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00:00If you lived before our time, who would you be?
00:14What if you could choose from a thousand yesterdays when the past was today and the new took your
00:21breath away?
00:22Who would you be?
00:23How would you live?
00:24Who would you love?
00:25Living every generation before us, remembering for generations to come, the History Channel,
00:37where the past comes alive.
00:41Hello, I'm Roger Mudd.
00:42Welcome to the History Channel.
00:45According to an old Navy saying, after a submarine leaves port, only two people know its location,
00:50God and its skipper.
00:52But that old saying is now out of date because it's not only God and the skipper doing the
00:56tracking, but also Washington, D.C., Moscow, and probably every other world capital.
01:01Our program traces how underwater surveillance has changed over the years.
01:06Join us now as the History Channel presents Silent Service, Tracking the Enemy.
01:13It's one of the most critical missions of today's Navy, detecting and monitoring enemy
01:17submarines armed with nuclear missiles.
01:21Using tactics developed over two world wars and sophisticated technology devised to fight
01:26the Cold War, U.S. naval forces continue to seek out and oppose enemy submarines capable
01:32of a nuclear strike.
01:34For over 90 years, tracking hostile submarine movement has been at the forefront of the
01:39dangerous and unpredictable world of undersea warfare.
01:44Tracking the Enemy, next on the Silent Service.
02:06They prowl the oceans of the world, nuclear-powered attack submarines.
02:13Fast.
02:14Silent.
02:15Lethal.
02:16The fast attack submarines were designed to be able to not only go fast, but multi-missions,
02:23operate with battle groups, conduct inshore operations, landing seals, extracting, withdrawing
02:29special forces, mining, recovery of pilots, downed pilots.
02:36Armed with both cruise missiles and torpedoes, these sophisticated hunters, like the USS
02:41Louisville, can kill land-based targets as easily as ones at sea.
02:46Louisville holds the distinction of being the first submarine to fire a weapon in hostility
02:51since the end of the Second World War, and that was the Tomahawk cruise missile.
02:55The missile demolished an anti-aircraft radar site near Baghdad.
02:58It was the first shot of the Gulf War.
03:02Louisville does hold the proud distinction that we were the first to fire, and Louisville
03:06slugger became our motto after that because we did throw the first punch.
03:13But it's not by firing their deadly weapons that submarines like the Louisville have performed
03:17an invaluable service to the United States for the past several decades.
03:21They've done it by listening, by scanning the ocean for enemy submarines and then silently
03:28shadowing them, gathering intelligence and remaining poised to strike should an enemy
03:33boat take steps to begin a nuclear assault on the U.S.
03:39The submarine's ability to track an underwater enemy with pinpoint precision is a relatively
03:44new phenomenon.
03:46It is a testament to the success of the Navy's multi-faceted approach to anti-submarine warfare.
03:52Complex system of underwater listening nets, submarines, surface vessels, airplanes, helicopters
04:00and even satellites.
04:03It's also the result of over two centuries of tireless effort to improve the submarine's
04:07ability to see and hear while submerged.
04:15The pilot of the first submarine to carry out an attack on an enemy warship relied on
04:19eyesight to locate his target and maneuver his craft.
04:23On the night of September 6th, 1776, Sergeant Ezra Lee navigated an egg-shaped submersible
04:29vessel called the Turtle toward a British gunship in New York Harbor.
04:34Lee planned to attach a charge of gunpowder with a time detonator to the wooden hull of
04:38the British vessel and then slip away undetected.
04:42There's no periscope.
04:44So the only hope of navigation is to stick this thing above water, look out, see something.
04:49This is at night too, it's difficult.
04:51And then you steer towards it.
04:53And he has an arrangement of a propeller, which he runs by hand, he has pumps that can
04:57bring him up and down.
04:59It's a very elaborate thing that must have been very difficult to operate.
05:04Upon nearing the ship, the submariner managed to submerge the Turtle, but he had trouble
05:09attaching the explosive charge, so he eventually surfaced and abandoned the effort.
05:15But not before the British sighted him, Lee wound up detonating the gunpowder after all
05:19to slow his pursuers and help make his escape.
05:29Eighty years later, during the American Civil War, submarine navigation techniques had scarcely
05:35improved.
05:38On the night of February 17, 1864, the Confederate submarine C.S.S. Hunley attacked the Housatonic,
05:45a federal blockade ship in Charleston Harbor.
