In the early predawn hours of March 7, 1968, creeping along the surface at 24N, 163W at about 2 knots was a Golf 2 sub. ID K129. This in and of itself was unusual because she was way out of her patrol box and only 360 miles away from Honolulu, and Pearl. This was way to close for a missile boat, she had no need to be this close. What was even more unusual was the fact that the Soviets lost contact with her shortly after she departed. She failed to report in, and blew right through her assigned patrol box. She also had no need to be on the surface but was. Inside the sub is where the story starts:
Half the crew was locked in a couple forward compartments, the other half was making preparations to lunch missile number 1 at coordinates 21 18N, 157W. Said missile was known as a "serb" and had a one megaton nuclear warhead. The target was Pearl Harbor. The officers in charge along with the crew were going through the procedure. Confirming codes, entering codes, turning the three keys needed to arm the missile. Preparations were also complete for an emergency dive after the launch. The hatch was open, all safeties were off, the final countdown began. When the count down hit 0 they tried to lunch the missile. Unknown to them they forgot one last fail safe Moscow had installed that the KGB lacked codes for. A little black box that was berried deep inside the missile, to prevent something just like this. Instead of the missile being ejected from the tube, and the main engine igniting it blew up. The explosives around the war head blew, destroying it and setting off the rocket fuel. Everyone was dead and the sub sank within minutes. Nothing was left but a radioactive oil slick.

The Soviets had a rogue, looks like the KGB along with hard liners in the navy tried to spark a war between the US and China. K129 was acting like a Chinese sub, her course was that of which a Chinese sub would follow. She surfaced and almost stopped to lunch her missile, like a Chinese sub had too. She also came in close the Chinese missiles lacked the range the Soviets had. Projected casualties in Pearl Harbor and the surrounding area would have been large. 500,000 dead soon as the warhead went off, probably another few hundred thousand from radiation poisoning. The navel base of Pearl would be vaporized.

The US would have responded, whether if the plan worked ICDM’s would have been fired at China, or the Soviets is a question that thankfully will never be answered. This certainly could have started a MAD scenario.

The events of that day were kept highly classified in both countries. Just recently some 40 years later people are starting to talk, and documents are being de classified.


Scary isn’t it?

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Never heard that one.

Is this related to the Glomar Explorer raising portions of a sunken Soviet sub?

B

Yes that was part 2 of the story.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

More ...

Deep Secrets

Did the Soviets try to launch a nuclear weapon at Pearl Harbor in 1968? Former submariner Kenneth Sewell revisits the mysterious loss of K-129.

By Gary E. Weir
Published: October 14, 2005

In "Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.," former American submariner Kenneth Sewell, in collaboration with journalist Clint Richmond, reexamines the 1968 loss of K-129, a Soviet Golf II-class missile submarine. Revisiting this well-known story and the CIA's aborted effort to recover the hull under the guise of the highly classified Project Jennifer, the author argues that K-129 actually attempted to launch a nuclear weapon against the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. He portrays this as part of an effort by Politburo hardliners to arrest what they perceived as the beginning of a rapprochement with the United States and a liberalization within Soviet society under Leonid Brezhnev.

Sewell builds a fast-paced, circumstantial case for the existence of this political environment in the Politburo and for the plot it might have inspired under the direction of the conservative communist ideologue Mikhail Suslov. The open literature has long alluded to the activities of such anti-detente reactionaries. According to Sewell, a group of mysterious men joined the boat before sailing and eventually commandeered the vessel, taking the submarine out of its normal patrol area, toward Hawaii, and then dying with the rest of the crew when an explosion sent K-129 to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The author also suggests that Project Jennifer actually recovered the entire vessel for close examination and subsequently spread disinformation to the effect that billionaire Howard Hughes' vessel, the Glomar Explorer, had recovered only the forward third.


While the political context provides interesting reading, the revelations offered in "Red Star Rogue" depart completely from history and present a doubtful scenario based largely on surmise.

