The 1983 Submarine Hunt: Three Days We Never Talked About

October 1983. I was standing watch in the cannon tower when the alarm came — three short beeps that mean one thing: submarine in the inlet.

Ten minutes later the whole crew was at their posts. No one spoke. It wasn't necessary.

We'd drilled this hundreds of times. But this wasn't a drill.

For the next 72 hours none of us slept more than three hours. We ate canned food standing up. Coffee — if you could call it that — from old thermoses that smelled like burnt rubber.

The hydrophones ping. Coordinates adjust. The commander's voice, calm as a fjord at dead calm, issues orders that appear in no official record.

Depth charges lowered. Not fired — that distinction matters. We signaled. We warned. We said: we know you're there.

The submarine left. Without acknowledgment, without comment. Just silence, then nothing.

Officially, nothing happened at all.

I'm telling you this now, forty years later, not to break secrecy — the 50-year rule has expired. I'm telling you because I want you to understand what it means to defend a coastline. It's not cannons and shells. It's 72 hours of waiting, cold coffee, and a radio that's always silent when you want it to speak.