdos wrote:
Hey, even if it's a stupid question at least it's OT!

What would stop some, TBD nation from posting some hunter-killer subs
outside of Iran's major ports-of-call, figuring out the sound signatures
of
these Iranian boats, and then sinking them while under way (and
underwater)?
It would seem to me there would be no smoking gun to prove who sunk
these
boats or why (at least as far as the Iranian navy goes)...

--
Doug

What would it accomplish?

There are some who speculate that a scenario like this may have already
been played out, back in 1968....5 submarines from the US, USSR,
France, and Israel were lost that year.

SCORPION US
K-129 USSR
Unknown USSR sub lost in the Arctic Sea
DAKAR Israel
MINERVE' France

Mark


Scorpion "believed to be a hot running torpedo, casued by defective
torpedo batteries"

K-129 "Hole blown nearly ten feet wide just behind the Golf's conning
tower" Blind Man's Bluff

SNIP

For the truly paranoid among us read

Red Star Rogue

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

In the dark hours of March 7, 1968, a lone submarine slowly prowled the
surface in open waters of the North Pacific. The slender sub rolled
easily in swells raised by a twenty-knot wind. Occasionally, the
whitecaps racing ahead of wave crests broke over the low forward deck,
sending foaming rivulets of seawater to hide the rust streaks weeping
from the boat's aging welds.

A coast watcher might have mistaken the submarine for some naval relic
with an oddly long fin emerging from the depths to fight a sea battle
of the Second World War. Such identification would have been only
partly right. This sub, despite its angular U-boat appearance, carried
three atomic-age ballistic missiles snugly housed in tubes in its
extended sail.

On the bridge, in the brisk wind, an officer quickly scanned the
horizon through powerful naval binoculars, and then raised them to
search all quadrants of the night sky.

A seaman in an ill-fitting sheepskin coat focused his attention closer
to home, climbing to the highest point in the aft section of the
bridge. The coat was much too large for his slight frame, and he was
much too young to have attained the rank entitling him to wear the
storm raglan coat, quilted pants, and expensive lined boots of a fleet
officer.

From his new perch he examined the long, flat area of the conning tower
behind the bridge. The faintest glow of starlight provided just enough
illumination for the sailor to discern the outline of the three
launch-tube doors. The doors appeared to be clear of any flotsam that
might have been picked up during surfacing. Beneath the steel doors,
like giant elongated eggs, were forty-two-foot-long ballistic missiles.
Each carried a one-megaton thermonuclear warhead.

The massive doors were tightly sealed, to keep salt water out of the
missile tubes. The powerful hydraulic arms that opened them could be
activated only from the missile control panel inside the submarine.

The officer gazing through his binoculars at the front of the bridge
had seen no threat to their position--no running lights of surface
ships, no antisubmarine warfare planes patrolling the sky. He
acknowledged the other man's report that the missile doors were clear,
then ducked back down the ladder and into the submarine.

As the boat broke through the swells at an almost leisurely two knots,
the crewmen below eagerly breathed the fresh air rushing in through
hatches opened to the conning tower. It was the first time the boat had
been on the surface long enough to flush out the foul air that had
accumulated in the living chambers during two weeks of submerged
sailing. The cool sea air replacing oily diesel fumes created a slight
draft in the control center as it flowed from compartments fore and
aft.

The usual elation of the crew at finally being back in man's normal
realm on the surface was suddenly cut short when they heard an order
barked over the intercom. The order was for battle stations, missile
launch. All compartments were to report ready when sealed. The order
was followed by: "This is not a drill."

That harsh command, which may have startled even the few crewmen in the
operating compartments who knew what to expect next, was more shocking
for five dozen officers and sailors confined against their will in the
forward two compartments of the submarine.

With an efficiency born of a thousand drills, all the steps to fulfill
a missile submarine's ultimate purpose were methodically taken.

The officer who had just returned from lookout duty on the bridge
entered the control room to assume the post of deputy commander. He
reported that all was clear from his visual observations, and that the
doors over the missile tubes were free of flotsam. Only the sailor in
the bulky, foul-weather coat remained on the bridge in the open night
air.

Another officer pronounced the stations manned and ready for live fire
of the main missile batteries.

Before surfacing, several skilled seamen trained as missile technicians
had worked feverishly for nearly an hour preparing for the next order.
An inspection of the missile tubes through small hatches in compartment
four revealed no fuel leaks or seepage of seawater that might hamper a
launch. Now all preparations were complete. A small knot of anxious men
in the control center waited for the commander to issue the final
instructions to activate the emergency firing procedure for nuclear
weapon release.

A missile officer standing at the launch console watched a warning
light blink on. The door of number-one missile tube was open.

Atop the submarine, the sailor in the raglan coat visually confirmed
that the missile door had opened properly. He closed the outer hatch in
the floor of the bridge and knelt behind a steel protective shield. His
job was to remain in this somewhat precarious spot -- the only person
outside the hull -- to be available in the event of any last-minute
problems.

Below the bridge in the action center, an officer peering through the
periscope confirmed number-one missile hatch open and clear.

The commander provided a large cassette containing the computerized
codes required to arm the missile warhead. Normally, the codes would
have been locked inside the captain's safe, to be retrieved by the
captain and the submarine's political officer only after orders were
received from fleet headquarters. This time, the officer in charge
simply handed the cassette to a young man, who turned and plugged the
packet into the launch console.

Some of the crewmen waited to hear the procedure they had followed in
dozens of simulated and live drills. The political officer should have
announced that headquarters had confirmed launch authority. But this
critical procedure was ignored. There had been no communication with
headquarters in more than a week.

