As a former submariner, I think it's much more likely that K-129 was lost after an explosion in one of the missile tubes during a routine patrol, much like what happened to the Yankee-class sub K-219 in October 1986 off of Bermuda. (Unless, of course, you believe the 'Hostile Waters' conspiracy theory that K-219 sank after colliding with an American sub -- If you believe that, then you must also believe that a U.S. sub torpedoed the Russian submarine Kursk.)
What Sewell and Richmond has done is to take a hypothetical theory and spin it into a yarn of 'fact', using unsubstantiated claims and suppositions to try and hold their story together.
Go ahead and read this book, but don't believe everything you read.
http://www.amazon.com/review/produc...07912-2718372?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
The book is so full of technical and chronological errors (many quite basic) that all possible credibility is destroyed. For example, the book states that the one-megaton nuclear warheads carried on the K-129's missile have a yield equivalent to 1000 tons of TNT; in reality, one megaton = one million tons TNT equivalent. Another simple, verifiable error is that the authors claim that the crews of USS Parche & USS (Richard B.) Russell received awards for their part in the K-129 recovery efforts in late 1968/early 1969. These two subs weren't even built yet! Also, the authors repeatedly use presented hypotheses as facts later in the book - a cardinal flaw in any form of deductive reasoning. The end result is just populist conspiracy theory trash.
1. China's first sub carrying nuclear weapons was put to sea in 1980. She sank. Twice. K-129 met her demise in the early 70's.
2. Had the nuke detonated in the tube (as they author claims), there would be nothing to salvage.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0743261127/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_2?_encoding=UTF8&pageNumber=2
..if the authors had wanted to write a novel, they should have. How on earth do they describe the weather, the moods, the actions of the crew without evidence to support it. Also, the Cray computers which they state the Navy owned in the 60s weren't built until the 1970s.
As another reviewer, William F. Twist, states, authors Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond claimed the acoustic signatures of the Soviet diesel submarine, K-129, recorded by a PERMIT Class submarine in 1968 were processed by land-based Cray supercomputers when the first such computer was not completed until 1976,
In 1968, the year K-129 sank, and for several years thereafter, any recordings of Soviet submarines made by US submarines would have been sent to the Naval Scientific and Techincal Intelligence Center (NAVSTIC) in Building 52 on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. Then, as now, such detection events were analyzed by Intelligence Research Specialists with near photographic memories. Computers were not then, nor are they now, used to evaluate such data. (This may come as a shock to those who believe computers are capable of solving almost all complex analytical problems.) As head of the Branch within NAVSTIC responsible for the analysis of all such data, I can state categorically that no K-129 acoustic signature information was received from any US submarine in 1968.
This, and other egregious errors documented by Twist, indicate Sewell and Richmond engaged in the complete fabrication of events to support their conspiracy theory and sell the book.
Sadly, this has become common practice by those who must be called "hack journalists." The motive: sell books to the technically uniformed and conspiracy gullible public. A more recent example is Ed Offley's book, SCORPION DOWN, which propounds unfounded conspiracy theories and ignores the pressure-collapsed condition of the wreckage on the bottom and the complete absence of any damage consistent with a torpedo attack.
SCORPION was lost because of an onboard problem the crew could not overcome before the submarine sank to collapse depth. The Soviets were miles away minding their own business. Sewell's next book, "All HANDS DOWN: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS SCORPION," due out 15 April 2008, will doubtless follow the same conspiracy story line although we can expect a few new fabrications to convince the buying public that Sewell's book is "better" than Offley's. We can also expect other hack journalists to provide back-of-the-dust-jacket reviews praising Sewell's effort as "a daring expose that reveals what the US Navy has for decades kept hidden" or some such drivel. This is a neat - but not very nice - reciprocal (quid pro quo) arrangement among such journalists: "You endorse my book and I'll endorse yours." This leaves the prospective buyer without an objective assessment of such books until they are critically reviewed - and their technical weaknesses exposed - in limited distribution publications such as NAVY TIMES or the US NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS.
I claim to know almost nothing about subs, being an old grunt myself. But I have read Cotten Collier's "A Matter of Risk" which covered the Project Jennifer and was written in the 1980's by a member of the Project Staff.
His claims jive with Craven's as to the status of the sub on the ocean floor (broken in two), the parts recovered and the fact the recovered section of boat broke in two while being lifed off the floor and the Conning Tower was lost. One missile also fell out of its tube to the floor.
Also at least one torpedo with a atomic warhead was recovered. As Collier's Brother was part of the crew that took the sub apart screw by screw, I'd take his version over.
I'd say that the "story" would make much more sense if he included Space Aliens, Di-Lithium Crystals, and a few cute kittens for the "human intrest" value.
I sincely hope the writers go back on their Meds before they write another book.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0743261127/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_3?_encoding=UTF8&pageNumber=3
In 1968, any nuclear attack would have been assumed Russian and the US would have retaliated against Russia, not China. [Or both!] China was having a lot of trouble with their few nuclear-armed subs and they did NOT patrol the coast of the US, while the Russians did.
To call the author's case "circumstantial" doesn't begin to cover "Rogue"'s problems. Intriguing at first for its depiction of life aboard a crude Russian sub, "Rogue" soon veers into "Philadelphia Experiment" territory when the authors demonstrate a willingness to piece together any evidence regardless of how poor the fit, how little it supports the author's case or excludes more reasonable alternatives. (Contrary to popular belief, "circumstantial evidence" isn't insufficient or even just lower-grade evidence - it's still bound by old-fashioned rules of reasonability, which the authors bury at sea.) Most of the story relies on information which suggests what would or could have happened, but with too little if anything to establish what did happen. The authors avoid any reasonable explanation undermining their claims with such painful obviousness, that just finishing this book will test your suspension of disbelief. "Rogue" is loaded with footnotes - most of which cite to meetings with anonymous sources, or to either "Blind Man's Bluff" or Burleson's history of the "Glomar Explorer", but few sources corroborate either of the book's central theses of a rogue-attack or a successful salvage. The authors assault the reader's intelligence by making claims only corroborated by the author's other unsubstantiated claims, and sometimes not even supported by them.
