April 10th, 1980
TUSLOG Detachment 28
Sinop, Turkey
Fred Poole looked at the transcripts in front of him for what seemed like the millionth time. No matter how long he stared at them, it wasn’t making any sense. His working theory that the Soviets were diverting fuel supplies to Afghanistan to support a major offensive effort wasn’t panning out. The evidence didn’t support it. In fact, all the heightened scrutiny of the refineries surrounding Baku had shown that the Soviets were in fact moving sizable amounts of Aviation fuel supplies to Kaspiysk. Poole sat in the conference room with Petty Officer Keller, and Lieutenant Stevenson trying to sort out the puzzle in front of them.
“Okay, we were looking at JP4 exports from Baku. It looks like our questionable fuel exports are all going to Kaspiysk,” said Stevenson, laying out the situation. Until tonight, only Poole had known that they marked the shipments for the coastal Soviet town. The Intel folks had reached this conclusion based only on the coming and going of tankers from the Port of Khatai just south of Baku and tracking their arrival in Kaspiysk.
“And now we need to figure out why,” said Poole.
“What about that new Destroyer? The Udaloy?” suggested Stevenson. This was a decent hypothesis. The latest Soviet ships, like their American counterparts, burned jet fuel instead of diesel. It would make sense that if the Soviet Caspian Flotilla would receive an Udaloy or two, they would need some fuel for them.
“That’s a solid idea,” replied Poole. “Do we have any details on the ship?” Stevenson walked to the door, opened it, and called out:
“Webb! Bring in that Copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships,” and returned to his seat at the table.
“I don’t know LT, even if those ships use JP4, this seems like an awful lot of gas for a ship or two,” said Keller.
“How many barrels of JP4 does an Udaloy burn in a typical day at sea?” asked Poole, surprised at Keller’s in-depth knowledge of the ship.
“I have no idea what I’m talking about,” admitted Keller, “It just seems like these tankers we’re tracking carry a lot of fuel. If it’s all going to Kaspiysk for a destroyer or two… It’s not science, just a hunch. There’s way too much Fuel.”
“I see your point Keller,” replied Poole. “But we can’t ignore the possibility. Isn’t the Caspian Sea landlocked? How do they even get new ships in there?” he asked.
“They sail them from the Black Sea up the Don River to the Volga and then back down to the Caspian,” replied Stevenson. “It’s a real pain in the ass for them, so it’s rare for the Soviets to transit like that.”
“And they don’t normally put a brand new, front line ship in the Caspian. It’s not like NATO is really out there contesting it,” said Keller.
At that point Seaman Webb brought in “Big Blue.” Though not a classified source of information, “Jane’s Fighting Ships” had long been the first stop in many an analyst’s quest for details. Keller took the tome from Webb and deftly flipped to the Soviet Fleet. In no time, she’d found the Ship class in question.
“Bingo!” she exclaimed when she found what they were looking for. “It looks like they use gas turbines that burn jet fuel.”
“Okay, let’s write that one down. I’ll need to make some calls to see if we can figure out where they are putting those new destroyers. This could be something,” said Poole.
“Hold the phone!” said Keller, still reading from “Jane’s.” “What about this new ‘Tarantul’ missile boat?”
Stevenson leaned over to see what she was reading.
“That better fits the profile of what they’d put in the Caspian, but it looks like they are building those out in the Far East,” said Stevenson, reading from the book. “I doubt that they’d be sailing them all the way around India to park them in that lake.”
With that burst of creative energy spent, the group went quiet again. Stevenson stood to stretch and was just about to send Webb for more coffee when Keller’s head snapped up and she said:
“What about the Sea Monster!?!?”
Poole looked at her with confusion, while Stevenson rolled his eyes.
“I don’t think we need to waste Poole’s time with that Petty Officer Keller,” said Stevenson.
“Okay, you have my curiosity, Keller. What on earth are you talking about?” asked Poole. Keller paused and looked at Stevenson, seeking approval before continuing. Exasperated, Stevenson relented.
