1981: Whiskey on the Rocks
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- Опубликовано: 16 апр 2024
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In 1981 the Cold War very nearly turned hot with an incident involving a Soviet submarine that came very close to sparking a war, quite possibly involving nuclear weapons. The odd incident in 1981 called “Whiskey on the Rocks” deserves to be remembered.
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Script by THG
#history #thehistoryguy #Coldwar
As they used to say in "Get Smart," "I find that very hard to believe." "Would you believe...?"
There is almost an element of humor in this story. The sub captain claiming that island popped up out of nowhere. Kind of like a poor driver saying that car came out of nowhere when I ran that red light. Another fine report. Thank you.
Nah. It was a tree. (just like John von Neumann's car wreck.)
From the original Battlestar Galactica. A Cylon pilot crashed. When asked for an explanation it said "I was flying in a straight line. The planet came up us."
The submarine grounded because it followed a Swedish navy military navigation route that had an overgrown marker. This caused the navigation error that grounded the submarine in a minefield.
The submarine had been laying on the bottom draining its batteries as it spied on Swedish torpedo trials that had been delayed.
This is why the submarine had empty batteries and it went into the archipelago to recharge because it would not show up on radar among the islands.
A whiskey sub cant reverse on diesel engines only batteries that is why they ran the diesels all night.
Good stuff!
Before I was on it in the 1980s, my Navy cruiser USS Leahy ran aground in a Japanese channel in the 1970s. It's nickname after that was Leahy on the Rocks.
Fascinating, having sailed around this area when in Merchant Navy it was clear that the Soviet Union was playing games with Sweden. Whiskey on the Rocks is a great title. Thanks again for your entertaining and educational channel
Great you cover this history and maybe some have commented, but anyhow here I go:
1) The Swedish prime minister was in Norway when journalists confronted him asking for a comment about the incident. Mr Torbjörn Fälldin, the prime minister, who hadn't yet been briefed just answered "The boooat?????"
2) Just outside the town Kungälv, north of Gothenburg, in the river is a rock looking much like a submarine tower. Once, painted on this rock was U137.
3) Shortly after the incident, a set of various alcohol was sold in taxfree shops onboard ferries, all referring to the cold war. One of these drinks was the U137 - WHISKY ON THE ROCKS. (There was also a brandy named 12 Years Behind The Bar)
It wasn't the PM it was the Defence Minister Torsten Gustavsson.
When I saw the title I thought you were doing an episode on the S.S. Politician running aground in 1941 in the Scottish Hebrides.
The old movie Whisky Galore is based on it.
The cargo included a load of whisky.
Several islanders "saved" the whisky...not much of it was ever seen again.
Me too,
Great movie!
A ship named the Politician ran aground? (Insert joke here).
So did I. Hello Kilearn?
Me too !
My Ph.D. advisor was the Lt. in change of the nearest coastal battery when this went down. Make no mistake, Sweden was 60 seconds from sending the Russians to the bottom had they crossed the line on the map.
No you weren't. You surrender monkeys are so cute when you try to act tough.A strongly worded lettter, lol. SWEDEN YES
This installment is now one of my favorites. I've never heard of this incident.
Never heard of this either
How remarkable. I turned sweet 16 on Oct 28 1981. Blithely unaware of these world events being more interested in high school life in the Caribbean.
So rare to see ones hometown pop up on a popular RUclips channel.
I grew up in Karlskrona. This is one of those stories that gets retold and retold in the town. It's probably the most exciting thing that happened there in the past 100 years. Everyone has their variant of it, and everyone wants to make it look like a way more decisive incidence for determining the outcome of the cold war than it really was.
Supposedly the crew was heavily intoxicated, why they got stuck.A faulty compass was also blamed but this compass was later tested and found to be functional.
Some say that was one of the official excuses but that the submarine was actually highjacked/crew bribed so that its tech and crew could be studied/debriefed. The latter theory is probably one that has evolved over many many drunk nights in good company, wanting to make Karlskrona look more important through some involvement with the usa and its intelligence services.
It might be true, but coming from Karlskrona and wanting this beautiful little town to be more significant than it is, I have to be aware of confirmation bias. It's very plausible the Russian crew had too much vodka.
I really want to visit the island where it all went down.
I know people that worked on F17 Kalinge at the time of the “incident” and the stories they tell sound insane
@@darraghmckenna9127 we're visiting in summer. You can rent small houses pretty cheap, they go around 40 bucks a night with kitchen, bathroom, wifi etc.