05:48In Hunley, I think they use a candle to see a compass to steer by, because remember that
05:54when you go back down to head towards the target, you have to have some way of knowing
05:59the direction you're going, otherwise you'll never get there.
06:04But the iron walls of the vessel often caused faulty compass readings.
06:08Even so, the Hunley succeeded in sinking her target that night.
06:13So Hunley had what they call a spar torpedo, which is a long spar sticking out of the front
06:18of the sub with an explosive at one end, and then she's supposed to use this to attach
06:24the explosive and then back off and then set it off.
06:29That's what she did the night that she sank the Housatonic.
06:34Tragically, the submarine itself, along with its captain and eight crewmen, went down shortly
06:41after the attack.
06:43She did get away.
06:45She got about five miles away, in fact.
06:48She sent a flare up that was supposed to indicate success that was actually seen from the shore.
06:54But the Hunley never made it back to land.
06:57Many speculate that once her crew opened hatches to breathe, waves flooded the boat and sent
07:01it to the ocean floor.
07:05In August of the year 2000, 136 years after she sank, the CSS Hunley was finally recovered
07:11four miles off the coast of South Carolina.
07:19It was not until 1902 that submarines acquired some means of sight while submerged.
07:26Simon Lake, the inventor of the first submarine to operate successfully in open sea, installed
07:32a system of lenses, mirrors and prisms within a vertical tube he called the Omniscope.
07:37The mirrors deflected horizontal rays of light down the tube and then to the eye of the observer.
07:44The Omniscope allowed the navigator of a submerged submarine to view the surrounding horizon.
07:51Several years later, an English maker of telescopes refined Lake's invention and renamed it the
07:56Periscope.
07:58You can look in from the bottom and see things above water.
08:01You no longer have to pop the sub up.
08:03And by the way, as the subs get bigger, popping them up becomes a much larger operation.
08:10Yet it wasn't until the outbreak of World War I that the submarine proved its worth
08:13as a reliable offensive weapon.
08:16German submarines, called U-boats, attacked British merchant shipping mercilessly.
08:27The English responded by grouping their ships into convoys to better protect them.
08:32They also developed two technical innovations that marked the beginning of modern anti-submarine
08:35warfare, now commonly referred to as ASW.
08:41The first innovation was a weapon, the depth charge.
08:47These things look like cans, in fact they're called ash cans, typically 300 or 600 pounds
08:52of explosive, and it's a depth fuse, so when it hits a certain pressure, it goes off.
09:01When British warships spotted a periscope, they would launch a barrage of these weapons
09:04set to explode at varying depths.
09:07They'd drop them off the back of the ship, they'd fire them, in effect from guns, so
09:14you'd get a pattern that spreads over an area.
09:20Because the better the area is filled, the better the chance that whatever is down there
09:24gets caught.
09:26The pressure of the explosions often collapsed the walls of the lurking U-boat.
09:39The other innovation was the hydrophone, the forerunner of today's sonar.
09:44In basic terms, a hydrophone is the underwater equivalent of a microphone.
09:49It converts sound waves conducted by water into electrical signals.
09:53These signals are then routed to listening devices.
09:57Submarines were fairly loud then, you could hear the propellers going chug, chug, chug,
10:02and that would give you at least an alert.
10:05Now the hope was that the alert would be so good that anti-submarine craft could actually
10:10go and attack the submarine on that basis.
10:13That turned out not to work so well, but at the very least, you could force the submarine
10:19to try to be quiet, which would mean not move very much, that would have an effect on what
10:23it could do.
10:24Eventually, however, this underwater listening technology aided both the hunter and the hunted.
10:31By the end of the war, hydrophones had found their way onto submarines themselves.
10:38If you look at a U.S. submarine of that era, often you see a couple of ears forward, like
10:43a fork, well, that's a hydrophone.
10:47And you would detect your targets that way, you would detect other subs that way, you
10:51would get at least a direction to the target and you could steer in that direction.
10:56Hydrophones on submarines meant that, in addition to the eyes provided to them by the periscope,
11:01submersibles now had ears as well.
11:04The race was on to develop a bigger and better means of tracking an enemy that lurked beneath
11:09the waves.
11:12The months following World War I brought a revolutionary advancement in submarine warfare.
