Soviet submarines

Press, 28 June 1983, Page 20

Soviet submarines

Sir,—The article, “New Nordic weapons initiative” (“The Press", June 18), by Stuart McMillan, contains this sentence: “Norway and Sweden recently have both had to deal with Soviet submarines in places where they ought not to be.” As neither the Norwegian nor Swedish navies forced any submarines to surface for positive identification, beyond all possible shadow of doubt, I invite Stuart McMillan to provide the evidence that would support his confident assertion that it was “Soviet submarines which were in places where they ought not to be,” or if unable to do so publicly acknow-

ledge in your correspondence columns that there is no such evidence. — Yours, etc., M. CREEL. June 23. 1983. [Stuart McMillan replies: “If the Swedish incidents alone are taken then the grounding of a Soviet submarine on the Swedish coast in October, 1981, was in a prohibited area. This submarine was believed, after tests, to be carrying nuclear weapons. The evidence that other submarines have been Soviet is circumstantial. The attempt in October, 1982, to force a submarine to surface was the subject of a Swedish commission’s report. The circumstantial evidence includes identification of twin propeller noise and track marks on the bottom of the ocean indicating that the submarine had a bottom crawling capacity. The characteristics do not match any North Atlantic Treaty Organisation submarine.”]