STILL BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE...

So here we are in March of 2006. The Iraqi Sunni minority are on the barest razor-edge of a permanent, on-going civil war with the majority Shi'ites (as any idiot who bothered to read up on  Middle Eastern history could have predicted), the nation has lost over 3000 soldiers and airmen to date in a useless, insuppportable crusade to bring an utterly alien political philosophy (democracy) to Iraq, and America is obsessively throwing mega-billions of our taxpayer dollars down that particular and bottomless rathole.

Meanwhile, the poor Blacks of Louisiana are still camped out on the ruins of New Orleans while the Federal Government (read: The Bush Administration) tap-dances on the critical issues of providing economic relief and recovery subsidies to that region.

Under these circumstances, to say that the United States of America (read: The Bush Administration and all of its three-brain-cell yahoo supporters) is royally screwed up in its ability to both recognise realities and set appropriate priorities is understating matters considerably.

Internally, young Americans increasingly have lost contact with any vestige of thoughtful reflection as the massively pervasive 'infotainment' industry cranks up ever higher levels of pop culture effluvia for them to drown in. Today's youth heroes are gangsta rappers, pop-star wannabees (read: 'American Idol'), and the violence quotient of youth gang activities has escalated  to the level of full-blown, cold-blooded Mafia smack-downs of the 30s & 40s. It's a good thing Mr. Rogers isn't around to witness all this social mayhem; he'd be quite disappointed to see the evidence for himself that it's no longer "A wonderful day in the neighborhood!"

Speaking personally,  from a philosophical standpoint, I feel spiritually and morally overwhelmed by all this clear evidence that the much-ballyhooed American Democracy of the 'greatest nation the world has ever seen' is spinning relentlessly ever downwards in a death spiral towards oblivion. Not that any other political-economic system the sun has risen on has ever advanced sufficiently far to achieve a better track record, its just that humanity has the inherent ability to rise so much higher above the ordure we presently roll around in and yet fails depressingly (and unerringly) to fulfill that potential. Even more exhausting is the fact that the 'average' American fails to have even a glimmer of the truth of this tragedy.  Thus, American cultural awareness grinds ever deeper into abysmal medocrity and my mood becomes ever more pessimistic (not that I was EVER optimistic about the ultimate fate of humanity, given what we know of its track record in rising out of the primordial slime mold of antiquity).

Meanwhile, we have severely misinformed and shortsighted dimbulbs starting to beat the drum for Dubya's 'Brown Sugar' Secretary of State, "Condominium" Rice, as a presidential candidate, Darth Vader-like Veep Dick "Trigger Finger" Cheney continuing to skulk secretively behind the Bush throne, and America remaining about as homo-phobic as ever (with the recent release of the gay cowboy film 'Brokeback Mountain'). No, it certainly isn't a wonderful day in the neighborhood and frankly, I'm getting tired on repeating the obvious in this monthly rant. What we REALLY need to resolve humanity's desperate circumstances, I think, is a Dr. Strangelove reprise wherein a 'Doomsday Machine' (a self-regulated, apocalyptic  nuclear mega-weapon capable of destroying all life on the planet) goes off and scours the surface of the entire planet clean of all biological lifeforms (except cockroaches, of course, whose collective intelligence & cleverness FAR exceeds that of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and the whole kit and kaboodle of our present administration put together). Perhaps then we could start afresh and let evolution try one more time to come up with a superior biological life-form on the planet Earth that wouldn't try to destroy itself every other millenium....

WE ALL LIVE IN A PINK (er....RED?) SUBMARINE...

In the past few months I have started to take a renewed interest in a life-long source of fascination: undersea warfare and submarine vessels. Although the Beatles almost got it right with their allegorical 'Yellow Submarine' parable, submarines are anything but light-hearted machines of euphoric pleasure (one notable exception was Fleet Submarine USS Balao's brief stint as a pink-painted submarine in 'Operation Petticoat', an early 60s film--see image at right). I have been for most of my life fascinated by the thought of human beings encapsulated within sealed steel tubes voyaging to the ocean depths. Partly due to the fact that the extreme hyperbaric pressures that submarine vessels are subjected to are almost beyond the average person's ability to imagine, and partly due to the (in my opinion) raw courage it takes to risk one's life in this manner (I've always been a craven coward, despite continuous displays of feigned courage), submarines have been a never-ending source of wonderment for me. In the past few weeks I pulled a copy of the movie "K-19: The Widowmaker"  off my video shelf and played through it again. The drama, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, is intense and skillfully produced. So much so that it is even better, I feel, than the vaunted 'Hunt for Red October' (starring Sean Connery). Moreover, it was based upon a very real event: the near melt-down of Soviet submarine K-19's nuclear core while operating 600 feet deep at sea in 1961.

