The Cold War Beneath The Waves | Submarines In Enemy Depths | Timeline

my name's dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video submarines stalking each other in the icy depths of the oceans as the superpowers strive for political supremacy after many years of silence the secrets of the submarine's cold war are now gradually surfacing there's not much place to hide anymore their battleground is the ocean floor and the perpetual ice the cold war was only cold for the diplomats they were freezing because they had nothing to do but for sailors like us serving on subs things got so hot that we were literally dripping with sweat a confrontation that puts the crews at terrible risk the bodies of our comrades were so radioactive that they contaminated us as well the entire boat had to be decontaminated [Music] a confrontation that puts all mankind at risk i don't want my children to die as a result as a casualty of war or of human ignorance may 1945 the crews of nazi germany's lust submarines surrender they had been sent out to victory or death it had been victory for none of them but death for seven out of ten [Music] the victors celebrate but while many believe that peace will finally reign tension is mounting behind the scenes and with east confronting west the cold war begins among the victor's spoils of war the new type 21 submarine it can remain submerged for days and runs faster underwater than on the surface representing the first genuine submarine it is feverishly examined by the victor's eager to copy its technology soon both sides are producing submarines able to sneak close to the enemy's coast undetected the americans launched the new guppy class while the soviets turned the germans type 21 into project 613 the whiskey class as nato calls it [Music] 1949 the soviets detonate their first nuclear bomb from now on there are two superpowers and the arms race is on the united states build their first nuclear reactors to power their submarines the peaceful use of nuclear energy comes a far second the initial goal is to create a super weapon in 1954 the uss 571 nautilus is launched the world's first nuclear submarine technically it's a nuclear-powered type 21 submarine it can remain undetected underwater for months since its reactor only needs to refuel every 20 years it produces a surplus of oxygen as well as electricity and abundance life on board a sub like this is almost luxurious for the soviets the nautilus is a nightmare [Music] when the nautilus was being built an expert who was apparently no expert on nuclear reactors mockingly that a reactor was as big as a block of houses he said a reactor as small as the one installed in the nautilus could never work that the americans were just in 1959 the skate a boat of the nautilus class is the first submarine to surface at the north pole even today the icy underwater wasteland of the arctic is still an ideal hideout for submarines below the ice they are invisible and almost immune to sonar detection since sound waves are refracted by billions of ice crystals nature creates a near soundproof carpet stretching all the way to the soviet union's northern coast at the beginning of the cold war both superpowers place their hopes in guided missiles american submarines can now carry ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads all the way to the soviet coastline but weapons like the regulus developed directly from the german v1 have one decisive disadvantage the subs have to surface near the enemy coast in order to launch the missile and that makes them vulnerable [Music] american scientists are looking for a remedy to that problem when both nations were just spending all their time and coming up with a deterrent no one thought about ballistic missiles and submarines tests are made to launch nuclear missiles from ships when you have a surface ship the habitat of the surface ship at that time was a pitching rolling heaving ship no matter how big or whatever it was and the habitat in which you launched liquid-fueled missiles has to be an absolutely stable habitat john craven is in charge of the polaris missile project when craven proposes to install the polaris on nuclear submarines the navy is thrilled until now the capacity for nuclear strikes has been a privilege of the air force then things got hairier and hairier as it looked like the russians were going to do more and so they came to us and they said can you get more than one submarine in 20 years and we said well we can take four submarines that we have now and cut them in half and put in a missile section and we can have those four submarines at sea in less than four years and so indeed four submarines are cut in half and rebuilt with missile sections a segment with 16 missile shafts is simply welded in place behind the tower and thus series production begins by the time we finished which only took maybe 10 or 12 years we had built 41 submarines and we had what we call the boat of the month club we commissioned a full nuclear submarine with 16 missiles once a month for 18 months [Music] [Music] the strategy of deterrence comes into its own the concept owes much to craven since his ballistic submarines guarantee the capability for a second strike but a decisive part of deterrence is being vulnerable yourself keeping both superpowers from playing with the idea of an all-out nuclear attack i mean america's ballistic missile submarines are really formidable i mean one one one boomer can cause 50 million casualties deterrence works but there are some who believe in absolute superiority and want to dispense with the concept of mutual vulnerability especially edward teller the father of the hydrogen bomb every time i would meet with every teller he would tell me we were going to have a nuclear war with the soviet union within five years and i've i met with him over a period of almost 30 years and every time i would meet with him i would say to edward edward you told me you will be having nuclear war with the soviets by this time and he would look at me and darkly and he'd say if he will have one within the next five years okay and it was always five years and