Recently, the Russian Navy sent their aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean and it had an entourage even Madonna would envy since there were, count 'em, eight NATO vessels following the carrier plus there were the standard Russian escort ships. That must have been quite the parade.
Pink said that's a job for a sub and he knows what nuke subs do since he served on one for years. All submariners honor a strict code of silence regarding whatever happens on submarines but sometimes the old information gets released and that's how we get to USS Halibut.
In a previous example, we saw the US Navy making a fine mess of things but in this example the Navy, operating under exceptional secrecy, even for submarines, did some remarkable things. (Ithaka: Something So Stupid Even the Royal Navy Didn't Do It Yet)
Thanks to Pink for this the links for the article about the USS Halibut. (The National Interest: The Nearly Forgotten Story of a Super-Secret U.S. Navy Spy Submarine (And What It Did to Russia))
Relax on what it did to Russia since there were no aggressive actions involved in this but rather it shows some applications for a submarine I did not know were possible. This application is something straight out of a James Bond movie.
Halibut operated for four years as a Regulus submarine. In 1965 the Navy, recognizing that a submarine with a large, built-in internal bay could be useful, put Halibut into dry dock at Pearl Harbor for a major $70 million ($205 million in today’s dollars) overhaul. She received a photographic darkroom, hatches for divers to enter and exit the sub while submerged, and thrusters to help her maintain a stationary position.
Perhaps most importantly, Halibut was rebuilt with spaces to operate two remotely operated vehicles nicknamed “Fish.” Twelve feet long and equipped with cameras, strobe lights and sonar, the “fish” could search for objects at depths of up to twenty-five thousand feet. The ROVs could be launched and retrieved from the former missile storage bay, now nicknamed “the Bat Cave.” A twenty-four-bit mainframe computer, highly sophisticated for the time, analyzed sensor data from the Fish.
In 1970, Halibut was again modified to accommodate the Navy’s deep water saturation divers. The following year, it went to sea again to participate in Ivy Bells, a secret operation to install taps on the underwater communications cables connecting the Soviet ballistic missile submarine base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula with Moscow’s Pacific Fleet headquarters at Vladivostok.
Halibut was decommissioned on November 1, 1975, after 1,232 dives and more than sixteen years of service. The ship had earned two Presidential Unit citations (the second in 1972 for Ivy Bells missions) and a Navy Unit Citation. The role of submarines in espionage, however, continued: she was succeeded in the role of special missions submarine by USS Parche. Today, USS Jimmy Carter—a sub with a particularly low profile—is believed to have taken on the task. The role of submarines in intelligence gathering continues.
Pink said that's a job for a sub and he knows what nuke subs do since he served on one for years. All submariners honor a strict code of silence regarding whatever happens on submarines but sometimes the old information gets released and that's how we get to USS Halibut.
In a previous example, we saw the US Navy making a fine mess of things but in this example the Navy, operating under exceptional secrecy, even for submarines, did some remarkable things. (Ithaka: Something So Stupid Even the Royal Navy Didn't Do It Yet)
Thanks to Pink for this the links for the article about the USS Halibut. (The National Interest: The Nearly Forgotten Story of a Super-Secret U.S. Navy Spy Submarine (And What It Did to Russia))
Relax on what it did to Russia since there were no aggressive actions involved in this but rather it shows some applications for a submarine I did not know were possible. This application is something straight out of a James Bond movie.
Halibut operated for four years as a Regulus submarine. In 1965 the Navy, recognizing that a submarine with a large, built-in internal bay could be useful, put Halibut into dry dock at Pearl Harbor for a major $70 million ($205 million in today’s dollars) overhaul. She received a photographic darkroom, hatches for divers to enter and exit the sub while submerged, and thrusters to help her maintain a stationary position.
Perhaps most importantly, Halibut was rebuilt with spaces to operate two remotely operated vehicles nicknamed “Fish.” Twelve feet long and equipped with cameras, strobe lights and sonar, the “fish” could search for objects at depths of up to twenty-five thousand feet. The ROVs could be launched and retrieved from the former missile storage bay, now nicknamed “the Bat Cave.” A twenty-four-bit mainframe computer, highly sophisticated for the time, analyzed sensor data from the Fish.
- The National Interest
On one of a series of super-secret missions, the USS Halibut accomplished something the then-Soviet Navy could not do in finding their lost sub.
K-129 had sunk along with its three R-21 intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The R-21 was a single-stage missile with a range of 890 nautical miles and an eight-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead. The loss of the submarine presented the U.S. government with the unique opportunity to recover the missiles and their warheads for study.
Halibut was the perfect ship for the task. Once on station, it deployed the Fish ROVs and began an acoustic search of the ocean floor. After a painstaking searchand more than twenty thousand photos, Halibut’s crew discovered the ill-fated Soviet sub’s wreckage. As a result Halibut and her crew were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, for “several missions of significant scientific value to the Government of the United States.” Halibut’s contribution to efforts to recover K-129 would remain secret for decades.
On one of a series of super-secret missions, the USS Halibut accomplished something the then-Soviet Navy could not do in finding their lost sub.
K-129 had sunk along with its three R-21 intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The R-21 was a single-stage missile with a range of 890 nautical miles and an eight-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead. The loss of the submarine presented the U.S. government with the unique opportunity to recover the missiles and their warheads for study.
Halibut was the perfect ship for the task. Once on station, it deployed the Fish ROVs and began an acoustic search of the ocean floor. After a painstaking searchand more than twenty thousand photos, Halibut’s crew discovered the ill-fated Soviet sub’s wreckage. As a result Halibut and her crew were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, for “several missions of significant scientific value to the Government of the United States.” Halibut’s contribution to efforts to recover K-129 would remain secret for decades.
- The National Interest
There's some speculation by the Russian military that K-129 sank due to a collision with USS Swordfish but there wasn't enough damage to the Swordfish to account for what happened and it would have had to be far off its logged course for it even to be possible. (WIKI: Soviet submarine K-129 (1960))
That was their first major stunt but there was another which has all the James Bond you may need.
- The National Interest
There is no tragic wrap to this.
- The National Interest
These were remarkable examples of technology and seamanship but underlying it is the peek-a-boo nature of foreign relations. There's likely no way to account for the trillions which have been spent on a game which can't possibly have a winner (i.e. nuke war) and yet the leaders have been little more than pawns of the military regarding any action to bring any sense to it. After over fifty years of this, there has yet to be a pair of real leaders who can review disarmament to the point of defensive equipment only.
Here's a shocker for you since Trump said he was going to drop the role of interference which the military has been playing out unsuccessfully in the Middle East all these years and that shows some actual interest in curtailing the aggression but he's also said he wants to rebuild the military's strength.
That last doesn't even mean anything when American drones spread all over the world as they started building them everywhere and building that strength could not possibly have backfired more famously.
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