K-19 was the first of a new group of Soviet submarines known as the Project 658/Hotel 1 class that would be fitted with twin VM-A nuclear reactors, following the design of earlier types (Project 627A/November and 659/675 Echo classes), and would carry three liquid-fueled ballistic missiles of the surface-launched R-13 type enclosed vertically within the aft section of its sail (the fine-like superstructure on modern submarines whose closest counterpart on earlier submarines would be termed the 'conning tower'). The R-13 missile had a range of only 350 nautical miles, requiring the launching submarine to close within that range of its intended targets (coastal US cities).

As the movie 'K-19: The Widowmaker' indicated, Soviet nuclear submarine K-19 was near-fatally crippled off southern Greenland when a coolant conduit burst in the so-called 'sealed area' near the core's fuel rod nucleus. Soviet reactors had sealed areas wherein contained systems were incapable of being maintained or repaired at sea; this was in marked contrast to US nuclear submarine reactors, which were fully accessible by the crew at sea. The Soviet subs also used manually operated (that is, manually raised or lowered) control rods, whereas US nuclear subs used automatic control rod systems. However, unlike the movie version in which K-19 is abandoned (and scuttled), the real K-19 was towed back to port, where its reactor compartment was replaced between 1962 and 1964; it was subsequently returned to sea duty. Over the next 26 years K-19 was recurrently plagued by one misfortunate after another, including collisions with other submarines (both US and Soviet), severe compartmental fires, and a host of other near-disabling calamities that were not due to a mythical jinx, but substandard technological maintenance and operation carried out by Soviet crews.

The Project 658/Hotel 1 Class nuclear submarines (of which there were 8 built, including the K-19) all experienced serious operational problems in their years of service as early submersible ballistic missile launchers and a review of world news throughout that 30 year span reveals a great number of news stories about these submarines being disabled on the surface at sea. But no matter how well the movie 'K-19: Widowmaker' conforms to the real historical drama of the unfortunate K-19, it tends to be overlooked in comparsion to more action-packed movies like Connery's 'Red October', which is unfortunate. It remains one of the few recent classic submarine movies truly worth viewing (one of the absolute best, of course, remains 'Das Boot').

When I was attending a chemical warfare defense symposium in Finland (mid-90s), high on my list of sights to see was the Finnish diesel-electric powered submarine 'Vesikko'. The Vesikko', built in the early 30s for Finland's navy and derived from late WWI submarine designs, was the basis of Germany's WWII Type IIB coastal U-boats and the progenitor design inspiration for the ultimate classic German Atlantic U-boats of the WWII period (Type VIIC). At the end of the war, Finland was penalised for its collaboration with Germany by being denied the use of submarines in its navy, hence the Vesikko was permanently beached and 'demilled' as a public display on the island fortress of Suomelinnen just off Helsinki's harbor (it is today a public park). Due to the scheduling of my conference and other considerations, there simply was not enough time to fully inspect the Vesikko (much to my everlasting regret), but there was some compensation for this in the fact that a former Soviet submarine was also tied-up in Helsinki Harbor as a floating exhibit, open to the public. This conventionally powered (diesel-electric) vessel was of the Project 651/Juliett class, of which a total of of 16 (out of a planned production of 72) were produced from 1963 through 1968. Displacing 3,140 tons surfaced and 4,240 tons submerged, the Juliett Class boats  were designed as large cruise-missile carriers, equipped with 4 P-5/P-6 surfaced launched cruise missiles in poded pairs that were built into the free-flooding structure above the inner pressure hull.

