“Submarines lived by a simple motto: There are two kinds of ships, submarines…and targets.”
The Red October Read-along - Episode Two - Days 5 and 6
Welcome back to the Two Navy Guys Debrief, the (mostly) weekly forum where we take on real—and fictional—national security issues.
If you’ve just joined us, we’re engaged in a guided read-along of The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy’s debut novel about a rogue Russian ballistic missile submarine. Feel free to join the crew.
The Recap
The Fifth Day
The mysterious letter from the reading last week finds its way to the desk of Admiral Yuri Padorin in Moscow. Captain Ramius has written to his “Uncle Yuri” and disclosed his plot, although Clancy does not go into specifics. To make sure the Admiral gets the message, he writes on the back: This is no joke, Uncle Yuri—Marko.
Onboard the USS Dallas, we meet Sonarman 2nd Class Jones, or Jonesy. We learn the ship is assigned to a patrol station codenamed, Toll Booth, where their mission is to report on Russian subs using a high-speed transit route through underwater sea mounts called Red Route One. Clancy describes the route as “skirting cliffs as though her skipper could see them, like a fighter dodging down a canyon to avoid surface-to-air missile fire.”
Reality check: If this was an actual thing, I never heard of it. The thought of running a route through underwater obstacles makes my skin crawl. That said, there’s a fantastic scene in the movie where Sean Connery navigates the route by counting to himself and doing the navigation in his head.
Back to Jonesy, who has been tracking a signal that the computer system tells him is “magma displacement”…but Jonesy believes otherwise.
Jack Ryan is headed to the airport with his daughter’s Christmas present in hand, but Admiral Greer calls him back to Langley. The Soviet Navy is going bananas. Any capable ship from the Northern Fleet is putting to sea and they are recalling all of their boomers. What the heck is going on?
The Sixth Day
Jack is read into the fact that the CIA has a high-level source in the Soviet government, code named Cardinal. The existence of this asset is known to only three senior officers in the CIA. To protect the identity of the asset, any intel from Cardinal is dispersed under a monthly code name and “laundered as carefully as Mafia income to disguise its source.”
Following a fascinating description of how Cardinal manages to relay messages to the CIA, we learn that the Red October has gone rogue and the Kremlin is hunting Ramius down. Greer calls in the Navy and intel bigwigs. They come up with a rough plan and head to the White House to brief the President.
The book takes its time laying out the full story and building up to the idea of a defection. The movie on the other hand gets there in a memorable fashion.
A primer on Sonar
The subs in HFRO use sonar a lot, so we thought it might be a good idea to offer a few basics. If you’ve served on naval ships, you can probably skip this part.
SONAR, an acronym for “sound navigation and ranging,” is how submarines detect contacts in the water. There are two kinds of sonar: active and passive.
Active sonar is what you see in the movies when a submarine sends out a ping and listens for a return. The time required for the sound energy to travel to the target and back gives distance, or range in Navy-speak, and the direction, or bearing, tells the sender where the target is in space. If you have a bearing and range, you have a firing solution on that target.
US Navy submarines almost never use active sonar. In six years on subs, I can count the number of times I saw active sonar used on one hand—without using all the fingers, either. Why? Because a submarine’s greatest weapon is stealth. If you send out a ping, you locate your target, but your target also locates you.
JR offers this analogy: Picture two assassins in a huge, completely dark room. Each is armed with a flashlight and a 9mm handgun. Their mission is to find and kill their opponent… Would you turn on your flashlight?
Passive sonar is exactly what it sounds like: you listen for a contact. What are you listening for?
Transients: If a mechanic drops a wrench on a deckplate of a submarine, that sound energy goes out into the water as a sharp noise. Sonar operators can hear it and it shows up on their displays as a bright spot.
Broadband noise: when a propeller churns the water, it creates bubbles that are formed and collapse, causing white noise. On a surface ship, you see this as a wake. This is known as cavitation and shows up as a bright line. Most subs have specially designed propellers, called screws, that are designed to minimize cavitation.
Narrowband noise: if a piece of rotating machinery, such as a pump, is grounded to the hull, it will emit energy into the water at a specific frequency. Enemy subs can hear and isolate this noise.
It’s called the Silent Service for a reason
The ocean is a very noisy place. Waves, storms, sea life, ice cracking, there is noise everywhere.
In the Cold War, the US Navy’s submarine strategy was to disappear, become a “hole in the ocean.” If the enemy can’t hear you, they can’t find you. In practice, this meant investing in sound-dampening technology, innovative propeller designs, acoustic hull coatings, as well as crew training and procedures. Additionally, they invested in better passive sonar sensors, which we’ll talk about in future updates.
This strategy is the origin of the submarine “cat and mouse” games so often referenced in this era. US subs were able to find and trail Soviet submarines without being detected. Clancy describes it like this:
While other armed services routinely had their components run exercises against allies or themselves in emulation of Eastern Bloc tactics, the navy had its attack submarines play their games against the real thing—and constantly. Submarines typically operated on what was effectively an at-war footing.
100% true. Of course, the Soviets got better over time, partly through stealing US Navy designs, and later their submarines were very quiet. Here’s a real-life example…
Color Commentary
These are set up chapters, a necessary evil in this kind of novel, and something we know a lot about. Often these are meetings between main characters. While the main point of these chapters is to deliver information that will make the plot tick, it’s a rare skill to be able to execute this in a way that keeps the plot moving.
In this week’s reading, there are a lot of characters and information being delivered via dialogue. This is an instance where Clancy’s choice of a more remote, omniscient point of view works against him. One of the tactics we often use in these scenes is to describe how the stress of the meeting impacts the POV character, which helps to keep the reader engaged.
Clancy’s engagement tactic is to cut between action scenes, like Ramius in the Atlantic, and talking scenes, such the White House briefing. It works pretty well.
Next week’s reading assignment: Days 7 and 8
Feel free to tell us what you think in the comments section. Next week, we’ll recap Days 7 and 8 and offer some thoughts about how the story is developing.
Be happy. Stay healthy. Read (or listen to) a book.
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David & JR, AKA the Two Navy Guys
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I have to say, THFRO now joins the very short list of movies that are actually better than the source material. I have read every Clancy penned novel, and he clearly refined his writing, particularly the over-abundance of non-critical detail over the years. This book is a real slog to get through in places.
A nitpicking detail, perhaps which our esteemed hosts/authors could shed light on, is the idea that Skip Tyler, identified as a second string All-American selection at right tackle, could be submariner. David Robinson notwithstanding, I assumed there would be some kind of size restrictions on a submarine captain--or even crew. I know the lineman were not the gargantuan size as they are these days, but they were still in the "jumbo-tall-and-heavy" category. Not an important detail, but still stuck out to me...
I couldn't hold to just reading a few chapters a week and finished in three days even though this was at least the 3rd or 4th time I'd read it. One of the things that struck me was how many things have changed over the last 40 years. I think the story stands the test of time very well on the technology side of the story, but BRAC sure had an effect on story locations.
I like your comments on the writing style which is something I never thought about. Though I think you are only partially correct on the suspension building comments. I think what held me more the first time I read this 40 years ago was that it could be real. The cold war was real and even those of us in the Army knew that things were happening on submarines.