Anyone know the story of the K-129 submarine?

That does sound interesting! ;)

howard hughes should be a GFY'r

he once lived in a large office space for weeks on end completely naked without any human contact

he had to piss in milk bottles cuz there was no bathroom

Hell yes. I"ve read the book "Red Star Rogue" by Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond. Pretty scary stuff.

If I recall correctly, K-129 came off a tour and was expected to be in port for a few months but was suddenly recalled for an "important mission" on short notice. Also there were 12 "extra" crewmen on board who had no offical duties.

The scariest part is that this was a Russian Golf II sub, but was attempting a nuke launch on the surface - making it look like an earlier Golf I sub. China had recently taken delivery of a handful of Russian Golf 1 subs, the the story goes that the Russian sub was trying to "act" like a Chinese Golf 1 sub. In other words, Russa would have nuked Hawaii, blamed it on China, and hoped that the US and China ended up at war. Cleaver bastards (if any of this is true).

When you think about it, we are all very lucky to be alive.

I seriously doubt it is true as Soviet subs as well as Chinese subs were tracked from the time of leaving port...and the Soviets as well as the Chinese knew this.

Makes sense, there was a guy outside the sub in fireboots, which would go along with a surface launch.

And then the russian navy constrained their search WELL outside where the actual sub went down, in a clear move to "pretend" they didn't know about it.

So there was either a hero aboard the sub (cia infiltration), or they fucked up, or it was a terrorist mission that was stopped by the incuded countermeasures....either way, we are very lucky to be standing here.

I wouldn't mind checking out that book.

it's interesting, but not true

You know... I think it was this same time that Mao and Soviet Russia (post kruschev) had a falling out.

They were tracked to an extent. Keep in mind this was the 1960's and the SOSUS wasn't fully in place. Also, a major point of the book was the sudden and unexpected departure of the Russian sub... which happened to be at the same exact time a Chinese Golf I was in the same area.

Also according to this book, the only reason any of this came to the attention of the US was because a missile launch detection satellite captured the event on film. The US Military quickly determined it wasn't a missile launch, but rather an explousion on the surface (and thus of no interest to the US until six months later when questions started coming up).

Don't quote me on any of this, I'm going by memory here. I consider myself lucky when I remember my wife's name in the morning.

Pretty damn scary if any of it is close to being true.

Howard Hughes was crazy. He use to refer to women as boobies..... "bring me some boobies"..... Did you know he was engaged 2 3 women at the same time. 2 of them were 16 or younger. Two were famous actresses and one a Vanderbilt if I remember right. They fought over his skinny rich ass.

I'll admit I've got the book, but along with all my other bedside reading, I have yet to read it, I probably won't bother now that there's a number of solid reviews that make "Red Star Rogue" more Tom Clancy'ish fiction than fact...


http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/843/red-star-rogue

"On March 7, 1968, a rogue, nuclear-armed Soviet submarine surfaced in the waters off Hawaii, attempted to fire a nuclear missile, most likely at the naval base at Pearl Harbor, and sank with all 98 men aboard. As Sewell explains in Red Star Rogue, the sub was attempting to mimic a Chinese submarine, almost certainly with the intention of igniting a war between the U.S. and China."

Gary Weir, a Historian at the U.S. Naval Historical Center who declined to participate in the book, documents the massive problems with this thesis.

Let me add two additional problems, from my perspective as a scholar of the Chinese nuclear weapons program.

First, US intelligence knew China had not developed missiles for its Golf class submarine in 1968. The IC simply did not believe China could launch the sort of strike that the Russians were purportedly attempting to mimic.

Second, in 1968, the Chinese had one?one?nuclear warhead design small enough to fit on a ballistic missile.

That sucker was a uranium implosion device?the same design that ended up in Libya?with a 15 KT yield. I don?t have Pavel Podvig?s essential reference at home, but I seem to remember Russia?s nuclear submarines were armed with thermonuclear weapons using plutonium primaries and with a yield in the megaton, not kiloton, range.

Just from the size of explosion, any moderately competent observer would be able to conclude there was no friggin? way that was a Chinese bomb. Assuming that we didn?t waste the Soviets in the next 24 hours, the radiochemistry data from the fallout would have removed all doubt that this was a Soviet, not a Chinese, warhead.

I?ll admit, I just flipped through the pages, but I didn?t see any effort to address these concerns.

The geniuses who wrote this little book overlooked one more extremely important fact:

The default for our nuclear war plan in 1968 (SIOP-4) didn?t distinguish between the Soviet Union and China?it was a joint strike. Now SIOP-4 did have some modularity?the President could hold China out of a strike package, for example.

But SIOP-4 was essentially Soviet-centered. A China-only strike package wasn?t introduced, as far as I can tell, until the 1970s?as a result of the Foster Panel.

Bill Burr has a realy excellent description of the evolution of the SIOP (The Nixon Administration, the ?Horror Strategy,? and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969?1972: Prelude to the Schlesinger Doctrine, Journal of Cold War Studies 7:3, Summer 2005, pp. 34?78).

Any Russian policymaker should have understood that Washington ?s principal reaction in the event of a nuclear strike would be to blame them, making this one incredibly reckless gamble.

what is the point of attacking a fucking hawaii?

Think pearl harbor still fresh in the memories of the american people this would make it a no brainer that we would go to war.

Well, lets see, you have Hickam Air Force Base, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Pearl Harbor Naval Base is home to the United States Pacifc Fleet, wipe out Hawaii, and you pretty much rule the Pacific Ocean, at least for 30-45 minutes until the nukes start raining down on your capital, and major industrial and population centers...