Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew (52 page)

March 1966: USS Barbel

The Barbel (SS-580), one of the last diesel subs the Navy built, collided with a freighter suspected of carrying arms near a port on Hainan Island, China, across the Gulf of Tonkin from North Vietnam. The force of the collision tore the sail planes from the sub, probably lodging parts of them in the ship's hull. The collision was hard enough that Barbel was forced down, hitting bottom about one hundred feet underwater. The Vietnamese later reported that the freighter had sunk when it hit a submerged object.

Indeed, the Barbel collision was especially upsetting to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara because he had earlier instructed Navy leaders to keep U.S. subs out of the area to avoid inflaming tensions. Barbel remained submerged, backed away from the freighter and left without checking what happened to the sailors on the ship.

December 1967: USS George C. Marshall

The Marshall (SSBN-654), a Polaris missile sub, was clipped by a Soviet sub in the Mediterranean Sea. The Americans knew the Soviet sub was there but couldn't move their massive boat away fast enough. Crewmen say the collision was "a glancing blow" but noted that it still left a gash in Marshall's forward starboard ballast tank.

October 9, 1968: Unidentified American or British Attack Sub

Russian Navy officials say this was the first collision involving a NATO surveillance sub and a Soviet nuclear boat in the Barents Sea. They told our Russian researcher, Alexander Mozgovoy, that the Soviet sub was operating normally when suddenly it began listing starboard, its hull shaking. The crew quickly surfaced and through the periscope sighted another submarine's silhouette. With the conning tower hatch now jammed, the Soviets used a sledgehammer to open it, and it was several minutes before the commander could climb outside to the bridge. By then, the waters were clear. Back at base, repair crews discovered a hole in the outer hull so large that one of the sub's officers said "a three-ton truck could easily" have driven through. Judging from small bits of red and green glass and metal fragments stuck in the wreckage, the Soviets concluded that they had been hit by a foreign sub. Soviet intelligence later discovered that a British diesel sub had pulled into Norway with a damaged sail around that time. However, the Soviets also believe they could have been hit by a U.S. sub.

November 1969: USS Gato

The sail of the Gato (SSN-615) was scraped by the hull of the Soviet Hotel-class missile sub known as Hiroshima when Hiroshima passed over the American boat. The men on Gato heard a dull grind as the subs bumped. Despite Soviet Admiral Gorshkov's wish that Gato's corpse be recovered, the sub escaped and nobody on hoard was hurt (see chapter 7).

March 14, 1970: USS Sturgeon

As a Soviet sub passed over Sturgeon (SSN-637) in the Barents Sea the men on board could hear crunching. The Soviet boat had scraped Sturgeon from above and to the left, pulling off metal plates above the conning tower.

June 1970: USS Tautog

In one of the most violent collisions of the cold war, the Tautog (SSN- 639) was rammed by the Soviet Echo II submarine Black Lila off Petropavlovsk. President Nixon was briefed that taped sonar sounds indicated the Soviet sub had sunk, though now her captain has come forward to say that his sub survived (see chapter 7).

1970: USS Dace

After Dace (SSN-607) hit something that rolled her to one side, her men were almost certain they had humped a Soviet submarine in the Mediterranean. Indeed, Naval Intelligence later learned that a Soviet sub pulled into a port soon afterward with the kind of damage that would have been expected from an impact with another sub.

March 1971: Unidentified Sub

On March 31, 1971, another Holystone sub collided with a Soviet boat, according to Hersh's May 1975 story in the New York Times. Hersh cited a memo addressed to CIA Director Richard M. Helms that put the collision seventeen nautical miles off the Soviet coast.

Late 1971 or Early 1972: USS Puffer

The Puffer (SSN-652) collided with a Soviet diesel sub in waters near Petropavlovsk when the Soviet boat took an unexpected dive just as Puffer was making one last surveillance pass. Both subs were moving at slow speed, and crewmen on Puffer say it was almost as if the Soviet boat sank on top of them and bumped.

May 1974: USS Pintado