Soviet frigate Storozhevoy the ship what inspired Tom Clancy for his book "The Hunt for Red October"
Krivak II
(Wikipedia)
Soviet frigate Storozhevoy the ship what inspired Tom Clancy for his book "The Hunt for Red October"
Frigate Storozhevoy was the Soviet Navy 1135 Burevestnik-class anti-submarine frigate(1). NATO reporting name of this class of ships is Krivak(2). This ship was "famous" because the political officer leads the mutiny on that ship. That mutiny was lead by political officer Valery Sablin(3) on 9 November 1975.
That man attempted to escape from the Riga harbor. and sail to the Leningrad, where the political officer of the crew wanted to agitate the rebellion in the Soviet Union and make the new revolution. The political officer locked the captain of Storozhevoy in the cabin, and then sail away from the harbor.
One thing was remarkable. The Tu-16 bombers (4) what the navy sent to destroy Storozhevoy couldn't lock on their radars to that ship, and that caused that those bombers couldn't launch their anti-ship missiles to target. The reason for that was probably the ECM-system of Storozhevoy, which denied the aiming of those missiles. That thing was translated as deny to follow the command, and that was a serious situation.
The political officer executed next year from the rebellion, but other crew members released and their career in the navy was ending. The result of that case was that the naval political control and the KGB thought the possibility "what if the mutiny was happening onboard of nuclear missile submarine?". The mutiny on board the warship is always a dangerous situation.
And the thing that made the Storozhevoy-case more dangerous is that the rebellion was lead by the political officer, who was responsible for the security of those vehicles. The role of a political officer of the navy is to listen to the problems of the crew, and then find out the plans, what might danger the Soviet system. And in nuclear submarines, another key for firing the missiles is in the hands of political officers.
The reason why the mutiny ended was that the navy (or KGB) took contact with the crew, who laid down their armament and allow special forces entry to the ship. The fact is that in this case also western nations would use force. In theory, the political officer planned that he would drive that ship to Sweden, but then he denied that idea because he was afraid that the Swedish coastal artillery would sink that ship. After all, they suspected that Krivak attempted to attack that country.
The case of frigate Storozhevoy was remarkable. That thing made the Soviet Navy make reestimation about the political control of the nuclear forces. And that thing caused the unique design of the "Typhoon-class" submarine(5), where the nuclear missiles are forward of the command center, and the reactors are behind that room. This means that during mutiny the crew cannot take the control of the nuclear missiles and engines at the same time.
But that case caused the slowing of the nuclear submarine projects of the Soviet Union. And there was probably something, that was hidden from somebody. Was something that came outside affect Valery Sablin? Was he targeted with some kind of psychological systems? Those systems could be subliminal or flash images that put in the films that displayed to the crew?
The fact is that Sablin was the only man, who was convicted in this case, and he was executed in the next year. Why the KGB or Navy were so hurry about that person, but pardon other men? There were executed people for lighter reasons than mutiny in the Soviet Union. And then another thing was, how Sablin thought that he could establish rebellion in the Soviet Union by using that frigate? Was he simply in psychosis?
Or was there something, what only Sablin knew? Was that thing some kind of acoustic weapon, what was hidden in the missile tube of that ship? Was Sablin thought that there was some kind of infrasound system in that frigate, what he thought to use in his plan? Or was he simply a maniac, who thought that he was reborn Lenin? The man who knows the answer is dead. But the case of Storozhevoy gave Tom Clancy the topic for the book "The Hunt For Red October".
Sources:
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_frigate_Storozhevoy
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krivak-class_frigate
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Sablin
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-16
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon-class_submarine
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krivak-class_frigate
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