Blind Man's Bluff - Sontag et al

 

We’ve all seen “The Hunt for Red October '', Tom Clany’s best novel and his best movie (not that he made the movie).  “One ping Vasili, one ping only”.  A role Sean Connery was made for, perhaps his best shot for the Oscar.  But did you ever wonder how true Clancy’s research may have been. It was 1984, when the novel was released, it seemed like it was ahead of its time.  One need look no further than “Blind Man’s Bluff”.  Fifteen years later we have a gauge of Clancy’s accuracy, and then some. He was accurate.  One wonders how Clancy figured so much  out when it took a  team of researchers another 15 years to divulge the true story of these undersea men. Of course “Blind Man’s Bluff” isn’t just about submarine warfare.  It  specifically addresses the use of submarines to perform intelligence operations.  Tracking other submarines, the primary subject of Clancy’s novel, is an intelligence mission.   Stealing, the Red October, becomes the primary concern of Jack Ryan, an analyst from the CIA, an intelligence mission.  So, it’s all there, yet fictionalized in Clancy’s book, but again, 15 years before broader research dropped the more pertinent facts on everyone's desk.  There was a leak somewhere.  Perhaps it was Kevin Costner who leaked the material to Clancy--nope, “No Way Out” was released in 1987.  Clancy’s sources remain mysterious. 

But this is a book review about the book, “Blind Man’s Bluff”, and the great people and machines that resulted from the work necessary to build such extraordinary deep sea machines and conduct such amazing undersea operations.    The team of researchers, led by   Sherry Songtag and Christopher Drew, journalists who reported for the New York Times, give us the lowdown.    Unlike a novel, however, Songtag and Drew don’t really tell a concise story, rather it is a collection of reports on 12 very significant undersea happenings that made news reports, but went, without exception, unexplained at the time  The motivation for submarine operations during the cold war, of course, wasn’t the stealing of a fictitious Russia submarine, but rather the stealing of electronic signals coming out of the Soviet Union that would betray the Soviet development of ballistic missile technology they had under development.  To collect these signals, our spy community had to get antennas close enough to the missile tests our adversaries were conducting in very remote regions only by sneaking up, underwater, popping up an antenna, and listening.  Hopefully, if lucky enough, during a missile test.  In the 1950’s we didn’t have satellites that could just listen overhead until Sputnik kicked off the race for space.  Without satellites, submarines that could get close to Russia test sites, were the significant motivation to do what we did, both from the technology side, and the risk of putting human’s at risk to conduct these operations.   And bad things happened.   It was dangerous business, both from the potential for loss of life, and the huge political implications of getting caught.  The idea that getting caught was not an option resulted in the draconian measure that before a captain would allow a submarine to fall into enemy hands, he would scuttle the boat (sink it) with all hands on board.  Fortunately, it appears, no American captain was ever forced to make that decision.  It also appears, no Russian Captain had to make a similar decision.  Rather, all undersea men, seemingly were kindred, in that, although they played a high stakes game against one another, they cared about the soul’s onboard their adversaries vessel.  And in one case, due to an undersea collision, when the US ship thought it was the impact that caused the loss of the Russian submarine, the guilt of perhaps contributing to the loss of those Russian lives, impacted the lives of the US men.  For which they didn’t believe or discover their true fate, in fact the Russian boat survived when the Russia Captain came forward decades later.  He was truly sad, when he discovered his US adversary had passed before they had a chance to meet swap stories.

In the course of trying to do this electronic eavesdropping, the crews of these submarines had to learn all the secrets of the trade.  How do you remain quiet? (mount everything on rubber)  How do you stay submerged for longer than 12 hours in a diesel submarine that has no air? (build a snorkel)  How do you track a Russian submarine, underwater? (stay directly behind them).  How do you retrieve things at the bottom of the ocean? (build a sub that can stay submerged and send divers out).  How do you stay underwater longer? (build a nuclear powered submarine)  How do you tap a Chinese communication cable at the bottom of the ocean? (do all of these things together).   And so, the story of all this technology has been given us.  Yes in piece parts, and with a lot missing.  If you have dirty knowledge of actual classified things, it is possible to fill in some of the holes, but not many.  Undersea operations continue to remain one of the most classified things in both the defense department and intelligence communities portfolio.

Having spent my career in the United States Air Force, and not the United States Navy, I only suspect some of the individuals mentioned in this book are legendary, such as the great legends in the USAF ala Robin Olds and John Ward.  This book was the first I’ve heard the names of Whitey Mack, the cowboy boat captain who followed a Russia sub on it’s entire patrol without detection.and John Craven who seemingly dreamed of deep sea recovery and then woke up and in invented the craft. Oppenheimer, barely gets a courtesy mention in this book, as the Navy chooses to keep him out of this research.  Strange indeed, but revealing of the politics that must have been in play at that time.

And of course, nothing can ever be fully explained, as most highly classified topics remain so, by law, for 75 years, or more.  We should start seeing some of the holes begin to get filled in as things that now happened in the 1950’s begin to see the light of day.  

I loved this book.  I don’t have as much dirty knowledge as some, so it’s difficult to read between every line.   But I’m going to pay more attention to this fascinating part of US Defense and Intelligence going forward.  Four stars for the real story more compelling than any Clancy could write.