OT: New book: Red Star Rogue

[Kapitan]

K129 was not a golf 2 submarine infact she was a golf I

moscow formaly denies K129 golf exists dr kravan notes on missile in the sail of the sub missing noting that this is golf I

golf II has a sort of hump like a normal SSBN after its sail with K129 this is not the case

of all the golfs most were converted K129 was not and so was a few others

[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by Kapitain

K129 was not a golf 2 submarine infact she was a golf I

Strange, the author of the book says it was a Golf II but the reason it tried to fire a missile on the surface was because it was trying to imitate a Chinese Golf I so that China got the blame for flattening Hawaii. However if true, this ploy would have failed because SOSUS had already picked up the K-129 and classified it as a Golf II sub. Perhaps the author is talking a load of tosh anyway and it was a Golf I.

Nemo

[Kapitan]

time the K129 went down golf II was under going tesing it took years before they even raise part of K129 and when crevan said missile missing in the tube in the sail that immediatly gives it awway as a golf I

[Grayback]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

well thats what ive read about missiles they are booby trapped to prevent un authorised launches perhapse an SSBN nut can help us ask ramius he should know

The book claims that the hijackers were KGB troops that had access to nuclear weapons...but then has the troops trying to bypass safeguards which seems to contradict the thesis that the sub was hijacked by troops having access to nukes. RSR has the same problem as Berlitz's "The Philadelphia Experiment" - where researchers claim to have uncovered a deep dark secret that has otherwise eluded everybody else. How did Berlitz manage to find the secret scientist who knew all about the Philadelphia Experiment? How did the authors of RSR uncover a secret that could have triggered WWIII? Given that everything about K-129 has always pointed to the Russians, the whole hijack theory seemed uneccessary - they could have just ordered the crew to launch against Hawaii, then disavowed that order. They couldn't guarantee that there sub would never be identified, whether it sank or not. Using hijackers instead of a regular launch order seemed not only to to doom the plan but guarantee that K-129 could be found and identified - the hijacker's (again, KGB troops with nuclear access) fail to correctly bypass the launch safeguards, and destroy the sub. We then spend billions ot bring -129 back up and then hide it, as if we were at least as scared to admit we had the sub as the Russians were to have lost it in the first place.

I guess my long-winded question is this - if Russian SLBM's were so dangerous (safeguards or otherwise) was there any demonstrated effort to make them safer? I think not - which makes a strong case for a missile explosion, but also undermines the theory of a botched launch. I read RSR a few months ago but for some reason never thought about the K-219 disaster of the 1980's - could that incident support the theory of a missile explosion? Was K-219 even mentioned in RSR?