Okay then, if you've never heard of the supposed 'mini submarine war' that took place in 1968, here's the background to the rumour(s):
In 1968, several submarines went missing, amongst these were: the Israeli submarine Dakar, the French sub Minerve, also the US sub Scorpion and at least one Soviet Golf II class submarine, probably more Soviet ones too. There may have been others too, but since we are talking about the height of the Cold War, and the Silent Service, it's impossible to say whether there were more casualties or not. The Vietnam war was at its peak, at least from a point of view of prominence in the American psyche at this time, and it has been speculated that much of this took the attention away from all of these sub events.
Rumours have circulated in the submarine service for years about the notion that a sub conflict may have taken place, the general theory being that the tracking and cat and mouse games that submarines played were somehow escalated, but that since the subs were effectively out of contact with their home bases, this prevented things from escalating further.
This might of course not be true at all, but there are several books on the subject, the ones I personally know of are 'To kill the Potemkin' written by Mark Joseph which is a fictionalised account based on the theory, and Red Star Rogue, a book which suggests that a rogue Soviet ballistic missile submarine, K-129, was either lost or sunk while attempting to launch a nuclear missile at Pearl Harbor. This apparently whilst pretending to be a Chinese submarine in an attempt to provoke a war between the US and China. It's believed that this rumour/event is the basis for Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October.
|