Nearly 400 feet beneath the freezing Sea of Okhotsk in the far east Soviet territorial waters,
two divers clung to their lives through the
umbilical cords that pumped warm water into their diving suits.
As the men scoured the ocean floor, they kept looking for a 5-inch-diameter
cable near their submarine's underwater skis.
However, not even they knew precisely what they were doing or why, as their mission was
so shrouded in secrecy that the sailors were told they were testing ocean engineering equipment.
Little did they know that the submarine was conducting a series of spy missions
to tap into Soviet communication cables between military bases, and was right
on its way to becoming the most decorated submarine in United States Navy history...
A Tempting Risk
The Kamchatka Peninsula, located in Russia's far east, was the home of
one of the Soviet Union's most important naval bases. Located 10,000 miles away from Moscow,
the peninsula adjoins the Sea of Okhotsk, a large bay northeast of Japan.
The Vladivostok base was right there and near the Soviet Union's border with China and North Korea.
In the early 1970s, the United States intelligence community discovered that
an underwater communications cable system connected many of the most important naval bases.
The system allowed all bases to keep a constant communication flow
all the way to the Soviet Pacific Fleet's mainland headquarters,
reaching the most remote places like Vladivostok and Kamchatka,
where submarines armed with nuclear-tipped missiles were stationed, and the capital.
The potential data that could be gleaned from tapping the Kamchatka-Vladivostok cable was
immeasurably valuable, but gaining access to the communications line would be highly complex.
As Russia considered the Sea of Okhotsk to be part of its territorial waters,
the cables were heavily protected, filled with anti-submarine obstacles
and acoustic listening devices to monitor both surface and underwater traffic.
Despite the dangers, American intelligence believed the risk was worth taking.
The National Underwater Reconnaissance Office, a highly secretive joint partnership between
the CIA and the Navy, soon launched an effort to tap the Soviet cables
and access the information transmitted between the bases with their submarines.
It would be a top-secret mission, as the risk of being caught was already too high.
The operation was called Ivy Bells, and it was a joint effort between the US Navy,
the CIA, and the National Security Agency, with the clear objective to place wiretaps
on the Soviet underwater communication lines between Russian Navy bases.
In addition to the obstacles related to the actual cables, the Soviet Navy
usually performed drills in the region, further complicating the efforts to hack into the area.
However, by 1971, the American team aboard the USS Halibut submarine successfully installed
a large wiretap recording device, but when Halibut was decommissioned,
the Navy, CIA, and NSA were in need of another ship to carry out the mission.
That’s where USS Parche came in.
Parche
When the Sturgeon-class submarine USS Parche was commissioned in 1974,
no one in her crew knew what the future would hold for the hunter-killer nuclear ship.
The US Navy's corps of submarines were also known as the ‘Silent Service’
due to their secrecy during the conflict and even in peacetime.
After serving for two years in her designated role with the US Atlantic Fleet,
Parche was selected for a specialized and highly secretive position:
targeting the Soviet Union's underwater communications cables.
Once Parche arrived at her new homeport in California, a crew began working on
the submarine's modifications for the particular project, joining an illustrious yet short list of
US Navy nuclear-powered submarines designed specifically for underwater engineering.
Due to the secrecy of the operation, most of the modifications were hidden below the waterline.
Parche was fitted with a moon pool diver's hatch, allowing divers to exit to and from
inside the submarine, as well as additional room storage to carry covert mission equipment
and extra seating and berthing spaces for mission specialists.
Notably, Parche was fitted with skegs, retractable
ski legs that allowed the submarine to rest directly over the undersea cables.
To conceal Parche's true mission, the submarine's chamber was redesigned to look
like a Deep-Sea Rescue Vehicle, a ship designed to rescue submariners from stricken submarines.
However, the state-of-the-art observation equipment came at a cost,
as the engineers had to remove most of the submarine's torpedoes to create space onboard,
leaving the submarine with only four shots for defense in case of detection.
And just like all the submarines from the Silent Service, Parche carried a dangerous secret:
in the event of imminent Soviet capture, the submarine had over 150 pounds of HBX explosives
to preserve her secrets at the cost of the lives of the entire crew.
