America Nuclear Sub Defecting to the USSR

I was reading a book on Cold-War defectors, and I'm curious: what if a top of the line American Nuclear Sub defected to the USSR?
I'll start off, the scenario can have several possibilities

Intel:

  • No American Knowledge during the defection or after
  • No American Knowledge during the defection
  • No American Knowledge during part of the defection
  • American Knowledge of the defection after the sub leaves port
All four conditions are also repeated for the Soviet side.



Destination:

  • Sub intends to reach/reaches Soviet territory
  • Sub intends to reach/reaches a Warsaw Pact member
  • Sub intends to reach/reaches the PRC
  • Sub intends to reach/reaches a neutral nation
Preparations:

  • Preplanned: Sub is well stocked with provisions and bargaining chips such as code books and training manuals.
  • Hasty: Sub is sufficiently stocked with everything on board at the time of defection.
  • Accidental: Sub does something incredibly stupid like surface in Hainan for some fresh food or blows the batteries near the coastline.
 
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What would be the incentive to the crew, though? It would be incredibly unlikely that the skeleton crew needed to get the sub to the USSR would be composed all of pro-communists who have passed vetting. As for the consequences if this did actually happen, though, I imagine the Soviets would certainly enjoy the computing technology, if received in the 80s...
 
What would be the incentive to the crew, though? It would be incredibly unlikely that the skeleton crew needed to get the sub to the USSR would be composed all of pro-communists who have passed vetting. As for the consequences if this did actually happen, though, I imagine the Soviets would certainly enjoy the computing technology, if received in the 80s...

Combination of ideology, blackmail, bribes, and killing the rest of the crew.
 
Combination of ideology, blackmail, bribes, and killing the rest of the crew.
A Los Angeles class has 129 crew

You would need to get at least, we'll call it 12, to get it to the USSR, and they have to be the right 12, engineers and bridge officers, cooks and torpedomen frex won't help as mutch

I could see up to three true believers on a sub, maybe three blackmailees, and three bribed (the KGB and GRU were very, very tight fisted with bribes)

That's not enough

Assuming that somehow you could get thirty on a sub, very unlikely, they are still outnumbered by three to one

This is very unlikely

The Red October type scenario, fake orders to get close and fake a reactor accident to get the crew to leave, won't work with a US sub, control is less centralized and the enlisted have more knowledge
 
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Orry

Donor
Monthly Donor
Only way I could see this happening is some major accident on a sub just off the Russian coast - so it would be an Attack boat....

Accident kills most of the senior crew and forces sub to surface close to a Soviet Sub hunter - Sub gets boarded and survivors decide to go with the 'we wanted to defect' line to get better treatment........
 
Maybe something like that upcoming show Last Resort -- sub is ordered to nuke some densely populated place, crew tells the U.S. high command to eat it, and so they defect to the Soviet Union.
 

Orry

Donor
Monthly Donor
Maybe something like that upcoming show Last Resort -- sub is ordered to nuke some densely populated place, crew tells the U.S. high command to eat it, and so they defect to the Soviet Union.

Trouble is in any likely scenario its going to escalate to where there is going to be more than one nuke flying and there may not be any where to defect to.....
 
Trouble is in any likely scenario its going to escalate to where there is going to be more than one nuke flying and there may not be any where to defect to.....

Unless the discharge of nukes isn't at the Soviet Union, or if it's simply a strategic measure instead of MAD. But of course, the incident itself could lead to some nukes flying...unless it's resolved peacefully.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Dumb and bizarre things have happened in history, so I can't say it is impossible, but it is getting close. Ramscoop's point about the impossibility of getting the entire crew is accurate. I would say getting 2-5 involved in the plot is about the maximum, so lets say I have the Newport 5 (think Cambridge 5) who have joined the submarine service and now happen to be on the same ship. So lets go through possible and impossible.

1) I think boomers are out since we have to move too far to be where the Soviets can get and the orders are just too bizarre to the crew. Best we can do here is scuttle the ship. More likely, if the KGB controls us, they want us just to provide intel like the Walker family. But if for some reason the traitors are suicidal, they can probably sabotage the submarine in deep water.