I highly recommend. The people there are really kind and it doesn't get more swedish than that. Brändaholm which is a part of Karlskrona is often featured, it's full of red wooden houses and when people think of Sweden they usually have that place in mind visually from it being featured in media so often.
Including you. Folks, this is why you don't make videos about small places in Europe. Everyone tho lives there pops up in the comments and tells you you did it wrong. Sometimes they meet each other in the comments. It's pathetic. SWEDEN YES
thx for the insider story🤗
Thanks for sharing your story
There is another possibly related Cold War mystery: the Luleå Tracks. In June 1983 some tracked vehicle drove up from the water onto a breach adjacent the an air base at Luleå. It left behind its tracks which what was discovered. It's thought that it was some kind of tracked submersible, possibly Russians doing beach reconnaissance.
I was stationed at the US Navy SOSUS station at Keflavik when this occurred. As I recall we mostly thought that the whole thing was pretty funny and for the most part it was mainly posturing by both sides.
I'm a little baffled by that Soviet account about said outcome of exploding the submarine. Nuclear weapons only explode under VERY mathematically specific circumstances. You really can't detonate a warhead in a way that initiates fission otherwise. It's more likely, based on my understanding mind you, that it would cause significant radiological contamination in the waters around Karlskrona.
Unless they intentionally detonated the weapons.
@@tommost1 Exactly.
He was implying that the crew would detonate the weapon in order to destroy the boat rather than allow its capture.
But exactly how safe nuclear weapons are is a matter of debate. I have certainly heard many on this channel discount the possibility of an accidental detonation even where the weapon designers are quoted saying that accidental detonation is possible. This was a nuclear torpedo already in the tube. I would not overestimate its safety in 1981.
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel you yourself have reported the broken arrow incidents where something like 8/9 failsafes were found to have failed, leaving only one failsafe to keep a detonation from occurring.
It could happen. Especially with soviet tech
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel I think the difference is between "accidently triggering the detonator" and "sympathetic detonation". If all you do is blow something up next to a nuclear warhead, all you're going to get is a bunch of radiation. But if you're doing something that interacts with the detonator, like, say, dropping a bomb, then the only thing keeping the detonator idle is the safeties.
1987? '86? USS Roanoke (AOR-5, I think. I was on USS Kansas City AOR-3) Was first into Pearl Harbor following a 3-fleet exercise to load up stores for West-Pac. She ran aground. The harbor was closed with three full fleets outside doing laps while everyone waited for the ship to clear. Meanwhile, the Kansas City was the only supply ship. By the time we made it to the Hotel pier (fueling station), we were transferring water to the rear of the ship to keep the screw in the water. Mostly. Wed then took on all their stores and did the first few months of their WestPac until they were repaired and relieved us. I don't remember if it was Japan or the Philippines where we handed off and returned home.
As far as I know, there was no loss of life, nor any injuries beyond those incurred by sharing liberty boats...a foolish idea from the outset.
In another incident Swedish military did detect another submarine, submerged. When "challenged" it surfaced - it was Westgerman. It was a few years later.
Btw. a compass is not quite enough for navigating when you cannot see a thing. Sending a surfaced (!) submarine into such waters on a darkened spy mission seems foolish. If that was the case or they just failed to navigate I do not know. Fools do exist.
I appreciate you and thank you for making content.
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Thank you for covering this !
I toured a Russian Udaloy class destroyer in 1992 while stationed in Bahrain with Commander US Naval Central Command (COMUSNAVCENT) embarked on USS LaSalle AGF 3.
From what I'vr read on it, as the Doviets upped thr pressure with ships, looking as if they'd 'go in and fetch the sub', Fälldin's (PM) response to what to do if that happened was "håll gränsen!" (hold the border.)
Also a previously never activated radar/missile battery was turned on, to foster thought...
Love when THG drops a new video definitely one of my favourite RUclips creators along with Mark Felton! Keep up your awesome content!
You sir are a treasure and a wonderful presenter of history I missed. Thanks for sharing.
What a great story..
We love you Lance.
Thank you!
I grew up not far from Karlskrona and also lived here when this happened (and still do) so I clearly remember these exciting days. But we had a lot of incidents with submarines in our waters and harbors at this time, however whiskey on the rocks was the only one that came up above the surface, all the others managed to escape. But it is correctly reported in the video regardless of what other home made theories say. 🇸🇪🥃
Håll gränsen
The sub captain wrote a book about the experience. A very interesting read, as the crew wanted to leave, but could not without help from the Swedes. The Swedes didn't want to let the submarine leave without interrogating/interviewing the crew. So the had effectively reached an impasse. Eventually some level of trust was found and members of the subcrew left the submarine so the Swedes could interview them.