it was repeated all of the time well it's because he wanted it he wanted it because his family was destroyed by the by the soviets okay and and so he just had this tremendous desire to to get even the soviets also have a strong desire to get even but not until 1958 that they succeed in completing their first nuclear submarine four years after the nautilus was built k3 and its sister ships have no missiles on board though they are built in haste and not properly tested before being put into service [Music] i wouldn't say we struggled with our nuclear technology but it's true that we had to experiment with the technology and with our own bodies as well technically the boats are far from perfect the crew's safety is a low priority for the soviet navy the mission is far more important than the lives of the sailors an approach which is accepted by the crew of nuclear submarine k-19 with a typically russian fatalism [Music] the crews of that first generation of submarines were made up of very simple peasants and workers the second and third generations of our submarines were technically better equipped and made use of previous experience some of them even equaled the standard of american submarines in terms of sound absorption and conditions of life on board the k-19 is supposed to catch up with the americans nuclear and operative lead it is operating south of iceland when a chain of fateful events begins [Music] with i bend forward and i'm taking some notes when i suddenly look up as if something had bitten me the instrument in the bottom row the indicator for the primary cooling system shows that there is zero pressure an instant ago it had shown 200 atmospheres there is a malfunction in the reactor's cooling system threatening to destroy the boat and everyone aboard [Music] eight men volunteered to enter the reactor compartment for emergency repairs [Music] they just said everything's okay everything's okay they were so busy that they had no time to think of the consequences but of course they knew they were exposed to a deadly dose [Music] everyone knows the men who save their comrades lives by repairing the system will not outlive their heroic deed [Music] their necks were so swollen that their shoulders began at their ears but that wasn't all [Music] their vocal cords were damaged their voices had totally changed they sounded strange like dwarves with a falsetto due to the radiation their faces were unrecognizable swollen so badly they looked as if they'd been attacked by wasps the skin on their faces was dark red the color of old bricks but following the makeshift repair the cooling system breaks down again another volunteer has to enter the reactor room a man who saw what had happened to his comrades another crew member sacrifices himself we didn't know how bad the radiation was because the men who measured the radioactivity were not allowed to tell the rest of the crew what they knew we didn't know how contaminated their bodies were what dose they had received we only knew that the indicators on all the boats measuring instruments couldn't go any higher all men with radiation sickness are taken off the boat and sent to a hospital the most severely contaminated only last a few days [Music] all his blood vessels had essentially decayed and burst open he was bleeding from the nose the mouth his eyes and from every other opening if you know what i mean and then they died one after the other first yuri nikolayev captive then boris rishkoff one after the other sermon the soviets tried to catch up with american technology but neither their missiles nor their submarines measure up to american standards so the navy stages a trick when demonstrating their prowess to khrushchev the first soviet underwater missile is launched from a diesel-powered submarine moving parallel to a nuclear sub to make khrushchev believe the ussr has caught up with the americans [Music] the soviets first ballistic submarines are usually powered by diesel electric engines like the boats of world war ii yet they still represent a threat to the americans [Music] we want to make sure that no russian ballistic missile submarine is going to be on station without our knowing that it's on station that's why the americans cover the ocean floor with microphones programmed to detect submarines the bugging system is called saucers sound surveillance system all you hear about about the the us not having a good intelligence system is just pure [ __ ] okay the social network is expanded the system refined until no soviet ship and no soviet submarine can travel the world's oceans without being detected while the americans know the whereabouts of every soviet submarine the russians have no comparable system but when craven speaks of a good intelligence system he doesn't only mean saucers the americans are also up to date about the soviet union's internal political and military matters sometimes even better than the soviet government itself we continuously educated the rulers of the kremlin that the paranoid part of their community was going to have a coup sooner or later and and that we educated them in such a way that they could defuse that coup and that was a major element of winning the cold war soviet putists in march 1968 the diesel electric powered ballistic submarine k-129 heads out to sea on a seemingly routine patrol shortly afterwards u.s intelligence realizes that k-129 isn't reporting its bearings any longer but has broken off all contact to its headquarters then soviet forces are monitored as they are sent out on a large-scale yet futile search and the sub keeps heading towards the usa there was a rogue submarine that it was up to no good of any kind and also that if it was a rogue submarine that the kremlin would not know that it was a rogue submarine or one with a defective radio transmitter only one thing is certain k-129 goes down on the 8th of march 1968 with the entire crew according to a us report due to a hydrogen explosion while recharging its batteries at the strangely precise position of 180 degrees west 40 degrees north it would be technically possible for that submarine to be launching a missile