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Launched in the early 1970s, US Navy submarine USS Parche
was initially built as one of many Sturgeon-class attack submarines.
But as fate would have it, she would then be transformed into a highly specialized and unique
vessel that included tiny retractable ski legs that allowed her to rest over undersea cables.
As the years went by, Parche’s missions evolved from ordinary attack submarine
operations to secretive covert spy undertakings.
Subsequently, she was outfitted with the finest monitoring gear, reconnaissance,
and surveillance systems of the time. Still, most of her service details remain unknown,
as her main purpose was to serve in top-secret operations, something that she exceeded at.
Parche would eventually become the most decorated vessel in the history
of the US Navy and would do so without ever firing a single shot in anger…
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Facade
The second US Navy ship named after the small coral reef butterflyfish,
USS Parche SSN-683 was launched on January 13, 1973, and not even the Mississippi shipbuilders
tasked with her construction could have imagined what the submarine’s fate would be.
Parche was a Sturgeon-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine. This type of submarine
was in service from the peak of the Cold War in the 1960s up until early in the new millennium.
They were even known as the workhorses of the
Navy’s attack submarine fleet during a significant part of the Cold War.
In essence, Sturgeons were a lengthened improvement from the Thresher/Permit class
that preceded them and featured a five-compartment arrangement, with extra room in the operations
compartment to accommodate additional Mark 37 torpedoes, the most advanced at the time.
The class’s top speed was 26 knots, but while the rest of her type received regular
mid-life upgrades, Parche’s destiny would part from that of her family.
Still, not much is known about her initial retrofit.
According to undersea authority H.I. Sutton, Parche had a brief career in the East Coast,
where she performed as a regular attack submarine before she was selected for a new job:
the Navy selected her to support a highly secretive joint enterprise
with the Central Intelligence Agency: the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office.
Sutton stated that Parche was then sent to Mare Island on the West Coast, where
she received an extensive refit that enabled her to execute so-called special missions.
After that, Parche joined an illustrious list of remarkable submarines that executed
underwater engineering operations, a euphemism for spying missions.
Among the list were USS Halibut and USS Seawolf.
While most modifications were hidden below the waterline, a diver’s chamber recovered from the
retired Halibut was fitted on her successor’s aft escape trunk. Fondly known as “the can,”
the section was disguised as a deep-sea rescue vehicle simulator -just as it had been on Halibut-
in order to minimize suspicions. In truth, divers would not perform rescue missions.
However, it was a rather unusual feature shared with USS Seawolf that
gave them their signature look: retractable ski legs or skegs.
Moreover, additional side thrusters in Parche’s lower ballast tank allowed
her to hover and touch down on the seafloor, while curiously,
she could also deploy small “sonar fish” through her torpedo tubes.
It is also possible that she had an external locker for submarine
communications cable taps because it is believed that her most likely
missions involved laying and retrieving enemy communications.
Over the years, Parche would receive several modifications which would turn
her into a spy submarine. She was such a powerful vehicle that very
little is known about her to this day, as the information remains classified.
However, it is widely treated as a fact that Parche was deployed
to the proximity of the Soviet Union to conduct covert intelligence operations.
The Silent Service
The US Navy’s corps of submarines is known as the Silent Service,
as it is the submarines’ mission to have a low profile during wartime.
However, most submarines are known to be even more tight-lipped during peacetime.
Subsequently, the Navy and the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office swore
Parche’s crew to absolute secrecy, honoring the nature of their highly important duty.
As claimed in the book ‘Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American
Submarine Espionage’ by Annette Lawrence Drew, Christopher Drew, and Sherry Sontag,
Parche succeeded in tapping into Soviet underwater military communication cables.
In fact, her activities were likely the continuation of Operation Ivy Bells,
the response to US intelligence discovering Soviet military undersea communications cables running
under the Sea of Okhotsk in the Pacific and the White Sea in the Atlantic during the early 1970s.
The cables linked Soviet naval bases to the mainland, and the threat to national
security was that several of these bases were home to nuclear-missile-armed submarines.
Therefore, the information traveling through these cables could provide invaluable data,
and consequently, the intelligence community decided to tap them.
