Subject: Re: [Fwd: Fwd: Connecticut Navy town relates to Russian submarine accident]
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 06:57:13 EDT
From: MOFFETT654@aol.com
To: gtucker@povn.com
G'day Gary,
I think Chuck was in part a victim of his own success. The taint of the
Nixon White House and Watergate had to effect his chances for political
appointment in a Democrat administration, and knowing Clinton as we do now I
suspect Chuck's aviation, submarine, nuclear, and special projects
credentials were too imposing. He would have done better with George Bush
who was neither a draft dodger nor a legal showman, and was for a time our
DCI boss!
Galen and Bucky Biddle stopped by while I was in Hawaii after Halibut and we
had a great day sailing Kaneohe Bay some three decades before Baywatch
Hawaii discovered the place. Seems I recall a note from Galen last winter that he
was planning to open a B&B up in Sitka. I didn't know about the boat
deliveries. I haven't decided on the reunion yet. My last was back in '82 and it was
difficult even then. Now with BMB and more Hollywood projects afoot it will
be a target for all sorts of folks looking for details and storylines we
have pledged to protect and this time it won't be just tearful wives wanting to
know. The pressure from Roger for the details of BJ's untimely passing to
put some substance in his tale of Hotel Street liberties and breaches of
faith in the propulsion plant was embarrassing for us both. I'd do anything
to get together with the guys in a way that we were free to talk about those
days, but I don't see that happening in Atlantic City any more than it did
at Mare some two decades ago. The fact that some of the story is out makes it
even harder to contain the rest, the real meat of the whole thing that would
set Drew and Sontag back on their heels and have scriptwriters pounding their
computers. Reality is a bitch!
Regards,
Peter
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Fwd: Connecticut Navy town relates to Russian submarine accident]
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 09:41:34 EDT
From: MOFFETT654@aol.com
To: gtucker@povn.com
Gary,
I worked for ComSubDevGru ONE for many years after HALIBUT and the DSRVs
Were part of the strange collection of submersibles and other stuff we operated.
The WSJ piece was forwarded to me by Charlie MacVean, first CO of Seawolf,
after she got the Halibut mods, and later CSDG1. Also Dick Hall of the
Halibut Project gang and later at Dev Gru was one of the COs of DSRV Avalon.
Chuck Larson, last CO of Halibut and featured reunion speaker, was also
CSDG1 for a while and was in a position to make sure the Navy didn't object
to Roger Dunham's book before it went to press. Small world.
Regards,
Peter
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Fwd: Connecticut Navy town relates to Russian submarine accident]
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 08:43:45 EDT
From: MOFFETT654@aol.com
To: gtucker@povn.com
Gary,
Fram the WSJ online:
WRITTEN ON WATER
The Death of the Kursk
Clinton could have ordered a rescue operation. Instead, he went to L.A. and
delivered a tribute to himself.
BY MARK HELPRIN
Tuesday, August 22, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT
If Russia is an enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded by mystery, its military
is the holy of holies, and the navy traditionally the most secret.
Traditionally, because not so long ago, when navies were the first
Instrument of national power, victory was often a matter of removing or maintaining the
veils of secrecy surrounding the location of ships and fleets, their
communications, and their exact capabilities. Of the various branches of
navies the submarine services are still the most opaque, and of all the
places in the world to be, the ocean above the Arctic Circle is among the
most forbidding and least hospitable.
That is why at this point only someone willing according to the dictates of
his imagination to substitute potential for fact can claim to know exactly
what happened to the Kursk. No one knows without doubt even what happened to
the USS Maine or to EgyptAir Flight 990, as reconstruction can be as
unreliable as prediction.
Nonetheless, it is possible to weigh and judge the probabilities of the
ever-changing scenarios presented as fact or floating up as rumor. When the
Russians suggested that the Kursk may have collided with a U.S. submarine,
they had not stepped beyond the bounds of propriety. American submarines
have been extraordinarily, justifiably, and reciprocally bold in their
penetration and reconnaissance of Soviet and (presumably) Russian waters, and it is
hardly far-fetched to consider such a collision during a complex exercise in
a crowded sea. Reportedly, two American submarines were on the scene.
If the U.S. were involved (responsibility is another question, as it takes
two to collide), eventually the facts would come out. There are simply too
many sailors, too many families, and too many shipyard workers who would
have to repair or see the damage that would have inevitably resulted. The
Russians stated that shortly after the Kursk went down they monitored an American
submarine requesting emergency permission to enter Norwegian waters. A
vessel that would not ask permission to shadow a Russian ship nearly to its berth
in Severomorsk would hardly feel the need, especially if it had a guilty
conscience, to petition an ally for leave to transit its empty arctic sea
space. And if such a request were made, it would more likely be so that the
submarine could leave the area as quickly as possible, to wait in friendly
waters until summoned to aid a rescue operation.