When I joined the project that eventually emerged, in 2003, as "Rising Tide: The Untold Story of the Russian Submarines That Fought the Cold War," I intended to record the full-career oral histories of Russian officers who expressed a willingness to speak with me. Those supporting my effort felt that these naval officers, formed by the Soviet system, would recoil at the sight of a digital voice recorder and prefer some measure of anonymity. Over many days, as I conducted interviews that lasted hours and exhausted two translators, the dreaded request for anonymity never came.

Given the revelations I received, I knew the story would be somewhat sensational. For a historian, regardless of the circumstances, history must rest on evidence that the writer can attribute to people and institutions -- evidence a reader can confirm. This has been a priority of my work in Cold War history over the last 20 years.

But I also needed to write reliable history because of the access and trust extended to me by the Russian officers and their families. As conversations progressed, I was frequently invited to look through family photo albums while sharing a meal, some vodka and a tour of one modest apartment after another. Wives asked me about my Catherine and what she prepared at mealtime and how. On my next visit to St. Petersburg I have to keep my promise to share Catherine's recipe for Southern fried chicken with Rear Admiral Lev Chernavin's marvelous wife. I owed these people a professional history, not a bit of sensation.

"Red Star Rogue" is plagued by sensation and lack of credibility. The most important historical problem involves the arrival of the mysterious 11 crewmen. The author offers no evidence that this took place. The best he can do is point to the number of medals awarded to the crew years later by President Vladimir Putin -- 11 more than the ship's usual complement. Yet ships of all sizes and types frequently go to sea with additional personnel, and at times these people fall victim to tragedy. In 1941, the German battleship Bismarck sent HMS Hood to the bottom and, with her, workers from a British shipyard. The American submarine USS Thresher also had additional personnel on board when she submerged for the last time.


Simon & Schuster

K-129, a Soviet nuclear submarine pictured here off the Russian coast, sank near Hawaii in 1968.

The author's description of this Golf II coming to the surface near Hawaii to launch its missiles only exacerbates the credibility problem. K-129 experienced an overhaul in 1967 modifying her according to Project 629A to fire R-21, system D-4, submerged launch missiles under an order dated July 2, 1962. The boat also received the Sigma 629A navigation system, and, in early 1968, a towed communications antenna called Paravan. For K-129, the first two modifications concluded on June 22, 1967 -- not in 1966, as the author claims -- and doubtless required repeated technical shakedown tests at sea after installation. This process would be completely normal in any navy and could very easily account for personnel onboard other than assigned crewmembers. It also discounts the assumption that K-129 surfaced to launch her missiles, a key component of the story. Sewell makes note of the technical conversion but never truly factors the upgrades into his story. He just tells us that the boat surfaced to launch in spite of the new capability -- a decision no submariner or conspirator would have made. Why fire in full view of probable American surveillance when one can stay submerged and unseen? This is the very reason for having submerged-launch capability in the first place.

An evaluation of Sewell's use of sources also raises questions. Fourteen interviewees requested anonymity, while the officers with whom I worked -- one of them only semi-retired and still serving on active duty -- never suggested withholding their names. This presents an issue of credibility. In addition, some sources claim less than this story suggests. The author mentions John Pina Craven, chief scientist for the American Polaris Ballistic Missile Project in the 1960s, noting the possibility of a rogue launch. However, an examination of Craven's book "The Silent War" shows that he immediately declared it unlikely and never qualified his conclusion. In addition, Soviet missile submarines were a relatively frequent occurrence off the American East Coast in the mid-1960s; I interviewed a number of their commanding officers. Having Soviet nuclear warheads within striking distance in 1968 could not have seemed new to the CIA or the Navy. At that point in time, the United States sought to keep close track of them, with the proper countermeasures at the ready.

In "Red Star Rogue," Sewell asks for trust but provides very little for the reader to lean on. Too much of the story is thin air. Barring the emergence of new documentation and verifiable oral histories, his book fails as history and offers only modest thrills for the imaginative.

Gary E. Weir heads the contemporary history branch of the U.S. Naval Historical Center.