Although produced by the TsKB-18 Design Bureau, under Chief Designer Abram S. Kassatsier, the actual naval architect to whom credit for the design must be given was a woman! Thus the NATO code name 'Juliett', and the fact that this is the only submarine vessel in history that was design-engineered by a woman. This small sidelight is often overlooked or ignored by most historians in the field of submarine technology, but it remains true, nevertheless. At any rate, my good Finnish friend Markku and I, along with our wives, were able to take a couple of hours to tour through this fascinating relic of the Cold War and it was indeed one of the most interesting personal experiences I have had related to submarines. I took a number of images aboard the boat, thoroughly documenting its accessible interior and exterior spaces, but when I changed films at some point in the control room, I must have left the film canister behind, since only a very few images of the boat tied to the dock remain. With some shame, I must admit that while in the control room I got out my Swiss Army Knife and unscrewed a small metal plate with some valve instructions on it in Cyrillic lettering; I still have that small metal ID plate today (see image below) and it sits on a bookshelf near a WWII U-boat Ka-leut's hat. I had assumed that the sub was permanently moored to the Helsinki dock we found it at, but later learned to my immense chagrin that it was actually only there temporarily on tour, and was scheduled to visit other areas on that tour in later months (via towing, since it was no longer operable under its own power). The haunting thought of my having negligently removed a critical valve ID plate from an actively operating submarine is still fresh today, although clearly the vessel did not subsequently encounter any untoward problems owing to my indiscretion. It is one of the few times in my life as a historian and firm advocate of historical preservation that I violated the historian's prime dictum to museum visitors: do not remove anything from a museum exhibit as a souvenir!

It was only relatively recently that the rest of the fascinating story behind Juliett 484 (which is more correctly identified as the ex-Soviet submarine K-77) surfaced in my awareness. Juliett 484 (AKA: K-77) was sold by the Russian government to a wealthy Finnish businessman, who had bought it as a novel floating restaurant and visitor attraction in Helsinki Harbor (this was its status when I toured through it in Finland, in the mid 90s). The idea didn't work well and to make a long story short, the boat passed through several owners until it finally was towed to Rhode Island, where it became a permanent part of the USS Saratoga Museum (it remains there today).  It is wonderful to know that this very interesting survivor of the Cold War Era has finally found a good home here in the USA. For a very comprehensive background on the sub and its post-Helsinki history, dial up the Juliett 484 / K-77 Museum web pages that are part of the USS Saratoga Museum  http://www.juliett484.org/juliett/history/historyofjuliett484.html Several of the images of K-77 shown here have been borrowed from that web site illicitly, but with hopes that the added publicity for K-77 will be welcomed and thereby tacitly condoned by that museum.

I should add, as a note to the above, that the internal compartments of this Juliett class Russian boat were used to shoot most of the interior scenes during the filming of the movie 'K-19: The Widowmaker'. Keep that fascinating fact in mind, when you next view 'K-19: The Widowmaker'.

Since my experiences in Finland produced a number of writings, I have excerpted some chapters from an unpublished manuscript ('WAHOO BACKDOOR: A CALIFORNIA YANKEE IN KING FAHAD'S COURT') that cover this particular experience and reproduced them below. Keep in mind this describes events taking place in the mid 90s, not long after the end of the Soviet Union as a political system came about.

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"RUSSIAN SUBMARINES & HOT DOGS:

"In Helsinki we arrived at the home of X’s sister who lives in a large flat in the city. From there we did the 24 hour concentrated tour of this very unusually modern Scandinavian city. The weather was still sunny, although it threatened rain later in the day, so we had a great dose of taking in all the sights that there are to see. Included in this tour was an inspection of a Russian Juliett-Class cruise missile submarine (Soviet submarine hull number '484' and referred to in the text as 'U-484' simply as a convenience), which is now anchored in Helsinki harbor as a temporary display, on loan from Russia. X and I must have spent the better part of two hours combing the huge steel tube through from stem to stern in the now increasing drizzle; both of us found it endlessly fascinating, although the wives predictably ho-hummed and fretted over our boyish enthusiasms. This prowl through the multiple-levels of Russia’s U-484 revealed many profound differences between their submarines and those of the United States. Their subs are a nightmare of tangled steel conduits and electrical junctions, combined with a nightmarish plumbing setup that would make an Ubanetsky modern painting look aesthetically understandable. It must be mentioned that the Juliette-class boats are the only type of submarine in the whole world that were designed and developed by a woman marine architect (with a NATO identifier of “Juliett”, who says NATO had no  sense of humor during the worst days of the Cold War?). Strangely, despite this fact, there were no signs over the heads reminding the crew to put the seats down after use.....

