USS Parche (SSN-683) Decommissioning

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USS PARCHE DECOMMISSIONING...


 

A silent warrior's final day

By Chris Barron, Sun Staff
October 20, 2004

On a dark and gloomy rain-filled day, a shroud of secrecy permeated the air on the Bremerton waterfront.

It was the perfect setting for the final day in the top-secret career of the Bangor-based USS Parche, one of the world's most prolific spy submarines.

By the time its life ended Tuesday in a decommissioning ceremony at the Bremerton naval base, the Parche was the most highly decorated ship in Navy history — even though most Americans have never heard of it.

Commissioned in 1974, the Parche spent 30 years and 19 deployments as America's top espionage sub, reportedly tapping the undersea military communication lines of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, plucking lost Soviet weaponry from the ocean floor and gathering intelligence on other enemies afterward.

The Parche (pronounced PAR-chee) was officially designated by the Navy as a "research and development" submarine. And it did plenty of that, testing new sonar and undersea warfare technologies.

But its highly classified missions, none of which have ever been officially confirmed, are the most intriguing aspect of its history. Many of those missions were deemed to be of "vital importance to U.S. national security," earning the submarine an unprecedented nine Presidential Unit Citations. The vast majority of ships never receive even one.

For being the most decorated ship ever, shouldn't more people be made aware of what it accomplished?

"Those that need to know, know," said a matter-of-fact Rear Adm. Ben Wachendorf, who commanded the Parche from 1988 to 1993.

Wachendorf, now U.S. defense attache" in Moscow, traveled from Russia to be at Tuesday's ceremony.

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything," he said. "It means a lot to be able to say goodbye to an old friend."

In fact, all but one of the Parche's nine former commanders were present at the Parche's decommissioning. In addition, about 130 former crew members, most belonging to the USS Parche Association, were on hand to witness the sub's inactivation.

Those who returned to see their sub one last time said it was not only the camaraderie of submarine life that made Parche special, but also the exotic and extremely challenging missions it completed, which often involved excruciatingly long periods spent submerged with dwindling food and supplies.

"It's the end of the life cycle," said Manchester resident Will Longman, chairman of the Parche Association. "It's very meaningful. The camaraderie does not go away. And the uniqueness of Parche imparts its own special camaraderie."

The Parche also was the last of the Navy's 37 Sturgeon-class fast attack subs to be deactivated — though it barely resembled any of the otherr ships of that class.

That's because its hull was extended by 100 feet to accommodate extensive classified modifications in a four-year stay at Mare Island Naval Shipyard near San Francisco in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In 1994, the Parche and its crew of 190 moved from Mare Island to Bangor. It had already earned six Presidential Unit Citations by that time and earned another three after its transfer to Bangor, including a ninth for its final deployment that ended in late September.

The Parche's final resume also included 13 Navy Expeditionary Medals and 10 Navy Unit Commendations — all unprecedented numbers.

"Parche has had a career unmatched in the annals of submarine history," said Rear Adm. Paul Sullivan, commander of the Pacific Fleet submarine force.

"Parche has gathered enough citations that are just truly remarkable ... based on her superb performance in critical national tasking.
 

"She now ranks among the most legendary vessels to ever have sailed under our flag."

Sullivan compared the Parche's storied past to other historic Navy vessels, such USS Constitution, USS Monitor, USS Missouri and USS Nautilus. "And now there is Parche," he said.

The ship figured prominently in "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage," a nonfiction book published in the 1990s, which described how it spent its Cold War days spying on the Soviet Union.

It's also been reported the sub, with a claw-like device, was able to pick up lost Soviet missiles or bombs from the sea floor. Later, it reportedly deployed unmanned drones to complete many of the espionage tactics.

Following the Cold War, the Parche continued its highly classified missions, with many observers citing an even higher sense of secrecy. It's said the Parche spent plenty of time in the Persian Gulf, gleaning intelligence on Iraq and Iran, and traveled through the Western Pacific keeping tabs on China and North Korea.

Capt. Richard Charles, the Parche's first commander, traveled from Mobile, Ala., for Tuesday's ceremony. He took command while the sub was being built and went on its first deployment, a five-month journey in the Mediterranean Sea. After that, the sub transferred to the West Coast and began its spy missions a few years later.

"Those guys in the Pacific had all the fun," Charles joked. "I just built it.

"It's always sad to see a ship retire, but after a while, they are like you and me; they wear out."

Ironically, the name of the Parche's last at-sea commander, Capt. Charles Richard, was a mirror image of the sub's first. Richard was relieved in a change-of-command ceremony Tuesday after leading the Parche on two post-September 11th deployments, including one that lasted 122 days in 2002.

"Being commander of this ship was an extraordinary experience and I was fortunate to be given the experience," he said. "I hope that each man who has served aboard this ship will look back and swell with pride knowing that he answered his country's call."

Following the ceremony, the Parche, probably one of the least known subs to the general public because of its highly classified missions, silently shifted over to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. There, it will be torn apart and recycled over the next few years.

And it's probably the first time in the Parche's history that its whereabouts will be known.

"That just proves our success that nobody knows what we do," said Bremerton resident Curt Mathews, who retired off the Parche last year. "It's kind of fun. People say, 'The Parche? I never heard of it?' Well, that's good.

"And we like it that way and that's why we were successful in all of our missions."

Reach reporter Chris Barron at (360) 792-9228 or cbarron@kitsapsun.com.

