Naval sailors called the sources of incomprehensible sounds "Quakers", and then this term was used in official documents instead of the abbreviation "NZO" (unidentified sound objects). The "Quakers" more than once made the Northern Fleet sailors nervous, who were trying to covertly pass the American anti-submarine lines in the Atlantic Ocean.
The appearance of nuclear submarines, capable of being in the ocean for months without shore support, was accompanied by an interesting discovery. In some parts of the oceans, Soviet submariners began to hear more and more often in the headphones of hydrophones incomprehensible sounds, reminiscent of the croaking of a frog. In the direction finding mode of the noise of the Rubin complex (MGK-300), they were best received in the high-frequency range. The duration of the sound was 0.1-0.05 s, and each sound consisted of one pulse. First, the sounds followed at intervals of 0.5-1 s, then the gap between the sound impulses evenly increased to 5-7 seconds.
“Imagine the state of the commanders, when already on the approaches to the SOSUS system you are greeted by a 'croaking' as a sign of possible detection! - said Captain 1st Rank E. P. Litvinov. - You turn away from him, and the bearing to him in seconds is the same!
The maneuvering of the submarine, attempts to "light up" the target in an active mode, the establishment of underwater communications were perceived, apparently, by the other side as a game. But only submariners know how dangerous such a game is, when you cannot decipher the response signals that change in frequency, when the source of the NSO always strives to be at the nasal viewing angles and at the same time goes swiftly to cross the course …
I had a chance to learn about the "Quakers" since 1970, while serving as a flagship miner in a division of nuclear submarines. A colleague at the headquarters, RTS flagship specialist, Captain Second Rank E. Ibragimov, said that the Quakers are surprisingly maneuverable. Calculations showed that they silently move at speeds of up to 150-200 knots (up to 370 km / h) … One way or another, but this created an atmosphere of nervousness at the command post of submarines, secretly moving into combat service."
“Quakers” could not be marine animals - the sailfish, the fastest inhabitant of the ocean, develops a speed of only 110 km / h. Military equipment, neither in the 60s, nor today, is capable of developing such a speed under water, all the more so without giving itself out by other sounds (running engines, cavitation, noise from propellers, etc.). Soon the crews of diesel submarines of the Northern Fleet began to hear them. The area of operation of the "Quakers" was expanding: in the 1970s, they could be found not only in the oceans, but also in shallow seas, including the territorial waters of the USSR near the bases of the fleet.
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“We are entering the Norwegian Sea, and suddenly an acoustician hears that some enemies are surrounding us under water,” said the former commander of the submarine, who wished to remain anonymous. “Moreover, these enemies act very energetically: they are actively maneuvering around vertically and horizontally, their sounds are unknown to us, and we cannot classify them. Sometimes it seems that an unknown enemy goes on the attack, then the sounds disintegrate. Everyone is shocked. Upon returning to the base, we, the commanders, report on what happened. Now the command is shocked …"
According to Rear Admiral V. M. Monastyrshin, “almost every day we found several Quakers. Drawn on maps, analyzed by frequency, by the place of manifestation. So many Quakers were found for our service that one might think that the whole world was engaged only in making them and placing them on the oceans."
When the number of reports of "Quakers" overwhelmed the patience of the naval officers, the commander of the Northern Fleet, Admiral GM Yegorov, ordered the creation of a special group under the leadership of the chief of staff of the fleet. The head of the analytical department of the fleet reconnaissance A. G. Smolovsky took part in its work.
“The secrecy was terrible, and even we, the members of the group, tried by hook or by crook to keep us out of the logs,” he recalled. - Almost immediately we learned that the Americans are also dealing with the same problems …
When the orgy with the "Quakers" began, Admiral G. M. Egorov invited the famous academician L. M. Brekhovskikh to the Northern Fleet. “We will not hide anything from you, but give an explanation of what is happening,” asked Academician Yegorov. The fleet commander was a very influential person, since he was also a member of the CPSU Central Committee. Therefore, the Institute of Hydroacoustics immediately got involved in the work and helped us a lot. The work was, frankly speaking, difficult, conflicts often arose. There was a misunderstanding due to the extreme secrecy of the issue being studied, which greatly interfered with the case. It just so happened that I continued to work on the "Quaker" theme for many years until my retirement. It is still too early to talk about the main conclusions of our many years of work, since this is the area of state and military secrets. However, I can say that "Quakers" are a very difficult phenomenon,behind which are perhaps the most intimate secrets of the ocean."
Former senior officer of the Main Staff of the Russian Navy, Captain 1st Rank Vadim Kulinchenko said that the source of the Quaker sound was impossible to determine: it comes from different directions, changing the tone. The submariners had the feeling that "something" wants to call the submarine into a conversation. They did not succeed in detecting this "something" - active scanning of the surrounding water column did not reveal anything that could make sounds. Sometimes the "Quakers", on the contrary, seemed to run away from the submarine - having issued a series of signals, the sound source began to move away with great speed. The Quakers reacted to attempts to give response signals by changing the tonality of sounds, but no one succeeded in figuring out whether the reaction was meaningful.