Those guys didn't read the book closely.

The list of who was on the sub went missing, even so names and ID's can be forged.

The commanding officers acted very strangely before the ship departed. Like men that thought they were going to die, very strange.


Golf subs were cramped, they were not going to take any extra personal unless they were forced to.

The author made no conclusions about what those 11 extra guys did, whether they took over the boat, or were placed there to help others ect.

He also claims that one of the reasons we knew where K19 sank is because we caught the explosion on satellite. A satellite designed to detect rocket launch’s, it caught the fuel igniting but at the time it looked like a false return because it was a quick explosion then the sub sank.

All in all it was a pretty good book that present 1 out of 4 theros as to why this sub went down.

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2007 Tiara 3200

Time will only tell how close we were or are how close we have came to nuclear annihilation...........and there is more to come.

Ironicly I was talking with one of our younger office girls about life in the USSR era. I knew what Dense Pack defense was when I was eight years old. I knew the capabilities of the MinuteMan, Dart nuclear missles and the blast radius if a missle hit my home town.

Its hard to tell if we are safer today than 1970.

I found one of the more compelling pieces of "evidence" to be the fact that upwards of 70 bodies were discovered in sections 1 and 2 of the sub when the original photographic survey of the wreck was completed. Those sections wouldn't have had any more than 20-25 crew under any conditions as they were cramped. There were no escape hatches in either section and there was one entrance to the two sections that could easily be controlled by a single person with an automatic weapon. This strongly suggested that the majority of the crew had been forced into this area after the boat had been seized by the 11 unknown crew members, who Sewell postulates was an osnatz unit.

It is an interesting theory on Sewell's part, and it seems to be backed-up by quite a bit of suggestive/circumstantial evidence. If we ever learn the truth and find out it was wrong, it was at least as entertaining a read as most Tom Clancy novels.

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Jonathan

2011 Mazda2
2000 E320 4Matic Wagon
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Or it could be that fire or flooding forced the crew into a different section of the boat before it sank.

Been on a surface ship that had a fire. Bad juju.

B

It is scary. Can you even imagine how it would have changed the course of history?

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Anders

1995 E300
2015 VW TDI Sportwagen 15K
1977 240D (197K)
2002 Subaru Legacy L Wagon (115k) (Wife's)
Gone but not forgotten:
2005 Buick LeSabre
1998 C230
1984 300D
1983 240D
1981 300SD
1974 240D
1974 Fiat 124 Spider
1968 Triumph TR250

Imagine if Ted Williams was a Yankee ; or DiMaggio was a Red Sox...???

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'87 924S
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Sold ->

81 300SD -
93 300E w/ 3.2
85 300D-
79 300SD
82 300CD
83 300CD - CA
87 190E 5 spd
87 Porsche 924S

"..I'll take a simple "C" to "G" and feel brand new about it..."

Yea, there would have been a good possibility that there would not have been a future to worry about.

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Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

...or if Johnny Damon was a Yankee...

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Anders

1995 E300
2015 VW TDI Sportwagen 15K
1977 240D (197K)
2002 Subaru Legacy L Wagon (115k) (Wife's)
Gone but not forgotten:
2005 Buick LeSabre
1998 C230
1984 300D
1983 240D
1981 300SD
1974 240D
1974 Fiat 124 Spider
1968 Triumph TR250

If that sub had fired the missle and Pearl Harbor had been wiped out, both China and the Soviet Union would have been wiped out by the US. That was standard policy back then.

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Regards

Warren

Currently 1965 220Sb, 2002 FORD Crown Vic Police Interceptor

Had 1965 220SEb, 1967 230S, 280SE 4.5, 300SE (W126), 420SEL

ENTER > = (HP RPN)

Not part of the in-crowd since 1952.

Yup, the course of history is what we need to worry about.
Ok, I keep slipping on my sarcasm.
Interesting story.
I always had a thing for submarines. Specially 'yellow ones'...dang here it goes again

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_spring

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