I live just 50 km from Karlskrona and I did my military service att the airbase mentioned.
I've seen a text saying that all russian submarine commanders has to sail his boat into "hot" swedish water and back again as an exercise. But getting to that place at night by chance is just ridiculus.
Tip: Do something about the Psilander-affair.
Karlshamn?
Stunning! Active duty at Norton A.F.B. Oct '81. I have no recollection of this event happening. I must've been young, dumb and 21. Oh, wait I was....
I do enjoy some of the events you unearth The History Guy! KUDOS!
I remember this one, I was not 21 at the time, I was 26 years old and starting my fourth year flying canceled checks in a Cessna 310Q. An airplane I really loved to fly.
Life imitating art. "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" was a Norman Jewison comedy about a Russian sub run aground off of Gloucester Island. Alan Arkin, as and a handful of sailors row ashore to find a big power boat large enough to tow them free, sparking panic among the residents, wild rumours and hilarious situations.
When I first saw this, I thought it was going to be about the Whiskey War (aka the Liquor Wars) between Canada and Denmark, over possession of Hans island - a bloodless war that was finally resolved in 2022, as an example to Russia about how to conduct a land dispute peacefully.
Reminds me of the song by Ray Stevens, “Surfin’ USSR” :
“We were out in the Pacific where it's nice and deep
When our sonar operator went and fell asleep
Then a terrible crash awakened every hand
And we woke up stuck here in the California sand”
Dear THG, thank you for enlightening us about this "almost comical" Sub don't he rocks incident form the Cold war. it seems funny now, but it was no joke in 1981.
I thought we'd already done this one - then again always good to go over events for those who're new to it :D
Excellent summation. Right on target. A+
Strange how certain countries that I will not name did not seem to learn from this....
As I watched this episode of THG, I tried to recall the incident and what I saw of it on the CBS Nightly News (my parents personal favorite). Thank you, History Guy, for clarifying some misremembered information. Once again, a stellar and brilliant piece of history that deserves…well, y’all know the rest.
Brings back the old days. As a submariner one of the things we learned in visual ID of Soviet Ships was for the Whiskey the back of the sail had steps that when viewed diagonally looked like a W. So one of hints we had in ship IDs. Loved it! Remember those days!
Fun with something from Sweden. I work at the marine base in Karlskorna ones a year as a small arms instructor. First thing I do every time when I get there is to drive down the docks to check out the submarines.
We used to have much better anti submarine capabilties then these days. Back in the 80s we had a known phenomena with TIR trucks. Eastern states license plate trucks always happening to be close to military training exercises.
Last time a swedish primeminister showed some balls. His order was short and succinct to the Commander in Chief : "Hold the border"
They sure don't do that today! SWEDEN YES
Always learning something new. Time to start catching up on some topics...
The only "accident" was that they got caught.
Fascinating.
Thank you History guy and team.
Learn something new every day.
Somehow I missed your channel. Keep up the good work!
Both countries needed to look tough and save face in an embarrassing situation. Quite the balancing act.
Thank you for the lesson.
I guess that Soviet submarine really wanted their whiskey on the rocks! 🥃🚢
I remember this
Love your work. Thank you THG
Thanks again Thomas. great show
Completely fascinating Sir. When I first saw the title of today’s THG episode I thought we were all going to hear a fascinating story about a famous (but largely forgotten) prohibition era Rumrunner out somewhere on the Atlantic coast in a fast boat- and how he and his cargo of then illegal hooch ended up on a sandbar or rocks after being chased by Federal Revenue Agents and/or the USCG. Only to hear a fascinating story of how the Soviets got caught red-handed spying on Sweden. Thank you again for such an interesting story.
If I had one question Sir, it would be whether anything is known of what happened to the Soviet sub’s crew when they finally made it back home? Especially the captain. Off to the Gulag?
I don’t know- the Russians are not very public about such things
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel : Thank you for answering Sir. It was a great presentation.
Good morning history fans. Welcome to Hump Day class.
🐪!
🥃🥃🥃
Very good.
As I recall at the time, this incident was one of a series that made Swedes begin to question the value of neutrality in the Baltic region. That came to a head last year, when Sweden joined the world (with a few notable exceptions) in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Very interesting!