11:18Many new boats had posed such a grave threat to shipping during the war that the British
11:22Admiralty formed a special group to focus on anti-submarine strategy.
11:28By 1920, this group, called the Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee, or ASDIC
11:34for short, had pushed hydrophone science a step further.
11:38They developed a technology also called ASDIC, later became known as SONAR, an acronym for
11:44Sound Navigation and Ranging.
11:48Unlike a standard hydrophone, which passively listened for submerged submarines, ASDIC SONAR
11:53actively tracked enemy movement.
11:56A surface vessel equipped with ASDIC emitted sound waves underwater.
12:00If these sound waves struck an object, they reflected back to the surface vessel.
12:05The interval between the emission of a sound wave and its echo revealed a distance to the
12:09submerged object.
12:12ASDIC held the promise in people's minds of being able to establish, say, a perimeter
12:19around a convoy, which it would be very difficult for the German submarines to penetrate because
12:26they'd essentially be seen underwater.
12:29One drawback to the new system, however, was that the sound waves it emitted did not cover
12:33a 360 degree area.
12:35Instead, they created a pattern that resembled a beam of a searchlight.
12:39If a submarine could avoid the search beam, it was safe.
12:43Despite its weaknesses, by the opening of the Second World War, ASDIC or active sonar
12:48had become standard equipment for most Allied and Axis warships.
12:57It had also found its way onto the submarines of most of the world's navies.
13:01Submarines were loath to use it.
13:03The ping emitted by the active sonar gave away a submarine's position immediately.
13:11So most submerged vessels continued to rely on standard hydrophone technology, now called
13:17passive sonar.
13:22But the best way for a World War II submarine to spot and track enemy ships was still through
13:27visual sighting on the surface.
13:29A submarine captain would equip crewmen with binoculars and post them on the bridge as
13:34lookouts.
13:35They had ample time for this activity, since submarines of the era could not avoid exposing
13:40themselves by spending several hours each day above water.
13:45Submarines up to that point really had spent 99% of their time on the surface.
13:49They carried enough battery power when submerged to basically go a relatively short distance
13:54at a relatively slow speed, but in essence they were surface ships occasionally submerged.
13:59And as long as you had an engine, of course, that required oxygen to breathe, that was
14:04going to always be the case.
14:07In the early days of the war, a submarine could surface at night with little risk.
14:11Its low profile helped hide it from lookouts on enemy destroyers, and active sonar could
14:16not detect an object unless it was submerged.
14:21But for German U-boats on the hunt in the Atlantic, these advantages did not last long.
14:28Following on the heels of active sonar was another technological development that revealed
14:32objects by emitting waves of energy, radio detection and ranging, or radar.
14:39Radar is simply, in essence, a radio transmitter that sends out radio waves and has a receiver,
14:45usually co-located with the transmitter, to receive echoes from objects that reflect those
14:50radio waves back.
14:51And you basically scan the horizon and sending out this energy, and when something interferes
14:57with the propagation of the energy and bounces it back at you, you detect that.
15:01Surface vessels and airplanes equipped with radar could see at night, even through fog.
15:07Submarines now had no safe place to hide.
15:12By 1943, Allied naval forces in the Atlantic had submarine hunting down to an art form.
15:19Taking full advantage of radar, sonar and the detection of radio signals emitted from
15:23U-boats, they formed teams of destroyers into special submarine hunter-killer groups.
15:29A hunter-killer group was built around an escort carrier, a relatively slow carrier
15:36whose aircraft were specially trained to protect convoys, but also to go out on their own to
15:44hunt down submarines wherever they could find them.
15:51Planes from the carrier would spot submarines and send destroyers with death charges in
15:55for the kill.
16:02After 18 months of relentless assault, these tactics finally decimated Germany's submarine
16:08force.
16:11At war's end, the Allies seized all remaining German submarines.
16:15Among them was a new type of boat just emerging from development, called the Type 21.
16:20The discovery was startling.
16:23What the Germans did in the waning years of World War II was sort of clever and obvious
16:27once you think about it, which was to give the submarines a snorkel, and the submarine
16:38could cruise right underneath the surface with the tube out, sticking out of the surface,
16:41drawing air for the engines.
16:46This new submarine also had both a more streamlined hull and a much larger battery plant to give
16:51it more speed and range underwater.
16:55Allied naval forces had come dangerously close to combating a new highly advanced weapon
16:59capable of evading anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, tactics.
