When I was a kid living on Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines, the standard school field trip was to go tour whatever ships were in port. My favorites were the submarines with their cramped interiors and lack of windows. The men on board often wore beards and their world was as hostile and unforgiving as outer space.
On another fieldtrip we visited the base post office. They had a big whiteboard in there that listed all the ships in the Pacific fleet and had the dates and location of each ship’s next port call so the mail could be delivered appropriately. Except for the submarines. They just had red dots. Nobody knew where they would show up next or when. I always wondered if that bothered a friend of mine whose dad was captain of the USS Grayback, one of the subs we got to tour.
That fascination with submarines led me to read about the NR-1 last summer, which in turn led me to Sherry Sontag and Christoper Drew’s thrilling 1998 history of cold war submarine espionage, Blind Man’s Bluff, a perfectly titled book.
Sontag and Drew recount the adventures of cold war submariners including daring attempts to follow Soviet missile subs, the illegal and very dangerous wire-tapping operations in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea, attempts to salvage a sunken Soviet sub, and the mysteries surrounding the loss of the USS Scorpion along with the various cover-ups that these operations entailed.
It’s an interesting look into one of the most secret and fascinating realms of cold war history, unknown to most Americans including, oftentimes, the crews of the submarines themselves. Sontag & Drew describe briefings with the newly elected presidents Carter, Reagan and Clinton in which they were told of the submarine operations about which they were previously unaware. By the end, each new president is sitting on the edge of his seat. Blind Man’s Bluff kept me there as well.
One of the most interesting things is that the authors interviewed many former Soviet naval officials and submarine commanders and learned the other side of the story as well. It is interesting to learn that the Soviets never really had a first strike capability against the US. They were building up in fear of – and to retaliate against – our first strike capability. But then cold wars are really about fear more than anything else.
When the cold war ended, one former Soviet admiral is reported to have joked that the end of the Soviet Union would be the most damaging thing that could have happened to the US submarine force since their enemy was being taken from them.
After the mid-nineties, the authors admit information is scant and classified. Subs are still out there under the waves, likely spying and playing cat-and-mouse with Chinese and Iranian submarines now, tapping new cables, and listening, always listening.
I guess, now all these years later, I can finally imagine how some of the blanks of that post office white board would be filled in.
