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Home > Miscellaneous >> Cold War surveillance ops. |
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With the USS ORLECK (DD 886) in Cold War surveillance ops. By Peter A. Huchthausen, Capt. USN (ret) Many of us serving on destroyers during the long Cold War took part at one time or another in close surveillance operations against units of the Soviet Navy as it grew into a blue water fleet. Following the naval face off over Cuba, the mid-1960s found the Red Navy woefully short of long-range assets. Thus began a massive building program in which new surface combatants and nuclear submarines were dropping off the building ways in alarming numbers. The late 1960s saw the first permanent Soviet Navy presence in the Mediterranean, and elsewhere, an increasing number of Soviet ships left their fleet op areas for the high seas. Such appearнances were the only time western navies could study them and their behavior. Naturally, this close-range surveillance spawned many grand sea stories. The following is an account of an early post-World War II close-surveilнlance operation. It took place between U.S. and Soviet forces during the Soviet Navy's expansion into waters previously considered the exclusive domain of the navies of the free world. In 1966, after months of tedious patrols in the Taiwan Strait or the Tonkin Gulf, tracking eight Soviet subнmarines in the fine spring weather of the Philippine Sea was a welcome assignment for the crew of the USS ORLECK (DD-886). En route with DesRon Three from the South China Sea to her home port in Yokosuka, Japan, DD-886 was diverted to surveil the eight Soviet ZULU-class diesel submarines and their DON-class tender, which were returning to Vladivostok from training with the Soviet's Pacific Fleet. The assignment was welcomed with enthusiasm by all aboard the ORLECK, a FRAM I, anti-submarine warfare destroyer, which seldom enjoyed the opportunity to match skills with real submarines.
The crews of the eight-ship DesRon Three, operating with the Seventh Fleet flagship, USS OKLAHOMA CITY (CLG-5), boasted many "WestPac sailors." These descendants of the old Asiatic Fleet had been living' in Japan since the Korean War and, in several cases, since 1945. These were mostly senior petty officers who remained permanently in Japan and transferred from one ship to the next as the squadrons rotated every three years to new home ports in California. As a result, some of the ORLECK's most senior first-class and chief petty officers were experienced salts. Many of these men lived in Japanese houses in and around Yokosuka in the picturesque Kanagawa Prefecture. Life in Japan in the 1960s was economical for Americans and offered the navy men a pleasant respite between deployments with few of the social restraints that faced navy men in West Coast ports. The ORLECK's wardroom and chiefs' quarters were occupied mostly by happy-go-lucky young men who enjoyed WestPac life. We were a spirнited group with high morale spiked by recent action in the South China Sea off the coast of North Vietnam. As we steamed at flank speed to take station on our quarry that day in 1966, we probably caused a great deal of curiosнity with our three over-sized battle ensigns flying from the masthead and two yard arms and a mysterious olive-drab van lashed to our small helicopter flight deck aft. The van had been hurriedly installed in less than two hours in Subic Bay three days before. With the van came a handful of communications technicians, or CTs, and one rumpled and studious-looking lieutenant, jg, who was fluent in Russian. The presence of the van with strange antennae protruding from the top, and the sudden arrival of the CTs, whose very existence was secret, helped make the coming surveilнlance assignment even more thrilling. For a single destroyer equipped with only slightly up-dated WWII anti-submarine weapons and detection gear, the ORLECK faced a difficult task maintaining continuous surveillance on eight submarines Ч especially if some periodically submerged. When one of the submarines submerged, the destroyer's mission was to hold contact with it until she could pass it off to a maritime patrol aircraft, either P3 Orions or the older P2V Neptunes, flying out of Iwakuni, Japan, or Guam. At the same time, the ORLECK had to keep track of the tender and remaining surfaced submarines. By the second week of this, when the Soviet seamen showed no sign of tiring or returning home to the Sea of Japan, the American sailors' initial interest began to wane. As the ORLECK's Chief Engineer and senior watch officer responsible for the training and performance of the officers' watch bill, I stood watches on the bridge. Keeping track of Russians was a good way to pass a four-hour watch, and with a little luck, the rumpled lieutenant jg, would emerge from his van, skulk to the bridge and pass on some wisdom about what the Soviets were up to. It did not take long to ascertain that he was in charge of an electronic eaves-dropping team. Those standing watch on the bridge welcomed his visits, which usually occurred during the night watches when the captain was not present to see the lieutenant's disreputable appearance. He always looked as if he had just climbed out of a bag of soiled laundry.