They should have sold the sub to the Americans. As is, where is. Buyer beware. Lol
Great presentation, THG.
As always.
Thanks Lance and family.
Liars lie, and do it with no remorse....even when caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Absolutely shameful !!!
I remember when this happened. A popular picture at the time was a Swedish fisherman casting out a line with a bottle of vodka as bait.
Good night
Love your videos
There were pictures in the press at the time of local Swedes rowing out to a sub stuck on the rocks with hot coffee and cinamon rolls. I don´t know if it was Whiskey or some other , as there were a couple of others that managed to duck out before they became much of an incident (or so it is said) but the optics were hilarious!
When I saw the title of this video, I thought at first HG was going to cover the story of the SS Politician and the real history behind the inspiration of the old film Whisky Galore!
Back in the Saddle Again Naturally
This was nothing new; the Soviets had already been snooping in Swedish waters for decades. My father, who is Swedish, has long memories from his army days. He remembers well, sitting on the banks of his country's home islands and observing those very same subs through binoculars. That's how close they were. Of course, this is just one example of the several centuries of conflict between Sweden and Russia. The Swedes have an old saying: "Never, ever trust the Russians". Long experience with their bellicose imperial neighbor has taught them that.
The best channel on RUclips!!!
Bon succès dans vos nouveaux projets.
*Reminds me of a couple of episodes of Star Trek where they used this excuse*
Remember that incident quite clearly. Had just been assigned for the last 3 month of my initial military service to a new battalion that was part of NATO's AMF brigade and we were on full alert throughout the whole incident...
Didn't have that much excitement until the '89 Russian MiG-23 crash in Belgium....
Thanks for post. Training exercise? I believe incident this showed the need for additional training.
I remember this incident clearly although I was only a kid at the time
The fear that my parents had of possible escalation was clearly understood by me even at that young age
The cold war was a frightening time and the way things are going now I this geopolitical landscape is a stark reminder that it only takes a whiskey on the rocks to escalate in to full blown war 😮😮
Let's hope that our politicians are willing to go the long way round so as to end up whit peace and not war
Just saying 🇳🇴
I kept waiting for THG to tell the part where the people of the local village helped save the submarine from destruction after its crew helped save young Johnny Whitaker after he had fallen from the church steeple. 😅
Have you done the 1980 Titan Missile explosion in which a socket fell off of a guy's wrench (that weighed 8 pounds) and damaged a rocket in a missile silo and almost triggered a nuclear explosion?
ruclips.net/video/jDcog2ZP684/видео.htmlsi=6xOj6jThViL0Ovf5
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel thank you!
The pre-quel to this story was in the early 1960s. A Hollywood film, with Alan Aarkin; The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming. "Everyone to get from Street" Narragansett Bay
The Cold War had many scary moments.
I wonder what happened to the captain of this Soviet submarine?
The sheer ATTITUDE the Soviets would display over obvious intelligence ops was frikkin amazing, We can see where Putin learned his audacity from,....and it's doubly risky behavior as crazy as the world is, today!
13:41 - The officer's statement that the nu'kes on-board would have undergone nu'clear expl'osions had the submarine been b'lown to smith'ereens may or may not be true, depending on how the Soviets designed them. In the absence of further details my reaction is that it's false. There were some explosions in the U.S.A. within missile-silos that tossed nu'clear wa'rh'eads for great distances, but none of them ever went off. It's possible to design the things so that they are not capable of nu'clear expl'osion until they are launched as intended, and even then they may have internal mechanisms that render them incapable of nu'clear expl'osion until a short time before they reach their tar'gets.
He was implying that they would detonate the weapon to prevent the submarine’s capture.
History Guys got the coolest intro music! Where did he find it?
During this time there were hundreds of incidents in this area with Soviet and US subs. They were tapping phone lines and doing covert stuff and everyone just denied it all 😂. I just watched a documentary on all this stuff
Good Wednesday morning class. Be seated, class is beginning. Turn on brains and tune in your ears for today's lesson
Mike! Mike Mike Mike!
Whiskey with an "E" is Irish, without is Scot's, Whisky.
I guess that NATO prefers Irish whiskey. first10em.com/quick-reference/nato-phonetic-alphabet/?amp
Whisky is also Canadian and whiskey is American (United States.) I was told at a tasting that if the country name started with a vowel it was whiskey and if it started with a consonant it was spelled whisky. India seems to violate that rule because in India it is called whiskey but the mane India is used by others. India calls itself Bharat.