"The drizzle, which had just started when we reached the U-484, began to increase to the point where it was raining quite considerably so I was unable to get more than one or two poor photographs of it from the dock across from it. Some wag operating the submarine museum concession had run a bright red KOFF beer flag up the periscope shears, right under the old Soviet red naval ensign. It made for an amusing if somewhat unglamorous counter-note to the exhibit of this interesting old survivor of frigid deep-water intrigues. After buying some hot dogs by the gang-plank leading to the sub’s hatch, we were told that a gourmet dinner could be arranged by special request in the sub’s officer’s mess; catering for groups of less than 12 could be provided to constitute what has to be one of the world’s more unusual opportunities for an evening’s dining at a decidedly unconventional submersible restaurant. That would have to rank as an exotic experience on the short list of such things, considering not just the location of the dinner but the cramped space available aboard the boat. The U-484’s four nuclear capable cruise-type guided missiles carried in firing tubes hidden in the upper deck casing had been removed, naturally enough, but it was sobering enough just to see the cavernous recesses in the launch area where they were stowed. A further unusual feature of U-484 was the fact that then entire forward section of its massive sail rotated 180 degrees to reveal the sub's substantial guidance radar antenna array. Just before leaving, X and I got a few pictures of each other posing at the main periscope in true dramatic war-movie style. So much for grown-up children and their fantasies, eh?

"The distaff element of our group were starting to mumble about a possible mutiny, so X and I reluctantly left this great big, 3000+ ton plaything for some more mutually agreeable sightseeing. At present, word has it that Helsinki is negotiating with the Russian Navy for loan of a Typhoon-class nuclear submarine (of which the ill-fated 'KURSK' is one). The U-484 has a displacement of 3500 tons; the Typhoon-class subs, which are nuclear powered and carried as many as 16 intercontinental nuclear missiles, weigh in at over  12,500 tons displacement! This compared to a German World War Two Atlantic U-boat, such as the Type VIIC, which weighed a mere 750 tons. The old saying has it that the only difference between the men and the boys is the cost of their toys. I would amend that to ‘the size of their toys,” as well. How about something like that in your bath-tub to use as a rubber-duckie?

"ARABIAN TOILETS IN HELSINKI:

"Helsinki has quite a lot to see, obviously. The sights were many, the markets and waterfront vendors plentiful and colorful, and we would be exhausted by the time the day was at an end. Among the places visited was the famous Arabia ceramics and porcelain factory with all its exquisite glass and art objects. The factory showroom, where all their samples and seconds are sold, must have been to our wives what the Juliett-class was for X and I. I had to admit that their products are beautiful, well known throughout the world for artful style and craftsmanship. I was vastly amused to find that every toilet in Finland (they seem all to be manufactured by the Arabia Company) has the word “ARABIA” scribed on its flushing knob. This was a note of irony I particularly enjoyed, considering how frequently I have often used excremental terms to describe my feelings on how it is to have to live amicably with the Arabs.

"Our wandering took us from the Arabia factory to the downtown center where we had lunch in the popular Happy Days bar and restaurant in the waterfront’s nearby park-square. A strange mixture of American 60s bizarre style and Finnish pop eclecticism, it was strangely appealing in an otherwise urban sylvan setting where drunks sat propped up against tree trunks in a harmless but sad manner that seemed perfectly normal. X remarked that Finnish alcoholism is still a major problem, but not as bad as it once used to be.

"GERMAN  SUBMARINES & CHINESE FOOD:

The final act of this last day was to visit the Island Fortress of Suomelinen which contains all sorts of interesting sights. Among these are the very old fortifications of the original island defense works, established many, many years ago to protect the harbor, a number of maritime displays, and what for X and I was the major draw: the submarine Vesikko.

"Vesikko, is a very interesting old submarine which began its life as a prototype of Germany’s new Kriegsmarine, designed and ordered by Germany before the war (in the 1930s). It was produced by Finnish industries and was then purchased by the Finnish Navy as the first of 5 similar craft to be operated during the war. The Vesikko was very similar to the so-called German Coastal U-boat (Type IIB) in size and displacement (about 350 tons), but bears remarkable resemblance to the famous Atlantic U-boat Type VIIC which was responsible for most of the allied shipping losses during the war. It was, practically speaking, an advance product of Germany’s cover gearing up for what became the Second World War, in contravention of the terms of the First World War’s armistice.

"Another submarine to explore! Boy, were X and I happy! The girls, as could be predicted, were far from happy crewmates on this sub-crawl and once again the smell of a mutiny brewed up after we had had only a brief time to inspect this latest bath-tub super-toy. Reluctantly, X and I left the Vesikko where she rests, high and dry on a pedestal near the water, and resumed our exploration of some of the rest of the island.

