I heard about this accident but mostly in terms of desperate heroism of Sablin, but never about such incredible mess that surrounded interception of the rebel frigate. There is an old Soviet joke: who has served in the army never laughs in the circus.
I'd just love to know what his full plan was- how could he possibly think bringing a ship and probably only a few real supporters to Leningrad would inspire a full-blown revolution? I mean was he THAT incredibly indoctrinated that he really thought he'd repeat the Aurora 'incident'? It's really hard to fathom... no pun intended ;)
@@mattl3729 it was really the case. 13 yrs before the revolt as young officer he sent a letter to Soviet Premier Khrushchev and denounced corruption of the Communist Party and betrayal of the ideals of the Russian revolution, this letter was intercepted, but he was considered as a good officer and didn't have serious problems, but since then everything he did was a careful preparation for this revolt, including entering the elite Soviet navy academy. It's clear he was inspired by revolutionary movie Battleship Potemkin (he watched it with sailors who supported him when they were chased by Soviet Navy ) and another inspiration was Don Quixote (the pencil drawing of DQ and wind mills made by Sablin in prison cell was returned to his wife by KGB after execution). His demand included a daily access to Soviet TV to broadcast his ideas and in addition he wanted to print a newspaper.
I was in the USN as a GMG when we were sent on deployment in 1986. Well one Sunday at sea we held a steel beach picnic, the ships band was playing, burgers and dogs on the grill, sailors tossing balls around to name a few. Along comes my E7 (chief petty officer) and tells us to stay close to our general quarters station. We also noticed GMGs started disappearing off the fan tail. After about 20 minutes later we found out why. Coming up fast behind us was a USSR frigate or destroyer, I cannot remember which. After it caught up to us, it stayed about 100 off our stern. If we threw trash over the side, they would collect it then speed back up as to sit about 100 yards astern of us. Also noticed not a single USSR sailor was walking the decks, they were buttoned up for a fight. But we did not stop our steel beach picnic. Some of the guys bought ships ball caps, few brass ships lighters, put them in a trash bag and tossed them over the side. As expected the Soviet ship picked the bags up. That ship followed us for about 4 or 5 hours and not once was there a Soviet sailor walking the decks of that ship. What the Soviet ship did not know was that the 5" guns were manned and ready for a fight just in case. When chief told me to stay close to my general quarters station he said " If they start something, they will not get far." Yes, I was a 16 inch gunnersmate ( aft turret center gun) on the battleship Missouri BB -63. Then when they were done the Soviets made a hard starboard turn and left at flank speed. So now if you see a Russian with a U.S.S. Missouri ships ball cap or lighter, you know how they got it.
@@Persian-Immortal, I would not say the Missouri did not have an escort. Capitol ships when deployed tend to have a submarine escort. Never found out if the Missouri had one or not as location of subs is classified.
Yeah, that sounds about right for the Red Banner Fleet. Suppress the 'incident' by getting rid of even the heroes, so you don't have to admit anything. Now they just give them medals and tell them to keep quiet.
From what it sounds like, the RU army is basically doing the same thing with their missle air defenders. Shoot down your own valuable Su-35? Get in trouble.. but also get a medal for doing your job... right?
There's cold comfort knowing that even the highest level of military leadership isn't imperious to forgetting the password to their critical equipment.
aside from nukes, if the cold war went hot and we entered a war with the soviets, i actually dont see what we were worried about. Not only in Ukraine, but their failed invasion of Afghanistan, and general incompetent leadership, along with sub par equipment, it seems Russia has always been a white Elephant. If Ukraine (granted with Foreign aid) can hold against the Russians, imagine if all of Nato fought Russia, they wouldn’t last very long imo.
Man, how bad does it feel to rescue the captain, break a mutiny, then be told "you deserve a medal, but you're getting a dishonorable discharge instead."
The Russian command didn`t want to be reminded of the situation and why give an enlisted man a chance to tell his grandchildren a great story of what he did in the navy?