 

 

Super-Secret Sub Goes Out Of Service

What did the USS Parche do on those missions? her crew will never tell

By ROBERT A. HAMILTON
Day Staff Writer, Navy/Defense/Electric Boat
Published on 10/20/2004

Chief Petty Officer Richard Okrasinski of Plainfield wears the black, gold and red ribbon of a Presidential Unit Citation, one of the most prestigious medals in any of the services.

He can't tell you what he did to earn it. He can't even tell you when he got it. But if you obtain a copy of his service history, you can narrow it down to sometime between 1996 and 2000, when he served on the USS Parche.

The Parche, the Navy's double-super-secret spy submarine, was taken out of service Tuesday in Bangor, Wash., ending more than three decades of missions by submariners who are notoriously closed-mouth, even by the standards of the Silent Service.

The Parche earned its own chapter in the book "Blind Man's Bluff," which detailed a number of Cold War submarine missions, but people who know about submarines say the book barely scratched the surface of what the Parche has done over the past 32 years. And the Parche sailors aren't talking, not even to other submariners.

If an admiral asked a junior enlisted man on the Parche crew how he earned the medals on his chest, the admiral would get a polite refusal to answer.

"Most people have come to understand that I'm not going to tell them anything about that part of my life," Okrasinski said. "My wife doesn't want to know, my father is curious, and my mother doesn't even want to admit I go to sea — she worries about me whenever I'm not at home."

"We mostly did a really good job of keeping a very low profile," said Adam Bridge of Davis, Calif., who put the Parche into commission as a nuclear electronics technician in 1972 and served aboard the sub until August 1977.

"Civilians just look at you and say, "Oh yeah, a submarine. Great.' But every once in a while someone will have read "Blind Man's Bluff' and starts to ask questions," Bridge said in a telephone interview. " just say there's nothing I can comment on, that by the nature of their operations, all submarine missions are secret.

"And then I add that, as a taxpayer, I think they got their money's worth."

Bridge's son, Eric, is a machinist mate 3rd class aboard the Jimmy Carter, the third Seawolf-class submarine that is being heavily modified at Electric Boat to fill the void left by Parche's decommissioning.

"We've already defined a set of boundaries," Bridge said. "We agreed that if I ask a question and he doesn't know the answer, he will say, "I don't know.' And if the answer would be something that he can't speak about, he'll say, "I can't say.' "

The Parche is a "stretch hull" Sturgeon-class submarine, one of nine lengthened by 10 feet to 302 feet to accommodate extra equipment.

It's rumored that the Parche was the quietest of the nine, and was picked for more extensive modifications in the late 1970s at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, including a 100-foot special section that gave it a unique "ocean interface,"which meant it could deploy divers or special equipment without surfacing.

For the last quarter-century it has boasted some unusual features that are visible on top of its hull as well, but nobody has ever offered any explanations for their use.

"I used to say forward of the sail is our bowling alley, and back by the stern was just the hump," Okrasinski said. "Most people were interested in what was up front."

The Parche was originally home ported in Charleston, S.C. It was moved to Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the 1970s when it began doing special missions, and then to Bangor, Wash., after its modifications were completed.

Because of the demand for its services, the Parche has long been one of the busiest boats in the fleet. Okrasinski said during his first year he did 200 days at sea. Whereas other attack submarines would do six months at sea followed by 18 months of shore time, maintenance and local operations, Parche did two or three three-month deployments every year, as well as a three-month repair period.

The Parche was also the only attack submarine home ported in Bangor for most of its life, in part because the Navy didn't want the crew mingling with other SSN sailors, or even with the ballistic missile submarine crews that call Bangor home.

"Nobody talked to the Parche sailors," Okrasinski said. "We lived in our own barracks, had our own pier, and had our own parking. We just kept to ourselves."

Retired Vice Adm. Bernard M. Kauderer, who was commander of the Pacific and Atlantic submarine forces at a time when the Parche had already established its reputation in the 1980s, said he was delighted to learn that the Carter would get a special 100-foot hull section to replace the capabilities that will be lost with the Parche's decommissioning.

"The way the program is planned, it can sustain a gap," Kauderer said.

In fact, he said, with the Carter slated to go on sea trials next year and to be delive red to the Navy shortly after that, it won't be much different than if the Parche had gone in for an overhaul.

"You just plan the kind of operations this submarine does for when the asset is available," Kauderer said. "It's not like a normal SSN (attack submarine), where it has to be instantly available to surge. These are very carefully planned operations, planned well in advance, so it's easy to plan something like this around the schedule.

"It's a great move to have a specially configured submarine asset ready to perform those very unique missions. It's a mission that no other platform, really, can conduct."

There is one Parche mission that leaked out to the public, thanks to Ronald Pelton, a National Security Agency analyst who spied for the Russians in the 1970s and 1980s.

For five years, the submarine snuck into shallow water in the Sea of Okhotsk between two large Soviet naval bases to tap a communications cable that carried military signals. Parche might have been caught in the act if not for satellite photos that showed intense Soviet interest in the area before it went in to retrieve the recordings that its tap had made.

It's not a mission that the Navy can credibly deny — the tap is iin a museum at the former KGB headquarters in Moscow.

It was missions like that, and others even more hair-raising, that have earned the submarine a number of Presidential Unit Citations. The medal is awarded for extraordinary heroism in accomplishing a mission under extremely difficult and hazardous conditions. It is a rarity on the Groton waterfront, and if you see it on a sailor you can be sure he's done a tour on the Parche at some point. Some jokingly call it the "Parche Unit Citation."

Does it bother him that he can't discuss why he earned such a prestigious award?

"Not really," he said. "There was a reason that we got it, and I understand there is a reason we can't talk about the reason.�

r.hamilton@theday.com