Soviet Foxtrots: Cuban Missile Crisis
Loaded with nuke-tipped torpedos
Array of possible detection sources
How did McCone know as early as October 20, 1962, that Soviet submarines might be transporting nuclear warheads into Cuba, and how did he know that four Soviet Foxtrot submarines would probably make it to Cuba within a week (by October 27)?
I’ll run through some possible sources of early detection. I should underscore that at no time did US authorities know the Foxtrots had nuclear-tipped torpedos, which the captains were authorized to use at their discretion.
USN and Allied air patrols
I have mentioned that the US and its allies conducted numerous airborne ocean patrols. The submarines would have to surface to recharge their batteries. Their goal was to do that at night, but they might have to surface during the daytime for any one of several reasons, primarily technical and environmental. The problem here is that it’s a vast expanse. Nonetheless, a USN patrol aircraft made contact with a Soviet submarine on October 24 and tracked the submarine sporadically for 11 hours, spotting it 120 miles east of Grand Caicos Island.
SIGINT intercepts
The Soviet captains were listening to American communications. The National Security Agency (NSA) and its service cryptologic agencies were intercepting Soviet communications. NSA had considerable monitoring capabilities around Cuba, including land-based, shipborne, and aircraft-based systems.
For example, the USS Oxford was specially configured for SIGINT collection and hugged Cuba’s coastline as closely as possible to intercept radio communications from the island, yet remained in international waters. Soviet ships were coming to Cuba every day. They were unloading equipment, and people transported that equipment every day, often to rural areas. While secrecy might have been important to the Soviets, it is unlikely the Cubans treated it as strictly.
Furthermore, NSA SIGINT collection sites covered nearly the entire Soviet Union. Bits and pieces of information may have leaked out. The Canadians had an embassy in Havana and may have collected SIGINT from that embassy, which they might have shared with the US.
CIA agents
During the Cold War, the CIA had agents and spies everywhere. Even the greatest secrets can be easily compromised by those who want to do so or who cannot keep their mouths shut. It is incredible what one can pick up at an embassy cocktail party, for example.
USN Sound Surveillance
The USN had a Sound Surveillance System known as SOSUS, an acoustic sonar system. It was developed as a long-range early warning system for detecting Soviet ballistic missile submarines. The first SOSUS stations were established in the late 1950s, forming an arc from Barbados to Nova Scotia designed to cover the mid-Atlantic Ridge, as shown by the red dots on the graphic. However, there was no SOSUS station in Iceland (green dot at top of graphic) until 1966.
Huchthausen wrote about SOSUS. He said,
"At the time, few of us aboard (the USS Blandy) knew anything about the secret new US sophisticated passive underwater sound detection system called SOSUS. This vast system, consisting of large numbers of sensitive hydrophones arranged in series on the seabed at strategic locations throughout the North Atlantic, and operated from an inner sanctum called Ocean Systems Atlantic in Norfolk, enabled the tracking of noisy objects moving in the ocean … In October 1962 the SOSUS system was still new, and the complex database required to correlate the sound levels of individual Soviet submarines was sparse. Soviet submarines had made relatively few deployments to the broad Atlantic in previous years … Thus, there was relatively little data on which to correlate and identify outbound Soviet submarines, including the diesel-powered Foxtrot class."
A positive correlation was observed between the USN patrol aircraft contact of October 24 and a SOSUS detection station. The patrol aircraft tracked the submarine sporadically for 11 hours, spotting it 120 miles east of Grand Caicos Island. The Navy’s base at Navy Facility (NAVFAC) 104 in Turks and Caicos was part of the SOSUS system and detected a Foxtrot submarine. The Foxtrot submarine, commanded by Captain Dubivko, B-36, was instructed on October 20 to navigate through the Caicos-Turks Passage not just once but twice.
This SOSUS station in the Turks and Caicos was relatively new and connected to a network of hydrophones via underwater cables. The station analysts identified the contact as C-20. This correlates to B-36, Captain Dubivko, whose submarine was designated by the Navy as C-26. At that time, he was near this SOSUS facility. This position placed him inside the blockade boundary as he navigated back and forth through the passage.
Intercepts of burst transmissions
NSA managed a project known as “Boresight,” followed by “Clarinet Bullseye.” I believe this to be the most credible source for early detection.
William and Craig Reed wrote an interesting paper on Project Boresight. However, there is some dispute regarding the validity of Reed's report.
What seems certain is that some intercept operators assigned to the Naval Security Group (NSG), the Navy's element working in conjunction with the NSA, discovered Soviet burst signals associated with the Foxtrot-class submarines. The idea was for the Soviets to raise the submarine’s antenna, transmit a message in a very short time, seconds, and then withdraw the antenna.
NSG operators intercepted these short-lived signals, honed in on them, and were able to conduct direction finding against them; that is, locate their source. The project was known as "Clarinet Bullseye." A Clarinet Bullseye Task Unit was set up and compartmentalized. One criticism of the Reed paper maintains that "Boresight" was shut down in 1961 and replaced by "Clarinet Bullseye."
I will refrain from debating Reed's paper. What I do know is that Soviet submarines began using these wide-band burst signals in the early 1960s; they could be located through high frequency (HF) direction finding (HF/DF), and technology was developed to create the AN/FRD-10 Circular Disposed Antenna Array (CDAA), which could perform rapid triangulation. The submarines had to use HF because the communications were long-haul, meaning ground stations could intercept them.
In his book, "One Minute to Midnight," Michael Dobbs wrote:
Since 27 September 1962, the U.S. Navy had been tracking the subs using listening posts that detected electronically compressed 'burst radio transmissions' between Soviet Navy command posts and the submarines themselves. The messages could not be deciphered, but the location from which they were transmitted could be identified. While U.S. Navy analysts had assumed that the subs were on their way to the Barents Sea for exercises, they discovered that they were in the North Atlantic on their way to Cuba."
The FRD-10 was designed to locate high-frequency (HF) transmissions, especially those from submarines, and was managed by the NSG. The AN/FRD-10 had an estimated range of 3,200 nautical miles (5,900 km) and was used to monitor and triangulate single or double-hop high-frequency (HF) signals between 2 and 32 MHz. Norman Freedman, writing "The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems," said the signals were too rapid for Boresight, but the AN/FRD-10 was able to handle them.
This global map shows the locations of stations equipped with FRD-10 capability. You can see they would have a good chance of spotting the Foxtrots if they used these bursts. The Navy built 14 CDAAs in the early 1960s, eight of which covered the Atlantic Ocean area.
William and Craig Reed claimed during the Cuban Missile Crisis that Boresight stations were getting locations on these bursts sent by Soviet submarines. They said USN ASW forces were then directed to those locations.
The Foxtrots were to report in as they reached specific waypoints. This would make them vulnerable, even when using burst transmissions. If there were submarine bursts out there, then I am sure the NSG operators would have located the Foxtrots during their transit. Whether NSG operators got those locations to ASW forces, I cannot say.
I, like most, cannot say with certainty when the US knew the submarines were coming, where they were going, and when the US had a firm contact, other than the one I mentioned on October 24, 1962. However, my instinct tells me that the most likely sources were those NSA stations that intercepted and located some relevant radio transmissions, known as burst transmissions, such as "Clarinet Bullseye." The issue here is that these programs were highly compartmentalized.
I have already reported that several of the Soviet submarine captains felt they had been detected as early as the Faroe Gap. As an aside, the mere thought of Soviet submarines in the Cuban area made President Kennedy very nervous.