@@tedzehnder961 At least if wasn't "...and why give an enlisted man a chance to tell his comrades *in the Gulag* a great story of what he did in the navy?
Honestly a lot of Russia's military history could be turned into a dark comedy, the story of Russia's 2nd Pacific Squadron could be easily turned into a movie.
That the Soviet Union got something legitimately good for them out of this (the realization that their air force was woefully untrained for maritime combat and thus could course correct) is itself a minor miracle given every other Soviet Union Air Force story I've seen here.
10 years later, a West German teenager flew his plane all the way to Moscow. That would make a wonderful Paper Skies video on Soviet response to it. You can just see the chain of failure all around.
@@dyingearththis is the guy involved in that incident, for anyone wondering: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust Edit: now that I've read the article myself... Wow. Rust was, it seems, quite unhinged. When he later served his Civil Duty as a hospital orderly (after he'd been released early from Soviet prison), he stabbed a female colleague who had rejected him; she barely survived.
The USSR never had a problem having a lot of intelligent and able people around. Their problem was that these people were very rarely in any position to use their intelligence.
@@jakublulek3261 the only time intelligence and position where Russia could use it met was the "шарашки". It's a bloody joke how 99% of the time russoan people do great the further away they are from Russia😅 Как в анекдоте, "я же говорил, место проклятое".
When Tom Clancy first published Hunt for Red October he got a visit from the State Department wanting to know how he had come by a lot of the information he included in the book. It turned out a lot of it was just guesses. They were just very accurate guesses. In any case, they kept a close eye on him for a while.
i have to wonder if we've got more than just tom's word on this. i assume there's primary sources out there, but I haven't really got the time to vet out those.
@@OutbackCatgirl The one part of it that rings true to me, is that when a CIA employee introduces themself to anyone outside the agency, they claim to be from "the state department". You can usually tell which state department they are actually from the quality of their suit and how well it fits.
To everyone who has ever been part of a military operation on short-notice, we feel for these guys. :) On the other hand, as soon as he threw up the scramble-diagram for the airfield with squadrons of fighters taking off at BOTH ends, I knew this would be good. Love the animations and niche media additions, Paper Skies! Please keep it up!
I’ve been wondering about that ludicrous idea of scrambling fighter jets from both ends of the same runway. 😣 Could that really have been an established tactic, or were they blithering idiots in panic mode?? 🤷🏼♂️ I guess it could technically have been a viable tactic to limit the number of jets getting shot down during an air raid on the aerodrome. But that would an extremely dangerous tactic, unless the runway was wide enough (and the pilots are trained to keep left/right) and little to no crosswind was present!!
@@BoHolbo From the video, it's established that it's in their standard procedures to scramble that way. I believe it's just part of how the airbase has been set up due to terrain and space requirements. From the looks of it, it does give every squadron the shortest route to the runway so they can be quick if they're only launching 1 squadron. The coordinated takeoff procedures shouldn't be a problem since the idea is the squadron that's awaiting takeoff on the opposite end of the runway would be sitting on the end of the taxiway until they get given the "go". But alas its not only box-standard military grade SNAFU but also a panic scramble after a big night of drinking so instead of slowing down to unfuck the situation they just went all gas no breaks into it. Otherwise, the leader of 1st squadron in the video would sense something's wrong when he's taking off before 3rd squadron, and he'd probably be double and triple confirming with command before committing to takeoff
You can't beat the last minute WARNO. One minute you're relaxing in your billet. Next you're getting a quick briefing on a short mission. You roll out of the wire, dismount, deviate from the plan and then you spend 56 hours sleepless in the rain scanning a ridgeline with a MK48 wishing you had packed more than ammunition while listening to the platoon on the other side of the valley engage in sporadic firefights when they're not trading MRE's to the locals for dry firewood.
Inevitable when the biggest by territory country in the world proclaim to be the most peaceful in the history of mankind had the military power five and half million strong, bigger than the next four armies: the US, people's republic of China and Iran with Iraq clinched in the forgotten decade long war in 80s ...
