There is a story, told in whispers and with guarded glances, about one of the greatest of the gatekeeper boats and her skipper. It is only a story, and neither the U.S. Navy or Royal Navy will officially state that it ever took place, but such are the stories that come from the silent service.
Sometime in the mid-1980s a gatekeeper boat was off the Kola Inlet, doing its job day after day. The sonar watch detected a submarine coming out of the barn from Severodvinsk. When the noise signature of the power plant and the other machinery on board did not match any known class of Russian boat, the captain of the U.S. boat decided to trail it and learn all he could about this new machine. Perhaps it was the first of the Sierra- or Oscar-class boats, or even the one-of-a-kind Mike-class boat with its titanium hull and liquid sodium reactor. Whatever it was, though, the U.S. commander was intent on getting to know everything possible about the new Soviet sub. The U.S. skipper carefully and quietly started stalking the Russian boat, probably from the rear, at a short distance.
In the chase that followed, the American sub listened and watched every move of the new boat. The sounds of the propellers and the all-important blade rate, which is used to calculate the speed of a ship or submarine. All of the machinery noise from the reactor (or reactors-many Russian boats have two), turbines, and pumps. They may even have heard some of the day-to-day living noises aboard the Soviet boat. The bilge tanks being pumped out, the TDU dumping garbage, and maybe even the sounds of hatches closing and pots and pans clanging in the galley. And through it all, the American boat and her crew remained undetected by the Russian boat and any supporting vessels that might have accompanied her.
After a period of time-and here the story begins to take on the air of unreality that is a hallmark of the true submarine stories-the Soviet sub came to the surface and slowed down. As the American sonar crews observed the Russians going to the surface, the American skipper apparently decided to try for the grand slam of submarine intelligence-gathering coups, getting some hull shots of the new Russian boat (video pictures of the hull, propellers, and control devices beneath the surface).
Such an operation is done by running underneath the target boat, raising the periscope equipped with a low-light video camera, and running a pattern around the hull to collect the video pictures. This is so difficult and dangerous that captains of U.S. submarines are almost never ordered to try it, as bumping a target can be non-career enhancing. On the other hand, successfully gathering hull shots is a sure sign that the boat's skipper has the right stuff and is worthy of promotion to higher command. And with only a few O-6 (captain) command slots available for boomers, tenders, and squadrons, the competition is fierce among the various attack boat skippers.
What happened next was a marvel of seamanship. The American boat was able to make at least one (several tellers of the story say more) pass around the Russian sub's undersides, and not once get noticed! Up and down the sides of the Soviet boat, the American skipper drove his periscope, obtaining the broadest possible coverage of the target. The coverage apparently included the control surfaces, propellers, and several sonar arrays. The quality of the video pictures was excellent, adding much to NATO's understanding of the new Russian boat. And maybe most impressive of all, she was able to back away, continue the chase, and eventually resume her gatekeeper position off the Kola Inlet.
The achievement was so impressive in its day, so the story goes, that the skipper was awarded a "black" Distinguished Service Cross (i.e., the recipient is unable to wear it, but the decoration appears in his service file folder or "jacket"). While such peacetime decorations are not unprecedented, they are extremely unusual, and the award of such a thing would be an indication of how important the U.S. high command considered the action.
This is the way the game of hide-and-seek went for almost forty years between the nuclear boats of the United States and the Soviet Union. And the game continues today. Only recently, there was a very public airing of a minor collision between the USS Baton Rouge (SSN- 689) and a Russian Sierra I north of the Kola Inlet. There were some bent hull plates, some exchanges of diplomatic messages, and minor apologies between the United States and the Russians. But have no doubt, the day-and-night stalking still continues as this book goes to press.
Tactical Example — Escorting a Boomer
In World War II the U.S. 8th Air Force found out the hard way about the price of running bombing raids into Germany without fighter escort. The big, heavy bombers were no match for the quick, heavily armed fighters of General Adolf Galland's Luftwaffe fighter command. Thus it was no surprise that as soon as they could be obtained, the 8th Air Force started to deploy fighters to escort the bombers against the danger the Luftwaffe fighters posed. These fighters not only reduced bomber losses but also tore out the heart of the Luftwaffe fighter command, making the invasion of Europe possible and victory that much easier.
Today, lessons such as these have not been lost on the operators of the boomer force in the U.S. Navy. The Ohio-class SSBNs are the largest and most capable FBM boats ever deployed by the United States, and also the most valuable. The Navy is proud of saying that no U.S. SSBN has ever been tracked while on patrol. But what about when it is headed out to patrol? With so many of America's strategic "eggs" in just a few Ohio-class hulls, they clearly are crown jewels needing protection. And when the boomers come out of Kings Bay or Bangor, they are extremely easy to see, whether by satellite or just a set of human eyes watching as they steam up the channel. Once they are at sea they fade away into the depths, but while departing and arriving at the base, they are vulnerable.
While the U.S. Navy has never made a big deal about such things-and with the end of the Cold War it is unlikely that they ever will-such vulnerability is a concern when you have only a few of the big Ohios to carry over 50 percent of America's total nuclear weapons load. All it would take is some easy cueing from a source ashore to tell an enemy submarine just when a boomer might be headed to sea. Thus it makes good sense to have the big FBM boat escorted out to sea by attack submarines, much as a fighter might escort a bomber on a bombing raid. It should be emphasized that a hostile boat would probably not try to get a shot in, though in wartime conditions this is always a possibility. More likely the threat boat would try to get on the tail of the Ohio and track it for as long as it could.
Let's suppose someone wanted to try tracking an Ohio as it came out of the channel at Kings Bay, Georgia. The continental shelf near Kings Bay is somewhat longer and flatter than at Bangor (the seabed drops right to the continental slope at the mouth of Puget Sound), giving a potential enemy submarine a somewhat easier time finding the Ohio as she comes out. Some time before the boomer is scheduled to leave port, one of our SSNs, probably a Los Angeles-class boat, will be stationed off the mouth of the channel to sit and watch for any signs of foreign submarines. The U.S. boat's mission will be to sanitize the area, making sure no other submarines have covertly entered American territorial waters to lie in wait for the SSBN. It will be a long, boring process, with many of the same kinds of problems described in the previous hunting scenarios. They will slowly patrol the area and listen, looking for any sign of something unusual or man-made.