17:06Actually they were quite carefully picked over by the Allies after the war was over,
17:10and the existence of the Type 21 generated a lot of concern in both Allied navies, the
17:16British Navy and the American Navy, because essentially it evaded all of the main ASW
17:23tactics and technologies that had been developed during World War II, and of course we weren't
17:27the only ones that were picking over Type 21 technology, the Soviet Union was as well.
17:33Both the Americans and the Soviets rushed prototypes back to their engineers for further
17:37exploration.
17:40Relations were already cooling between the two nations, and Cold War loomed on the horizon.
17:47As technology advanced, both powers would soon face a new threat, a submarine that never
17:54had to surface.
17:58Following the capture of experimental German U-boats at the end of World War II, U.S. and
18:02Russian submarine technology made important advances.
18:06Both nations began to exploit the Germans' cutting-edge ideas.
18:11Submarines of both powers now had snorkels, which allowed the vessels to breathe without
18:15fully surfacing.
18:16They also had larger battery plants, and their hulls were streamlined to be more at home
18:20underwater.
18:22These improvements greatly increased the submarine's stealth.
18:26In August 1949, the U.S. Navy sent two newly modified boats, the USS Cochino and the USS
18:34Tusk, into the Norwegian Sea to conduct operations.
18:37Their mission, ostensibly, was to carry out training maneuvers.
18:41However, many believed the boats were actually dispatched for another purpose.
18:47This was one of the dark ages of the Cold War, up to a certain point.
18:54We were probing the Soviets, the Soviets were probing us.
18:58At this point, however, the Navy is an arm of the United States government trying to
19:04find out, what can we find out about the Soviets?
19:07Maybe we're going to have to fight them tomorrow morning.
19:09So the Navy has submarines out around the perimeter of the Soviet landmass, trying to
19:17poke around and find out what's going on with the Soviet Navy.
19:22U.S. officials no doubt feared that the Soviets had developed nuclear technology.
19:28Periscope observation of Russian missile tests could possibly have confirmed these suspicions.
19:34And one spot where there would be this kind of observation is Murmansk.
19:41It's chill Arctic waters, it's a tough place for anybody, and it's tougher even for a submarine.
19:48Days into the mission, the Cachino and Tusk fell victim to a fierce polar storm.
19:53Strong waves battered the submarines relentlessly.
19:57The Cachino develops a fire in its batteries.
20:01It's on the surface, the submarine Tusk comes to its aid, and in a heroic series of actions,
20:12the Tusk gets the crew off the Cachino and saves all but one person on the Cachino.
20:21And there are six men lost on the Tusk as a result of the rescue efforts.
20:28It was one of the first tragic naval losses of the Cold War.
20:33And the publicity is hard for the Navy to handle because these submarines were undoubtedly
20:38on intelligence gathering mission.
20:41And later on, the Soviet Union charges this.
20:45And it's one of the first times that the American public gets a look at the poking that's going
20:52on between the two countries.
20:55Shortly after the loss of the Cachino, U.S. intelligence groups reported that the Soviets
20:59had made their first successful test of a nuclear warhead.
21:04Now the other side also had the bomb.
21:07The potential existed for new, stealthier Russian submarines armed with nuclear weapons
21:12to threaten U.S. coasts.
21:15So we're kind of desperate.
21:18Then they find out that sound really travels very long distances in the ocean, like thousands
21:23of miles type distances.
21:26So it's possible to put up very large detectors in the ocean, deep in the ocean, that will
21:31pick up submarines hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
21:36The idea that it might be possible to hear submarines advancing from great distances
21:40prompted a government-funded secret research project stationed at Bell Laboratories.
21:48The result was SOSUS, Sound Surveillance System.
21:52SOSUS was an array of hydrophones planted on the ocean floor and linked by long cables
21:57to a computer that analyzed input data.
22:03The data could be used to dispatch anti-submarine patrol planes and surface vessels to attack
22:07approaching enemy submarines.
22:11The first fully operational SOSUS array was set up in the Barbados.
22:16To give you an idea of what that array was able to accomplish, this single array was
22:21able to detect and track American submarines traveling at high speed, making no attempt
22:27to hide themselves across the Atlantic all the way to Great Britain, and was also able
22:32to detect Soviet submarines coming through the gap between the United Kingdom and Greenland.
