Word: gushin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...events leading to the release of the sub were a mixture of high drama and low slapstick. For six days, Commander Pyotr Gushin refused to leave his stranded vessel to talk to the Swedes. Not until Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko allowed Gushin to cooperate did the commander relent. The skipper and his navigation officer emerged, asked for and were allowed permission to shower, and then settled down to claim during a seven-hour interrogation that they had hit the reef because their compass had failed...
Only an hour after Gushin had left the sub, the harsh Baltic elements took an unexpected hand in the plot. Gale winds of up to 85 m.p.h. slammed towering combers against the sides of the sub, cascading tons of water on deck. The 50-man Soviet crew quickly decided it could stand no more. Red flares signaling distress whooshed up from the conning tower, and the radio put out the call "Mayday, Mayday." Under the sea's battering, the submarine developed a 17° list to starboard. The vessel's large electrical storage batteries threatened to leak acid...
Even then, the Soviets remained skittish: 31 hours after the rescue, signal flares lit up the night sky. The Swedes dispatched another rescue team. It found no emergency, just anxious crewmen who wanted to know the whereabouts of Commander Gushin and his navigator. Asked one Soviet sailor: "Are they your prisoners...
Hardly. After his first lengthy questioning, which left the Swedes "not satisfied," Gushin, on orders from his superiors, demanded that further interrogations take place aboard the sub. He continued to stick to his story of flawed navigational equipment. Swedish officials boarded the sub and found the navigational gear in order. They also discovered a surprise...
Normally, a submarine crew, weary of tight quarters, cannot wait to get back to home port. But as Commander Gushin and his crew headed out to sea last week, the voyage of 200 miles to Baltiysk and the waiting Soviet interrogators must have seemed far, far too short...