Russian Tracking Ship.
Shadowing the Russians.
(Transcript of part of a conversation with Bill Adams on Monday Oct 28th 2013 at his home in Bermuda.)
But I guess 1960 was the biggest year there – we were getting involved with the Russians. It was on a
Friday night, I was home here, about 8:30 the phone rang – it was Gordon Hamilton.
“Bill, I got a trip you got to go on.”
“Oh! Good. What’s it all about?”
“I can’t tell you about it over the phone, I have to talk to you.”
“What do I have do?”
“You’ve got to catch a ship out of Pearl Harbor Sunday afternoon.”
“That’s good, but you can’t talk?“
“No, but I want see you before you go”
“You want me to come over to your house?”
“No!” he says, “I’m in Washington”
So he says he’s coming home tomorrow on Eastern Airlines, meet him at the airport, we could have a half-hour talk and I could go back out on the same plane. So that was very nice, but he says you’ll need a tape recorder and some tapes, and some cables to hook it up, so I met him at the airport and we talked about it there and I didn’t have any problem getting a ticket - he gave me this piece of paper - just go up to any airlines, hand it to them and say “Look I want to be on that flight no matter what” and away we went.
I went back out on the flight to New York and then got on another plane and went to San Francisco, I think it was. I had to overnight there and board another flight down to Pearl Sunday morning.
So next morning, I went to the airport and got a flight booked, and as soon as I got that booked, got on the phone and asked the operator to connect me to the office at Pearl. So Pearl comes on, I told him who I was and I was arriving on flight so and so at such and such a time. I request transportation to take me to my destination. He says “Where are you going?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
And I gave him one word– the code for the operation – “you can work it out while I am flying in”.
So I went down and when I got to Pearl, there was a woman Navy officer there to meet me with a pick-up truck – a car would have done, but they thought I had a lot of equipment, so we put it in there and she says “Mr. Adams, there’s been a change in the plans, you are not sailing today, we have orders to put you into the Makalapa BOQ – the Officers headquarters – for the night anyhow.”
That’s fine, as I had been there before. I went there, had a nice meal that night, and next morning when I got up and had breakfast, then I went over to the Operations Office to see what the hell was going on.
So I went in and talked to this guy and he said that he got a dispatch from Washington on Sunday – or Saturday – one of the two – telling him that there was a UK rep. coming, to be on this trip, and whatever you do, don’t go without him. He says that’s all he’s got – doesn’t know where he is coming from, and when he is going to get here or anything about him.
“We just gotta’ wait.” So I thought about that one a little bit and I said,
“Now look, Captain, are you sure you read that thing right.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, ”I don’t think it said a UK rep, I think it probably said a UK National.”
He says “Good God, that would be even worse.”
So he buzzes his intercom for his secretary to ‘bring me that dispatch’ – she brought it in and he read it and says, “My God, You’re right! What made you think of that?”
I said “Well, -- that UK national? – you are looking at him.”
He was really shook up but I took my traveling orders out of my briefcase, showed it to him and I was authorized to access anywhere.
So I said “The biggest problem that you’ve got now is explaining to Washington why we didn’t sail yesterday, because I was here.”
It was panic stations. Anyway, we went down to the ship and went aboard. The skipper was a lieutenant commander, and this other guy was a four-striper and he told the l-c to give me whatever cooperation I needed, and assist me in anything I need.
“Well I need access to the transponder* for your sonar, I want a place to set up a tape recorder, power for it, and I want radio from WWV** for time. Soon as I get that hooked up, we can go.”
He got his chief sonar man up there and we got together and half hour we had it hooked up and we put to sea.
Before we put to sea, the captain gave the skipper an envelope for me and says open this up when you get to sea, not before.
So we went out and when we cleared the buoy about a mile we stopped, opened it up and it told us what it was all about.
We were to locate this Russian tracking ship and see what he was doing, basically. The instructions for me was to stay with the Russian, don‘t get any closer than a mile, but don’t get any more than 2 and a half miles away from him. So I told the skipper that’s what you are to do. The orders to the skipper were simple - to do whatever I said. So we set out then, working on this damn Russian spy ship. Nobody knew how long we were going to be out or anything, you know – I couldn’t tell anyone where I was, nobody knew where I was anyway, so we figured we would be out about 10 days maybe. We had drafted a doctor on board in case somebody went ill.