Whiskey with ice is an abomination. Lucky it wasn’t winter.
The Soviets only had a guy with a machine gun in the tower after the submarine had been discovered and was watched by Swedish military units.
Sounds like they could have set up a hot food line and got the crew out.
The threat of nuclear detonation to destroy was bunk. Even a fictional Bond villian Soviet general wouldn't be able to execute that order. Swedish govt. should have kept putting pressure on them by waiting them out. The crew was mutinous (story came out later, but still predictable). The Swedes were very kind to make their demands so reasonable. Hope they got some secret concessions.
There is a serious good book about the episode i just boughtcalled u137 i know it exist in Danish and Swedish
So close… make mine a double 🍹🍹
Releasing the sub was both, wise and pragmatic.
Would have been funny if they have just left it there. “No, we aren’t going to punish you. No we aren’t going to storm the vessel to get your men out. If they want to stay, so be it.”
Obviously the men would have run out of supplies and the USSR would have had to make further concessions to get their men and boat back. But also obviously the Swedish weren’t thrilled with having another country’s nukes off their shore.
But maybe I also find it funny when offenders are caught doing something they shouldn’t and the party catching them just says “lm just not going to do anything, just keep doing what your are doing, since you must have wanted to be doing that to be doing it in the first place” and lets the offending party begin to drown in their own prior actions.
It was a cowardly submission to an enemy that had been provoking with such intrusions for years. A golden opportunity to hand them a defeat, and a strongly worded letter was the only consequence. SWEDEN YES
I know how the U.S.A. would have handled it.... I read the book, "Hunt for Red October", so I know of what I speak! ha,ha 6061 has the right idea. What would be the downside if they just waited them out?
Sweden should have told the Soviet Union that they would sink any unidentified vessels in their waters from that point on, so make sure your boats are sure of their locations around Swedish territory. "We wouldn't want to see a loss due to "accident"
Sweden played it cool, if they had tried to enter the sub they could have had a Hiroshima type event at Sweden largest Naval base.
If I was a data broker, I’d run my own company like Incogni. It’s like a money treadmill. Guess the hard part is getting all the data tho
According to one news report at the time the subs captain was court marshaled and jailed for this incident.
A 15-20 kT nuclear detonation at the location of the grounded sub, would be effectively harmless outside of a 5 km radius, for an unprotected person out in the open. Very few people even live in the area. The soldiers and sailors, and journalists, in the area would have perished or suffered radiation injuries, but almost no other causalities or fatalities would have occured. Fallout would have been a problem, but most would likely only have affected very rural parts of the archipelago.
Nukes are really bad, but let's be realistic.
When the T-5 torpedo was tested in 1957 it created a large plume of radioactive water and sank vessels six and a half miles away- roughly the distance between the location of the submarine and the South Coast Naval Base at Karlskrona. While the damage from a nuclear device can be overestimated, I think that it is safe to say that, along with vaporizing the Swedish naval vessels nearby, the explosion would have done significant damage to shipping, at least tsunami damage to the port city, and caused major ecological harm.
Brush Tall Favorite Of Tailors.. serves as a toe nail Since Footholds, Halted Then On The Situations..
👍👍👍👍
I remember that incident though I didn't read all the reasons/facts at the time. I remember thinking, this is a reenactment of the book The Russians Are Coming, though far more serious. As for "thru the USSR", Russia is still invading NATO territores and mapping what they can destroy to do the most damage, mapping territorial waters, and developing tactics for attack. (Much as the US does, on a side note.)
patrols such as what that sub was operating close to or inside Swedish waters would have been completely unnecessary if it was a "boomer" sub, only a specialized attack or reconnecence sub would have needed to venture that close to foreign sovern waters which makes the whole "nuke" question puzzling.
It was an attack submarine carrying nuclear torpedoes, not ballistic missiles.
I am very skeptical that they could have intentionally caused a nuclear detonation of a torpedo in the tube. And it would have taken quite a bit of work in advance. And specialized skills and knowledge which they likely did not have on board. They apparently did not have any power inside the sub. Particularly if they could not even heat food. No lights after a night or two after batteries had run down. Pump the sub full of cold nitrogen in a surprise maneuver at night, they all suffocate in minutes, enjoy analyzing your Soviet submarine.
I remember when all this happened. It was all over the news. Made the Russian Navy look like incompetent landlubbers.
Defending neutrality is critical to it's claim. A neutral nation must be adamant in protecting its borders.