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.
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.
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 Corsair, 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."