Although the fairwater planes of certain classes of U.S. submarines would be
capable of ripping through a ship's plating like a knife, the Kursk is
doubled-walled, with a gap of 13 feet between the outer and inner hull. Even
though in the geometry of a hypothetical collision the inner hull is out of
reach, on each side of the Kursk are banks of 12 surface-to-surface missiles
with a total of 20,000 pounds of high explosive and 66 tons of energy-rich
propellant. Still, an explosion triggered by crushing the missile tubes
would probably be so catastrophic as to break up the entire craft and destroy
anything close to it. It is most unlikely that the United States contributed
to the sinking of the Kursk, and, if it did, keeping such a thing quiet
would require deniability even beyond the talents of an administration that
doesn't know what is is.
Geometry militates as well against the Russian claim, advanced a few days
after the accident, that the Kursk may have been struck by a Russian
icebreaker. The deepest draft of any of these ships is about 35 feet,
meaning that to sustain damage along its side the Kursk would have to have been
running on or breaching the surface, in which case the crew of the
icebreaker certainly would have been aware of something untoward.
The best supposition is that the Kursk fell victim to an internal explosion.
Soviet submarines are not strangers to all kinds of propulsion mishaps,
including nuclear, and if the intricacies of a vessel's power plant are
suspect, so will be the measures to guard against premature detonation of
its armament. If American carriers and battleships can be crippled and nearly
sunk by munitions accidents, so can Russian submarines. Or perhaps the Kursk
struck a mine left over from the Second World War or of more recent vintage.
It is possible that in the course of their exercise the Russians
inadvertently loosed a homing torpedo. Perhaps something happened that no
one has even considered.
We may never know. But we can know, and we do know, exactly and precisely
what we did wrong when faced with this crisis--the Russians in particular
but the U.S. as well. A Russian mechanic, one Vladimir Starodubtsov, evidenced
more leadership, decisiveness, and character than either of the two
presidents of Russia and the United States. "What a disgrace!" he said.
"They should have used all available means simultaneously from the very start."
How right he was. There is no question that immediately upon hearing of the
accident every power of remedy, redundant or not, should have been brought
to bear. Without even putting down the phone that alerted him, Mr. Putin should
have called upon Britain, the United States, and anyone else in a position
to help. Strange are the ways of a habitual dictatorship, but that is no excuse
for the unexceptional performance of President Clinton. On Saturday, he was
or should have been informed of the Kursk. Whether or not he had heard from
the Russians, he should have ordered a Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, or
DSRV, and its appropriate support to stage in Europe, and to prepare to
receive instructions while in the air for diversion to Murmansk.
We have two DSRVs, both based in San Diego. They can lift off from North
Island Naval Air Station in C-5 transports, and are automatically readied at
first news of submarine disaster anywhere in the world. Each can operate to
a depth of 5,000 feet, rescue to a depth of 2,000, and adjust to a list of up
to 45 degrees. Listing at 20 degrees in 350 feet of water, the Kursk would
be no special challenge for DSRV Mystic or DSRV Avalon, except perhaps in
regard to hatch compatibility. In 1981, the U.S. provided every submarine-producing
nation in the world, including the Soviet Union, specifications to allow
them to make escape hatches compatible with the DSRVs. These are now standardized
world-wide, except perhaps in Russia. There is no reason why Russia should
not have standardized as well, especially in so new a boat, but even had
they not, two options would have remained. The "skirt" of the DSRV, which links to the hatch to form an airtight seal,is flexible. Even were adjustment insufficient, with the dimensions of the Russian hatch rim an adapter could have been fabricated in quick time and flown to the scene. That the hatch was damaged might not have been
insurmountable; for every engineering problem there is an engineering
solution. Had the two nations devoted their best energies to removing
survivors, they might have been lifted out--up to 24 at a time--in the
homely but agile DSRV. And the DSRV could have been in Murmansk on Sunday and in
operation on Monday, when, according to the latest Russian statement, the
last sounds were heard from within the stricken boat--of sailors, trapped in
the freezing, air-depleted darkness, who were knocking to show that they
were still alive. But the DSRVs were not tasked, the airfields not lined up, the C-5s not dispatched, the adapter not forged, the announcements not made. Why?
Lethargy. Lack of imagination. Incompetence. Distraction. On Saturday, the
president should have held a news conference, announcing that we were not in
any way involved in the accident but that we were aware of it, and that we
were offering our help to Russia. To prevent a complicating Russian
humiliation, he would state that "this country, too, in recent memory, has
lost submarines, and the families still grieve. We, too, send our sailors
into arctic waters, and are aware of the danger. Because of this, we stand
ready to help as you wish, and have dispatched our DSRVs to a third country,
to await your summons. They are in the air now, and will divert to Murmansk
if you request. We work together in space. Let us work together on the sea
as well. And let all other considerations fall in favor of the immediate rescue
of your sons, who, for the moment, are our sons too."
It is possible that survivors of the accident might have been spared the
agonizing death they have apparently suffered, and that relations between
the United States and Russia would have taken a new turn, for the bonds that are
created in the drama of fighting a terrible enemy run as strongly one way as
another. This was an opportunity and a humanitarian obligation that a real
commander in chief would have seized upon and honored without hesitation.
But, of the two presidents, the Russian was merely an apparatchik on
vacation, and the American was busy preparing a convention speech in which
he presented himself as the center of the world. He delivered that speech, and
gloried in it, just after the knocking had stopped.
Mr. Helprin is a novelist, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal
and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. His column appears Tuesdays.