Customer Reviews

Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

First, I want to say that I really, really wanted to like this book. I really did. But there were so many factual problems with it, that I can't take it seriously.

First and foremost, the author mentions on several pages that the explosion aboard K-129 was monitored by a US early warning satellite. The problem with this is that according to "Guardians, Strategic Reconnaissance Satellites" by Curtis Peebles (Presidio Press, 1987. ISBN 0-89141-284-0), a comprehensive work on intelligence satellites from the beginning until 1985, there were no early warning satellites in operation in March 1968, when K-129 went down. The low orbit MIDAS follow-up program was cancelled in 1966 (due to problems with coverage and false alarms), and Project 949, its geosynchronous replacement, wasn't launched until August of 1968. So, it couldn't have been been monitored, because we didn't have the capability at the time K-129 sank.

Also, Sewell claims that the sailing was timed to prevent it from being detected by photoreconaissance satellites, but again we run into an issue: At the time, *ALL* US photorecon satellites were 'film return' types. In other words, they imaged what they saw directly on to film, and when they were done they returned that film back to Earth to be developed and interpreted. After they ejected the film, they were essentially useless. Referring back to "Guardians" again, we find that the Russians didn't have to try very hard to evade them: Launch 1968-5 was on January 18th, and had a lifetime of 17 days. That put the return back on February 5th. K-129 sailed on February 24th. The next US launch wasn't until March 13th, almost a week after K-129 sank.

Also, the author claims that K-129 was followed by a Permit class submarine, and that this sub recorded the acoustical signature for later processing on land-based Cray supercomputers. Remember, this is 1968. Seymour Cray didn't found Cray Research until 1972, and the first Cray-1 wasn't completed until 1976. Now, I have no doubt that the boat could have been followed, and its signature recorded for processing back on land, but if the author makes a mistake like this (and the aforementioned ones), how can you trust the other claims?

There are other problems as well.

I find it completely plausible that we wanted to raise the boat for examination of the missiles, especially the warheads, and to get the code materials. Now, it is true that the code machine and settings would have been old. Those not familiar with the story of how the British broke the German naval Enigma back in WWII would wonder how 5 year old code materials could be of help in breaking new codes. First, because K-129 was a strategic nuclear asset, it is likely that it had the best code machine the Russians could produce. That means that likely it was still in use at the time of the attempt to raise it. Even if it was not, it would allow us to decode the material from the time of the sinking (provided the codebooks containing the settings for the machine had been preserved - a pretty likely scenario). That would give us insight into the communications of the Soviet Navy with its ballistic missile submarines. Because military messages tend to be pretty strictly formatted, and those formats don't change greatly over the years, that would give those in the NSA working on the then current Soviet codes probable texts to use as 'cribs' to help them decode Soviet naval communications.

This book reminds me of a book I read a long time ago about the Face on Mars. All speculation, and very little actual factual information. I was sorely disappointed, because I was hoping that over the years new light would have been shed on the sinking and subsequent recovery of at least part of the K-129. Unfortunately, this book ain't it. Instead of shining a light, this book obscures the actual incident in supposition, speculation, and outright misrepresentations of the facts.

Unsupported, and often contradictory supposition aboubds in "Red Star Rogue", which tells the story of the Soviet K-129, a nuclear missile sub that sank in the Pacific in early 1968. Already famous for the attempt to salvage it using the "Glomar Explorer" (told in 1998's "Blind Man's Bluff", but already well-known), K-129's loss had long been thought due an accident. The authors boldly argue otherwise - that K-129's sank due to a botched attempt to launch missiles against Hawaii, a plan sanctioned at the top of the Soviet leadership to instigate a Chinese-American war. The authors also repudiate accounts that the Glomar Explorer was only partially successful in recovering K-129.