This ship, the one we were on, her normal duty is weather station duty and she would be provisioned for 21 days – 2 days out, 17 on station and 2 days back. So when we got around 15 -16 days, things are getting kinda’ depleted! We knew they had 3 or 4 other weather ships in different parts of the Pacific and we could intercept the communication between them as each one was being relieved. Somebody would relieve you on such and such a date and time and you head off home. Everybody said, “Well, our time is next.” So I was out somewhere on the ship doing mostly nothing and a messenger comes for me. “Captain would like to see you in the ward room.”
So I went up there and he handed me a dispatch and said “Look, we got this thing from the Admiral in Pearl, but they don’t have any way of relieving the ship because of you.” (My job:- they thought the Russians were going to put a man up in space at that time because Khrushchev was going to address the United Nations*** and they thought Russia would probably do something spectacular to back him up, and my instruction was that if they did send something up, regardless what it was, wherever it comes down, if it didn’t come down right alongside that tracking ship, if they missed the shot or whatever, I was to get it before they did.) But none of the other weather ships had the equipment to tell where it would come down, see.
So we got this damn message telling us how important we were and how bad they needed us and how important our mission was and everything and would we consider staying. So skipper says what are we going to do. So I said, “Well, you have 2 options, you can write back and say ‘yes we are happy,
we’ll stay’, or you can write back and say ‘No. we’ve had enough, we are coming home’. I said in either case you’re going to get another message telling you damn well just stay anyhow. So we agreed and told them we needed to be re-provisioned. So a little later we got a message back agreeing to
re-provision us. And a couple of hours later, the skipper sent for me again to the wardroom. The Supply Officer is there with a list in his hand all made up and skipper handed it to me and said,
“What do you think of this?”
So I read it, and skipper says “Is that alright Mr. Adams?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, I don’t see any ice cream, and I don’t see any new movies. The movies we’ve got, we’ve seen them all four times.”
Supply Officer says “We couldn’t put them on there, because being ‘provisioned at sea’ – well, that’s considered an absolute luxury. We couldn’t put that on.”
So I said, ”Well, then, we don’t stay, we go home.”
So skipper looked at me and says, “Well, if we put those things on there, will you sign it?”
“Yeah, I’ll sign the bleddy thing. They can’t do anything to me.”
So we sent it off.
Next morning, we were being re-provisioned, and we had our ice cream and we had our new movies!! So I was real popular after that! We were out there for 34 days altogether before we got back into Pearl. That was an exciting trip.
But we stayed with that damned ship – he’d go a little way then he’d stop. I told the helm “Look, if he moves, you move, if he stops, you stop. I just want to be within that range of him and we will take it from there.” Every bleddy time that ship stopped, no matter what time of morning, noon or night it
was, some messenger would come and tell me, even if I’m asleep, “he’s moving” or “he’s stopped”. It was a pain in the neck. It was aggravating. But it was what we had to do. Finally, the Russian was turning and heading for home, we went with him for 2 days or something but then we got the orders that at a certain time, we were to break and come home. So, when that time come up, we were about a mile away from him heading in the same direction, about to break away, when there was a commotion on the Russian ship - he mustered ‘ships company’ on deck, and they waved us ‘good-bye’.
They knew what was going on. That was unbelievable. So much for secure communications! But it was a lot of fun.
*Transponder. - A device located underwater on the ship’s hull that can send out a brief signal (a ‘ping’), and receive back an echo from any object that the ping is reflected from. Knowing the speed of sound in seawater, (about 4,800 ft/sec.) the distance to the object can be calculated.
**WWV. - A very accurate time signal that is transmitted by radio by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.
*** 1) Sept 12th 1959 Khrushchev addressed UN.
2) The Russian re-entry capsule was first tested in 1960, and was designed for a land-based landing. Perhaps it was tested in a sub-orbital flight, landing in the Pacific, but that is something for the historians to verify (or not!).