The mission would be highly dangerous, as the cables were on Soviet territorial waters
and thus virtually inaccessible, while they were also protected by
an array of acoustic listening devices to identify both surface ships and submarines.
Furthermore, the Sea of Okhotsk was also the venue for occasional Soviet
Navy drills, which complicated the situation for the American vessels.
Regardless of the dangers and obstacles, the Navy succeeded in planting a large wiretap
recording device in Soviet waters in 1971. The famous espionage submarine USS Halibut was the
one to achieve this exploit and paved the way for her successors, Seawolf and then Parche,
to continue with the mission. Then, when Halibut was decommissioned, Parche
took over the wiretapping and recording device recovery operations and was never once detected.
By the end of the 1970s, Parche had performed countless trips within the Sea of Okhotsk,
and it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that a National Security Agency
leak revealed the existence of the illicit wiretaps. In the meantime,
they proved to be immensely invaluable in gathering intelligence on the Soviets.
Parche also participated in cable detection and tapping operations
near the North Pole and the Barents Sea, and was involved in recovering
Soviet fragments of anti-shipping rockets from the seabed after test launches that
provided the Navy with material to develop countermeasures to safeguard their fleet.
It is also possible that the submarine recovered Chinese missile fragments during the Third Taiwan
Strait Crisis of 1995 and 1996 when the People's Republic of China fired DF-21
and DF-15 ballistic missiles into the sea to deter Taiwan’s attempt at independence.
Journalist Robert Karniol wrote about the incident:
(QUOTE) "I suspect that [...] Parche might have gone after these Chinese missile fragments."
Furthermore, he suggested Beijing might have given away to: (QUOTE) "Some useful missile secrets."
Ultimately, much of Parche’s operational history involved clandestine missions,
and the Navy refused to give up a cover story for decades. It was always stated
that Parche was testing: (QUOTE) “Ocean engineering equipment [in support of]
the development of enhanced submarine warfare capabilities in shallow waters.”
Still, despite a vast majority of her missions remaining classified,
the fact is that Parche never fired a single shot in anger.
Final Days
Parche underwent plenty of known overhauls, including a major one in the late 1980s.
In it, her hull was extended with more than 100 additional feet forward of her sail to
make room for more modern gear, such as surveillance apparatus, cameras,
communications equipment, and additional sonar arrays, not to mention a larger crew complement.
Nevertheless, her powerful observation equipment came with a cost, and Parche
had almost all of her torpedoes removed to create extra space.
Had she had been ever detected, she would only have had a mere four shots to defend herself.
However, like other spy submarines, she carried 150 pounds of HBX explosives as a last resort to
preserve the submarine’s secrets with a scuttling charge that would prove her crew’s commitment to
the cause. Fortunately, there would be no need to use them during her illustrious career.
As the new millennium arrived, Parche started to become obsolete. Most of her fellow class
submarines had already been retired from service and their replacements were already in action,
namely the Los Angeles and the Seawolf classes of hunter/killer nuclear boats.
After her 30-year career as a “special projects platform,” Parche was withdrawn
from service for a belated retirement and replaced by USS Jimmy Carter, a modified
Seawolf-class submarine that featured a similar 100-foot extension in her hull.
It is likely that Jimmy Carter’s extension houses unmanned underwater vehicles, remotely
operated vehicles, and maybe even compact crewed submersibles to continue with Parche’s spy legacy.
However, these days Jimmy Carter would surveil not only Russia and China but also North Korea,
while modern cables also carry Internet traffic.
Parche was decommissioned and scrapped in 2004, and only her sail was preserved to
showcase her numerous markings. It is on display at Bremerton, Washington.
The submarine ultimately became the most decorated vessel in the history
of the Navy and earned more Presidential Unit Citations than any other US warship.
Parche was undoubtedly a crucial resource of the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office.
Curiously, while Presidential Unit Citations are awarded for outstanding performance in action,
Parche never saw combat. Even more ironic is the fact that
the most decorated warship’s missions are still undisclosed.
But as Journalist Kyle Mizokami put it: (QUOTE) “That's the way the Navy wanted it.”
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