Red Star Rogue by Kenneth Sewell

Author:Kenneth Sewell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2005-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

Suspicions about the motives of the crew were first expressed by Dr. Craven, the U.S. Navy’s original scientific investigator into the K-129 incident. He summed up the mystery in his autobiography The Silent War with these words: “The secret residing in the secret—the motivations of that Soviet captain and his crew—had remained intact and that, ironically, is the secret that ought to be revealed.”

Dr. Craven confirmed in his memoirs that the investigators suspected the boat was a rogue, and that it had destroyed itself in an attempt to launch, or while launching, against Pearl Harbor. Under a lifetime confidentiality contract, Dr. Craven is quick to qualify that conclusion each time it is mentioned in his book.

Most likely, however, it was not the motives of Captain Kobzar or his senior commanders that should have been questioned. There are good reasons to believe now that the officers and senior sailors in the regular crew of K-129 had nothing to do with an attempted rogue attack on the United States. Once the longest leg of the journey to the mission box had been completed, only a small part of the regular crew would have been needed to divert the submarine from the mission box, position it near Hawaii, and attempt to launch a missile.

The key to this assumption may be found in the eleven-man unit that is known to have boarded K-129 at the last minute. Just as evidence about the inexplicable extra manning of the boat came to light after the end of the Cold War, other military information not available to U.S. agencies has recently surfaced that can explain a great deal about the incident.

The officers of K-129—particularly the submarine’s commander, Captain First Rank Vladimir Kobzar, and its first officer, Captain Second Rank Alexander Zhuravin—were known to be devoted husbands and fathers, and they had unblemished service records. While these admirable traits would not necessarily have precluded their willing participation in a rogue operation, they do make these men unlikely suspects for leading a revolt against the homeland and defying orders by participating in a serious unauthorized activity. These top officers and other staff officers seemed to be no less loyal or patriotic to their homeland than their counterparts commanding American submarines with similar capacity to launch nuclear war. They were the best and brightest their countries had to offer, and the last people who would have contemplated a suicidal and terrorist attack that could have caused World War III.

The officers and crew were highly respected by the admirals and fellow submariners of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. We know this is true of Kobzar, Zhuravin, the senior missile officer, Captain Third Rank Gennady Panarin, and his assistant, Captain-Lieutenant Zuev. Rather than perpetrate an unauthorized sneak attack, it is reasonable to believe that these men would have fought against any rogue element attempting to take over their submarine. These men would certainly have known that any unauthorized attempt to launch a nuclear missile would have been thwarted by the fail-safe system. They

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