To call the author's case "circumstantial" doesn't begin to cover "Rogue"'s problems. Intriguing at first for its depiction of life aboard a crude diesel-electric sub, "Rogue" soon veers into "Philadelphia Experiment" territory when the authors prove willing to piece together any evidence regardless of how little it supports the author's case or excludes more reasonable alternatives. (Contrary to popular belief, "circumstantial evidence" isn't lower-grade evidence - it's still bound by old-fashioned rules of reasonability, which the authors bury at sea.) Most of the story relies on information which suggests what would or could have happened, but with too little if anything to establish what did happen. "Rogue" so baldly evades any reasonable explanation clashing with its claims (of a hijacking, attempted launch and complete salvage) that just finishing "Rogue" will stretch your suspension of disbelief. "Rogue" is loaded with footnotes - most of which cite to meetings with anonymous sources, or to either "Blind Man's Bluff" or a history of the Glomar Explorer" written by Burleson. Little of the quoted material corroborates either of the book's central theses of a rogue-attack or a successful salvage, or supports anything more than an appearance of research. In fact, the authors spend a lot of time actually repudiating those sources. (e.g. John Craven's claim that K-129 disintegrated like an Alka-Seltzer tablet after Glomar's retrieval robot collapsed is actually ridiculed, but the authors' conflicting example, using RMS Titanic is utterly ludicrous.)

The authors balance a host of possibilities on top of each other as supportive proof - there were extra men on K-129 placed at the last minute, but there's no record of them (a memorial later carries extra names, but the authors never follow up on them) - but if they had been there, they could have been KGB "Oznaz" commandos who could have commandeered the ship, and would have had training in using nukes; the Americans determine the truth, but kept quiet for "political" reasons.

The proof is selectively analyzed. The extra crewmen are "established" to have been aboard, even though there's no record of their being aboard, and any record, the authors say, could have been falsified by the high-ranking plotters. The authors never consider an innocuous explanation for their presence (US ships have "riders", especially following a refit such as the one detailed for K-129) or that evidence of their existence may be a simple clerical error (if the plotters were highly placed, couldn't they have simply substituted the desired crewmen?). The authors discount a voluntary role played by the actual executive staff because their high rank made them loyal - but then implicate higher ranking members of Soviet leadership; the KGB hijackers accidentally destroy the ship trying to bypass safeguards on the ship's warheads - even though (as the authors claim) such troops already had access to nuclear weapons thus obviating the need to bypass them ("Rogue" posits conspirators trained on nuclear-weapons, but not trained adequately); the authors make a good case for a missile explosion and a thin one for an explosion caused by attempted launch - ignoring any other hardware failure like the one involving a prototype SS-7 ICBM that killed over 100 people in 1961, or a missile tube failure involved in the loss of K-219 in 1986 (K-219 rates nary a mention in "Rogue").

Though they claim that the attack was meant to frame the Chinese, "Rogue" lacks any evidence needed to point to China: K-129 was an advanced member of a class of subs found only in Soviet service; crewed by uniformed Soviet sailors and armed with Soviet missiles. The authors never demonstrate that the Chinese even possessed an operational SLBM system as early as 1968 (most sources place the first successful test launch of China's first ICBM in 1978, with initial ops in '83). The case falls apart when the authors try to explain how the Soviets would have refuted suspicions that the attack was their own.

Worst of all, "Rogue" tries to have its cake and eat it too - getting undue mileage by appearing well researched even when spending more time refuting sources than finding support in them - other sources are ridiculed when they clash with the authors' sources, without any concrete explanation as to why the author chose to believe one story over another. If the sea has harbored a secret of the K-129, this book does not reveal it.

RED STAR ROGUE is an interesting account about a supposed rogue Soviet submarine that allegedly attempted a nuclear strike against Honolulu in 1968. The authors, lacking specific, corroborating information, engage in a considerable amount of speculation. Moreover, they cannot make a point or present a fact without repeating it at least once--usually within a couple of pages--causing this reader to lose patience. Remove the speculation and the repetition and you would have more of a pamphlet than a book. Nonethless, this book, despite its sensationalist tone, appears to be the most well researched account of this incident publicly available.

Personally, I'm not convinced. The authors have not presented much more evidence than is already readily available, they have simply offered an alternative explanation for that evidence. And it's a serious stretch.

I think this book is 90% entertaining speculation, and 10% recitation of well-known facts surrounding this submarine's loss. The proof of this to me is the frequent use of fanciful narratives which describe in detail the "events" leading up to the supposed failed launch attempt.

