Red November

W. Craig Reed

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780061992544
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

" Red November delivers the real life feel and fears of submariners who risked their lives to keep the peace."
—Steve Berry, author of The Paris Vendetta

W. Craig Reed, a former navy diver and fast-attack submariner, provides a riveting portrayal of the secret underwater struggle between the US and the USSR in Red November. A spellbinding true-life adventure in the bestselling tradition of Blind Man's Bluff, it reveals previously undisclosed details about the most dangerous, daring, and decorated missions of the Cold War, earning raves from New York Times bestselling authors David Morrell, who calls it, "palpably gripping, " and James Rollins, who says, "If Tom Clancy had turned The Hunt for Red October into a nonfiction thriller, Red November might be the result."

CHAPTER ONE

Red sky at night, sailors delight.
Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.

—OLD SAILING PROVERB

WITH ORDERS TO CONDUCT A TOP-SECRET espionage mission, the USS Blenny (SS-324) sped toward danger on the last day of April 1952. A bright sun warmed the black deck of the World War II–vintage submarine as she cruised past a dozen colorful sailboats off the coast of San Diego. A cold wave crashed across the bow of the boat and dotted Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul Trejo’s lips with the taste of salt. Still a freshman to the fraternity of underwater warriors, Trejo stood on the bridge and admired the beauty of his diesel-powered sub as she cantered across the water with the smooth gate of a stallion. In the white churn of her wake, dolphins played, and when guided beneath the waves, she became a silent assassin worthy of respect.

Less than two miles from the submarine base at Ballast Point, the diving alarm sounded. Trejo slid down the ladder past the conning tower—the tiny space just above the control room, then descended one more deck into the control room. There, assuming the duties of diving officer, he joined a half-dozen sailors on watch and stared at the indicator lights on the “Christmas tree” panel. When the horizontal bars changed from red to green, verifying closure of all hull openings, he held up an open hand and called out an order: “Bleed air.”

A petty officer nodded and spun open a valve to bleed high-pressure air into the boat. The needle on a manometer twitched and then inched up a few millimeters. Trejo closed his hand, and the petty officer shut the valve. Both men focused on the pressure indicator. A half minute later, satisfied that no air leaked from the boat through an unwanted hole, Trejo closed his hand. “Green board, pressure in the boat,” he said.

Commander James S. Bryant called down from the conning tower, “Diving Officer, make your depth six-zero feet.”

Trejo repeated the order to the bow planesman seated at the front of the control room. As the chief of the watch blew air from the Blenny’s ballast tanks to submerge the diesel-driven craft beneath the waves, Trejo visualized a plume of seawater shooting skyward toward a blue dawn. The boat submerged and made a turn toward paradise.

After a short stop in Hawaii, the Blenny departed for Japan on Monday, May 13, crossed the 180th meridian—the domain of the Golden Dragon—and arrived in Yokosuka eleven days later at 0800 on May 24, 1952. Bound for enemy waters, the Blenny sailed away from Yokosuka on May 29. Commander Bryant gathered his officers in the wardroom as excited banter and cigarette smoke filled the air. The skipper’s blue eyes and movie star persona reminded Trejo of Cary Grant. Bryant’s forehead wrinkled as he pointed at their assigned station on a map spread across the wardroom table. The officers’ talk faded to silence.

The Soviet city of Vladivostok had a population of almost a half million Russians in the early fifties. Nestled near the Strait of Korea to the south and Petropavlovsk Naval Base to the north, “Vlad” served as a staging area for an extensive segment of the Red Bear’s Eastern Fleet, including ballistic missile submarines. The Korean War was in full swing, and the Soviets were shipping weapons to the North Koreans, so the commander, United States Naval Forces, Far East (COMNAVFE), ordered U.S. attack submarines to patrol the La Pérouse Strait near Vlad to gather as much intelligence as possible. Reconnaissance patrols in this area occurred between early March and late October, as too much ice encircled the seaport throughout the long winter months.

Trejo recalled that the USS Besugo (SS-321) had attempted a patrol in the strait in December 1950, but dire weather conditions made reconnaissance all but impossible. U.S. subs now patrolled only during the warm window when the Russians sent ships to Korea and other countries and bombarded Vlad with incoming cargo vessels—or “megaton squirrels,” as they called them—delivering “acorns” to the Soviet Northern Pacific Fleet.

American boats were ordered to observe and photograph the pay-loads of these vessels during peak traffic times to find out what the enemy might be building, planning, or thinking. Such missions, thought Trejo, were akin to flying a passenger plane unnoticed into Chicago’s recently renamed O’Hare International Airport on Christmas Eve.