22:41By 1954, SOSUS arrays were deployed along the entire length of both U.S. coasts and
22:47Hawaii.
22:49That same year, naval engineers made a watershed advance that would transform the nature of
22:54submarine warfare.
22:57Following the success of the Manhattan Project, the top secret World War II program that the
23:02developed the atomic bomb, engineers began to experiment with the idea of using nuclear
23:07energy to power a submarine.
23:10It's a very obvious thing that if you can take energy out of a nuclear reactor, you
23:14could use it to drive a sub.
23:16That is, the reactor produces heat, the heat can be used to heat water, the water can be
23:21boiled, that's steam, you have a steam-powered sub.
23:27Nuclear power would provide a stable, self-contained propulsion system that could remain submerged
23:32indefinitely.
23:34After nearly a decade of experimentation, submarine designers finally achieved success.
23:41In January 1955, the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, took to the waves.
23:51In addition to having a self-contained propulsion system, it was equipped with devices that
23:55cleaned and re-oxygenated the air breathed by the crew.
24:00In a nuclear sub, there's a lot of electricity, so you break down seawater for oxygen.
24:05And that means that air is not a limit.
24:07Otherwise, the air inside a sub will last you only about 24 hours before you have to
24:12replace it.
24:15Nuclear subs had taken submarine tracking to a whole new level.
24:19The Nautilus never had to surface.
24:22The first true submarine was ready for operation.
24:26And it was very fast.
24:28In anti-submarine warfare games in which it took part, it outran attacking destroyers
24:32and their active sonar beams.
24:35But for the U.S. Naval High Command, the victory was bittersweet.
24:41They realized that if the U.S. could develop such a fearsome weapon, the Soviets would
24:48not be far behind.
24:52By the early 1970s, both the United States and the Soviet Union had multiple nuclear-powered
24:58and nuclear-armed submarines patrolling the oceans of the world.
25:03Traditional anti-submarine warfare methods were no match for these powerful machines
25:08that traveled at great depths and never had to surface.
25:12The old ASW team, which had been based on these hunter-killer groups, destroyers, active
25:18sonars, using a lot of radar, high-frequency direction finding, gradually kind of edged
25:26aside.
25:27The Sosus arrays, long-range patrol aircraft called P-3s, and nuclear submarines themselves
25:34took over the duties of opposing Soviet underwater intruders.
25:38And as illustrated by the following incident, only recently declassified, the threat was
25:42not always limited to U.S. home waters.
25:47On several occasions during the Vietnam War, U.S. officials became concerned that the Soviet
25:52Union would choose to enter the war more actively, possibly even put to sea in some way.
25:58And at one point, there was a fear that they were going to unleash submarines and get them
26:04into the Yankee Station and imperil our surface ships.
26:11Yankee Station was the Navy's term for the area in which it staged aircraft carriers
26:16off the coast of Vietnam.
26:19To guard against such an event, in 1972, the Navy dispatched the nuclear attack submarine
26:24USS Guardfish to watch for Soviet submarines headed for Southeast Asia.
26:30Guardfish is on station one day and starts to see Soviet submarines going out, more than
26:38three or four.
26:39And the implication of their course was that they were heading for Yankee Station.
26:45Guardfish trailed one of them, but sent out a general message that there was a lot of
26:50submarines moving in the direction of Vietnam.
26:56This information caused great concern back in Washington.
27:00Secretary of State Kissinger was to meet with Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, and Kissinger
27:07was armed now with information that Soviet submarines were heading toward Vietnam.
27:13And he told Brezhnev, those submarines have got to turn back, that we feel this is a terrible
27:19threat to our warships and it's a bad move on the part of the Soviets.
27:26And the Guardfish did observe the turning about of those submarines.
27:33Such tracking episodes were frequent throughout the 1970s.
27:39In another operation recently declassified by the Navy, an attack submarine was ordered
27:43to trail a Soviet ballistic missile submarine called a Yankee SSBN throughout an entire
27:49patrol.
27:51The National Security Council was concerned that the Soviets were changing the pattern
27:56of the ballistic submarines that were off the east coast of the United States.
28:02In early March 1978, the Navy called upon the USS Batfish, an attack submarine based
28:08in Charleston, South Carolina.
28:11The submarine's commander, Thomas W. Evans, was summoned to headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia
28:16to receive his orders.