That isn't to say the book isn't entertaining; quite the contrary, the book was a treat to read. However it doesn't change the fact I don't put that much faith in the theory it proposes. It rings of the conspiracy theorist: entertaining the most elaborate and grandiose sequence of events that can be imagined, simply because it could, with some stretch of the imagination, be one of the countless possibilities.

A much better (and actually historically proven) tale of extraordinary events on board a Soviet warship are documented in the book "The Last Sentry." The Last Sentry: The True Story that Inspired The Hunt for Red October

I have a hard time making up my mind on this one...

Either RSR is a bunch of paranoid nonsense or its one of the most facinating episodes from the Cold War. I really don't have the expertise to know whether the authors claims are accurate or not; the "facts" are connected with a lot of assumptions and conjecture; still, the story does seem to have a ring of truth to it. I am, however, inherently suspicious of conspiracy theories...

Did a rogue Soviet submarine attempt to nuke Pearl Harbor and frame China? It seems possible but I suppose we'll never really know. Even so, the mere possibility that it could be true makes RSR a compelling read.

Many reviews have already summarized the theme of this book, so I will

not repeat. I think the story is interesting, but there are just too many

things in this book which is suspicious that one can hardly believe it.

One point I would like to put forward is the following: the author claim

that the missile launch and sunk of the boat took place at an exact

integer longitude and latitude. He said that this is to trick

the US to believe it is from a Chinese sub, which could only launch missiles from such exact positions. This hardly believable. There is not

anything special about exact longitude or latitude. Missile launch can

easily be made from any longitude and latitude, it requires no more complicated math than a simple interpolation table, and is much simpler than navigating the submarine itself.

A few months back I had lunch with an old friend and the conversation turned to the Cuban Missile Crisis. "That was the biggest event of the Cold War, don't you think?" my friend commented. I concurred. Then I read this outstanding and revelatory work of narrative history. RED STAR ROGUE makes a persuasive claim that the biggest -- yet heretofore unknown to the general public -- event of the Cold War was in fact this: In 1968 the Soviet submarine K-129 went rogue and sank while attempting to launch a nuke at Pearl Harbor. Sound preposterous? It won't after you read this. Sewell, a veteran of the USS Parche, and Richmond, an experienced and respected journalist, have made a compelling case for the above based on political and economic factors of the time, but also very specific nuclear, structural, engineering, and military personnel-related details garnered from a trove of only recently released US Naval documents and Soviet archives, and from extensive interviews with intelligence sources in both the US and Russia. The book is well sourced in the back and the adventurous reader can follow-up with the details on his or her own. Those of you compelled by this will also want to read Sewell's follow-up book, ALL HANDS DOWN.

I enjoyed reading this book. I have also enjoyed reading the informed reviews of it afterward. Their technical points are well taken, and do tend to undermine the author's credibility.

However, does that mean that it didn't happen? If it didn't, how would one explain the diplomatic virtuoso performance of Kissinger in using the information about the alleged incident? He couldn't have bullied the Russians, claiming to have information about the incident, if the Russians knew it had never happened. I was never a fan of his before this read, but if the incident did happen like the book said, I take my hat off to the man.

All in all, it's a good sea story. Enough truth to make it believable, and enough non-truth to make a good discussion of it. Even if it turns out to be more fiction than fact, it was still worth the read for me.

Little by little the whole story behind the things that happened during the Cold War will come out....and it will be shocking!

This book is a great crack at the door of knowledge of some of those stories, a great read.

I often read history and military history books, so I am familiar with the technique used when writing books like Red Star Rogue. This book was a difficult read in that it provided details that were unnecessary to the core of the book and that it needed better flow through topics. After cutting unnecessary information and detail and fine tuning the flow, this book could have surely been one hundred pages less, easy! The jumping around and randomly returning to topics made the book a painstaking read quite frequently. Red Star Rogue does NOT read like a novel and due to it appearing unorganized, it loses what excitement it could have had. Anyone truly interested should read Red Star Rogue, however, those unfamiliar with reading history books or with a tendency to become easily distracted should perhaps choose another selection.