The more aggressive sub drivers—the skippers of these diesel-powered “smoke boats”—in search of intelligence rewards, often snuck past Soviet warships and tiptoed to within a mile of Vlad’s coastline. While most of the world claimed a three-mile coastal sovereignty, the Soviets insisted on twelve. Either way, Trejo knew that a U.S. boat caught in the act of spying near Vlad faced but two choices: escape or die.

The Blenny arrived in her operating area on the second day of June after a four-day jaunt from Japan. She snorkeled throughout the night, and then near dawn, Commander Bryant maneuvered the boat closer to the harbor. In the cramped conning tower, now silent and rigged for battle stations, Trejo’s temples pulsed. The stale air smelled of fear. Wiping away a bead of sweat, sitting on a bench in front of the torpedo data computer, he stared at the blinking lights on a panel not more than an arm’s reach away. As the assistant TDC operator, and part of the fire control tracking party, his job entailed helping track—and potentially prosecute—enemy targets. The electromechanical TDC fed target tracking information into an attached torpedo programming system, which Trejo monitored with eagle eyes. The term fire control related to the firing of weapons, not the traditional snuffing of fires. If an unsunk target retaliated, however, then fire control could very well take on its literal meaning.

The conning tower sat just above the control room and served as the boat’s nerve center. This small area normally held seven to ten men, including a sonarman, a radar operator, the TDC operator plus an assistant, the skipper, a helmsman, and a navigator stationed at the back near the navigation plot. After countless drills, the team hummed in unison like the pistons in a well-tuned engine.

Commander Bryant stepped toward the periscope well. “Up scope number one,” he said.

The oil-covered mast slid upward with a hydraulic hiss. Commander Bryant slapped the handles on the attack periscope horizontal. Seawater dripped onto the deck, and Trejo watched the skipper plant the right side of his face against the rubber eyepiece. “Mast, funnel mast, clipper bow, king posts, transom stern, down scope.”

Hydraulics whispered again as the mast slid downward. In his head, Trejo translated his skipper’s jargon: the observed contact was a clipper-bowed cargo ship with two masts, a king post, and a transom-style stern.

“The big light is on,” Bryant said, scratching at the stubble on his chin.

Trejo knew that his skipper referred to a bright searchlight on the southern tip of Sakhalin on Nishi-notoro. When the Soviets lit up the dawn with that light, they illuminated a surge in shipping traffic in the strait. They also unknowingly helped the Blenny capture some photographic intelligence—or PHOTINT—since everything navy needed a truncated moniker.

Bryant issued another order. “Ready the camera.”

Chief Radioman Donald Byham, holding a thirty-five-millimeter Canon camera, stepped toward the periscope. Trejo imagined a handful of skinny Coke-bottle-glassed nerds back at the Naval Security Group headquarters in Fort George G. Meade, Mary land, poring over each photo graph taken by the Blenny with a magnifying glass to see what the Red Bear might be up to this month. Thousands of snapshots of Soviet vessels delivered by dozens of U.S. submarines probably lay scattered across the desks of high-ranking officials at NSG. Were cargo ships delivering a new type of missile that could hit the White House from the other side of the Atlantic or parts for a new class of submarine that could run circles around U.S. boats? Were Soviet warships just conducting an exercise or preparing for a full-scale nuclear war? The navy needed to know, so much so that hundreds of lives were considered expendable in the search for that knowledge.

“Ready with the eyes?” Bryant asked, his arms dangling over the periscope handles.

“Good to go, Cap’n,” Chief Byham said as he moved closer to the periscope.

The Blenny came with two periscopes—the number one scope, with a small diameter of less than two inches, and the four-inch-wide number two scope. The former was the wiser choice when stalking prey at close range, as the smaller diameter lowered the risk of detection. The larger scope served as the best PHOTINT platform, as the mast contained better optics.

The advanced optics in the number two scope were better but not perfect, so Chief Byham’s “eyes” served as backup. The medium-build chief had worked as a talented commercial artist in civilian life and possessed uncanny drawing skills. Recalled to active duty at the outset of the Korean War, he also came equipped with a photographic memory. After a few short glances at a target through the periscope, he could recreate the images he saw as detailed hand sketches within minutes. God gave the human eye far greater acuity than a camera lens, so Byham could see subtle details hidden in the shadows that the Canon could not detect. These Byham drawings became part of the intelligence stash delivered to NSG for review. Chief Byham never got a dime for his artwork, but he did receive a letter of commendation.

“Up scope number two,” Bryant said. “Raise the ESM mast.”

Electronic surveillance measures, thought Trejo. Along with visual information, the NSG wanted recordings and measurements of wavelengths, frequencies, and pulse repetition rates emanating from enemy radar signals. They called it SIGINT. The ESM mast captured this type of data for subsequent perusal by the NSG. An alarm in the conning tower beeped when the ESM mast detected that Soviet radar might be “painting” one of Blenny’s masts. Too many beeps equated to “caught,” which also meant they were screwed.

