Sub Crew's Tale Of Cold War Valor Surfaces At Last

Philadelphia Inquirer
March 2, 2001

By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press

It tailed a Soviet submarine for 50 days in 1978. Its success may have hastened the Soviet Union's demise.

WASHINGTON - They kept silent for 23 years. But yesterday, members of a U.S. submarine crew finally told about a top-secret mission that some believe may have hastened the end of the Cold War.

In the 1978 mission, dubbed Operation Evening Star, the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine Batfish detected a Soviet sub armed with 16 nuclear missiles and bound for America's East Coast.

The Batfish tailed the Soviet submarine for 50 days without being detected, collecting valuable information on how the Soviets operated, said the Batfish commander, retired Rear Adm. Thomas W. Evans.

"It was tedious at times," Evans said of the mission, which left South Carolina on March 2, 1978, and lasted 77 days.

Although it was not the first mission to follow the Soviets, or the last, it was one of the more successful, and information on it has been declassified by the Navy.

"We knew exactly where that submarine went on an hour-to-hour basis," Evans said at a news conference at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He said the mission tracked the Soviet sub's route and mapped the area the Soviets were patrolling.

The news conference was held by Smithsonian magazine, which publishes in its March 2001issue the first story of the Batfish mission.

In the article, "Run Silent, Run Deep," author Thomas B. Allen says the mission was intended to supplement air and other methods of tracking at a time when the Carter administration's detente with the Soviets was wearing thin over concern about Soviet missile subs cruising off both U.S. coasts.

The Batfish was 300 feet long and 32 feet wide and could dive to a depth of more than 800 feet.

Evans attributed the success of the mission to the experienced crew; to the Batfish design, which made it "extremely quiet"; and to a new, extra-sonar system that was dragged behind the American sub, making its sonar detection superior to the less-advanced, noisier Soviet sub. The Navy named the Soviet submarine a Yankee class.

The Batfish could get close enough to hear the Yankee but not close enough to be heard by it, Evans said. He usually hung back four to 51/2 miles.

Fifteen days into the mission, on March 17, the Batfish detected the Yankee at the north end of the Norwegian Sea about 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, Allen said.

Evans said the Batfish lost track of the Yankee only twice. Once was during a bad storm. Another time, Allen said, the distracting noise came from a fishing fleet that passed overhead with its rumbling diesel engines and whining hydraulic winches.

By then, Batfish sonar technician Daniel Lawrence had figured out the Yankee's "acoustic signature" and could relocate it without much trouble after the distractions passed.

"Each submarine has its own acoustic characteristics," Evans said, like "when you hear Frank Sinatra over the radio, you don't have to be told it's Frank Sinatra, but you know who it is." Evans said the Soviets never knew they were followed until they learned it through espionage - the infamous Walker spy case.

Retired Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr. pleaded guilty in 1985 along with his son, Navy Seaman Michael L. Walker, 22. The father admitted passing secrets to the Soviets while he was a shipboard communications officer and, after his retirement, by recruiting his son, brother and a friend to provide fresh information.

U.S. intelligence officials later came to believe that when the Soviets learned about missions like Operation Evening Star, they realized their submarines were vulnerable and embarked on a budget-draining effort to catch up that eventually contributed to the end of the Cold War, Evans said.

The Navy last year declassified some information about the Batfish - and a similar 1972 mission - so the information could be used in an exhibit at the National Museum of American History honoring the centennial of the U.S. submarine force.

And what was his top-secret order, had the Batfish determined that the Yankee was about to fire a nuclear missile?

"Only the captain had those orders sealed in his safe," said Evans, the captain, "and they remain classified today."