Scenario Idea: Sweden v USSR, Whiskey on the Rocks 1981

[MarkSheppard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

In October 1981, the Soviet submarine S-363 accidentally hit an underwater rock about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the main Swedish naval base at Karlskrona, surfacing within Swedish waters.[3] The boat's presence coincided with a Swedish naval exercise, testing new equipment, in the area. Swedish naval forces reacted to the breach of sovereignty by sending an unarmed naval officer aboard the boat to meet the captain and demand an explanation. The captain initially claimed that simultaneous failures of navigational equipment had caused the boat to get lost (despite the fact that the boat had already somehow navigated through a treacherous series of rocks, straits, and islands to get so close to the naval base).[3] The Soviet navy would later issue a conflicting statement claiming that the boat had been forced into Swedish waters due to severe distress, although the boat had never sent a distress signal, and instead attempted to escape.[4]

The Soviet Navy sent a rescue task force to the site in Sweden, commanded by vice-admiral Aleksky Kalinin[5] on board the destroyer Obraztsovy; the rest of the fleet was composed of a Kotlin-class destroyer, two Nanuchka-class corvettes and a Riga-class frigate. Sweden's centre-right government at the time was determined to safeguard Sweden's territorial integrity. As the Soviet recovery fleet appeared off the coast on the first day, a fixed coastal artillery battery locked onto the ships, indicating to the Soviets that there were active coastal batteries on the islands. The fleet did not turn immediately and as they came closer to the 12-mile (19 km) territorial limit the battery commander ordered the fire control radar into top secret war mode, turning the radar signal from a single frequency to one that jumped between frequencies to stay ahead of enemy jamming. Almost immediately the Soviet fleet reacted and all vessels except a heavy tugboat slowed down, turned, and stayed in international waters. Swedish torpedo boats confronted the tugboat, which also left.[citation needed]

The Swedes were determined to continue investigating the circumstances of the situation. The Soviet captain, after a guarantee of his immunity, was taken off the boat and interrogated in the presence of Soviet representatives.[4] Additionally, Swedish naval officers examined the logbooks and instruments of the submarine.[4] The Swedish National Defence Research Institute also secretly measured for radioactive materials from outside the hull, using gamma ray spectroscopy from a specially configured Coast Guard boat. They detected something that was almost certainly uranium-238 inside the submarine, localized to the port torpedo tube.[3] Uranium-238 was routinely used as cladding in nuclear weapons and the Swedes suspected that the submarine was in fact nuclear armed.[3] The yield of the probable weapon was estimated to be the same as the bomb dropped over Nagasaki in 1945. Although the presence of nuclear weapons on board S-363 was never officially confirmed by the Soviet authorities,[6] the vessel's political officer, Vasily Besedin, later confirmed that there were nuclear warheads on some of the torpedoes, and that the crew was ordered to destroy the boat, including these warheads, if Swedish forces tried to take control of the vessel.[7]

As the Soviet captain was being interrogated, the weather turned bad and the Soviet submarine sent a distress call. In Swedish radar control centers, the storm interfered with the radar image. Soviet jamming could also have been a factor. As the Soviet submarine sent its distress call, two ships coming from the direction of the nearby Soviet armada were detected passing the 12-mile (19 km) limit headed for Karlskrona.[citation needed]

This produced the most dangerous period of the crisis and is the time where the Swedish Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin gave his order to "Hold the border" to the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, General Lennart Ljung. The coastal batteries, now fully manned as well as the mobile coastal artillery guns and mine stations, went to "Action Stations". The Swedish Air Force scrambled strike aircraft armed with modern anti-ship missiles and reconnaissance aircraft knowing that the weather did not allow rescue helicopters to fly in the event of an engagement. After a tense 20 minutes, General Ljung called Prime Minister Fälldin again and informed him that it was not Soviet surface ships but two German merchant ships.[8]

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.[4]

From a Swedish poster on another forum:

two Russian books recently released have a new piece of information on the Soviet plans to free the trapped Whiskey class submarine in Sweden in 1981.

We knew since before that a Soviet naval flotilla along with naval infantry had planned to free the submarine by force, and that this was called off half an hour before it was to be executed as the naval commanders assessed that the Swedish military buildup in the area had grown too strong that they could successfully charge in.
The submarine was later released through negotiations.

Now however it turns out that the details in the plan called for a detachment of naval spetsnaz attack divers to storm and take over a Swedish ship that was blocking the inlet, and then use the ship to pull the submarine free. Either with the aid of the crew or with Soviet "specialists for every function" that were attached. The ship referred to is likely the naval icebreaker Thule which was acting as a block ship.

This according to Gennadiy Zacharov, later rear admiral and deputy head of Yeltsin's bodyguard unit, who explains in a book by Aleksandr Sever that he commanded the spetsnaz detachment. His account is supported by one in a second book by Aleksandr Rzjavin, also a naval spetsnaz veteran, who also states that a spetsnaz detachment was ready to capture the Swedish block ship.

Quite a bold plan, and difficult to see how this would have played out when one factor in the fairly large number of Swedish military assets that had assembled nearby by the time this would have come into play. But if it had come to pass I imagine that it'd have been a battle that have stood out in modern warfare history. Especially if the Soviets had managed to pull it off.

It can be noted that Rzjavin also talks about "the Swedish corridor", he explains that the Swedish coastline especially in the east and north is the most suitable in the northwestern theater for infiltration from the sea by Soviet spetsnaz units due to the sparse population in bays and on the many islands. Sweden would then have been a doorway to targets further away in NATO countries. This would explain what by some is seen as a disproportionate number (compared to other countries) of observed divers and mini submersibles in Swedish waters towards the end of the cold war.

I don't have time right now to do anything involving this idea, but if anyone wants to do a Sweden v USSR scenario with this as a starting point to "spark" the incidents...