As the masts sped toward the surface, Bryant ordered a steady depth and buoyancy trim, as an inch too shallow could spell disaster.

Beep!

The hair on Trejo’s neck bristled. The radar detection system in the ESM mast just got a hit from a nearby warship.

Beep! Beep!

Two more hits.

“Camera,” Bryant said, stepping back from the scope. “Make it fast.”

Chief Byham snapped the Canon onto the periscope’s eyepiece and moved away. Commander Bryant hurried back to the scope, peered through the camera lens, and clicked off several shots. He spun the scope a few degrees and clicked off a couple more.

“Pull the camera,” the skipper said, again stepping away.

Chief Byham removed the Canon.

“Eyes, you’re up,” Bryant said.

Chief Byham gave a quick nod and seated his face against the scope’s eyepiece.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

“Five seconds,” Bryant said.

Trejo glanced at his watch. Five seconds felt like fifty.

“I’m done,” Chief Byham said.

“Down scope.”

The sonarman, seated just aft of the periscope, turned his torso toward the captain. “Active pings in the water!”

Trejo’s heart stopped. A Soviet warship must have gotten a good hit on the scope with a radar beam. The bad guys just caught Blenny spying, so they were compelled to pummel the ocean with active sonar. Depth charges and torpedoes might be next.

Through the open hatch, Bryant called down to the control room. “Diving officer, twenty degree down bubble, make your depth 300 feet!”

The diving officer echoed the command as the boat now angled toward the bottom. At 300 feet, Bryant glanced at the bathythermograph. The BT, fed by a small device installed on the boat’s hull, displayed pressure and temperature related to depth. As colder water layers tend to reflect sonar beams upward, the skipper wanted to stay under one. To ensure accurate and timely readings, the boat dove to test depth every morning, then inched back toward the surface, all the while taking temperature and density readings to feed the BT and find the layers. Today, the best acoustic thermal layer started at 400 feet. Bryant called down to control and issued a new order. “Diving Officer, take us down to 450 feet.”

Trejo’s heart started again and raced to full throttle. Even though the Blenny’s newer “thick skin” design made her a deeper diving boat than her “thin skin” predecessors, her test depth topped out at 412 feet. Too much beyond that could result in the proverbial crushed beer can effect.

The boat groaned as she descended beyond 300 feet and the ocean’s grip tightened.

350.

375.

412.

Steady at 450 feet.

Trejo could now hear Soviet fifty-hertz sonar pings through the hull. He moved his eyes upward, as if he could see more than just pipes and cables. The pings grew louder. The boat crawled along at three knots, her twin screws generating no more noise than a slow-speed fan. Trejo held his breath and prayed that Soviet sonar beams would not penetrate through the acoustic layer.

Then the explosions started.

Faint at first, they grew louder until the boat shook with each clap. Trejo hoped the Soviets were using warning depth charges, which were “light” versions of the subkilling kind, but he did not know for sure.

Click, whang! Another explosion.

The flooding alarm sounded, and men ran to damage-control stations. Leo Chaffin, the Blenny’s executive officer, darted out of the control room. Part of his duties included leading the damage control team. Minutes later he made a call to the skipper over a sound-powered phone. Bryant uttered a few words, nodded a couple times, then hung up the phone.

Facing the team in the conning tower, Bryant said, “The XO reports that we have a leak around the sound dome shaft in the forward torpedo room. He’s sealed off the area from the forward battery and is pressurizing to thirty psi, but it won’t be enough. We’ve got to take her deeper until they get the leak fixed.”

Bryant leaned over and called down to the control room. “Diving Officer, make your depth 500 feet.”

The diving officer’s voice cracked as he confirmed the order.

The boat moaned in defiance to the added pressure. Trejo’s mouth went dry. He understood the strategy but didn’t like it. More depth equals more pressure, and more pressure makes things smaller, like pipes and shafts. This can sometimes make leaks easier to fix. Sometimes. Still, 500 feet could be 88 feet deeper than dead.

Seawater leaked from a half-dozen pipes in the overhead as the boat descended, showering men in the conning tower. Sonar pings bounced off the Blenny’s thick skin, followed by the staccato clap of more depth charges. The volume of both increased as the Soviets continued to close.

A dozen long minutes passed before the sound-powered phone rang in the conning tower. Commander Bryant answered, listened, nodded, and hung up. Again he addressed the tracking party: “XO says the leak is fixed. Skelly just earned your respect and a navy commendation.” Bryant bent down and called through the lower hatch, “Diving Officer, make your depth 450 feet.”

The diving officer echoed the order, and Trejo let his shoulders relax. He later learned that Auxiliaryman First Class Skelly, being a skinny kid, volunteered ...