in the direction of hawaii craven believes that k-129 was about to launch a nuclear missile from the surface and that the missile exploded because a secret safety mechanism prevented it from taking off but there are arguments that refute this assumption [Music] a boat of that type used the b4 missile complex which enabled a submarine to launch missiles only underwater from a depth of 45 meters so did k-129 sink while attempting to launch the missile underwater from a depth of 45 meters stop there is circumstantial evidence to make this doubtful most important at the time of the disaster the boat was running at periscope depth a maximum of 15 meters [Music] i saw the photos the americans took of the k-129 lying on the ocean floor with all its periscopes extended that's clear-cut evidence that the boat was no deeper than 15 meters so the boat had neither surfaced nor was it at launching depth even today the russians still believed that k-129 was being shadowed by an american submarine which then rammed it intentionally in order to sink it an american whose name i'm not allowed to mention told me you russians are right if you believe your boat was rammed by one of ours but of course it was allegedly unintentional an accident as may happen at sea one boat accidentally rams another and that goes down then the cia attempts to salvage k-129 from a depth of 5000 meters the most expensive salvage operation ever the project devours 500 million dollars including the construction of a special ship the glomar explorer the cover story manganese lumps are to be scraped from the ocean floor however the ship's payload area is the size of a submarine saucers only gave the americans a rough idea of the rex position that they found the submarine as proof that they knew where it was before it ever sank what happened while salvaging took place and what was really salvaged is still a secret today neither photographs nor films of the sunken ship were ever published according to the official cia version the americans actually found the boat and lifted it from the ocean floor but then allegedly one of the claws came off and the boat broke in two only the bow could then be salvaged the missiles had been lost and smashed into pieces on the ocean floor even elementary calculations show that when two-thirds of the submarine's mass breaks off which means about 1 500 tons then the change in weight and buoyancy causes such an imbalance that the salvage mechanism would be torn off many salvage experts share this view another strange aspect is the complete lack of debris on the ocean floor one member of the salvage crew just said the remains of the wreck had dissolved in the sea like alka-seltzer or did the americans salvage the entire boat after all if you want my opinion the case of the k-129 is so complicated because the truth is hidden behind a mountain of lies in terms of disinformation it's perhaps only comparable to the course kefir according to the us version six bodies were found in the bow of the boat and ceremonially buried at sea as seen in this video which the cia sent to the soviets back then we've been in contact with the americans for years now including the captain of the salvage vessel and his crew and i keep asking them you discovered our submarine you saw how badly it was damaged all right during the salvage operation it allegedly broke in half and the stern dropped but you got a good look at it beforehand there are thousands of photos and video recordings you know what caused it to sink what actually happened and the american standard answer is great weather today igor do you think tomorrow will be even nicer operations salvaging sunken objects from the bottom of the ocean the americans seem rather bitten by the idea john craven is charged with a secret project which has only gradually become public nr1 is the smallest nuclear submarine of the us fleet it can dive down to 1 000 meters three times as deep as a normal submarine it has a grip arm and wheels which can be lowered enabling it to drive on the ocean floor like an all-terrain vehicle one of the missions that that we had early on is simply the mission of identifying all of the nuclear weapons that were lying on the ocean floor as a result of having been lost by airplanes that have gone down or submarines have gone down this hydrogen bomb was still salvaged conventionally by divers but nr1 is already in service to erect this sauces mast when you get close to the bottom you're close to objects you don't want to run into and you have to be able to hold position and we had a couple of ways to do it when we would lower the wheels and then set the submarine on the bottom take on a little extra weight and then the current wouldn't move you around and we could actually drive right up to what we want to look at in high spirits the young crew tumbles down a slope on the ocean floor they have weighted down the bow of the submarine with ballast water to keep it on the bottom but as a side effect the boat accelerates as we rolled along we approached a sidearm of the canyon that was just literally a vertical cliff and the sonar just looked out past it and didn't see anything the nr1 plunges into the canyon like a nose nose-diving plane the crew tries to stop its fall but with the bow full of water they are unable to straighten it up there was no way to stop the fall because the thrusters would no longer hold it up the nr1 finally comes down in a sort of emergency landing at the bottom of the canyon but they aren't out of danger yet the impact stirs up a cloud of mud they can't see a thing moving around much would cause a an underwater landslide if you will or cause a kind of a mudflow to come down the canyon and if that happened or even if some mud fell in then the ship would be trapped on the bottom by moving back and forth and slowly rocking the boat they are able to free themselves from the mud it was a close call but they are lucky this time it was a scary situation then later we learned there are many ways to get trapped the link submarine got snagged in some cables off of florida and the members of its crew all died because no one could