Previous FRA Employee: U137 Navigated Error

Still, after almost 44 years, many questions about the submarine fisherman Bertil Sturkman remained on an early morning in October 1981. He would pick up some of his pike hooks when he saw a 76 meter long Soviet submarine with the numbers 137 on the hull lying on a cut.

The boat was in a military protection area in Blekinge, in a secret military navigation route against the war base Karlskrona. Was it just the last maneuver that went wrong, or had the nuclear -adapted U 137 a long way earlier and ended up deep in the Swedish archipelago of pure mistakes?

The Armed Forces and the government said it was a conscious violation of Swedish sovereignty, and that line still valid today. But some other experts have questioned the authorities’ assessment.

Michael Fredholm, with a background at the Swedish Defense Radio Agency, FRA, is a historian and writer. He has been given access to, among other things, the Soviet submarine’s logbooks and assignment orders, the Swedish navy’s war diaries and ÖB’s report to the government on the incident, documents that were previously secretly stamped. Based on them, he has tried to reconstruct the process that brought the submarine up on the Skäret in his book « U137 from within » (Medström’s book publisher).

He has drawn a conclusion that goes directly against the description made by both the Swedish Armed Forces and previous Swedish governments. Namely, it was a fault navigation.

The submarine navigation equipment had been injured when they were close to Danish Bornholm, by a driving fishing traw. They also had problems with their gyro compass and the alternative navigation system and simply lost the orientation, according to Michael Fredholm’s book « U 137 from the inside ».

– If you look at the logbook notes and go through all the hearings, you can see that there was a great deal of uncertainty within the Soviet crew about where you were actually, he says.

– There are several sets of logbooks, because there were different people who navigated. In the logbook for which the ship’s manager was responsible, there are certain position tasks. If you look at the chief navigator’s notes, however, you can see other information. And there are corrections and overruns.

He says that the disagreement in the Soviet crew about where they were found out also came at the interrogations held. It was not the only thing that pointed to a fault navigation. The commander’s first report to the government states: « The speed and the course indicates that it has not been clear that they were inserted and in a very crowded waters. »

The submarine had a functioning radar. Why didn’t the crew use it?

– They were out on a preparedness assignment outside Bornholm, at what the Soviet Union called the outer line of defense of their own territory. Therefore, they had orders not to reveal their position if it was not an extraordinary situation. And they did not understand that this was just one. When they finally realized that, I think they simply became nervous and did not dare to depart from the original orders, he says, adding that a radar can reveal the ship’s position.

If a foreign warship is in sea, it must be recovered and rejected, according to the regulations.

– It has been repeatedly argued from the Swedish side that Captain Gushtjin did not claim that he was in need until after three days. But he did, because it is very clear in the war diary from Karlskrona. That information then disappeared completely in Sweden. And of course it is also related to how the assessments were made in Stockholm, says Michael Fredholm.

This is the most Noteworthy throughout the story of U137, he says.

– Commander -in -chief Lennart Ljung made his own assessment over the course of ten minutes. The foundation was the report he received from the Chief of Staff at the Karlskorna War Base, Karl Andersson. He had observed the grounded submarine and sent a radio report home. There he noted that it is a Soviet whiskey submarine that is on the ground. Point.

– ÖB did not contact its intelligence service. He said it was a hostile act, and then you had already departed from all other opportunities for action. The government then bought ÖB’s assessment.

However, FRA had reported on an unusual event after the submarine was on the ground. Soviet submarine aircraft flew in the area around Bornholm, where U 137 according to the crew’s own information should have been.

– But no one took into account these reports, says Michael Fredholm.

How could the submarine get so far into the archipelago if they just went at random? Shouldn’t they have gone on before?

– Here we must start from the Soviet testimonies. You had seen copper, but since you were convinced that you were out on the high seas, in the dark and the fog had interpreted the cobbles as oil stains. You saw the lights because there were lighthouses and residential buildings when you got closer. But because they thought they were still on the open sea, they interpreted it as fishing boats. They were navigated away from them, and thus did not go on the ground.

– Gåsefjärden is the basis for such a submarine. Although it had not been due to the insert, it had not come so many meters further in there. And what could have been the purpose to get in there to go for a few meters later instead?

The Armed Forces describes Still U 137’s grounding as a deliberate violation. The head of the military intelligence service, Thomas Nilsson, was present at Michael Fredholm’s book presentation. But he does not want to comment on the conclusions in the book.

Michael Fredholm writes that an perceived need to safeguard domestic party political interests and a deep rooted distrust of everything Russian escalated the submarine crisis.

– ÖB took for granted that the Russian, in this case the Soviet Union, of course lies about everything. Then you have to find another explanation yourself. And that’s when it started to go wrong.

You write that many problems would have been avoided if the Swedish navy had accepted that the submarine was there because of a fault navigation and silently helped it home. But how do you think the population and the outside world had reacted to it?

-I do not think it had led to any strong reactions because the 1970s were a period of relaxation, says Michael Fredholm, adding that if the submarine navigated wrong, it would be towed and rejected according to the time’s interpretation of international law.

Per Andersson is retired Lieutenant Colonel, who worked in the military intelligence and security service, Must. He was part of the Navy’s own analysis group of submarine violations and listened to Michael Fredholm’s lecture in connection with the new book being released.

« He wasn’t right in very much of what he said, » he says.

Per Andersson says that within the framework of a research project after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he has been on trips east and met several submarine officers. One of them was aboard U 137 at the grounding.

– We have met people at a high level who have acknowledged that they have deliberately offended Sweden and they said it was war preparations they carried out, he says.

He points out that Sweden also did its own navigation investigation, which showed that the Soviet Union’s information did not go together. His conclusion is that U 137 was in the Swedish archipelago on one Secret assignment.

The Soviet assignment order for U 137 shows that the submarine had several sealed envelopes on board, which would be opened only after a given order.

Per Andersson believes that one of them contained instructions for a special operation in Swedish water.

– What then the operation consisted in, we do not know for sure, he says.

Michael Fredholm’s observation The fact that it is shallow in Gåsefjärden and that the submarine would have gone a little later if she did not get stuck on the insert he does not give much to.

– It would not have been a problem for U137 to turn and go out again, even in the dark. It had not managed it with a single girl, but had to cut out, much like you back from a narrow parking lot. I have talked to Swedish submarine captains who said that they went in there when the weather was very bad.

During the Christmas holidays, SVT showed drama comedy « Whiskey on the Rocks », inspired by the events in Gåsefjärden. In the toasted Russians diligently in the vodka before the grounding.

When it comes to the liquor, Michael Fredholm and Per Andersson agree. The crew did not get full. At one point, a Swedish officer was offered a snaps. They both believe that it consisted of compass, for any vodka was not on board.