The Americans finished off an emergency Soviet submarine, and then managed to raise it
The echo of the US CIA's strategic operation Jennifer, carried out by the Pentagon with cynical immorality, cannot be silenced in any way. The first deputy chief of Naval intelligence of the headquarters of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Captain Anatoly Shtyrov, monitored this extraordinary event in real time. And gave him a merciless assessment years later.
On the eve of the New Year, which opened the next millennium, one of the congratulatory calls became very important for me.
Moscow. Warsaw highway. "Rear Admiral Shtyrov," the metropolitan subscriber introduced himself. – We met at the sea crossings on the TOPH. I read your article "Requiem for the K-129 submarine missile carrier". And it resonates with me. Did you serve under Kobzar?". "The first father is a commander. I owe him my becoming–" I replied, automatically standing up. - What can I do for you, Anatoly Tikhonovich?". "Thank you for being recognized and not forgotten. Then the scheme is simplified. I found your phone and am impressed by the opus I read about the strategic confrontation between the US and Soviet submarine forces in the Cold War. There is a proposal to exchange doubts about the fate of Volodya Kobzar." "I would be honored! Moreover, I also have an opus. In the original in English. Sent from Brighton. It sounds rude, like a slap in the face – because of the name "Blind Man's Bluff".
Underwater routes are laid out on maps
In addition to the tragic nuclear-powered Kursk, we have another loss. No statute of limitations. On February 24, 1968, the diesel-electric submarine K-129 departed from the pier in Krasheninnikov Bay in Kamchatka for combat patrol into the ocean under the command of the captain Vladimir Ivanovich Kobzar. With the necessary ammunition on board for such an occasion, designed to conduct combat operations if a war happens. He left, as it turned out, in one direction. Two weeks later, on March 8, he was to occupy the point "K" with coordinates 40 ° 00' s. w. 180 ° 00' w.d. on the border of the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Before turning on a new tack, according to the SBD system, inform the headquarters in seconds about the arrival at the point. In seconds - because the enemy is listening to the ether tightly, trying to detect the current coordinates of the ship.
"Kaperang Shtyrov managed to track the route of K-129 from Avacha Bay in Kamchatka to the point of collision with a special multi-purpose nuclear-powered Swordfish ("Swordfish") under the command of Captain John Rigsby following him in tracking mode."
The connection did not take place. The state of emergency echoed to the CCP in the Main Headquarters of the Navy.
The countdown of the lag along the route for two weeks of moving silently with secrecy to the point "K" was 1,230 miles.
At what countdown he could have blown up - it's harder to look for than the wind in the ocean. A search operation involving 30 pennants from diverse fleet forces in a couple of months conscientiously ironed the probable route along and across. In the drift on the raging surface among the shafts, the loss did not appear. A long-range marine scout Tu-95 recorded a drifting multi-mile solar spot in the colors of the run. The search result line contained more than a harsh conclusion. The strategist with the arsenal of modern warfare was taken into the mighty arms of the ocean, which, as you know, is well able to keep its secrets.
After May 5, after the expiration of the missile carrier's autonomy, a funeral service was held on the territory of the association at the monument to the L-16 submarine cruiser. Under the rustle of the waves in the bay, the meeting was opened by the squadron commander, Rear Admiral Yakov Krivoruchko: "Comrades, today we say goodbye to the crew who remained on eternal watch in the ocean. Duty called them. We will unite our ranks more closely."
According to the conclusion of the government commission, the ship was lost due to an unknown maritime accident. Therefore, a casuistic entry was entered in the death certificate for each deceased: recognized as deceased. That is, they disappeared without a trace, and did not give their lives for what they served. In the squadron's political organization from above, they asked steeper: could the subordinates have surrendered? The fragments of the seafarers' families left for their stepmother's homeland. A common grief with the belief that their husbands and sons could not have disappeared into obscurity.
Top Secret Loss
For reasons of secrecy in the USSR, they kept silent about the loss. The potential enemy, to be more precise, the enemy tracked the dynamics of events. They did not know about the role of the "K" point in the K-129 transition trajectory. We have not analyzed its importance. But in vain. According to the duty version of Captain James Bradley from the Pentagon's Department of Naval Operations, the batteries on the marine scout exploded. The cotton was recorded by the US Underwater Surveillance Service. This fact was not taken seriously by us.
Already on July 15 of the fateful 1968, the submarine Halibut ("Flounder") with the tail number SSN-587, she went to a specific square of the North Pacific Ocean with the task of checking what lies on the bottom at the point 40 ° 06's.w., 179° 57' s.d.