get through them before they ran out of air and that was like several hours they had complete communication they could talk to people but nobody could get down to rescue nr1 is a boat that was specially built for espionage [Music] but the regular submarines whose job is to shadow the other side's missile boats are used for espionage as well they are sent out on photo intelligence and electronic reconnaissance missions and they carry divers for special operations [Music] craig reed was one of them and what navy divers were involved with were a number of operations they included uh various espionage operations this could be photint or photo intelligence it was also mundane in some respects and that navy divers did get involved with retrieval of various different expensive objects that were dropped over the side for these kind of operations the divers are issued with special vehicles just like james bond [Music] one of the most spectacular operations takes place near petropavlovsk the americans discover a soviet telephone cable on the ocean floor connecting the peninsula with the mainland the cable runs at a depth of 200 meters deep enough for the soviets to presume it's safe an error that is to have severe consequences so we tapped it we basically put an induction coil across it and we were able to pull the signals out of it and put those into a recording device this operation became very sophisticated to the point where we actually had a device that looked like a 55-gallon drum with a plutonium-238 reactor in it the americans record every communication between the soviet pacific fleet and moscow tubes extending from submarines supply the divers with a helium oxygen mixture until a traitor within the u.s secret service informs the soviets [Music] our submariners were there in the cfo cost we were retrieving tapes and the soviets came out and it became a very difficult situation to get charges dropped it came very close to making the ultimate sacrifice vladivostok was another vital espionage target at a particular submarine went into vladivostok harbor we weren't supposed to be there of course no submarine of the u.s was supposed to be within a mile off the shore and this submarine was of course trying to take periscope photographs and maneuvering very close within about 900 yards a certain navy diver was asked by the skipper of this boat true traverse through the escape trunk and to go very close to this submarine within a few feet with an underwater 35 millimeter camera surface very briefly during the dim light and take a very close photograph of this odd pod so that it could be determined what it was reid takes his photos right next to the soviet boat and the lookout on the conning tower then he swims back to his submarine not noticing that the soviet boat has started moving as reed is about to enter the diving chamber there's a jolt [Music] the submarine actually collided with uh the submarine that i was on and caused severe flooding and uh caused a very severe incident to happen uh that was actually considered during the cold war to be the worst collision between two opposing foreign vessels underwater vessels the american submarine begins to sink bow first i was shaking but i no longer felt the cold it was just another feeling deep within that this was a situation that i might not return from air is running out time is running out you you know the submarine is at a 30 degree angle that it's running very fast you know that there's been a collision you heard it you don't know that even if they can get you out of that escape trunk that that reprieve might be brief before a soviet torpedo finds you or a depth charge finds you fellow crew members managed to rescue him from the submarine's diving chamber [Music] these were the situations that many submariners lived in almost in every mission that that was conducted during the cold war and this is what most of the world does not know the boomers the u.s strategic missile submarines are constantly on patrol the delicate balance of mutual deterrence is working as envisaged by john craven in the 1950s but when the soviet's power begins to dwindle the whole concept comes into question defends it against its critics pleading against safeguarding america by an anti-ballistic missile screen you have to be vulnerable yourself and so that's why the anti-ballistic missile treaty was signed in which both sides agreed that they would not put up a anti-ballistic missile screen which meant that both sides were vulnerable to missiles that would be launched against against them but the new ideology is gaining more and more supporters while the soviet union grows weaker and weaker the hawks in the usa feel it's time to get tough then ronald reagan becomes president he fundamentally changes the strategy of the usa he no longer relies on the balance of terror but invests in a protective abm shield and miniature nuclear weapons like this nuclear mine which can be carried by divers the americans no longer want to survive the cold war they want to win it as soon as reagan came in every single one of us who had fought against the tactical missile okay was dropped from every advisory committee that we ever served on we were purged just purged richard sale is the secret service correspondent for upi he knows many of those then involved especially inside the reagan administration [Applause] the theory that while you can only have influence what you have very strong diplomat tides with diplomatic ties with really went out the window i think they just suddenly decided we do not have to get along with the russians that's nonsense and we really shouldn't try to the united states has its enormous pent-up force it's both financial and it's military and we should just put them in their place we should show them who's boss it was very very you know eyeball eyeball others place their hopes in dictant or even negotiate with the soviets about banning nuclear weapons from northern europe like sweden's prime minister olaf palmer who tries to win international support for this concept love palmer was acting for some kind of new world order as it used to be called