"Ice Fist": secrets of the top-secret Soviet military base

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The world's first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, was launched in 1954, and four years later, the Soviet K-3 Leninsky Komsomol launched under a nuclear power plant.

The superpowers have acquired an unprecedented weapon capable of wiping out an entire state from the face of the Earth. The nuclear submarines could not surface for months, getting close to the target and inflicting a covert inevitable blow. However, navigation turned out to be the Achilles' heel of the miracle weaponry. Successful missions required extremely detailed sea and ocean floor maps, new navigation systems, and accurate knowledge of our planet.

It is not surprising that simultaneously with the appearance of the first atomic submarines in the USSR and the USA, oceanological research intensified. More and more sophisticated equipment was installed on more and more ships that descended into the water and deep under it. In 1958, the US Navy even acquired the deepest research vessel of the time from the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard. The Bathyscaphe Trieste explored previously inaccessible areas of the ocean, including the Mariana Trench. The map of the seabed in the USSR was created almost as rapidly.

In the direction of the arrow

Until now, inertial systems based on gyroscopes, both traditional and modern laser ones, remain the main navigation tool at great depths. The same accurate, reliable systems are used in aircraft and ballistic missile guidance systems. But over time, even they accumulate an error and need to be periodically referenced to real coordinates and make adjustments. Ballistic missiles do it by the stars, airplanes by radio beacons. Cruise missiles use detailed three-dimensional maps, comparing them with data from an airborne altimeter. Submarines act in a similar way, probing the bottom profile with an echo sounder and comparing it with the one on the maps of the area. It was these cards that were supplied to the military research vessels.

The technology is excellent, but it has one drawback: as soon as the echo sounder turns on, it can be heard from many kilometers away, which quickly unmasks the submarine. Therefore, new orientation systems based on the Earth's magnetic field, a kind of ultra-precise electronic compasses, began to be developed for nuclear missile carriers. But for their work, new data were needed - accurate maps of geomagnetic anomalies, ultra-precise coordinates of the Earth's magnetic poles. As you know, they do not coincide with the geographical ones and, moreover, they are constantly moving. Then, in the 1950s, the geomagnetic North Pole was deep in Canada. It is clear that at the height of the Cold War, Soviet specialists were denied access to it. But there was another pole in the south.

To each his own pole

It must be said that the Soviet scientists were the first to see the chip with magnetic navigation. Therefore, when the superpowers began rivalry with the construction of bases closer to the South Geographic Pole, the victory went to the Americans quite easily. However, as a consolation prize, the USSR quietly took the geomagnetic pole for itself: in 1957, the Vostok Antarctic station was built here at an accelerated pace, which is still one of the most inaccessible on the continent. The very existence in a region with record low temperatures (in 1983 the thermometer outside the station dropped to -89.2 ° C) was a feat. But it was worth it: Soviet submariners gained access to the exact coordinates of the South Geomagnetic Pole.

The Pentagon quickly figured out what was the matter, but it was too late."Vostok" was already in place, and representatives of the hostile countries were not allowed to take a cannon shot at the magnetic pole. The closest to it was the American station McMurdo, located on the edge of the Ross Sea, a key for the Antarctic ecosystem. For many years, they tried to declare this area a marine reserve, but the proposals invariably encountered opposition from the USSR and China. It was here that these countries caught the rare and valuable "oil fish" - Antarctic toothfish. It was suspected that, under the guise of several fishing trawlers, the Soviet Union and China were keeping reconnaissance ships in the Ross Sea, monitoring everything that happened in the vicinity of McMurdo base.

Crystal base

One way or another, but the unusually increased transport activity did not pass the attention of Soviet military analysts. A careful study of the intelligence led to an extremely disturbing conclusion: perhaps an expeditionary force is being prepared to oust the Soviets from the South Geomagnetic Pole. Having lost access to its volatile coordinates, Soviet nuclear submarines, which until then had sat with impunity off the coast of the United States, would have been forced to withdraw to safer waters. An inconspicuous special operation on a distant continent threatened to disrupt the strategic balance around the world.

The USSR could not openly send a fleet into the Ross Sea: the country had nothing to oppose to the aircraft carrier groups of the USA and NATO countries. Instead, an incredibly bold plan was born, and in an atmosphere of complete secrecy, ice-class ships headed by diesel-electric ships Ob and Estonia reached the coastal station Mirny. The caravan was loaded to the brim with top-secret equipment. The USSR was preparing to implement its "asymmetric response" and begin the construction of a unique base in the thickness of the coastal ice. The artificial iceberg was supposed to house the barracks of the special forces and the submarine base, supplies of fuel and ammunition - and its own ship engines.

Digging into the ice

The technology of high-speed construction in ice was developed at the Research Institute of Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Chemical Processes near Moscow in cooperation with NIIOSP, a leading institute in the field of complex foundations, foundations and underground construction. The premises and corridors of the floating base were formed by melting the ice with narrowly directed streams of superheated air and imperceptibly draining the resulting water into the ocean. Inside, at some distance from the ice walls, thermally insulated wooden walls were installed - here the engineers came in handy with a rich experience in construction in permafrost conditions. An incredible solid layer of ice and a huge mass of iceberg promised reliable protection against almost any means available to the enemy, in addition to the most powerful nuclear charges.

In the fall of 1963, as soon as a series of cracks appeared near the Mirny station, Soviet glaciologists came out onto the ice. Among the icebergs ready to break away, a giant was chosen, suitable for the construction of the base, with a massive dense underwater part and a flat top surface for arranging the runway. In an atmosphere of complete secrecy, stocks of Antarctic aviation fuel and the necessary navigation equipment were unloaded onto it from Soviet trawlers, and test flights of Il-14 aircraft began from the Mirny station. The work was carried out in an emergency mode: the Cuban missile crisis threatened to develop into a full-scale conflict. Soviet submariners could not be left without navigation systems, and the work of specialists in the area of the South Magnetic Pole needed to cover the military.

Cold world

Just as not long before that American military activity in the Ross Sea had not escaped Soviet intelligence, so the Soviet one this time was noticed by the Americans. They could not get an exact confirmation: there were no reconnaissance satellites yet, and the range of U-2 high-altitude aircraft launched from airfields in Australia to Mirny station was not enough. Nevertheless, the successful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis reduced the intensity of the confrontation. The construction was far from complete when the parties began long difficult negotiations. The work of a separate secret commission was devoted to the situation in Antarctica.

The final meeting of the diplomats and the military took place at the Mirny station. On November 5, 1964, an American C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft landed here with a delegation led by Rear Admiral James Reedy. As a result of the negotiations, the parties agreed on the withdrawal of military and military equipment from the territory of Antarctica and on the organization of mutual inspections. The countries declared a complete rejection of any attempts to seize Antarctic stations and territories.

The crisis has melted

In order to somehow explain the exotic visit of one of the leaders of the American navy to the Soviet polar station, the world press published a short news about international research, for which, they say, the rear admiral selected 40 Adélie penguins on Fulmar Island. It seems incredible, but this story then satisfied everyone - and James Reedy himself became the commander of the Seventh Fleet of the US Navy in the summer of 1965.

During a short navigation, all valuable equipment and military specialists were removed from the iceberg and removed. The unfinished base was towed out into the ocean. Soviet warships accompanied the iceberg until it melted so much that enemy specialists could not recover any details of the secret technologies. Despite official assurances, the fishing of Antarctic toothfish in the Ross Sea by two - now Russian - trawlers continues to this day.