The commander of the Flounder, Clarence Moore, confidently gave commands to the steering wheel of his "sea sniffer", converted from a serial missile carrier, equipped with a diving camera, long-range and near-side sonars, a towed underwater vehicle and optics capable of detecting an object the size of a trash can on the ocean floor. Literally in the first tack, the device panoramically bypassed a secret graveyard with a torn rocket carrier in the middle. There was a dark gap in its hull on the left, which was later assessed by our operators as a trace from the impact of the submarine's deckhouse when performing a diving maneuver.
Traces of ruptures of the shell of the Durable K-129 hull on the left side in the nose and behind the wheelhouse fence on the right
There was another hole behind the wheelhouse to the right. The eerie scene in the glare of strobe lights was complemented by the body of a sailor lying face down. In a three-piece, a commander's raglan and burnout boots. Next to the boat. It was as if he had forgotten himself in a dream. Colleagues who knew him recognized the commander of the missile carrier Vladimir Kobzar. Judging by the equipment, he was on the bridge. So, the K-129 cruiser came under its own power to the meridian of the date change at the point "K". Took a positional position. I didn't get in touch. But for some reason, he was covered in battle scars at the bottom of the ocean.
Clarence Moore took 22 thousand pictures. CIA Director Richard Helms, accompanied by Chief of Naval Operations William Moorer and Secretary of Defense Melville Laird, presented a report to President Richard Nixon on the work done in the situation room under the White House. Apparently, it turned out that as a result of an accident at the crossing, a Soviet underwater scout sank, he is from the era of steam and electricity, but the ammunition on board is certainly modern. There is complete radio silence from the Soviets, and judging by the search operation, they do not know where the submarine died.
The Race for Secrets
The idea of lifting the Soviet secret carrier was approved by the president without debate and instructed billionaire Howard Hughes to build a Glomar Explorer platform ship. The official cover story was that the design and construction at the shipyard in California of this marine giant is necessary to expand the exploration and extraction of minerals from the bottom of the seas and oceans. In fact, the top-secret brainchild of the CIA had only one task - to extract a Soviet missile carrier from the depths. In May 1971, the project began to be implemented, and a few years later the new ship came off the slipway. Incomprehensible to the public remained inscribed in the internal entourage of the vessel, a volumetric refrigerator with a prosectarium. For a crew of one hundred people. The nest looked quite decent in appearance. And its hidden "sting" in the form of a column of drilling pipes was a kind of "claw" in the contours of the K-129 hull.
For an advertising publicity project in September 1973, the ship appeared off the coast of Nicaragua. The battle check turned out to be successful. The moment of truth came in June 1974, when the Glomar Explorer left the Long Beach Naval Base in California and headed for a given point.
Who let down the naval authorities
At the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet, the first deputy chief of intelligence, Kaperang Anatoly Shtyrov, came to the commander Admiral Nikolai Smirnov with information for a decision: "Comrade Commander, above the point "K" in the center of the Pacific Ocean, where the K-129 lies on the ground beyond the 6000-meter depth mark, a CIA platform ship has been spotted, ready to extract the submarine with all the secret stuffing."
The report went all the way to the highest authority – the General Staff of the Navy. Yes, there's a donkey. Subordinate authorities authoritatively informed the commander-in-chief of the USSR Navy, Sergei Gorshkov, that even with the length of the arms of the CIA's special services, such a task would be on the shoulder no earlier than the XXI century. Than the senior naval chief was let down.
A picture of the front page of the New York Times newspaper
for March 19, 1975, where the article on the right indicates,
what did the Glomar Explorer raise from the bottom of the ocean?
the dead sailors on the submarine K-129.
Officially, the Americans are buried according to the ritual
six crew members. The Russian public
worries: where and how the rest are laid to rest
or thrown out to feed sharks?
Kaperang Shtyrov did not leave a suspicious object with his attention. And when the Glomar Explorer team switched to closed communication channels, which confirmed their readiness to start lifting K-129 from the ground, remaining the senior on the raid in the department, I decided at my own risk to send a cipher to the head of the higher department to the Naval headquarters: "I ask your permission to turn the ship of the Primorye KRTR into a point "K" with the task of tracking the actions of the US forces in order to make immediate decisions.
Acting Chief of Intelligence of the TOP Shtyrov".
The answer was withering and concise. And polite to the point of mockery: "Acting Chief of Intelligence of the TOPH. I draw your attention to the better performance of planned tasks. I. Khurs".