28:19We were to establish a patrol position at 70 degrees north latitude and 4 degrees east
28:25longitude to await the next Soviet ballistic missile nuclear submarine that was coming
28:30out of the Barents Sea, headed for a patrol position east of the United States off the
28:36coast of Washington, D.C.
28:40The Batfish was to trail the Soviet vessel from the start of its patrol to the finish,
28:44all without being detected.
28:47It would have to be a combination of a lot of skill, a lot of luck, good weather and
28:54the effective operation of the Navy's anti-submarine warfare team to pull it off.
29:03On March 17, 1978, the Batfish spotted its target.
29:09When we gained initial contact on the Yankee SSBN, we maneuvered very carefully and quietly
29:15to take up a position astern of the Yankee off of the center stern point and to track
29:22from a distance sometimes usually from, say, three and a half to five and a half miles
29:27was the nominal range that we set up.
29:33Hiding behind the enemy in this fashion would ensure that noise of the Batfish would be
29:37drowned out by the Russian Yankee's propeller noise.
29:40This was called staying in the enemy's baffles.
29:45But even with this advantage, the crew of the Batfish still had to be on guard continually
29:49in order not to reveal itself.
29:52The Russian boat would periodically do what was called the Crazy Ivan, an abrupt turnaround
29:57to see if another submarine was following it.
30:01We could sense when they were about to conduct one of these maneuvers, they would begin to
30:05slow down, we would hear a control plane and rudder action, and we would know to back off
30:11and slip off to the side and let them get through with their maneuvers so that we could
30:15then proceed on down the track.
30:19Early in the operation, however, conditions beyond the control of the Batfish crew caused
30:23them to lose track of the Yankee.
30:26A tremendous storm came up out of the North Atlantic from the southwest, headed over Iceland
30:32and completely blanketed the Southern Norwegian Sea.
30:36We couldn't hear anything, and we lost contact on the Yankee at that point after tracking
30:41it for 350 miles.
30:44But with the help of a long-range patrol aircraft, the Batfish quickly re-established contact
30:51with the Russian vessel once the storm blew over.
30:54This was the only hiccup in the two-month operation.
30:57We knew where that submarine was every hour on the hour, minute by minute, through that
31:03entire period of time.
31:05We took sonar recordings throughout the entire operation.
31:09We plotted its track to station, where it went, how it did its business, its security
31:15procedures, clearing baffles, what it did when it went to periscope depth, and a variety
31:21of other operations.
31:23So it was a fine-grained analysis of that submarine.
31:29On their return to Charleston, the crew of the Batfish received a Navy unit commendation,
31:34along with other awards, for their extraordinary achievement.
31:38The submarine's commander, Thomas Evans, received the Distinguished Service Medal.
31:44Because of the top-secret nature of the mission, the families of the crewmen could not be told
31:48why their fathers, sons, and husbands were being decorated.
31:52The Submarine Service has a culture of silence, which has been part of its way of life since
32:00the very beginning.
32:02You can see a battleship, you can see an aircraft carrier, you can't see a submarine.
32:07And that's almost the atmosphere that the submarine feels much more comfortable operating
32:11is when you can't see it and you don't know anything about it.
32:14And that philosophy, I think, extends to the officers and men.
32:19And even when 30 years have passed after an action, they still don't want to talk about
32:24it because they have been imbued with that idea that you don't talk about what we do.
32:33But in the year 2000, the Submarine Service celebrated its 100th anniversary.
32:39To help illustrate and honor the submarine's role in the Cold War, the Navy chose to partially
32:43declassify two tracking operations.
32:46The 1972 mission of the USS Guardfish and the trailing of the Yankee SSBN by the USS
32:53Batfish in 1978.
32:56However, many details of both missions are still secret.
33:00It is the Navy's position that no one other than authorized spokesmen should discuss either
33:05episode.
33:07While the Guardfish and Batfish carried out their tracking missions without mishap, other
33:11Cold War submarine operations ended in disaster.
33:15It is thought that during some intelligence gathering maneuvers, American and Russian
33:19submarines may have actually collided.
33:25Throughout the Cold War, Russian submarines armed with ballistic missiles routinely transited
33:29both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans en route to patrol positions off the coasts of
33:34the United States.
33:37On March 11, 1968, the Soviet nuclear submarine K-129, a Gulf-class vessel similar to the
33:44one shown here, sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
33:49All crewmen perished.