The officer in the action center directly above the control room made
one last sweep of the horizon with the attack periscope. He checked
again to make sure the missile door was completely deployed and shouted
down to the control room that the missile was clear for launch.

At the launch control panel, an officer confirmed he had powered the
number-one console.

An assistant navigation officer, a lieutenant, told the commander they
were three minutes to launch position at latitude 24° north, longitude
163° west. Their course was east-southeast, at a speed of two knots.

The missile technician at the launch panel confirmed the target
coordinates on a southeast heading from the boat: 21° 18' north, 157°
west.

With that information, the commander, his deputy, and a third sailor
stepped up to the launch panel. Each man inserted a key in the panel
face. They turned the keys and stepped back to allow the missile
officer to complete his task at the console.

The commander gave the order to proceed to activation of the warhead on
number-one missile. He hurried up the ladder to the periscope in the
action center, shouting to his deputy as he climbed to prepare for
emergency dive after launch.

A small spotlight in the ceiling above the chart table in the control
room threw a bright beam onto a naval chart. A penciled X, crudely
drawn in the center of the chart, partially covered the name printed on
the map. Just below the mark was another name: HONOLULU. The target was
Pearl Harbor. But the explosive power of a one-megaton yield from the
thermonuclear warhead would extend far beyond the military base to the
civilian metropolitan area that adjoined it.

The sailor at the launch control panel announced the system ready for
firing sequence.

The commander looked toward the man standing at the navigator's
station. The man held a stopwatch in one hand and dividers in the
other. "Two minutes to launch point on my mark...mark!"

Instantly, the commander activated his own stopwatch. The second hand
swept one full turn around the face. He ordered missile one to be
fired.

The man at the control panel complied, setting in motion the last step
to launch missile one. Time to launch was sixty seconds.

Officers and seamen in the control room instinctively braced themselves
for the jolt that would come when compressed air ejected the
eighteen-ton missile out of the launch tube, just feet away from the
command center.

At the control panel, a sailor pressed a black button, removing the
last manual override of the system. It was fifteen seconds to launch.

The men locked in the forward compartments could hear each order in the
launch sequence over the intercom. Any outcry they made was muffled by
the watertight hatch separating them from the men giving the orders in
the control center.

A young assistant missile officer, who by training would have known
more than most crewmen about what was to happen next, curled up
helpless in his bunk in one of the officers' cabins in compartment two.
A small journal lay by his side.

It was ten seconds to launch.

Standing in front of the control panel, the officer commanding the
submarine began the staccato countdown:

"Dyesyat, dyevyat, vosyem, syem..."

One of the great secrets of the Cold War, hidden for decades, is
revealed at last.

Early in 1968 a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine sank in the waters off
Hawaii, hundreds of miles closer to American shores than it should have
been. Compelling evidence, assembled here for the first time, strongly
suggests that the sub, K-129, sank while attempting to fire a nuclear
missile, most likely at the naval base at Pearl Harbor.

We now know that the Soviets had lost track of the sub; it had become a
rogue. While the Soviets searched in vain for the boat, U.S.
intelligence was able to pinpoint the site of the disaster. The new
Nixon administration launched a clandestine, half-billion-dollar
project to recover the sunken K-129. Contrary to years of deliberately
misleading reports, the recovery operation was a great success. With
the recovery of the sub, it became clear that the rogue was attempting
to mimic a Chinese submarine, almost certainly with the intention of
provoking a war between the U.S. and China. This was a carefully
planned operation that, had it succeeded, would have had devastating
consequences. During the successful recovery effort, the U.S. forged
new relationships with the USSR and China. Could the information
gleaned from the sunken sub have been a decisive factor shaping the new
policies of détente between the Americans and the Soviets, and opening
China to the West? And who in the USSR could have planned such a bold
and potentially catastrophic operation?

Red Star Rogue reads like something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel,
but it is all true. Today our greatest fear is that terrorists may
someday acquire a nuclear weapon and use it against us. In fact, they
have already tried.



Download Description
"One of the great secrets of the Cold War, hidden for decades, is
revealed at last. Early in 1968 a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine sank
in the waters off Hawaii, hundreds of miles closer to American shores
than it should have been. Compelling evidence, assembled here for the
first time, strongly suggests that the sub, K-129, sank while
attempting to fire a nuclear missile, most likely at the naval base at
Pearl Harbor. We now know that the Soviets had lost track of the sub;
it had become a rogue. While the Soviets searched in vain for the boat,
U.S. intelligence was able to pinpoint the site of the disaster. The
new Nixon administration launched a clandestine, half-billion-dollar
project to recover the sunken K-129. Contrary to years of deliberately
misleading reports, the recovery operation was a great success. With
the recovery of the sub, it became clear that the rogue was attempting
to mimic a Chinese submarine, almost certainly with the intention of
provoking a war between the U.S. and China. This was a carefully
planned operation that, had it succeeded, would have had devastating
consequences. During the successful recovery effort, the U.S. forged
new relationships with the USSR and China. Could the information
gleaned from the sunken sub have been a decisive factor shaping the new
policies of détente between the Americans and the Soviets, and opening
China to the West? And who in the USSR could have planned such a bold
and potentially catastrophic operation? Red Star Rogue reads like
something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel, but it is all true. Today
our greatest fear is that terrorists may someday acquire a nuclear
weapon and use it against us. In fact, they have already tried. "
--This text refers to the Digital edition.






Dakar "The exact cause of the loss is unknown, but it appears that no
emergency measures had been taken before Dakar dove rapidly through her
maximum depth, suffered a catastrophic hull rupture, and continued her
plunge to the bottom. The emergency bouy was released by the violence
of the hull collapse, and drifted for a year before washing ashore."

.

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