- Author
- Book reviewer
- Subjects
- Book reviews, History - post WWII, Non Commonwealth Navies
- Tags
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- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- March 2023 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
The Hunt for the Storozhevoy; the 1975 Soviet Navy Mutiny in the Baltic. By Michael Fredholm von Essen. From Helion Books, Europe At War Series No 19. Published 2022.
This is a short (50 page) book on a very little-known episode during the Cold War.
Storozhevoy was a Soviet Navy, Krivak 1 class ship. The author has managed to piece together the story from a diverse range of sources. Many lessons were learnt, from this episode- imagine intelligence analysis needs to be 24 hr, during a Cold War? The story was the immediate inspiration for the novel, The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy.
In an echo of the present Ukraine war, the Soviet armed forces tried to attack and sink the Storozhevoy but ended up attacking the wrong ship. Luckily, they missed both. Orders were issued to fire nuclear tipped missiles at the Storozhevoy, the author explains why this did not happen. Was there a Soviet Air Force hero involved, or did his missile malfunction? We get some understanding of the monolithic structure of the Soviet system and how it worked, or did not work.
All this mayhem was caused and orchestrated by one officer with little help. Strangely he did not want to bring the communist system down, even though he appeared to be heading for Sweden. Some little-known Swedish/American cooperation on intelligence is discussed. Only one person died and most of what we know came from various Swedish intelligence services.
The book provides details of the ships, aircraft and people involved and this went to the top of the Soviet system. Well worth the reading time.
Reviewed by Mark Meredith