Foreign subs ‘played hide and seek with Navy’

Press, 30 December 1982, Page 6

Foreign subs ‘played hide and seek with Navy’

NZPA Stockholm Photographs of seabed impressions show at least two foreign submarines played hide and seek with the Swedish Navy during an all-out hunt in Stockholm’s southern archipelago last October, said news reports yesterday.

The Navy now has definite evidence that foreign subs, possibly mini vessels, lurked in Hors Bay near Sweden’s top secret naval base at Musko Island 50km south of Stockholm, the Swedish news agency TT said in an unattributed report. The evidence, Navy pictures of seabed impressions in Hors Bay, will be turned over to an ongoing Government investigation into the two-week episode. A defence staff spokesman confirmed the existence of seabed photographs, but

would not discuss what they had shown. Nor would he say whether they were taken by a Navy underwater camera or by divers. During the hunt, Swedish Navy helicopters and warships dumped dozens of live depth charges into the Hors Bay area and set off several underwater. mines in frustrated efforts to bomb the elusive intruders to the surface. The Government has not said so, but the subs were widely believed to come from the Soviet bloc. It was the latest in a string of

submarine intrusions since the Soviet sub U 137 ran aground off a naval base at Karlskrona in southern Sweden in October, 1981. The photographs implied that the subs were only 16 to 18 metres long, about one third the size of the U 137. During the hunt there was speculation that the intruders were- mini-subs with less crew than usual, or even remote-controlled vessels. Navy officials had also speculated that they were dealing with two or possibly three submarines.