November 2013
But I guess 1960 was the biggest year there – we were getting involved with the Russians. It was on a
Friday night, I was home here, about 8:30 the phone rang – it was Gordon Hamilton.
“Bill, I got a trip you got to go on.”
“Oh! Good. What’s it all about?”
“I can’t tell you about it over the phone, I have to talk to you.”
“What do I have do?”
“You’ve got to catch a ship out of Pearl Harbor Sunday afternoon.”
“That’s good, but you can’t talk?“
“No, but I want see you before you go”
“You want me to come over to your house?”
“No!” he says, “I’m in Washington”
So he says he’s coming home tomorrow on Eastern Airlines, meet him at the airport, we could have a half-hour talk and I could go back out on the same plane. So that was very nice, but he says you’ll need a tape recorder and some tapes, and some cables to hook it up, so I met him at the airport and we talked about it there and I didn’t have any problem getting a ticket - he gave me this piece of paper - just go up to any airlines, hand it to them and say “Look I want to be on that flight no matter what” and away we went.
I went back out on the flight to New York and then got on another plane and went to San Francisco, I think it was. I had to overnight there and board another flight down to Pearl Sunday morning.
So next morning, I went to the airport and got a flight booked, and as soon as I got that booked, got on the phone and asked the operator to connect me to the office at Pearl. So Pearl comes on, I told him who I was and I was arriving on flight so and so at such and such a time. I request transportation to take me to my destination. He says “Where are you going?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
And I gave him one word– the code for the operation – “you can work it out while I am flying in”.
So I went down and when I got to Pearl, there was a woman Navy officer there to meet me with a pick-up truck – a car would have done, but they thought I had a lot of equipment, so we put it in there and she says “Mr. Adams, there’s been a change in the plans, you are not sailing today, we have orders to put you into the Makalapa BOQ – the Officers headquarters – for the night anyhow.”
That’s fine, as I had been there before. I went there, had a nice meal that night, and next morning when I got up and had breakfast, then I went over to the Operations Office to see what the hell was going on.
So I went in and talked to this guy and he said that he got a dispatch from Washington on Sunday – or Saturday – one of the two – telling him that there was a UK rep. coming, to be on this trip, and whatever you do, don’t go without him. He says that’s all he’s got – doesn’t know where he is coming from, and when he is going to get here or anything about him.
“We just gotta’ wait.” So I thought about that one a little bit and I said,
“Now look, Captain, are you sure you read that thing right.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, ”I don’t think it said a UK rep, I think it probably said a UK National.”
He says “Good God, that would be even worse.”
So he buzzes his intercom for his secretary to ‘bring me that dispatch’ – she brought it in and he read it and says, “My God, You’re right! What made you think of that?”
I said “Well, -- that UK national? – you are looking at him.”
He was really shook up but I took my traveling orders out of my briefcase, showed it to him and I was authorized to access anywhere.
So I said “The biggest problem that you’ve got now is explaining to Washington why we didn’t sail yesterday, because I was here.”
It was panic stations. Anyway, we went down to the ship and went aboard. The skipper was a lieutenant commander, and this other guy was a four-striper and he told the l-c to give me whatever cooperation I needed, and assist me in anything I need.
“Well I need access to the transponder* for your sonar, I want a place to set up a tape recorder, power for it, and I want radio from WWV** for time. Soon as I get that hooked up, we can go.”
He got his chief sonar man up there and we got together and half hour we had it hooked up and we put to sea.
Before we put to sea, the captain gave the skipper an envelope for me and says open this up when you get to sea, not before.
So we went out and when we cleared the buoy about a mile we stopped, opened it up and it told us what it was all about.
We were to locate this Russian tracking ship and see what he was doing, basically. The instructions for me was to stay with the Russian, don‘t get any closer than a mile, but don’t get any more than 2 and a half miles away from him. So I told the skipper that’s what you are to do. The orders to the skipper were simple - to do whatever I said. So we set out then, working on this damn Russian spy ship. Nobody knew how long we were going to be out or anything, you know – I couldn’t tell anyone where I was, nobody knew where I was anyway, so we figured we would be out about 10 days maybe. We had drafted a doctor on board in case somebody went ill.