nowadays some kind of dialogue between the west and the soviet union to get rid of the cold war and to in a certain respect to to change the soviet union by dialogue and this was an idea that the americans did not believe in and they thought it was unacceptable the united states was really assuming a very you know a head first attitude i mean we were very trucking we were very bellicose and we were on the march and we were out to humiliate the soviet union if we could but the soviet union seems able to do this without help from the united states on the 27th of october 1981 the soviet sub 137 runs aground 30 kilometers off sweden's naval headquarters at carl's crona so the union where it's caught with its pants down and the only thing the only reason i think i went on the story was the immediate reaction in the u.s press was so organized so loud and so well coordinated it struck me as orchestrated and they were lying and wait for this to happen richard's sale is convinced that it was no soviet missile he suspects a secret operation planned by the pentagon and the cia i was later told after doing a lot of digging uh by people who worked at hascombe air force base and were from mitre corporation and worked you know in the r d departments of the u.s navy that we simply had had the electronic technology that was able to simulate a clear channel to the captain of that submarine so that when he looked at his instruments he thought he was in clear water could that be true we search for and find the soviet submarine commander piotr gustin for the first time in public he tells what actually happened gustin was having compass trouble so he was assigned an additional navigator a senior ranking captain who somehow seems to make one mistake after the other sheer incompetence or outright intent first he steers the sub right into a group of fishing boats with their trawling nets while extracting the boat from the nets the main navigation system's frame antenna was bent antennae the second time we were caught in the nets the echo sounders receiver broke down so we could no longer determine our location there's only one intact navigation system left the so-called pirs or projection information resource system otherwise they depend on the stars like 100 years ago but the sky is overcast and the two officers argue about their correct position they keep getting different readings and in the end the senior navigator gets his way [Music] and just at that moment the last intact system for determining our position pirs broke down too the stranded sub is a media scoop it was clearly a propaganda coup and clearly designed to be one and it was very well executed indeed the impact upon the swedish public and and the european public including the danes i mean the whole of scandinavia was just extraordinary neutral sweden somehow seems to stand in the way of the interests of a superpower but of which one the soviets whose submarines now literally seem to be popping up everywhere off the swedish coast two men were closely involved in these events ola tunanda was an advisor on submarine issues to the swedish government lieutenant colonel sven olof kriemann was the district commander who chased the foreign subs which now are also launching divers there is little doubt that the intruders are soviets they're through vios we thought we were being visited by divers who were inspecting our defense system you call that war preparations i was convinced they were russian special forces on a clandestine mission we drew this conclusion from their behavior and from their equipment it clothed from the cloth of the result it is now considered a fact that soviet special units were training in swedish waters but they probably weren't the only intruders the british were definitely there as well and probably the americans too i wouldn't be surprised that if we didn't have marines in from norway running around as well keeping an eye on the german and the russians running around you know pretending they're scandinavians that's the way it would work then a single periscope is cited off the naval base at moscow a few hours later a senior commander gives the order to prepare a press conference for 500 journalists they arrive four days later make films and report that the swedes are hunting soviet submarines submarine sightings increase some move with their periscopes extended others even show their conning tower you shouldn't show your periscope more than a centimeter above above the surface and you should not you should not demonstrate your sails in uh in populated areas this is you know every submarine captain knows that and uh and what and this was what this submarines did the rift suddenly traces are detected at the bottom of swedish waters according to the military they are proof of soviet intruders since the west had no boats with wheels or tracks the country seems at war with an elusive enemy the percentage of swedes who feel acutely threatened by the soviet union increases from five to forty percent prime minister palmer is in trouble [Music] jesus allow many the swedish government was very much on the defensive they they tried to to put up some kind of nice ideas about how the europe should look like and then they couldn't defend their own territory so it was the whole idea became impotent on october 11 another submarine is spotted in swedish waters sonar specialists in moscow located heading for a mine barrier lieutenant colonel kriman is determined to capture or destroy the intruder we heard typical scraping sounds and low frequency sounds at a very early stage typical of a submarine so we realized that something was going on at noon on the 11th i remember precisely that it was 12 20. we received a signal we couldn't turn off it meant that there was really something there underwater we turned the sensor off and on again three times but since the warning was still there we detonated a 600 kilogram underwater mine indicating look forward explosion causes a 60 meter high head of water and can be felt at a distance of 10 kilometers apparently the foreign submarine is in trouble it grinds over the ocean floor and stops the