Although only three others were cleared to know what the bright young lieutenant and the rest of his Naval Security Group Direct Support Detachment were doing, he did not hesitate to pass on poorly concealed tidbits of advice when the Soviets were about to do something. He called his nuggets of information "direct tactical support," which the ORLECK's crew knew was coming from his signal intelligence van. Initially, the ship's company were awed by the Security Group's ability, which was displayed one warm tropic night during the mid-watch. The jg, nickнnamed Spooky, materialized on the wing of the bridge. "In a few minutes, you' re going to see a couple of surface contacts coming out of the north" he said. "A Soviet tanker in company with a KOTLIN-class destroyer will join us." He then vanished. A half hour later, the ORLECK's surface search radar picked up two contacts approaching from the north at about 35 miles. They were heading in our direction exactly as Spooky was predicated. After that, the watch standers listened intently to every word Spooky uttered, fascinated by the power of vision he commanded in the van. A favorite tactic of the Soviet subнmarine group was to steam slowly at eight knots while the crews of two of the ZULU submarines took advantage of the better facilities aboard the large, seven-thousand-ton tender. The two subs bobbed next to the tender on a long boat boom while the remaining six submarines kept a loose station in a circle around the tender. The trial came as the subs shifted positions. One of the two on the tender's boom slowly drifted away from the mother ship and submerged stealthily to avoid our noнtice. They normally did this at night when there were rain squalls and a slight sea to hamper visibility and interfere with the surface search radar's ability to clearly observe the maneuver. The ORLECK's reputation as an ASW ship hung on a fine line as our constant stream of situation reports were read up and down the line by the squadron commodore, the Seventh Fleet commander, and the many lofty staffs analysts, and sooth-sayers following the details of the Cold War ASW situation. One night, I was OOD, and was on the bridge early in the mid watch. With weather conditions deteriorating, I was unable to determine whether there were still two subs on the tender's boom. According to the captain's night orнders, the ORLECK was to maintain a minimum distance of 1,500 yards at all times to avoid a dangerous or embarrassing situation. As the OOD, I was expected to give the alarm if any of the subs submerged. The result of losing one of the submarines both visually and on sonar would be a professional embarrassment to the ship.
Submarines tender of project 310 (Don-class) With this in mind and unable to deterнmine whether there were one or two subs by the tender, I slowly maneuvered the ORLECK astern of the tender, swinging gently from his port quarter to his starboard. It was a perfectly harmнless maneuver, except that we had to cross the bow of one of the surfaced submarines 2,000 yards astern of the tender. As the ORLECK approached the tender to the minimum distance preнscribed by the captain's night orders, I was forced to cross the sub's bow by about five hundred yards, which in my calculations was adequate. I inched the ship forward to the new position, but still was unable to discern whether one or two subs lay alongside the tender ahead. With growing confidence after nearly an hour of uncertainty and no new sonar echo indicating a sub may have submerged, I threw caution to the winds and inched forward toward the tender, to 1,200, then 1,000, then to 800 yards. Still unable to count the submarines, I reduced the distance to about 600 yards, and ordered the signal bridge to illuminate the nest on the starboard side of the tender. It was a good thing, for we saw clearly in the brief illumination of the red-lensed signal light that the outboard submarine had only her sail awash as she gradually slid away from the tender. As alert watch standers, we had caught them, I thought with relief. Now all I had to do was to increase the distance between the ORLECK and the tender to the required 1,500 yards, guide our sonar onto the submerging sub and thereby thwart the Red plot. I cautiously backed the ORLECK making sure that the submarine astern was clear. Technically, as officer of the deck, I had violated the standing night orders, but I was certain the combat information center (CIC) watch officer, who had watched the operation from his enclosed tactical plot, and the rest of the enlisted watch would not breathe a word to anyone that I had brought the ORLECK to a narrow 600 or so yards of the Soviets. As daylight slowly arrived, and the end of the watch drew near, the ship's sonar men maintained strong contact on the submerged sub, and all the other subs were in sight or on radar. I was feeling elated to have returned stealthily to the prescribed limits of station when the captain appeared on the bridge, looking satisfied that all was in order. Suddenly, the Soviet tender's signal light began to flash a message. When necessary during the course of the surveillance, the Soviets had communicated with the U.S. ships by signal light, usually when they wished to give advance warning of a potentially dangerous maneuver. Those of as standing watch realized a significant message was coming from the Russian bridge, and after a few minutes, the signalman arrived in the pilot house. "Flashing light message from the Russian, sir, in English," he reported. There was silence on the bridge as the captain read the signal. Gradually my elation over foiling the Russian maneuver dissolved into remorse when the captain looked up with a frown and said, "When you are relieved of the deck report to me in my cabin."
A short time later, I stood in the captain's sea cabin while the latter held the signal in his hands and read aloud in the Russian's broken English, and my euphoria gradually gave way to despair. Your official on watch during the last hours of night is conducting himself in a dangerous and provocative manner by reducing the distance between ships to less than 500 meters, crossing the course of one Soviet ship, forcing it to maneuver to avoid danger. I demanding that your official of the watch be severely punished and that such irresponsible actions be avoid in the future. I will reporting this gross display of poor seaman action to our fleet headquarters for appropriнate diplomatic actions. The Soviet Commander I had been put on report by a Russian officer! A new and unforgettable experience for me.
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