I heard "Quakers" in 1979, when we were going to K-455 (pr. 667BDR) by the southern route from Gadzhievo,”said another anonymous submariner. - Clicks were heard in the area of the Faroe-Icelandic border. The clicks were heard with the naked ear in the 2nd compartment (it is the quietest). We specially went to listen. We were sure that this is the NATO stationary system in active mode. It was later that I realized that a technique that can give such powerful impulses, neither we, nor they do not exist.
As Oleg Ivanovich Vasyuta, the commander of the 1851 project, told me, he tried to "catch" the source, not by order, but on his own initiative. The coordinates of the source of clicks were precisely determined by acoustics. They turned there, and when they arrived at the point, the source jumped to another place. After several attempts, this lesson was dropped … Acoustics did not give marks from any subject. Sound only."
Other attempts to track the Quaker have produced strange results. One of the submarines, sailing off the Bering Islands, spent a long time finding the source of the sounds. Hydroacoustics concluded that it is located near the Hawaiian Islands, at a depth of about 5,000 meters. According to their data, the impulses reached through thousands of kilometers of water from depths accessible only to bathyscaphes!
In the early 1980s, the "Quaker" study program was abruptly closed and the group working on it was disbanded. The collected materials, containing about 15,000 reports of sounds of unknown nature, recorded by sailors, were classified. One of the reasons for the secrecy was explained by A. G. Smolovsky: “The information concerns the routes of our nuclear submarine cruisers, and therefore has a direct bearing on the security of our country. Therefore, in the near future this information will remain secret. " To this we can add that in the materials of the project there is information about the operation of the sonar equipment of the nuclear submarine, about the maneuverability of submarines and other data, which is undesirable to give out today.
What could the “Quakers” be? The version that these are the newest American RGAB (anti-submarine sonar buoys) was almost immediately rejected. Such a buoy, even if it had an autonomous engine for maneuvering, could not escape detection: it betrays itself by a magnetic field, metal content, a surface with an area sufficient to form a clear echo. Soviet sailors repeatedly fished out American buoys and eventually became convinced that their signals had nothing to do with the sounds of "Quakers". Even in 2005, the idea of supplementing ocean listening networks with autonomous underwater devices had not yet gone beyond the limits of single expensive experiments.
Perhaps they did not find anything because there is nothing to detect: it sounds like water itself, subjected to some influence from the outside. Energy can be supplied to a specific place, for example, using two crossing beams of radiation (similar experiments were carried out in air). The difficulties are enormous: it is necessary to detect a nuclear submarine in the ocean and transfer energy in accordance with its maneuvers, and through unstable water with different densities, layers and currents. For terrestrial technology, the task is unbearable, therefore it is not for nothing that the "Quakers" were studied in one "bundle" with underwater UFOs.
Nor can it be animals unknown to science, at least in our usual sense. The incredible maneuverability means rather that it is not about moving the sound source, but about the movement of the sound itself. The closest analogy is the maneuvers of a school of fish, making maneuvers all at once at a speed greater than the propagation of any signals in the water. Perhaps some animals, gathering into a single cloud, form a single "neural network" with much greater capabilities than each animal individually. The sound can be emitted by a temporary thickening of the cloud, dissipating at the slightest danger, then a second thickening is formed at a distance, a third, etc. This process for an acoustician will seem to move one body from the first point to the second and third. Something similar was described in Frank Schetzing's science fiction novel The Flock.
The accounts of some divers support the latter assumption. Head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for Navigation and Oceanography, Admiral A. A. Komaritsyn recalled: “Sometimes, passing through the Quaker's area of operation, we came with some kind of gray biological substance on the rubber covering of the submarine. For quite a long time it still glowed like a firefly. But after a while, under the influence of sunlight, the glow faded away."
Senior Lieutenant Pyotr Streltsov said that in 1985, when the K-433 nuclear submarine was in the North Pacific Ocean, the Quakers sounded for an hour. And suddenly, at a depth of one hundred meters, they encountered "something soft and viscous, the sound was like a slap of raw meat on a cutting board." The obstacle was such that the submarine "K-433" with a displacement of more than 13,000 tons shuddered and shook when submerged. Nevertheless, the submarine did not receive any damage, and most likely the "obstacle" too. If it was a huge cloud of small creatures, such an outcome of the collision does not seem surprising.
The sudden cessation of research means that the answer was found, and the detected phenomenon did not pose a threat (otherwise, instructions for actions in the area of / u200b / u200bQuaker coverage would have been developed). But on the other hand, this phenomenon had potential scientific or military significance - otherwise the conclusions would not have been classified together with observational material. The version about a natural "neural network" fits into this framework. The military could start thinking about how to control it, could it be done so that the organisms entering it would distract enemy submarines, jam sonar, etc. Were, after all, trained dolphins in the arsenal of the Soviet fleet?
We will find out the truth only after the period of secrecy expires and the naval specialists of our day speak up, and not those who sailed under Soviet rule. Perhaps it will turn out to be more shocking than we could imagine.
Mikhail Gershtein