submarine's hull and the propeller seem to have been damaged divers later find pieces of metal on the ocean floor [Music] later that evening our detecting system told us that something was going on inside the boat someone was using a tool as if something was being repaired sometime during the night i can't exactly remember when we recorded 20 to 25 minutes of those sounds a yellow green spot appears above the submarine the swedes take pictures and samples of the spot it's an emergency signal used only by the us navy at that time later both the photos and the samples disappear without a trace after directly after the explosion we were told for some reason to hold fire for the rest of the night on the market that's offense then they had the elite and he put here i had this strange suspicion that someone didn't want the coastal defenses to succeed but that's just a theory as i began arguing that we should keep firing even during darkness chief of staff bro steffensen told me the reason why we'd been ordered to fire only in daylight when visibility was good we don't want to create a bloodbath among the soviet sailors do we two days later kriman again hears a submarine but he isn't allowed to detonate any more mines when he sends up some helicopters and decides to drop depth charges from boats instead the situation escalates 300 meters remaining 200 meters 100 meters the patrol boats are approaching the position it was very tense because the carpet of depth charges was going to be laid and tells the skipper you know exactly that you are only cleared to drop one depth charge until the foreign submarine is gone this is are banned and some levels something else really keeps bothering me the tapes from october 11th still exist but there's nothing on them hanging in from a hundred that's quite strange and another thing that's strange is the war log at headquarters apparently the report from that evening is missing the two pages from the night of october which of course makes me wonder for a while general hanson suspects that there are soviet agents at naval headquarters in social media after a thing development the chief of staff politely asked me to come to his office come on i want to talk to you about something as you've surely heard there are rumors that nato submarines might be involved in these occurrences of course these are nothing but rumors and we must categorically deny them in 1985 sweden's foreign minister leonard bodstrom is forced to resign after publicly declaring that the nationality of the intruding submarines was not known afterwards the defense minister understood boy said that we didn't have enough evidence but what should we do i mean we couldn't dive ourselves you know we have to trust the the the military officers responsible for this and the military officers who was responsible uh told them that it was soviet submarines the conflict culminates when high-ranking swedish officers turn to the media and accuse prime minister palmer of betraying sweden in september 1981 a month after the whiskey class submarine incident casper weinberger visits sweden the first u.s secretary of defense to do so in the year 2000 he gave a surprising interview confirming that u.s submarines had often entered swedish waters after consultations with the swedish navy there was no direct intrusion or testing of swedish waters or defenses without consultation with the swedes you see speaking of an agreement i don't think there was any any agreement but i think there was a uh i think that there was a a consultation which led to an understanding that for an individual case for a specific situation a particular maneuver uh that there would be uh would be agreement that that could be done the consultations uh the discussions that were had were designed with all countries not just sweden with all countries were designed to ensure that nato was able to perform this mission and had ample opportunities to test through maneuvers and through other activities as to whether the defenses were adequate the result of all that i think was very satisfactory because aside from that one intrusion of the whiskey class submarine there were no violations no no capability of the soviets to make a attack which could not be defended against when i started to go into these details you find that all almost everything was invented there were no signal intelligence information it was just a lie from the war and not the board some what if it was a nato submarine that brought steffensen knew about one that had received permission to operate in the darkness of that notorious night in that i can now view the whole thing with a bit of self-irony and self-criticism in 1987 and the years that followed i felt like a useful idiot which i believe was exactly what brawl steffensen thought i was what bruce defense on some menu chief of staff braw steffensen and vice admiral pair rudberg seen here with weinberger were the highest-ranking swedish officers to inform their government about the submarine incidents this was an operation that was done very clearly against the swedish government the swedish government was not informed the the uh you even this when you go through the secret documents from this from the government meetings shows that they didn't understand anything of what was going on so it was it was a it was an operation that was run by a few naval officers on the swedish side and and and the americans and uh and the british submarines secret weapons for psychological warfare against a presumptuous government that feels entitled to choose its own path it was an enormous instrument for manipulating a country you transform the whole mass media in a country by creating in incidents [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 528,390

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, submarine combat, submarine documentary, cold war, cold war submarines, cold war naval battles, naval battle documentary, soviet submarines, american submarines, us submarine, us navy documentary, united states, soviet union

Id: 4qlb5jVX6cI

Length: 52min 31sec (3151 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 02 2021