A relatively short time after Parche's commission,
the submarine evolved from a typical Cold War-era attack vessel to a top-secret spy
warship, fitted with only the newest and most advanced technology for secret surveillance.
To this day, most of Parche's operational history remains classified.
Still, it is known that the ship spent decades performing
high-stake surveillance missions in different parts of the world.
Ivy Bells
Parche’s most important mission and the reason behind her initial
transformation was Operation Ivy Bells.
After Halibut was decommissioned, Parche took over the wiretapping and device recovery role.
And for years, the submarine succeeded in going undetected.
In fact, the mission was so secret that most of the crew did not possess
the security clearance to know the truth about what they were doing.
The Navy had created a cover story to disguise their actual objective,
claiming that the spy submarine was sent to the Sea of Okhotsk
to recover the Soviet SS-N-12 Sandbox supersonic anti-ship missile debris.
By the end of the 1970s, Parche and her crew had performed numerous trips
into the dangerous and guarded Sea of Okhotsk, and these wiretapping
missions proved to be highly invaluable in surveilling Soviet military intelligence.
An Exemplary Warship
In addition to its secret wiretapping role,
USS Parche participated in countless top-secret missions known only to the
highest ranks of the Navy and eventually became the most decorated submarine in naval history.
Throughout her career, Parche received a total of nine Presidential Unit Citations
and ten Navy Unit Commendations.
In addition, during her three decades of service,
Parche also received thirteen Navy Expeditionary Medals and thirteen awards for Battle Efficiency.
While she was Operation Ivy Bell's prime submarine, Navy divers also performed secret
missile recovery missions, seizing all anti-ship missile debris following Soviet test launches. The
material was then sent to the United States and reconstructed at the Naval Research Laboratory.
Based on the recovered pieces, the laboratory managed to reverse-engineer the Soviet technology,
discovering that the missiles were guided by radar only. The infrared guidance previously suspected
did not exist at all, and this intelligence helped the Navy further safeguard its own vessels.
It is also rumored that during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis between 1995 and 1996,
Parche and her crew recovered Chinese missile fragments.
During those years, the People's Republic of China launched DF-21 and DF-15 ballistic
missiles into the seas surrounding Taiwan to deter them from moving toward independence.
In addition, USS Parche also took part in cable detection and tapping operations in other areas,
such as the North Pole and the Barents Sea.
In her decades of service, Parche underwent several modifications and overhauls to allow
her to have greater maneuverability and make extra space onboard for communications
equipment cameras, thrusters, landing skids, sonar arrays, and a larger crew complement.
The End of an Era
In 1980, Ronald Pelton, a rogue and indebted former National Security Agency intelligence
analyst, arrived at the Soviet Embassy in Washington and revealed the existence of
Operation Ivy Bells in exchange for money, thus ending its ten-year run.
By the following year, Russian warships had anchored all along the wiretapping area in the
Sea of Okhotsk to retrieve the American device. It would eventually be displayed in a Soviet museum.
However, the CIA, NSA, and Navy still refuse to acknowledge the true nature of Parche's missions.
After operating overseas for a long time, Parche arrived at the port of Bangor,
Maine, on November 23, 1994. She was welcomed by cheering crowds
that included locals and some of the crew’s family members.
By then, Parche was already recognized as the most highly decorated submarine in active service.
Still, Naval officials declined to admit what the ship did to earn all her awards.
When asked about the missions by reporters, Parche's Commanding Officer, Bruce E. Smith,
vaguely stated that the submarine conducted research and development,
helping test submarine ocean engineering equipment.
According to Smith: [QUOTE] "USS Parche also supports the development
of enhanced submarine warfare capabilities in shallow waters."
By the early 21st century, Parche had gotten too old to continue with her missions,
and after three decades of service, she was decommissioned and scrapped.
Eventually, other ships like the USS Jimmy Carter Seawolf-class submarine overtook Pache’s missions,
functioning as the Navy's premier spy submarine.
And even though the majority of USS Parche's exploits will likely remain classified,
she remains the most highly decorated vessel in US history,
receiving all its decorations without ever actually seeing combat nor firing a single shot.
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