Customer Reviews

Hide and Seek: The Untold Story of Cold War Naval Espionage

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I found the book very disappointing. I was a fan of Hutchausen's earlier books (K-19, October Fury), but this one is just awful!!! The chapter on the K-129 is so bad, it's not even wrong! (paraphrasing physicist Wolfgang Pauli's comment "your theory is so bad, it's not even wrong"). It has been known for 30 years that the HMB-1 barge never went to the wreck site in the Pacific; just the Glomar Explorer and the Capture Vehicle (aka "claw") within the moonpool to grasp the wreck. The partially recovered submarine was analysed in the moonpool of the Glomar Explorer, not in the HMB-1 barge, which was back in California. Other details are total fabrications as well. There is more accurate information in the public domain on that operation than they are employing in the book. This makes one wonder about the provenance of other information in the book.

There are numerous technical details that are wrong; twice they mention the use of U-238, once to power the Ivy Bells tap pods and once as part of the Soviet torpedo nuclear warheads. Plutonium was used to power the pod, as it gives off heat which allows thermionic electrical generation. U-238 doesn't. Also, it is the more scarce U-235 that is fissionable; U-238 is not (except in extreme conditions, like a fusion explosion, where it is used to boost explosive yield). If U-238 were fissionable, all those mid-East countries wouldn't need those expensive centrifuges to separate the scarce fissile U-235 isotope from the more abundant U-238. Didn't these guys read newspapers?

The chapter on the mid-1980's Soviet incursion into Swedish waters seems to be going along fine, then suddenly the two authors pull a non-sequitor. Without producing one real shred of evidence, they suggest that the submarines involved in later excursions into Swedish waters were the NR-1 and Seawolf (SSN-575). Why? Because witnesses (unnamed) claim to have seen submarine sails that were "square shaped", and Soviet submarines don't have square shaped sails. Well, actually the Whiskey and Foxtrots have more or less square sails. And the submarine caught on the surface by the Swedes just a few weeks earlier was a Soviet Whiskey class submarine! Yes, all US nuclear submarines do have square shaped sails...with the exception of one...which is...(wait for it!) Seawolf (SSN575)!! She was built with a very distinctive two level stepped sail. And, oh yeah, Seawolf was deployed in the Pacific at that time, and suffering from recurring mechanical problems due to her age. Wait, let me check my map...nope, Sweden isn't in the Pacific. They also mention that Seawolf was converted in 1965 to permit SEALS to lock out. No, it was converted to allow saturation divers to operate, and the conversion was in the 1971-73 time period at Mare Island.

And then there is the chapter on UFOs. That's right, the Soviet Navy encounters with UFOs. Where is the Smoking Man when you need him? Another part of the same chapter describes sounds first encountered by the then new Soviet nuclear submarines in the 1960's. These are termed "Frogs of the Deep" (you can't make up stuff like this...). Probably sounds shorts from their own (loud) propulsion systems.

This book is so chock full of wrong information (which can be easily shown to be wrong from multiple sources) that it is impossible to believe virtually anything in it. All I can think of are two possible explanations: 1.) Hutchausen and his French co-author regularly drank good bottles of wine at a sidewalk bistro in Paris, got a buzz on, and sketched the book out on paper napkins. 2.) Hutchausen wrote a decent draft, but unfortunately he died last year, and Sheldon-Duplaix rewrote the book, maybe with an eye on a screen play adaptation. In either case, a very sad ending to the career of a man whose earlier Naval History books I greatly enjoyed.

This book is interesting but replete with factual errors so as to make an unreliable source for the history of this period. A couple of examples: the authors locate Oak Ridge Laboratory in Georgia (p.13); it is in Tenn. The authors state that Bill Casey (Director of CIA) was "forced to resign" as a result of the defection of Edward Lee Howard ( p.252). Bill Casey died of a brain tumor while still in office. There are many more such errors.

I found the book interesting. Just wish I could trust it.

This is not a book about submarine espionage like "blind mans bluff" and the "silent war." That is not to say that submarine espionage is not discussed, rather, submarines are but a portion of the material covered.

I think the book was a worthy read just for the insight into the cold-war Soviet Navy's thinking and experiences that Hutchthausen rusian contacts provide. That is not all, though, the reader will be exposed to a variety of naval events like the sinking of the Novorossiysk, the gulf of tonkin incident, the Pueblo incident, the Walker spy ring, unknown submarine incursions into Swedish waters, and many others.

It also offers an unprecedented look into the Soviet's nuclear shipbuilding programs, surface and submarine alike. That portion of the book very much reminds me of Patrick Tyler's excellent "Running Critical," which covers the topic from the USN side.

To be fair, it looks to me that some of the critisism cited in other reviews may be innacurate. There is no detailed description of the K-129 retrieval in this book. The chapter that covers the incident "A submarine lost, a submarine found '68-74" is very perfunctory and anectdotal from the Soviet side, as related to Hutchthausen. I believe that reviewer may have gotten confused with another book (Red November or Red Star Rogue.) Another complaint over the authors naming Seawolf and NR-1 as possible suspects for the Swedish waters incursion in the '80s because Seawolf was based on the west coast is disingenious at the very least. It is well known that USS Parche ran its Barents sea tapping missions while based out of Mare island. The NR-1 was a natural suspect as it was the only submarine known to leave tracks on the ocean floor.

This book is filled with anecdotal revelations that, while limiting its provenance, give a tantalizing look at the other side of the iron curtain. If you are interested in naval intelligence operations in the cold war, and a look at the Soviet navy of the era, this book is fo you.

Very informative and well written. Some of the information is redundant but there is also plenty of new information that I had not read in other books. I would highly recommend this book.