Posted on 10/12/2012 2:00:06 AM PDT by Winniesboy
HMS Conqueror is famous, some would say notorious, for sinking the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano. The nuclear-powered attack submarine, a type also known menacingly as a hunter-killer, that year became the first of her kind to fire in anger.....
But the ship now in the crosswires was not the Belgrano. This was August, almost two months after the liberation of the Falklands, and on the other side of the world, in the Barents Sea, backyard of the mighty Soviet Northern Fleet.....
This one was special: [the trawler] was pulling a device long coveted by the British and Americans, a two-mile string of hydrophones known as a towed-array sonar. It was the latest thing in Soviet submarine-detection technology and Conqueror’s job was to steal it...
It may be that the Russian government is learning for the first time the fate of what was one of its most closely guarded devices.....
“This was a quite remarkable feat, a daring exploit that carried with it immense risk,”...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Is there a naval affairs ping list?
bflr
Good read! Thanks!
BFLR
0bama would have gone on TV and claimed credit for getting the devise.
Just ordered both......thanks
MI Ping
Pretty awesome stuff!
Good read. I would have kept it classified for another 30 years especially in these dangerous times.
At one time sonic arrays, the positioning of permanent/semi permanent arrays and use of them might have been one of our top secrets from the Russians.
“If one is into stories like this I recommend Blind Man’s Bluff a great book about the sneaky cold war submarine force. My father in law worked as a civilian on deep submersibles for years. Never really talked about it, but when this book came out he shoved it in my hands to read. He was exceptionally proud of the amazing stuff they pulled off back during the height of the cold war. He had good reason to be.”
One of my sons complained to a friend that I never discussed what I did in the old NSG.
That friend bought him Blind Man’s Bluff and gave it to him.
Later my son loaned it to me and said read it, and “I know no comments!”
This is a great book and shows a little of what our submariners did to keep the Ruskies off balance and scared of what we could do to them.
Tapping the Soviet phone cable under the Sea of Okhotsk was daring genius.
Hopefully one of these days, our children, grandchildren,spouses and sibilings will understand how hot the Cold War was at time.
Many events as you noted were truly daring.
The full article at the source was very interesting, but the comments under the article are bizarre.
My dad worked as a DCAS source inspector on any number of black projects.
The only one I know of was the B-2, and that’s only because it is no longer Black.
I’ll never know the rest. I’d love to know as they go white, but never will. *sigh*
AFAIK Reds picked NATO towed array technology in a pretty similiar thus not that much refined way crashing their sub into US vessels and driven cable away on their propeller.
I heard they did it twice. First time in 1981 on Sturgeon class and in late 1983 on USS McCloy.
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