May 2011
73 posts
In October 1981, the Soviet submarine S-363 accidentally hit an underwater rock about 2 km from the main Swedish naval base at Karlskrona. The boat was surfaced and inside Swedish territorial waters. Swedish naval forces reacted to the breach of neutrality by sending an unarmed naval officer aboard the boat to meet the captain and demand an explanation. The captain initially claimed that simultaneous failures of navigational equipment had caused the boat to get lost (this despite the fact that the boat had already somehow navigated through a treacherous series of rocks, straits, and islands to get so close to the naval base.)
The Soviet navy would later issue a conflicting statement claiming that the boat had been forced into Swedish waters due to severe distress, although the boat had never sent a distress signal but rather attempted to escape.
This incident is popularly known in the West as “Whiskey on the rocks”. In the Soviet Navy the sub came to be known as “Swedish Komsomolets”, a pun on both the incident, and the then widespread tendency to give the subs Komsomol-themed names.
” —Wikipedia.