« Fakeout | Main | Where are your "Minutemen" now, Mr. Moore? »

Book Review: Red Star Rogue

What were you doing on March 7th 1968? Was it a nice day? Did you sleep soundly? According to author Kenneth Sewell, on that day, the Soviet Ballistic Missile Submarine K-129 was in the process of launching a nuclear missile at Pearl Harbor from the North Pacific when an accident occurred that caused the loss of the sub. How different history might have been had they succeeded in their mission. How might that date ring in our minds today if they had been successful?

Red Star Rogue is another book that gives details behind the Soviet Subs mission and the CIA mission to retrieve the Submarine after it failed. Although I have read several other books on the subject such as The Jennifer Project , Blind Mans Bluff and The Silent War, this is the first book that says that the Soviet Sub was actually in the process of launching a nuclear missile at the time of the accident. This is something that gets your attention very quickly.

The actual history of the Cold War is only now coming into general knowledge. I have always been fascinated by the mission of the spy ship ‘Glomar Explorer’, which until recently was only spoken of in whispers. Until recently, I watched the ship sit at anchor in Suisun Bay as I came and went to work in the Bay Area. I always wondered how many people driving by on the freeway knew the role that the nondescript, grey industrial ship sitting just below the bridge had in their lives and how one day in the 1970’s it retrieved from the floor of the Pacific Ocean one of the biggest secrets in the Cold War, a Soviet Submarine.

I’ve really enjoyed reading this book and I find it a good fit with the others in the K-129/ Glomar Explorer saga. I find the details behind the lives and the mission of the Soviet crew to be interesting and informative. Of all the books on this subject, this is the only one to go into that area of knowledge. The rest of the books I have read so far tend to concentrate on John Craven or the USS Halibut.

Did a Soviet Sub actually attempt to destroy Pearl Harbor in 1968? Read it; then decide for yourself. No matter what you may decide after reading it, we haven’t heard the last of this story, so stay tuned.

( What was I doing on March 7th 1968? I was 7 years old, lived on Orange Ave. in Paramount California in an apartment building behind a drive-in dairy. I remember falling asleep in school while watching a filmstrip and getting into big trouble over it and I have a vague memory of Robert Kennedy being killed in Los Angeles, and I remember burning the hell out of myself with the cigarette lighter in my parents Renault Dauphine, but very little else about that time sticks in my head.)

Posted @ October 14, 2005 11:01 PM | Book Reviews