“Okay, you started this Keller, enlighten our friend here with your sea stories.”
Keller walked to the door and called out:
“Webb, bring us the file on the Sea Monster,” then sat back down. “Okay, back in the sixties, a satellite picked up an image of some kind of seaplane being built in Kaspiysk. It was huge, and it didn’t look like it was complete. There was no way this thing would fly. Anyhow, it had the letters ‘KM’ emblazoned on the top of the wing. That’s where the ‘Sea Monster’ nickname came from. It was called the ‘Kaspian Monster’ then the ‘Kaspian Sea Monster’ and finally just the ‘Sea Monster.’ We never figured out what the hell that thing was.”
Webb brought in a manilla folder containing dozens of loose sheets of paper and set it on the table.
“Here, look at this,” said Keller, opening the file and sliding a photograph across to Poole. Fred could make out what looked like a port facility with several piers with small ships docked. Then just to the Northwest of the piers was a large berthing area containing… something. It looked almost like an airplane, but then not quite. It was too narrow to be a ship, but it was too large to be an airplane. That was to say nothing of the odd “wing” configuration. It looked like there were three sets of wings protruding from the fuselage. The first was short clipped and right behind what appeared to be the cockpit. The second was longer (but still short and clipped) set amidships. The last pair looked like a traditional horizontal stabilizer from a large aircraft, but in proportion to the wings they were huge. The stabilizer had about the same wingspan as the main wing. It was just… odd.
“I can see what you mean Keller. It looks like they never finished building out the wings on this bird,” said Poole. “How old is this photograph?”
“I couldn’t say.” Answered Keller. “It’s been here longer than I have. This folder gets passed around for all the new personnel when they first onboard. It gives them something to read during the mid-watch and helps make the whole job more interesting.”
“I can see that. Adding a bit of mystery always makes things more interesting,” replied Poole.
“As I was saying, we don’t know what the hell that thing is. That doesn’t mean that nobody knows, we just don’t know here,” said Keller.
“It has to be some kind of engine test bed. I don’t know why they have it sitting in the water, but that fucker won’t fly with those sad little wings, and it’s too stupid of a design to be a ship.” said Stevenson. “I would bet money that it burns jet fuel, but there’s no way that ridiculous monster consumes the amounts we’re tracking right now. This is a fun diversion, but it’s not a serious idea.”
Stevenson had never fallen for the Caspian Sea Monster legend. It was a fanciful story that engaged the imaginations of junior enlisted, but it wasn’t a serious avenue for exploration. The thing had been around for over a decade. If there were anything to report on it, they’d know about it by now. The entire world would know about it by now. Instead, it was just an obscure project in a Soviet backwater with no relevance to what they were looking for.
“I think we’re onto something with this new ship allocation,” continued Stevenson. “I think we should pull up anything we can on Soviet designs with gas turbines and see if we have any evidence of a major re-deployment to the region.”
“I think you’re right Lieutenant.,” said Poole. It was clear to Poole that Stevenson had made up his mind on this. It appeared there was more to the story of why Stevenson wasn’t interested in the Sea Monster, but Poole honestly didn’t care to find out. Any investigation into it at this point would just agitate the Officer further, and that would quickly become counterproductive. Instead, Poole filed the Sea Monster aside in his mind, and decided that when he got back to Washington, he would do more investigating on that front.
The night continued with the three of them looking at deployments of various frigates and missile boats. There was a moment when they considered the brand new Slava class guided missile cruisers, before that was dismissed as ludicrous. The lead ship in the class hadn’t been commissioned yet, and besides, those ships were too important to be relegated to a backwater like the Caspian Flotilla. Once they had scoured their sources (including the ubiquitous “Jane’s Fighting Ships”), Poole drafted his report notes on the subject, and Keller returned to her radio, and Stevenson to his office. This was what Fred had come here for, and the next steps in his process would be in Washington, D.C.