"All means are good to achieve the goal!" - this slogan underlies any policy, any war. From time immemorial, the "king of nature" did not hesitate to involve our smaller brothers in his showdown. Horses, dogs, camels, elephants, pigeons were used in hostilities … And in the 20th century, the turn came to aquatic mammals, and first of all to dolphins - amazing creatures with high intelligence and innate sympathy for humans.
Site 75
In 1965, a rather vast area on the shores of the Cossack Bay in Sevastopol was surrounded by barbed wire with menacing signs: “Stop! Restricted area!" This area was guarded by brave guys in naval uniforms. But soon the meticulous residents of Sevastopol noticed that mostly people in civilian clothes were walking behind the thorn of military unit 13132-K. And then the people's intelligence reported that a top secret "area 75" was located in the Cossack Bay - a military oceanarium, where specialists train combat dolphins, training them to search for mines and sunken ships, capture and destroy enemy saboteurs-scuba divers.
The founder and organizer of the oceanarium was Captain 1st Rank Viktor Kalganov - a legendary person, the very commander of a reconnaissance detachment who, during the Great Patriotic War, conducted a brilliant operation, as a result of which the fascist map of mining the Danube fairways ended up in the hands of the Soviet command.
A military transport "Irgiz" was sent to catch the Black Sea bottlenose dolphins to the shores of Gurzuf. The first in the network came across a female, later named Shalunya. She, along with other bottlenose dolphins, was handed over to experienced trainers.
The training of the fighting dolphins was carried out in an atmosphere of complete secrecy. But this will be discussed below. And first, about why Soviet scientists were forced to do this.
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The Cam Ranh murders
The emergence of "Site 75" gave rise to an arms race and rivalry with the Americans. Having got involved in the Vietnam War in 1964, the United States was faced with the problem of protecting its ships, in particular, deployed at the Cam Ranh base in South Vietnam. These ships were attacked by North Vietnamese swimmers-saboteurs, who planted magnetic mines on them and inflicted serious damage to the American fleet at first. To combat them, the soldiers of a specially created unit used network traps, harpoon guns, combat crossbows … But all these weapons turned out to be ineffective. And then six fighting dolphins, trained at the base in San Diego, were delivered to Cam Ranh. In a short time, they helped to catch over 50 underwater saboteurs. Moreover, according to rumors,some of the swimmers were destroyed by the animals themselves by means of knives fixed on their noses or cans of liquefied gas equipped with long needles, tearing the insides of the saboteurs. They say that in this way two Soviet scuba divers died.
However, it is doubtful that dolphins were responsible for their death. These marine mammals are genetically predisposed to humans, they have a kind of taboo on harming them. A dolphin will never knowingly kill a person, he can only be deceived. In training, he poked his nose into the body of a swimmer and received a fresh fish for it. Dolphin took it as a fun game. He could pull off the mask and fins from the scuba diver, thereby forcing him to rise to the surface and surrender. But if the dolphin realized that he had committed the murder, he fell into a stressful state and generally refused to cooperate further. So, most likely, the swimmers-saboteurs were killed by sea lions - ferocious animals that do it with pleasure.
It was the incidents in Cam Ranh that forced the Soviet government to create a research center for the training of fighting dolphins in Sevastopol.
Poisoned seals
However, “Site 75” did not appear out of nowhere. At the beginning of the 20th century, experiments were carried out in Russia on the combat training of marine mammals. In 1915, trainer Vladimir Durov approached the General Staff of the Russian Navy with a proposal to neutralize underwater mines with the help of seals. Soon, a new secret section appeared in Balaklava Bay, where 20 animals were trained in three months. During training, seals easily found dummies of anti-ship mines under water and set up special buoys above them.
The idea looked very promising, but it was not possible to use the newly-minted "sappers" in combat conditions. German intelligence found out about the unusual special forces, and their agent poured poison into the seal. All the seals were killed. The military counterintelligence did not have time to complete the investigation of this crime, since February 1917 came, the tsar abdicated the throne, the Russian Empire collapsed, and everyone was not up to the poisoned battle seals. And then the Bolsheviks came to power, the Civil War began. When the Red Army broke into the Crimea, experts who trained marine mammals destroyed all methodological literature and other secret documentation.
It is impossible to hide from the dolphin
However, some of the developments were apparently preserved in the Durovs' archive and were useful in the creation of "site 75". Olga Karandeeva, who previously worked in the "Durov's corner", was engaged in the preparation of dolphins in the Cossack Bay, and the daughter of the famous tamer Anna provided the trainers with consulting assistance.
50 Black Sea bottlenose dolphins were delivered to the military oceanarium. Their training was based on the principle of "action - reinforcement". That is, the dolphins developed the skills of the desired behavior, and for completing the task they received fish. However, bottlenose dolphins quickly understood the meaning of what was happening, were happy to join the interesting game proposed by people, willingly made contact, took the initiative and themselves suggested certain algorithms for cooperation. It turned out that dolphins have high intelligence, excellent reaction, are very smart, easily distinguish objects by shape, color, size and never make mistakes. In addition, they have their own language with a sufficiently large vocabulary, with the help of which animals can transmit information to each other.
Dolphins were trained in several directions: protection and patrolling of the area, destruction of saboteurs, search and detection of underwater objects. Soon, the tailed fighters achieved amazing successes.
“It is impossible to hide from the dolphin,” says coach Vladimir Petru-shin. - Yes, and to fight with him under water is not in the hands of a man. We held exercises regularly. The GRU swimmers were tasked with penetrating the protected area, and at that time we were releasing the animals. In the end, there was not a single breakthrough.
Of particular importance was the ability of dolphins to detect underwater small-sized and low-noise objects at a considerable distance with amazing accuracy, since nature has awarded them with an excellent acoustic radar, far superior to technical devices created by man.
In 1974, the Hercules dolphin first discovered and marked with a buoy a sunken training torpedo at a depth of 51 meters. Torpedoes were sometimes lost during exercises, and it was almost impossible to find them. And each cost 200 thousand rubles. Dolphins found hundreds of such torpedoes.
And once a dolphin stumbled upon an automatic mini-submarine, lost 10 years ago. They did not even hope to find her, they wrote it off for a long time, and those responsible for the loss received a well-deserved scolding. And suddenly such an unexpected joy!
Dolphins have even mastered underwater photography. And one of them became an airborne paratrooper, parachuting from a helicopter with his trainer.
Dolphins also helped civilians, in particular archaeologists. With their help, Greek amphoras and other antiquities were raised from the bottom.
Dolphins sometimes behaved just like conscripts. One "fighter", for example, got into the habit of "running AWOL" to a girlfriend in the open sea. But after walking up, he always returned - apparently, it was more interesting with people.
Nikolay Santalov