The slap from the starmornach to the subordinate did without heart attacks and strokes. Just a sleepless night alone with a mountain of cigarette butts in an ashtray. He came to the conclusion that the headquarters, with its attitude, gave the gentlemen from Langley a chance to abuse someone else's churchyard for them. With far-reaching consequences for the fleet.
In the spring of 1975, a scandal broke out in the halls of the institutions of the adversary, which splashed out on the pages of the press with details of the K-129 ascent that had already taken place. In the military department of the Central Committee, Western periodicals were also monitored. Admiral Gorshkov was the first to fall under the distribution. Officials were also given to whom what was supposed to be. Including this cup did not bypass kaperang Shtyrov. He thundered from the high post of head of the operational department of the Kamchatka Flotilla to the whipping boys. In the wording – for not explaining in a timely manner to the commander-in-chief of the Navy the essence of the state operation "Jennifer".
With Anatoly Tikhonovich, our relations have developed into a tight sea knot. He was and remains in memory a wise and straightforward man. My essay on K-129 obviously touched him. After the conversation that took place, there was a sense and a basis for its more serious continuation. With an understanding of the texture. Proletarian solidarity worked for the Union, and there was no safe on the planet where we could not look if necessary. Under the door of the office of the Soviet embassy, an unknown well-wisher left a note saying that a US satellite at point "K" spotted K-129 afloat in a drift with a roll to port on March 8 at 17 o'clock local time.
Shtyrov also managed to track the route of K-129 from Avacha Bay in Kamchatka to the point of collision with a special multi-purpose nuclear-powered Swordfish ("Swordfish") under the command of Captain John Rigsby following him in tracking mode. And when he told me about it, I asked him the question: "Are you sure?".
He did not remain silent: "An ideological source did not tell me for money from the Japanese how this "fish" with the wheelhouse rolled sideways on a particular night crawled into the dock for emergency repairs at the base in Yokosuka. In reverse, I calculated that the robber, after a collision in the center of the ocean, was registered there on the fifth day."
In such open and direct conversations, the text of my research was born in creative agony. Questions were asked to the master without counting. And the same number of exhaustive answers have been received, formed in the material about the fate of the K-129 against the background of the strategic confrontation of the submarine forces of both superpowers.
After two years I took the finished folio to Anatoly Tikhonovich. A month later he called: "I swallowed it in three days. I read around the clock, as if I were offline. The rest of the time I spent on analysis in order to dig in. Thank you, respected. We should now give it to an expert seaman to read. Preferably with a name. If he approves, let him go into the light."
For such a task, a visit to Vice Admiral Rudolf Golosov, a teacher at the General Staff Academy, looked good. Under it, I once served in Kamchatka. He reminded me of himself through friends. And I got a call in the evening: "Come."
The meeting took place in his home office. And this is what one of the most informed sailors in the country very carefully told me:
- a gas explosion, according to the American version, when charging the battery due to a faulty ventilation system, even if it had taken place, could not have given such fatal consequences for the hull of the boat;
- the presence of a hole in the hull along the 52-54 frames confirms the fact of an American submarine hitting a Soviet missile carrier while performing a diving maneuver;
- The Code for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea should also be respected in underwater environments as a law.
At the end Rudolf Alexandrovich made an important message: "Information was received through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – a man asked for an appointment at one of the consulates in the United States. He was received by the consul."
"I want to relieve my soul–" the guest said. – During my service in the Navy in March 1968, I was on watch in stormy weather on a destroyer in patrol duty. In the dark, with poor visibility, we rammed an unknown submarine."
The fate of K-129 is already unenviable. Kaperang Shtyrov commented on the news: "I'm sure there were ends in the water. "Sword-Fish" took her feet from the scene, and reported on the radio about the condition of the victim. And the destroyer was sent to finish her off. Behind the wheelhouse on the right in the picture you can see the trace of the ship's stem hitting. Operation Jennifer was also aimed at saving Uncle Sam from the shame of sadism. And what Kobzar experienced in the throes of hell, standing on the bridge of a wounded rocket carrier, without communication, the Lord knows."
There were about 20 such raids during the Cold War. The national motto of the United States is not Christian morality, but permissiveness, elevated to the degree of state necessity. And in this regard, the biographies of the triumvirs who defied the sky are instructive. The sworn "friend" of the Russian people, Richard Nixon, parted with the post of president in the most shameful way. His namesake, Richard Helms, has fallen from office. The lucky owner of billions Howard Hughes died of a banal cold.
Nikolay Titorenko
The newspaper "Military-Industrial Courier", published in issue No. 11 (924) for March 29, 2022
