Sweden solves Cold War ‘submarine’ mystery
22 May, 2008, 11:55
New technology has helped researchers in Sweden solve a 26-year-old deep sea mystery. In 1982, Sweden claimed that it had recordings from a Soviet submarine in the waters of the Stockholm archipelago. It’s now emerged that the recording was of a Swedish charter boat.
The recording was made during a submarine hunt by the Swedish military on October 12th, 1982. It strengthened suspicions that Soviet subs were intruding in Swedish waters.
There were good grounds for such suspicion. Just a year before the recording was made, in October 1981, the Russian diesel Submarine W-137 got stuck on an underwater rock about a mile from the Swedish main Naval Base at Karlskrona.
The sub remained on the rock for nearly 10 days. The Russian Navy sent a rescue task force to the Swedish shores, composed of heavily armed destroyers and high sea tugs.
After days of negotiations between Moscow and Stockholm, the master on the Russian Submarine was summoned ashore for a hearing. The case was swept under the rug and the Soviet sub was released and the case was closed.
The matter was front-page news and closely watched by international media: CBS, BBC, ATV and others. That was the first and the only time a Soviet sub officially violated the borders of Sweden.
Nowadays, the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) was determined to find whether the sound on the 1982 tape came from a submarine or surface vessel’s propeller.
This spring FOI learned that a civil vessel, the charter boat Amalia, happened to be near the area of the Swedish Navy operation when the recording was made in 1982.
Luckily enough, Amalia lasted until 2008 and a test recording of Amalia’s working propeller was made in April.
“The conclusion is that it was likely the charter boat Amalia, which was in the area the same day, which is the source of the noise from a propeller found on the recording,” concluded the agency’s statement.
Roger Magnegard, the spokesman for the Swedish Armed Forces, welcomed the finding, but said it did not disprove the theory that Soviet subs were present in the archipelago at the time.
“This is one part of the puzzle,” he said. “We have no indisputable evidence in either direction.”
Back in 1982 the incident resulted in Operation Notvarp, the most advanced known secret submarine hunting operation ever undertaken by Sweden’s Armed Forces.
During the operation, all of Sweden's submarine hunting forces concentrated in one location following a number of suspected intrusions.
This “submarine fishing” operation implied trapping a presumed foreign submarine and forcing it to the surface by dropping depth charges. Not a single submarine surfaced as a result.
Soon after the operation finished, Sweden launched a special submarine commission which in the spring of 1983 concluded that the USSR was behind the intrusions.
The sitting Swedish government at the time recalled Sweden's ambassador to Moscow and registered an uncharacteristically strong protest to the Soviet government. The centre-right opposition backed up the government.
The 1982 recording was handed to the Soviet side so they could study it. On examination, the Soviet government protested against Sweden's complaint and rejected all claims of incursions.
This old rumble is still poisoning Russo-Swedish relations, even after a quarter of a century. One of the strongest objectives against constructing the Russia-EU gas pipeline, Nord Stream, is that an undersea pipeline will supposedly increase activity of Russian submarines in the waters surrounding Scandinavia.
This is not the first time Swedish experts questioned the “Russian origin” of the sounds on the 25-year-old recording. Some experts insist that propeller noises were mixed up with the sounds of nature, while others suspect other NATO members tested the defence of a neutral Sweden.