"This brought the total number of submarine explored  to three for this trip, since we had found another one in Stockholm Harbor tied up to a dock near the Vaasa Museum. That one had been a conventional electric/diesel boat of the Russian Whiskey-class, designated the U-194. First produced in the early 50s, It had been in active use by the Russian Navy since 1957 to prowl Swedish coastal waters and was kept in service until about 1991, amazingly. The Juliette-class cruise missile sub in Helsinki Harbor (U-484) had been in use by Russia until 1994!

"Finally, late in the evening, my wife and I hosted X and his wife at a fairly good Chinese restaurant in the old port area of the Helsinki waterfront. While nothing to write the relatives back in Hong Kong about, it wasn’t too bad and X and his wife enjoyed the chance to experience a cuisine which Finns rarely partake of. Arriving back at X’s sister’s flat quite late, we were really tired, having seen far more than we really had the energy to in this lightning tour of a city that has much to see and experience. Included were the Finnish Modern Art Museum, the very old (second oldest to Turku) city of Pouro with its ancient wooden buildings and the magnificent cathedral, the Helsinki Marimeko Store, the Helsinki University Hospital, the old Helsinki maritime district, and the Finnish Museum of Traditional and Modern arts & Crafts.

"The next day we were due to fly out for home, my wife for the US and I for Riyadh. X and his wife would continue their 6 week summer vacation with a trip by car across the Bothnian Gulf to  Sweden and Norway, after our departure.  We put my wife on her BA 737-400 flight to Heathrow in the early morning, and then X and his wife saw me off on my BA Airbus 300 flight back to Riyadh that afternoon.

"My wife was glad to get back to the dogs, both of which she told me were terribly excited to see her after the absence of only a week [It is something else to watch two well-fed Siberian Huskies express their pent-up happiness to be reunited with their humans again after a period of separation.... we’re talking “slurp-city.”], but she admitted to being somewhat burned out from the strains of having to communicate in such a constantly painstaking manner. I also was feeling the stress of the protracted communication requirement, but I had enjoyed myself thoroughly thanks to X’s excellent efforts to  provide a visit worth remembering. I was begrudgingly ready for another long, hot, dry and boring as hell  summer in Riyadh, but only barely, after having been overwhelmed by Finland’s vast green beauty and her wonderfully hospitable inhabitants.

"The 3 hour leg of the flight back to Heathrow from Helsinki was uneventful, but the three-hour layover there was infinitely dull. The flight from Heathrow to King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was also uneventful except for the fact that a small baby being carried to the plane’s toilet in its father’s arms chose to projectile vomit all over me everything it had eaten in the past several hours. Fortunately for me and the continued survival of the baby, it wasn’t a direct hit and I had only a few fleeting urges to strangle it by its little neck before I was able to relax after a bit of reflection on the little pooper’s apparent lack of finesse in choosing an appropriate target.

"The unavoidable ordeal of clearing Saudi customs wasn’t half as bad as I had expected and shortly after the arrival of our flight at 0600 hours Riyadh time I was waved through and caught a taxi back to the hospital compound. I was carrying some 6 kilos of printed material, brochures, papers, magazines and what-have-you from the NBC conference in Stockholm and the weeks spent with the Finns. When the customs inspector saw all of this he simply gave up trying to inspect it all for illicit “nasty” pictures. For my part, I couldn’t believe I had managed to lug all that stuff home with me; even the framed photo of the two Drakens in flight over Tampere had survived the flight, with glass intact.

"The trip had been overall one of the best I have taken in recent years, and was certainly genuinely enjoyable and interesting. My wife was pleased with introduction to these two Scandinavian countries, despite the wearying pace and breadth of the trip.

"X and his wife, by the way, are planning to spend several weeks with my wife and I in the coming year and we shall be returning the favor of hospitality. My wife will show X’s wife the sights and scenes of California while I take X on a tour of the defense establishments. I am looking forward to that almost as much as he is.

"I expect X and I are an excellent illustration of the old saying about scratching the man and find the boy within. Well hell, X and I shall have a whole new set of war toys to play with shortly, when he arrives in the US. Watch out, Robert Bly; here we come, and don’t ever forget Rule Number One ("Don't talk shit!")!

Perhaps I'll reproduce more sections like this from my unpublished writings in future installments. It sure beats exhausting myself complaining yet again about the execrable state of competence manifest in present US foreign and domestic policies! Be well citizens.

Cheers, Doc Boink, March 2006

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