cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/56707632
The S-363 was a soviet submarine in the NATO designated whiskey-class.
In Sweden she is know as U 137, due to her Soviet name being classified at the time.
S-363 ran aground on 1981/10/27, on the south coast of Sweden, this happened at a time when the Sweden held a naval exercise testing new equipment in the area.
There were a lot of back and fourth between Sweden and the Soviets, with the Soviets blaming faulty navigation having got the boat lost, this was despite the boat having navigated several complicated areas with rocks, straights, and islands to get to their current location.
The Soviets later issued a contradictory statement about how the submarine were forced into Swedish waters due to bad weather.
The Soviet captain was taken to be interviewed on the mainland, and while gone the sub sent out a distress call and two ships from a Soviet armada just outside Swedish waters started to move towards the submarine.
This is when the Swedish Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fäldin gave the order “Håll gränsen”, “Hold the border”, to the Swedish Supreme Commander.
Coastal batteries, mobile coastal artillery gund and mine station went into action stations, the Swedish Air Force scrambled strike aircraft armed with modern anti ship missiles.
20 min later Fäldin was informed that the ships were not infact Soviet naval vessels, but rather West German merchant ships.
The submarine was stuck for 10 days, before being hauled off the rock by Swedish tugs and permitted to join the Soviet naval escort.
The photographer of this photo is unknown, and it is licensed as CC-BY
And for those less well versed in naval lingo: S-363 / U-137 was known as a Whiskey-class submarine, hence the very apt “whiskey on the rocks” moniker. 🥃
Further, this was during the cold war when it was “well known” (ie. not proven) that the Russians were intruding into Swedish territorial waters and cartoons like the one below was commonplace in the papers. So this event was very much a “smoking gun”, leading swedes to say “Ha! We knew it!” which was rather embarrassing for Russia. Not to mention… that boat is really up there, you know?