Posted on 12/18/2005 6:56:53 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
I believe it was speculated that the sub's captain had decided to wage W.W. 3 on his own...(?)
Any way Why didn't the Russians know the location of their own sub?
Usually they did. They just looked for P-3s circling overhead...
bfl
Wasn't there a special on the History Channel or the Discovery Channel about this some years ago? I recall watching something that sounds real familiar to this. Wasn't the Glomar Explorer created for this? IIRC, the govt' actually brought up some of the wreckage and it seemed that it all just kind of disappeared or faded into the woodwork. It seems to me that the ending of the whole affair was very vague.
From what I saw in an ad, it appears the sub wanted to bomb Pearl Harbor, but give the credit to the Chinese.
That way the US and China would fight a war (destroying China, which was one goal of Russia) and probably leaving China divded between the the USA and the USSR along east-west lines.
But I doubt the sub capt. could have acted on his own;
a much larger Soviet plot may have been involved.
Three bits of evidence here make me question this WW3 stuff.
1) No radio contact for 4 days
2) No radio contact upon surfacing.
3) The sub exploded.
The facts could be explained by a massive electrical surge as the result of a nuke containment failure...which isn't too absurd a guess given Soviet-era quality control. Not that the doomsday scenario isn't possible--just that it seems a more unlikely reason for those facts. Anyone know if the explosion was radioactive beyond simply reactor leaks after a sub sinking?
If this is the one I am thinking of, the US eventually either turned some bodies over to the Russians, or turned over photos of a burial at sea of the bodies that came up with the wreckage.
bump
Spring 1968.
"Prague spring".
Paris riots.
Tet.
Soviets might have thought something daring was worth a try.
Not buying that scenario at all.
Glomar Explorer was built (by Howard Hughes for the CIA) to recover a lost Russian sub and did recover at least part of it with bodies inside ...........I saw film of a burial at sea(Discovery Channel I think) .........not sure if this is the same sub but it sounds like it...........original cover story for Glomar Explorer was "mining of the ocean floor" ........I remember an article to that effect in the Weekly Reader in high school
Except that it appears to have been a diesel - electric boat (Golf), which would fairly definitively rule out a reactor failure.
" Usually they did. They just looked for P-3s circling overhead..."
I was an aviation machinists mate in an ASW squadron based at NAS Alameda from 69-70. The Russians were off the coast all the time and we were on them like white on rice. The general public didn't have a clue about what was going on just a few miles from them.
But from a psychological standpoint it would have been a devastating, iconoclasmic blow to the "greatest generation" who held the reigns of American government and industry.
Exactly the sort of attacks that AQ plans and executes.
curiosity having gotten the better of me,I found thishttp://w3.the-kgb.com/dante/military/mission.html ..............or just goooooooogle "Glomar Explorer"
Film/photos of the burial at sea of a half dozen bodies that were recovered.
That was a paraphrase of a statement by a Soviet Admiral.
LOL!
American spy satellites in March 1968? The technology was in its infancy at that point ... not likely.
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