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The Top Secret Submarine (Four Minutes to Read)

11/22/2013

 
The Freedom of Information Act has provided us with information we’ve never had access to before. Basically classified information including some that's top secret becomes available 25 years after the operation. This doesn’t include any information that would risk people’s lives so a lot of the CIA’s information is never released as people are still in the field gathering information and recruiting operatives. 
 
There’s one amazing story that both the United States and Russia is sharing but their version has been seriously rebutted over the last ten years by researchers especially in the amazing book Blind Man’s Bluff. There’s a lot to this story but I’m going to cover the highlights to make this non-time consuming to read.

During the Cold War (1947 – 1991) tensions were very high mostly between us and Russia. We were extremely concerned about the spread of Communism and we started building a large fleet of submarines including a lot of submarines that had nuclear missiles on board (my submarine had 16). They were built as a deterrent to war not something we wanted to use proactively to attack any country and it certainly has worked for decades. Both China and Russia through propaganda tried to convince their citizens we were evil with a desire to wipe out the rest of the world with our nuclear ambitions. They used this fear mongering to support growing their military to unprecedented levels. It was Russia’s military build-up that helped wreck their economy and cause their Iron Curtain to fall.      

In 1968 a Russian submarine carrying nuclear missiles left port to go on patrol. The captain was concerned about this trip because he didn’t know the skills of some of his crew as the mission was put together last minute and there were several people on board he didn’t know. 
 
Their submarine was supposed to contact Navy headquarters at specified times to update them on their location. When they didn’t report in, their headquarters went on alert and anxiously awaited the next check-in time to see if everything was okay. When the time rolled around they once again didn’t hear from the captain. They started considering options which the two most likely were the submarine went down or it went rogue (like the Hunt for Red October), which is even worse because the United States would be able to get ahold of their technology. 
 
A this point much of the Soviet Navy was sent on a mission to find the submarine and destroy it. So now all of a sudden the submarine had the Soviet fleet trying to chase it down. A Soviet sub found the rogue sub and fired two torpedoes at it but missed then they lost contact. They reported back to their headquarters that it appeared the submarine was heading towards Pearl Harbor to defect. By this time our fleet figured out that Russia had lost control of one of their submarines. Our CIA was brought in to help handle the situation (once again just like what happened in the Hunt for Red October), should the defection be legitimate.    

The submarine was over 100 miles off the shore of Oahu when an explosion took place that sank the submarine with the entire crew of around 75 sailors dead.  So what happened? First of all it did go rogue but not because of the captain. A handful of special agents from the KGB acted like they were members of the crew and boarded the submarine. They were sent by higher-ups in the KGB. We never found out for sure who gave the order but they did determine the head of the KGB knew nothing about it. Their intent was to take over the submarine and go on a mission that would’ve caused a nuclear war.

The mission was to take the submarine to a location where the United States wouldn’t expect them to be so they chose Hawaii a place where if anything bad happened the U.S. would think China was behind it. Their plan was to launch a nuclear missile at Los Angeles then they were going to destroy the submarine. So the KGB agents were planning on committing suicide but the rest of the crew didn’t know what was happening. 
 
If the missile hit L.A. we wouldn’t think Russia had anything to do with it and instead would go after China which is exactly what Russia wanted. Although both of these countries were communist nations they absolutely hated each other.

The KGB’s mission failed as the missile exploded while exiting the hatch…it appeared one of the crew members by then knowing what they were trying to do, sabotaged it. What a brave sailor because he knew what would happen when the missile exploded inside the hull that was right next to him. But he understood how important it was to stop the missile from going off even if it meant the entire crew would die. 
 
The Pacific Ocean was littered with Navy  vessels from both the U.S. and Russia as they both wanted to find the submarine that went down...the United States wanted to salvage it if possible while the Soviets wanted to completely destroy it. We found it using sonar and Russia had no idea that we did. We had to make sure there wasn’t a lot of activity around the spot where we found the sub so we acted like we found the Soviet submarine over one hundred miles away from where it actually was which brought in all kinds of Soviet boats and ships to the fake sight which allowed
us to investigate the submarine. 

Keep in mind this was 1968 so there weren’t a lot of good options for salvaging something that deep so the U.S. pursued the help of an engineer and inventor by the name of…wait for it…Howard Hughes. His design worked and we were able to look at parts of the submarine and we did find the hatch that exploded (it was the only one opened), so it confirmed the story. We did lose big chunks of the submarine right as we were pulling it out of the ocean because a crane broke. 
 
When the United States finished gathering information they let Russia know where the submarine was for two primary reasons. One is that it would hurt us politically around the world if we took their vessel so Russia appreciated what we did. But one of the main reasons is that Navies across the world have certain ethical codes and one is that all crash sites are considered sacred ground because of the fallen sailors. There were a lot of dead sailors in and around the crash site and the way it works is the men aren’t collected they stay where they lay and burial rites are conducted…just because a country is communist doesn’t mean they aren’t religious. 
 
There were a lot of reasons why the United States and Russia didn’t want this story out. Russia lost a rogue nuclear submarine which doesn’t reflect well on the leadership in their country. The Russian Emperor lost control of his KGB which didn’t look good. The United States didn’t want us to know (especially California), that a Soviet submarine snuck by and almost nuked us. U.S. citizens would lose faith in our military.
There were more reasons than this but you get the picture. Fabricating a story was a better option for them at the time but I’ve got to say after reading their account of what happened that it was a lame attempt of misinformation.     