Like a house of cards, the authors balance a host of possibilities on top of each other as supportive proof - there were extra men on K-129 placed at the last minute, but there's no record of them (a memorial later carries extra names, but the authors never follow up on them) - but if they had been there, they could have been KGB "Oznaz" commandos who could have commandeered the ship, and would have had training in using nukes; the Americans determine the truth, but kept quiet for "political" reasons (for the authors, it's enough to say how tense the American political situation is and say that the considerations for the cover-up were indeed political without having to explain why the political situation tilted against disclosure; in our "Wag the Dog" era, it's quaint to think that our national leadership was so preoccupied in 1968, that it actually smothered any word of a homeland security issue). The authors lunge for every possible conclusion, and drop a few sensationalist hints that they never bother to follow up (links to convicted turncoat John Walker & the mysterious loss of the USS Scorpion being two examples; my guess is that Walker's role is overblown here - there's no explanation for how the former USN radioman had access to sensitive diplomatic documents).
The authors' proof is also selectively analyzed. Extra crewmen are "established" to have been on K-129, even though there's no record of their being aboard, and any record, the authors say, could have been falsified by the high-ranking plotters. The authors never consider that evidence establishing that these men ever existed may have been a simple clerical error (if the plotters were highly placed, couldn't they have simply substituted the desired crewmen?). The authors discount a voluntary role played by the actual executive staff because their high rank made them loyal - but then implicate higher ranking members of Soviet leadership; the extra crew accidentally destroy the ship trying to bypass safeguards on the ship's warheads, but it's never explained why loyal agents of such highly authorized sources lacked access to the weapons that obviated a bypass; the authors determine that a missile explosion destroyed the ship - but make the leap to an explosion caused by an attempted launch, and ignore any other hardware failure like the one that caused the Nedelin tragedy, or the one involved in the loss of Submarine K-219 in 1986 (K-219 rates nary a mention in "Rogue"). The authors posit conspirators trained on nuclear-weapons, but not trained adequately. Lastly, the Americans go out of their way to recover K-129 intact because they can use it as proof of the Soviets' plot as leverage against them - even though the sub itself (according to "Rogue") is likely cut up for scrap by those same Americans almost as soon as it's brought back to California.
Though claiming the attack was meant to frame the Chinese, the authors utterly fail to present evidence pointing to China: K-129 was an advanced member of a class of subs found only in Soviet service, crewed by uniformed Soviet sailors and armed with Soviet missiles. The authors utterly fail to provide information that Americans in 1968 would have needed to link the attack to China, or explain how the Soviets could have refuted suspicions that the attack was their own. It's as if the authors spent most of the book hyping some horrible plot - then neglecting to include the plot as well.
Finally, and most egregiously, the author's spend most of the book "debunking" the nearly-official story of K-129 & her recovery, dismissing some claims as ludicrous - but still relying on many such sources for corroboration. Why the accepted story is the wrong story, but sufficient for their purposes will remain a mystery the authors are not likely to reveal in the near future.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0743261127/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_5?_encoding=UTF8&pageNumber=5
This gets goofy: he describes a "cold launch" system to fire the missiles FROM A SURFACED POSITION - in essence this system uses compressed air to blow the missile free from its launch tube AS THE SUBMARINE IS SUBMERGED. The predecessor to the submarine, the Golf I class HAD to fire while surfaced, and used an elevator platform to lift the missile clear of the launch tube, of which there were three located in the sail. The Golf II was specifically created to be able to utilize the R-21 missile, which GAVE IT AN UNDERWATER LAUNCH CAPABILITY. If the author had even bothered to actually read Pavel podvig's book, "Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces," WHICH HE CITES, he would know that the K-129 would not have fired from the surface, but submerged. But well, that would conflict with the story...
So the permissive action lock triggered the missile's warhead to self destruct? IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY. It prevents the missile from firing, or the warhead from detonating, but it DOESN'T POP THE EXPLOSIVES ON THE WARHEAD. It would render it inert - and THAT IS ASSUMING THAT THE R-21 HAD A PAL SYSTEM. Not to mention that such an explosion would have opened up the missile's fuel tanks (it was a liquid-fuelled missile after all) and most likely would have blown open the missile hatches covering the other two birds in their tubes. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS THEN? You have two more missiles blowing their fuel tanks, and in the end, there wouldn't be enough of that sub left to fit in a sardine can. Boom. Big rocket fuel explosion. Bye bye boat, and Mr. Hughes doesn't build the Glomar Explorer.
I hope that I haven't ruined anyone's fun here, and if you like sea stories, this one might keep you company on a rainy night, but it is absolutely implausible. Oh, I didn't mention that he states that a secret "Jennifer" satellite "detected" the missile fuel explosion. I thought that "Jennifer" was the code name for the attempted recovery, not surveillance of the world for infrared sources... And being able to discern "between house fires and rocket fuel." Errr, right. I am familiar with the Vela satellites, and I am familiar with the early warning satellites that sit in geosynchronous orbits at great distance that look for rocket plumes, but this satellite system is unfamiliar to me... OH, THAT'S RIGHT - he cites THAT information FROM A DISCOVERY CHANNEL TV PROGRAM.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0743261127/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_next_6?_encoding=UTF8&pageNumber=6