This ship, the one we were on, her normal duty is weather station duty and she would be provisioned for 21 days – 2 days out, 17 on station and 2 days back. So when we got around 15 -16 days, things are getting kinda’ depleted! We knew they had 3 or 4 other weather ships in different parts of the Pacific and we could intercept the communication between them as each one was being relieved. Somebody would relieve you on such and such a date and time and you head off home. Everybody said, “Well, our time is next.” So I was out somewhere on the ship doing mostly nothing and a messenger comes for me. “Captain would like to see you in the ward room.”
So I went up there and he handed me a dispatch and said “Look, we got this thing from the Admiral in Pearl, but they don’t have any way of relieving the ship because of you.” (My job:- they thought the Russians were going to put a man up in space at that time because Khrushchev was going to address the United Nations*** and they thought Russia would probably do something spectacular to back him up, and my instruction was that if they did send something up, regardless what it was, wherever it comes down, if it didn’t come down right alongside that tracking ship, if they missed the shot or whatever, I was to get it before they did.) But none of the other weather ships had the equipment to tell where it would come down, see.
So we got this damn message telling us how important we were and how bad they needed us and how important our mission was and everything and would we consider staying. So skipper says what are we going to do. So I said, “Well, you have 2 options, you can write back and say ‘yes we are happy,
we’ll stay’, or you can write back and say ‘No. we’ve had enough, we are coming home’. I said in either case you’re going to get another message telling you damn well just stay anyhow. So we agreed and told them we needed to be re-provisioned. So a little later we got a message back agreeing to
re-provision us. And a couple of hours later, the skipper sent for me again to the wardroom. The Supply Officer is there with a list in his hand all made up and skipper handed it to me and said,
“What do you think of this?”
So I read it, and skipper says “Is that alright Mr. Adams?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, I don’t see any ice cream, and I don’t see any new movies. The movies we’ve got, we’ve seen them all four times.”
Supply Officer says “We couldn’t put them on there, because being ‘provisioned at sea’ – well, that’s considered an absolute luxury. We couldn’t put that on.”
So I said, ”Well, then, we don’t stay, we go home.”
So skipper looked at me and says, “Well, if we put those things on there, will you sign it?”
“Yeah, I’ll sign the bleddy thing. They can’t do anything to me.”
So we sent it off.
Next morning, we were being re-provisioned, and we had our ice cream and we had our new movies!! So I was real popular after that! We were out there for 34 days altogether before we got back into Pearl. That was an exciting trip.
But we stayed with that damned ship – he’d go a little way then he’d stop. I told the helm “Look, if he moves, you move, if he stops, you stop. I just want to be within that range of him and we will take it from there.” Every bleddy time that ship stopped, no matter what time of morning, noon or night it
was, some messenger would come and tell me, even if I’m asleep, “he’s moving” or “he’s stopped”. It was a pain in the neck. It was aggravating. But it was what we had to do. Finally, the Russian was turning and heading for home, we went with him for 2 days or something but then we got the orders that at a certain time, we were to break and come home. So, when that time come up, we were about a mile away from him heading in the same direction, about to break away, when there was a commotion on the Russian ship - he mustered ‘ships company’ on deck, and they waved us ‘good-bye’.
They knew what was going on. That was unbelievable. So much for secure communications! But it was a lot of fun.
*Transponder. - A device located underwater on the ship’s hull that can send out a brief signal (a ‘ping’), and receive back an echo from any object that the ping is reflected from. Knowing the speed of sound in seawater, (about 4,800 ft/sec.) the distance to the object can be calculated.
**WWV. - A very accurate time signal that is transmitted by radio by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.
*** 1) Sept 12th 1959 Khrushchev addressed UN.
2) The Russian re-entry capsule was first tested in 1960, and was designed for a land-based landing. Perhaps it was tested in a sub-orbital flight, landing in the Pacific, but that is something for the historians to verify (or not!).
November 2013