On this day in 1981 — “Whiskey on the rocks” international incident: the Soviet Whiskey-class submarine U137 rans aground near Sweden’s Karlskrona naval base.
On this day in 1981 — “Whiskey on the rocks” international incident: the Soviet Whiskey-class submarine U137 rans aground near Sweden’s Karlskrona naval base.
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Soviet submarine S-363 was a Soviet Navy Whiskey-class submarine of the Baltic Fleet, which became notable under the designation U137 when it ran aground on 27 October 1981 on the south coast of Sweden, approximately 10 km from Karlskrona, one of the largest Swedish naval bases.
U137 was the unofficial Swedish name for the vessel, as the Soviets considered names of most of their submarines to be classified at the time and did not disclose them.
The boat was stuck on the rock for nearly 10 days. On 5 November it was hauled off the rocks by Swedish tugs and escorted to international waters where it was handed over to the Soviet fleet.
This 1990 [RAND report](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2007/R3776.pdf) sheds some light on Soviet submarine operations in Swedish waters during the Cold War.
I wonder how many nuclear subs the Russians have left on the bottom of the sea, there’s a couple of really dangerous ones at minimum. I guess asking for some principled, good-will responsibility for their radioactive messes is out of the question
The funniest thing about the whole incident is perhaps the reaction from a Swedish admiral during the questioning of the soviet captain.
The captain insisted that they were supposed to be conducting training outside Poland, and only ended up in Sweden because of a navigational error.
Upon hearing that the admiral supposedly quipped that if true, it was an error worthy of the history books.
The submarine that wanted to be topterra.
Captain, Chief Mate and helmsman definitely had a couple of whiskeys on the rocks prior to this incident.