2) So we are on an attack submarine or one of two of the USA intel submarines. The first easy option would be to sink the boat in shallow Russian territorial waters. Like #1, this is doable. Flooding ship (say explosion in torpedo tube) would force the crew to evacuate. It might take a second failing of a water tight system, but a smart Captain with some help can arrange this one. Or we could ground the submarine on navigation error. Soviets get a lot of detail intel by recovering in either scenario, and we can defect to USSR. But it does not give the desired secrecy.

3) While I loved Red October, the plan is just too complicated to be expected to work. Even once Ramius gets his men off the ship, you still have to have the submarine "sunk" and yet not start WW3. Submarines shooting at each other can lead to war very quickly. So now we have to get more creative/ruthless. We have to kill the entire crew but a few of us, very quickly, with sinking the submarine. The only thing that come close to being able to do this is nerve gas, but then how do we explain the 5 people in full MOPP suits. Do subs even carry these? How long to MOPP suits really work in an enclosed environment full of nerve gas?

Bullets don't work.

The evacuation crew method does not give us the time to do our evil plot. The USA will know where the crew is at too quickly.

Using real radiation leak effects everyone.


4) So lets examine the additional issues, even if we have "special movie plot device gas" that lets us kill everyone but the conspirators and we can sail the ship with just 5 men. The USN will figure out pretty quick it is missing a boat. Maybe someone on the board can give an amount of time between mandatory radio communication. We now have to either meet up with Russian surface ship or sail to Russia port and hide in covered subdock. We then have to have the Russians do the intel work. Then we have to sail the ship to a location where the USA can believe it sunk and sink it for real. This sounds like at least a week of time to me, very complicated and complex to do this one.


So I don't think even if the USN submarine forces were deeply penetrated by traitors or moles, you try to steal a ship. Using the traitors as an intel ring, each with the most elaborate security precautions is the best bet. It provides many of the intel benefits of capturing the ships without being impossible and risking a war. The only other possible option is to scuttle the ship, but not to follow the procedures needed to destroy secure items, and hope the Russians can salvage faster than the USN. And that the USN does not do something like bomb the wreckage. I can easily see air battles over a lost submarine escalating to war.
 
Maybe something like that upcoming show Last Resort -- sub is ordered to nuke some densely populated place, crew tells the U.S. high command to eat it, and so they defect to the Soviet Union.

Defect to the soviet union? Asb, sorry. Ask for asylum in britain, norway, france, portugal, wherever? Sure. The soviets, no.
 
Given the crew constraints, the only sub type (on either side) that you could use to defect would probably be an Alfa, since their crews were much smaller than normal (around 30 total, IIRC).
 
Unless the discharge of nukes isn't at the Soviet Union, or if it's simply a strategic measure instead of MAD.
No target within 100 miles of the borders of the USSR, or any pro-USSR country is going to be tolerated, the Soviets wouldn't risk being the first to use nukes, but once one was off they wouldn't hesitate to reply in kind, at least once they had something approaching parity.
 

Pangur

Donor
Only way I could see this happening is some major accident on a sub just off the Russian coast - so it would be an Attack boat....

Accident kills most of the senior crew and forces sub to surface close to a Soviet Sub hunter - Sub gets boarded and survivors decide to go with the 'we wanted to defect' line to get better treatment........

As much as the Soviets would like to get their hands on a American nuclear sub I can't see them taking the risk of boarding one. That would be seen as a act of war
 
As much as the Soviets would like to get their hands on a American nuclear sub I can't see them taking the risk of boarding one. That would be seen as a act of war
I think the Soviet Union would gladly shoot it if its in their territorial waters or it might just be an accident. And once the boat is leaking and surfaces no one is going to declare war on the USSR for tugging their sorry asses to port.
 

GarethC

Donor
If the "defection" is successful, the Soviets will give the submarine back to the US eventually... after they've had a good look around.
 
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