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INVESTIGATING THE “GHOSTS OF THE OCEAN” INVESTIGATING THE “GHOSTS OCEAN” THE From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, rapidly moving underwater objects and mysterious croaking sounds were reported by Soviet submariners. What was to blame: US Navy sonic buoys, unknown creatures or something out of this world? The Soviet Navy's Kvakeri Research he Cold War was raging at the end of the 1960s, and dangers for both sides of the ruthless (and frequently invisible) war lurked in the skies, on land and underwater. One particularly strange underwater phenomenon attracted the attention of the Soviet Navy's High Command. This mysterious phenomenon was discovered in the late 1960s. Soviet nuclear-powered submarines encountered strange sounds emanating from moving objects at great depths. Listening to underwater sound is known as hydroacoustic monitoring, and Soviet monitors heard the strange signals that resembled frogs croaking. They dubbed the objects kvakeri, and the term was officially accepted in the Soviet Navy's documents. vakat' in Russian means "to croak". It was the Soviet Minister of Defence, Marshal Andrei Antonovich Grechko, who ordered the creation of a special research team by the Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Navy to investigate various paranormal phenomena such as the kvakeri. Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov, a Soviet naval commander during the Cold War who oversaw the expansion of the Soviet Navy into a global force and at he time was Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy and Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, spared no effort in research into this phenomenon hat obstructed his navy's operations. Consequently in the USSR, a special Top Secret research program into the kvakeri phenomenon was started in the late 1960s. It lasted through to the early 1980s. But it was not the only unusual underwater phenomenon of interest to the Soviet Navy. The Commander-in-Chief ordered a series of oceanic expeditions to research the kvakeri and other phenomena. Soviet officers in the Top Secret naval research program performed their duties eagerly; they were well- educated and highly professional people. They continuously visited different Soviet fleets and collected all available information. The kvakeri were found to operate as far away as near the Philippines and in the northern seas close to the USSR, but they were most active in the Atlantic Ocean. One such expedition in April 1970 involved the Khariton Laptev, a reconnaissance vessel code-named SSV 503 (the ship was removed from active service in 1992). This was precisely at the time that a Soviet nuclear submarine, the K-8, perished in the North Atlantic. The reconnaissance ship, which was participating in a secret mission, stopped its sonar operations, rushed to the submarine and was able to save many of the crew. It is believed that the kvakeri had a particular interest in nuclear-powered submarines, as discussed later. However, the kvakeri research program was stopped abruptly when the phenomenon ceased to "bother" Soviet ships on special missions in the Atlantic Ocean. So, what were those mysterious kvakeri? Email: rurcla@hotmail.com NEXUS ¢ 53 by Paul Stonehill © 2011 OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2011 www.nexusmagazine.com