33:52The Russians claimed their vessel was struck by an American submarine, but this has never
33:56been substantiated, and U.S. officials deny the accusation categorically.
34:01However, with only a general idea of where the accident occurred, the U.S. Navy managed
34:07to locate the downed Russian craft some 1,700 miles northwest of Hawaii, an incredible feat
34:14since the submarine came to rest nearly three miles beneath the ocean's surface.
34:20The chances are that the explosion that destroyed the Russian sub registers on SOSUS or on some
34:25other undersea listening system.
34:27We had some others.
34:29So that gives you an idea of where it is, and we had subs that could examine what was
34:34on the bottom using suspended cameras and little mini-vehicles and things like that.
34:40One submarine said to be so equipped was the Hawaii-based USS Halibut, an early Cold
34:45War vessel launched in 1959.
34:49At that time, probably Halibut was the submarine we were using.
34:52So we would know there was something down there very deep, and it suddenly occurs to
34:57us that since we know where this thing is, there's a chance of recovering it.
35:01So we fit out the special ship with what amounts to a giant claw that you could drop by oil
35:08drilling technology.
35:10We get the claw in the sub alright, but the claw's been damaged and the sub breaks up
35:15in the claws that's being brought up.
35:17Surely the most dramatic kind of Cold War intelligence operation.
35:21And it was betrayed about two or three years after it happened.
35:26In spite of the mishap during the lifting operation, salvagers managed to recover at
35:30least some valuable intelligence information from K-129.
35:35It is thought that a small part of the submarine was retrieved, along with some of the Soviet's
35:40newest and most advanced torpedoes.
35:43Although there is no evidence that K-129 was struck by an American vessel, many believe
35:48that some tracking operations did end in collision.
35:52However, most incidents simply caused minor damage and merely frightened and embarrassed
35:56the crews involved.
36:00Basically the idea is that you're in a car and you're completely blindfolded, trying
36:04to follow another car at relatively close range.
36:08And so, you know, in this kind of environment you could imagine that there sometimes paint
36:13got scratched on these submarines because, in fact, there were collisions.
36:20As submarine quieting technology advanced, a new problem in tracking Soviet underwater
36:25vessels would soon strike fear into the hearts of U.S. leaders.
36:32For most of the Cold War, the United States maintained an advantage over Russia in the
36:36realm of submarines.
36:39American boats on the whole were quieter.
36:42And because of this, a lot of espionage by the Soviet Navy was targeted against United
36:47States Naval Submarine Service.
36:49And a lot of this information was then used to further quiet Soviet submarines, making
36:54it much harder for us to use our sonar systems to find them at sea, in the open ocean.
37:01Indeed, in the late 1970s, the deployment of a type of ultra-quiet Russian submarine,
37:07the Victor III, sent shockwaves to the highest levels of the U.S. Defense Department.
37:13The Victor III-class submarine could occasionally slip past SOSUS nets undetected.
37:19This was the first real experience the American Navy had where this submarine comes to sea
37:24and they go out to do what they normally do and they think, oh, God, this one is really
37:30hard to find.
37:31They've figured it out, they've figured something out.
37:34Our techniques aren't working as well, or at all.
37:42Yet in the mid-1980s, radical changes in political relations between the Soviet Union and the
37:48United States diminished this new threat.
37:53Just as World War II ends with this kind of saved-by-the-bell ending where the German
37:59Type 21 is just about to deploy and doesn't quite get there before the war ends, the Cold
38:04War ends really before the Soviets deploy large numbers of truly quiet nuclear submarines.
38:13While Russia continues to deploy nuclear submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles, they
38:18go to sea in fewer numbers and eased tensions between the U.S. and Russia make these stealthy
38:25warships somewhat less of a concern.
38:29Ironically, the threat of primary relevance today is the conventional submarine powered
38:34by diesel-electric motors.
38:36Iran and China have both made recent purchases of conventional Russian submarines.
38:42What happens after the Cold War is that you've got some more modern diesel submarines which
38:46can use their batteries for longer, can submerge for longer, just because of the onward march
38:53of technology in that area, and you also have a political or geopolitical scenario in which
38:58those submarines don't have to deploy out into the middle of the ocean.
39:02They sit near their base and wait for us to come to them.
