1974 Poseidon SSBN/Victor 1 Collision.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Ok, here is the preamble I downloaded because im too lazy to write creatively myself.

 

In early 2017, The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a de-classified document between US NSA Advisor Brent Scowcroft and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, issued in 1974, alerting him of a collision between the USS James Madison (A Poseidon SLBM Nuclear Missile Submarine) and a Soviet Victor Class Attack Submarine just outside the US Navy Submarine base (Refit Site 1 / Subron14) at Holy Loch, Scotland on 3rd November 1974.

For the previous 43 years this incident had remained highly classified and concealed from the public by both the US and British Governments. The 2017 CIA release provoked a short media frenzy in the UK, with the Mainstream Media claiming the incident was a Nuclear Weapons accident which nearly started World War 3, which was the reason for the cover up. However Russian TV (NTV) poured scorn on these over inflated claims, in a news report tracking down former Soviet Submarine sailors to tell their story. Naming the Soviet submarine as the Victor 1 Class K306 attack submarine., and the collision was actual a rather minor shunt with no nuclear reactor or weapons damaged.

What is apparent from the present day Russian TV news feature, is that the collision took place deep inside British sovereign territory, on the Firth of Clyde, opposite the town of Greenock and just 20 miles from Scotland's largest city Glasgow. It represented the most egregious breach of UK territory by the Soviet armed forces during the entire Cold War, which was only uncovered due to the underwater collision. This video visits the scene 50 years later, and seeks to piece together the full story of the 1974 Clyde Estuary Soviet Victor Crash, and examines the covert activity and espionage that compromised the USS James Madison's departure date. Also the political tensions in 1974 that affected the decisions afterwards, And why neither the US or British Governments will discuss the incident even today.

 

 

Interestingly enough, Ian MackIntosh, writer of the popular TV series 'Warship', wrote of a Soviet Submarine trappd in a Scottish loch as the plot for one of his novelisations of the series. Mackintosh  wrote several TV series, including a popular one on MI6 called 'The Sandbaggers' and was reputed to have links to British intelligence himself. I guess the point im making is, we seem to have known all about it, even though we didnt seem very fond of talking about it, and it made its way into culture for several years afterwards. Clancy's Chapter about chasing the Delta SSBN in the Kola peninsular seems to my mind to have perhaps been influenced by it.