Both Russia and the United States are keeping the top secret records about this incident sealed so the Truth of Information Act isn’t being applied but as usual information always finds a way to get out. By the way, Russia found a picture of the crew on the dock before they went to sea so they were able to figure out who the KGB agents were and who their connections were in the party.
                     

Yet another example of the hundreds of thousands of amazing stories out there that most of us never hear about.

Black Hawk Down (Three Minutes to Read)

11/20/2013

 
I realize most people have either read the book or have seen the movie but as usual I try to provide some interesting information in just three minutes reading time. 
 
The fight was in Somalia and is called the Battle of Mogadishu which is the capital of Somalia. Mogadishu is pretty much the size of Charlotte. It was a typical situation of a warlord (Mohamed Farrah Aidid), taking over the city with he and his militia pretty much doing whatever they wanted to the citizens.  Various leaders in Mogadishu asked for help from the U.N. and more specifically from the U.S. to get rid of the warlord and his oppression. Not to my liking President Clinton rallied to give them support while some of the U.N.’s military stood by in Pakistan should we need them. 
 
Not that we thought it would be easy to extract the warlord but we certainly weren’t prepared for the type of fight we’d be engaged in. We sent 116 soldiers mostly from Delta Force and the Army Rangers. They went in from the ground with Humvees and through the air with seven Black Hawk helicopters which were used to drop some of our soldiers close to where the warlord was supposed to be hiding. In my opinion soldiers who exit a helicopter through climbing down a rope are heroes to begin with. Think about how exposed they are to enemy gunfire when they exit a helicopter this way. For that matter think how exposed a helicopter is to enemy fire especially RPG’s as they’re flying in place while dropping the soldiers off; no doubt a lot of very brave soldiers. This is why I joined the Navy…I felt safe hundreds of feet below the surface on my submarine.     

During the battle two of our helicopters were shot down and fell into the streets with each having a couple of soldiers who survived. Our troops were moving as fast as they could under heavy gunfire to see if they could save anyone on board and they made it to the first helicopter in time and saved them but they didn’t get to the second helicopter in time. The two survivors were overrun by the militia and killed then paraded in the streets. Could you imagine if we did something like this to one of their soldiers?

The major problem we ran into is that our people on the ground were constantly getting outmanned and outgunned. Here we had 160 fighters and the militia had over 4,000. I don’t know where the Intel came from but someone should’ve lost his job. Plus they were way more organized than what we thought as they strategically put up road blocks and had snipers on top of roofs to fire down on our vehicles as they tried to turn around. They were equipped like an army with automatic weapons, grenades, and RPG’s (used to shoot down aircraft). 

I can’t go into how many fights Delta Force and our Army Rangers were involved in because just about every street they went down the militia attacked. Although dangerous, our fighters don’t leave anyone behind so if someone were hit in one of the attacks our soldiers risked their lives recovering their fallen brother or sister dead or alive. Things became completely out of control and the mission changed from getting rid of the warlord to getting our soldiers out.  

When help finally arrived to get our soldiers, they boarded Humvees to head back to camp except for ten members of Delta Force who wanted to walk behind the convoy to make sure none of the militia pursued them. Delta Force was involved in a few skirmishes as they left town. As they approached the boundaries of the city Somalians lined up and cheered for them.

This must be difficult psychologically because I’m sure it’s difficult to not hate everyone in the city because it seems like everyone wants to kill you but then you encounter a group of people who are cheering in appreciation of your help…I don’t know how I’d process it. Is hearing the cheers worth fallen brethren? Keep in mind I’m former military and I’m not against war I just want to make sure it’s the right war if we’re to risk the lives of those serving in our military.   

Out of the 160 soldiers, 18 were killed and 73 were wounded. We had one of our pilots captured and he was released in three weeks. Somalian rebels had around 4,000 soldiers and civilians participate in the fight with 1,000 casualties and 1,500 wounded. What an amazing feat by our soldiers.

The warlord got away that day but ended up dying three years later in a fight between him and one of his previous allies. Think about how things have changed…we would’ve sent in a drone to accomplish the mission to take him out versus sending in our troops.

I’d have preferred not going in especially since it’s the kind of place where it goes from one warlord to the next so even if we would’ve taken this guy out someone else would’ve taken his place. Just my opinion but some areas in the middle-east are better led by dictators. 
 
We didn’t accomplish our objective and even if we did how would Somalia be of benefit to us? President Clinton got us into this mess but he’s certainly not the first president to severely disappoint me with their foreign policies. I’ve never seen such as foreign policy mess as the one Obama has created. We don’t understand what he’s doing nor do our allies. His first trip to the middle-east in his apology tour he bypassed Israel. Wow…what were they to think? 

By the way the U.N. did pitch in but it was only to pick our soldiers up and get them back to camp. It’s seems like it’s always the U.S. who tries to solve the world’s problems with the U.N. often egging us on so they won’t have to do the dirty work. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to even pitch in monetarily for our military doing the work. I say charity begins at home. When we’ve solved all of our problems then we can go out  looking for opportunities to help; with the exception of altruistic help to countries experiencing natural disasters. 
 
I’ll wrap up with this, the general who was in charge of the operation was devastated about the amount of men he lost especially since they didn’t accomplish their primary objective. He showed a lot of compassion in trying to get his troops out of there as fast as he could. The warlord did lose most of his powers so he never ended up on our radar again although he did stay on the general’s radar and the very next day after the warlord was killed he retired from the military; seems it’s all he had left on his military bucket list.
           

    Author: John Mann

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