39:07The Iranians are not going to try and go out into the middle of the Indian Ocean and cut
39:11off sea lines of communication between the United States and the Persian Gulf.
39:15To use the Iranians as an example, the submarines that they have are designed to protect Iran.
39:21They were designed specifically to protect the Straits of Hormuz, for example.
39:25They don't have to go anywhere to do that.
39:28The potential for enemy diesel submarines to just sit quietly, poised for attack in
39:33shallow coastal waters, has forced United States ASW forces to rethink their strategy.
39:41What this has meant is that we've had to go back into our old tool bag of ASW techniques
39:46and pull out active sonar, pull out radar, pull out all those sort of techniques that
39:53lost their salience during the Cold War because of the focus on nuclear submarines.
39:58Today, surface ships, planes, helicopters, and even satellites assist in tracking enemy
40:04submarines.
40:05And a key element of this effort is a new twist on an old technology, the hydrophone.
40:12Surface ships and U.S. attack submarines employ towed array surveillance equipment.
40:18This is a long string of hydrophones that we put in the water behind the ship to listen
40:23for that submarine transiting through the water.
40:27It is essentially a mobile SOSUS array that can comb specific stretches of ocean.
40:33Planes and helicopters also now employ variations of the hydrophone called sonobuoys.
40:38We have a variety of different kinds of passive sonobuoys, and we have also some sonobuoys
40:43that are capable of active transmissions.
40:46These devices are either dropped or lowered into the water.
40:49In areas of suspected submarine activity, they assist attack submarines and destroyers
40:54in getting a fix on the enemy.
40:58Satellites overhead relay information between the various ASW units.
41:03In hostile situations, once the location of an enemy submarine has been established, it
41:08can easily be killed by rocket or torpedo.
41:11They have what's called vertical launch ASROC.
41:14ASROC stands for anti-submarine rocket.
41:17This is something that we have that has a capability of being fired about eight or nine
41:21miles from the ship.
41:24In most instances, however, the weapon of choice would be an aircraft launch torpedo.
41:34The aircraft is not vulnerable, by and large, to attack from a submarine.
41:38It's a much safer way to conduct your warfare.
41:42And it could be, depending upon where you are or what the scenario is, could be maritime
41:46patrol aircraft launch, or it could be helicopter launch.
41:50But such force isn't always necessary.
41:54You don't have to sink the submarine to defeat him from doing his mission.
41:57If you can avoid him, if you can get the high value units through without him being able
42:02to pose a danger to them, you've accomplished your mission just as well.
42:08Allied enemy submarines, both nuclear-powered and conventional, pose such a dire threat
42:13and have such a tremendous capacity for stealth and evasion that it is crucial for all anti-submarine
42:18warfare systems to be working together at all times.
42:22One platform can't do it.
42:24A surface ship can't do this alone, an aircraft can't do this alone.
42:27We all need to work together as a team.
42:30Though the Cold War has passed, the potential for a submarine-based nuclear strike against
42:35the United States remains.
42:41Most experts believe that vigilance and cutting-edge tracking capabilities are the only real defense.
42:47You know, he who shoots first wins.
42:50He who sees the other guy, detects the other guy first, is the winner.
42:54And that's where it all comes back down to the technology that we employ on these ships
42:59to make sure we have the best possible chance of detecting the enemy first, getting a fire
43:04control solution, shooting him before he can get a chance to shoot us, or before he
43:11can get a chance to shoot at the carrier or whatever other battle group asset we may be
43:17protecting.
43:18As it has been since the earliest battles with German U-boats during World War I, tracking
43:24enemy submarines remains a deadly game of cat and mouse.
43:31And as long as the threat persists, United States ASW forces will remain alert, and attack
43:37submarines like the USS Louisville will patrol the depths, watching and listening.
43:47On August 12, 2000, the Russian submarine Kursk, with a crew of 118, sank in the Barents
43:54Sea north of Russia.
43:56Moscow claimed the Kursk had collided with a U.S. sub, but Western intelligence sources
44:00said the Kursk sank because of two devastating on-board explosions, which the Russian Navy
44:06acknowledged a week later.
44:08The Kursk disaster produced a domestic political crisis for Russian President Putin, who waited
44:13five days before breaking off his Black Sea vacation to return to Moscow.
44:19For the History Channel, I'm Roger Mudd.
44:21Thanks for watching.
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