Fall '05 Undersea Warfare Out
Even before it's officially winter, the Fall 2005 issue of Undersea Warfare magazine is out! It includes a good article on the loss of the Soviet Yankee-class boat K-219, as well as a discussion of the joy that is Midshipman ops.
Bell-ringer 2212 04 Dec: This is too kewl! Robin White, one of the authors of "Hostile Waters", the book about the loss of the K-219 that they made the movie from, provides his take on the Undersea Warfare article in the comments. I checked my copy of the book, and, as would be expected, he's right that the book never made the claim that USS Augusta collided with K-219. They do claim that Augusta snapped the tow cable attached to the Soviet boat; and, in the pictures section, the picture of Augusta is next to a picture of a Delta IV showing damage from a collision with a U.S. boat (I'm assuming the picture was of Novomoskovsk [K-407], which collided with USS Grayling in March 1993). This, coupled with the movie specifically featuring a collision, may have made people "remember" this about the book.
posted by Bubblehead at 9:20 PM
1 Comments:
Bubble:
As one of the authors of the 1997 book HOSTILE WATERS, I found the retelling of the story compelling, if not quite so "technically accurate" as they humbly claimed. There is a saying that Russian history can be quite unpredictable, and here we have an example: No message was ever sent from Moscow ordering K-219 to be abandoned. In fact, all evidence (including interviews with one of the authors of the UNDERSEA WARFARE article, Igor Kurdin)points to the opposite: Moscow wanted everyone who'd managed to get off to reboard and "save the boat at all costs." When her CO balked, his shipmates were ordered to forcibly remove him. That didn't happen because she went down first. Whether Captain Britanov pulled the plug or not, his adamant refusal to allow his crew to climb back down the trunk of a stricken, poisonous, foundering submarine put his own life at risk (treason was a capital offense) and it saved their lives. They break down in tears when they have reunions and the CO shows up. Let history say what it will now, they know the truth.
Second, the ressurecting of the Navy's sniffy little comment about how HOSTILE WATERS (the book) and HOSTILE WATERS (the movie) made the "outrageous" claim that one of our boats (AUGUSTA) collided with K-219 is false. The book never made such an assertion. Instead, we wrote that it was a leaky missile tube, a chemical reaction, an explosion and flooding that killed K-219. In short, what the new, "technically more accurate" version in UNDERSEA WARFARE finally got around to after lo these many years.
The movie was definitely a "Hollywood" (snickers intended)creation. The book is not.
'nuff said.
Robin White
12/04/2005 2:14 PM
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