Customer Reviews

Sea Spies

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The title and description of this video is very misleading. It is NOT about submarine spy missions, submarine operations, or even really about submarine technology. The video is about the history of SOSUS and the technology of sound transmission under water (and how we used it to track Russian subs). It briefly covers a few historical uses of SOSUS such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is short at 50 min but has some extra footage of Cold War era US training films and news reel footage. Ballard was a US Navy submariner during the Cold War.

A benefit of ending the Cold War is the release of previously classified information. Sea Spies provides an insight into how our technology tracked the Soviet submarine threat and unfortunately, how the loathsome traitor John Walker compromised it to the Soviets. Ballard does a great job narrating the film with supporting input from US, British, and Soviet submarine experts. Well worth a viewing!

Sosus had it's beginning as a small array off the island of Eleuthera terminating in a war surplus tent on the beach.It was called Project Jezebel at the time, manned and operated by WE/Bell telephone Lab's personel.
Later vertical and horizontal arrays were installed on the slopes of Bermuda and elsewhere along our coast. For many years the whole operation was called Project Ceasar or Ceasar System. Cables from the arrays came ashore and were terminated in Naval Facilities; these were low, inobtrusive buildings manned by naval personel and Western Electric field engineers. Bell telephone labs had their own labs in many of the locations where the navy equipment was fine tuned and the next generation of electonics and array designs was perfected. It must be mentioned that this work was done in parallel with the Naval Underwater Labs, New London, Ct.All of this work, the very existance of Ceasar, was very secret.
New Nav.Facs were installed on our west coast, in the Pacific ocean,Norwegeon Sea and a number of locations within the NATO comunity.
At this point (70?s), Ceasar became Sosus.
My only beef with the book was it being called "Sea Spies". The many people that worked on the project were not spies, but should have had some sort of recognition for the work they did.

This documentary is helpful in telling about SOSUS, an interesting part of the Navy activities during the cold war. Until recent years the ability it gave the navy to detect and track Soviet submarines at long range was a well kept secret.
The role of the Bell Laboratories and Western Electric in conceiving, developing, installing and supporting the operations of SOSUS is underplayed, probably reflecting Ballard's background as a Navy Lab man. In particular it ignores the crucial role of a small group of Bell labs scientists under Dan McMillin in finding of the lost Scorpion submarine.

We did not enjoy this documentary anywhere near as much as we did Steel Boats, Iron Men. Way to much dialogue with Dr. Ballard and not enough boat film.