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Why Those Concerned in Russia Still Believe the USS SWORDFISH Collided With and Sank the K-129

By Bruce Rule - Nov 27, 2013

In his book BENEATH THE WAVES, RADM Victor Dygalo who, in 1968, commanded the 29th Ballistic Missile Submarine Division to which the GOLF-II K-129 was assigned, rejected the explanation that the position of the lost K-129 could have been produced by analysis of acoustic detections of the event. The following quote is from Dygalo's book.

(Quote) As for the American SOSUS fixed underwater target acquisition system, it was only partly (three stations) operational in the Atlantic and was under way of construction in the Pacific in 1968, where only one station was functioning in the moment of the loss of the K-129 and could in no way be involved in registering the fact of the loss. (end quote).

Dygalo, and many others then in the Soviet Union and now in Russia, concluded the US knew where the K-129 sank because the USS SWORDFISH was responsible for that disaster. Not only were Dygalo and others uninformed about the operational status of SOSUS in both the Atlantic and Pacific in 1968, they - nor anyone on their staffs - apparently knew anything about time-difference fixing (localization) of short-duration acoustic signals.

When the US Navy was able to locate the wreck-site of the USS SCORPION (SSN-589) in October 1968, that event should have sounded alarm bells within the Soviet Navy; however, it did not, and the CIA effort to raise the K-129 from a depth of 16,400-feet (partially successful) in August 1974 proceeded as Project AZORIAN using, as previously discussed, a time-dofference position derived by the Air Force Technical Applications Center using their own sensors and a tap on an Adak array.

So, there we remain - with the Russians still widely holding to the belief that the US was complicit in the loss of the K-129. The writer is reminded of the loss of the KURSK in August 2000 when the Russians also claimed there was a collision with a US nuclear submarine. The actual cause was a torpedo fuel fire that, after 135 seconds, set off the entire weapons load in the first compartment, the torpedo room