The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has opened an investigation into the implosion of the Titan mini-submersible that was aboard the Canadian-flagged vessel Polar Prince.
Canada is involved in this story in several ways. It was a small underwater robot from another Canadian vessel, the Horizon Arctic, based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which first discovered the submersible’s wreck about 500 meters from the wreck of the Titanic. The discovery was announced shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported that the sound of the small travel submersible’s “catastrophic implosion” was first recorded by the US Navy.
The US Navy confirmed the news, adding that “other partners” had cooperated in collecting the acoustic data.
The implosion first discovered in Halifax?
This is undoubtedly Canada, which along with the United States is participating in an underwater listening network – a series of hydrophones placed on the seabed – to detect the presence of enemy submarines near North American shores.
This integrated underwater acoustic surveillance system called SOSUS (SOund SURveillance System), which provides long-range detection capability in deep water, was developed during the Cold War to detect Soviet nuclear-armed missile submarines approaching Canadian and US territorial waters.
The Canadian nerve center of this network is in the ultra secret area trinity, the Canadian Naval Base in Halifax Harbour. Deteriorating NATO allies’ relations with Russia, which accelerated with the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine, updated the Russian underwater threat, which had subsided but never disappeared after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Trinity works with the Intelligence Fusion Center in Virginia operated by the US Coast Guard. The SOSUS line, which covers the east coast of North America, is codenamed “Caesar”.
Russians are always very interested in what’s going on at Trinity. They paid a Canadian naval officer working there, Jeffrey Delisle, to find out.
Delisle sold information to the Russian Military Intelligence Service (GRU) in what was the largest theft of classified documents in Canadian history. Between 2007 and 2012, he leaked secrets to Russians over the Internet for $71,000.
Almost five years after his betrayal, it was the FBI that brought him to the attention of the RCMP and CSIS in 2011. In February 2013 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Thanks to an incredible forbearance, Jeffrey Delisle regained his total freedom in March 2019. The parole board ruled that he was not at risk of reoffending.
Toshiba’s silent propellers
The Canadian part of SOSUS was initially based in Argentina, Newfoundland. When the base closed in 1995, the underwater listening system was moved to Trinity Base in Halifax.
Steven Ratkai was arrested on June 11, 1988 in possession of classified documents from the Argentia base. He worked for the GRU, who wanted to know if the base’s controlled hydrophones could still detect their submarines, which had been newly fitted with quiet propellers sold to them by the Japanese company Toshiba.
While Russian subs could be spotted up to 200 nautical miles with traditional propellers, with the new Toshiba propellers they were difficult to spot even at 10 miles! In retaliation, Washington banned Toshiba products from its territory for three years beginning January 1, 1988.
Ratkai is sentenced to nine years in prison for espionage for the benefit of the Soviet Union.