A pity Kubrick is not with us anymore... I would love a "The Hunt of the Storezhovoy, or How l learned to love the Soviets and Stopped Worrying About WWIII"
@samsonsoturian6013 As a German, that reminds me of the stories of the Third Reich... it's always a bad idea to rate party membership higher than real competence.
Fun Fact: When the Russians were speaking Russian, English subtitles were provided. Then in the scene where the Commissar was reading Oppenheimer's book in Ramius' cabin, he's reading in Russian until he gets to the word "Armageddon", which is the same in Russian and English. From that point forward, the Russians spoke English. Then in the scene after the DSRV attaches to the Red October and the Dallas crew come aboard, the Russians speak Russian but without subtitles. After all, the Dallas crew did not know Russian and had no idea what they were saying, just like the audience. When Jack Ryan joins them and translates what they say into English for the Americans, we then get subtitles as the Russians talk to or refer to Ryan. Then Ramius speaks English with a Russian-Scottish accent to the Dallas captain and crew. While the book is more detailed than the movie, "The Hunt for Red October" is a great *guy movie.* 10/10 would recommend.
They definitely gave some thought about how the language would play out and it's that kind of attention to detail that really makes this such an enjoyable movie to watch.
Deeply impressed by the dedication of Valery Sablin, and of Shein who reportedly still supported Sablin even after he was released from the labour camp 8 years later. @Paper Skies: the last minute or two of the video (not counting the ad for Nebula) is currently missing from the version on Nebula.
The tragi-comedic irony of this story is that one zealous man and his compatriots, whose trust in the state he believed in was shattered, was allowed to get as far as he did in his ill-thought out revolution because the men who broke his trust had a distinct lack of trust in the military they commanded, a distrust that crept all the way down to the rank-and-file. I know "you couldn't write it better if you tried" gets bandied about a lot, but my god, you really couldn't. EDIT: Typo - thanks to @discorp for pointing it out, and apologies for my month-long delay in a response.
Clancy gave a talk at the NSA in the early or mid 80's, which you can find on TH-cam ;) and Clancy explicitly states that this incident was part of his writing method, where he read about such incidnets, and he filed them away, to include as parts of, or as full plot lines in his books. This incident was the inspiration for The Hunt For Red October
It is funny that Clancy himself seemed to not have a very high opinion of the Soviet military, but still maintained the myth that they were scary for the benefit of his books. I recall seeing him interviewed about the autoloader of the T72 once and he said something like 'it's a death trap- like everything the Soviets ever made' LOL
@@mattl3729 Which is a very uneducated thing for him to say since (at the time it was built) it was safer than every Western tank. Being so low to the ground, and with the autoloader at the very bottom of the tank, the kinds of hits that could strike the autoloader and cook it off would have already killed the crew. In comparison the Challenger 2, designed about 20 years after the T-72, still uses 2-piece ammo and stores the powder charges and HEAT warheads inside the hull at chest height where they can be hit by any penetrating sabot, HEAT jet, or spalling.
@@thelastdwemer A private citizen, an author no less that gave talks to the intelligence communities inside the FBI and the NSA among others says Soviet gear was junk I would believe him over you...just saying
Knowing the Soviets love of secrecy it’s probably that those guys on that cargo ship would live the rest of their lives unaware of what happened. Like imagine being bombed and then just never finding out who did it.
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@@IncredibleMD Yeah. They reported being bombed to the relevant authorities, and never heard anything about it, or more likely were told never to talk about it again. They for sure "knew" who bombed them
Wow it’s really spectacular how he mentions the political officer in the film “Hunt for Red October” is named Putin, and the actor even has a faint resemblance to the real Putin - even though the film was made in 1990 when nobody knew of Putin (and the book in 1984). The character is pretty similar to how I imagine Putin was in the KGB. Of course the author likely chose a random name, though I’ve never heard of another Putin as a Russian as it’s not a common name as far as I know (from what I see only 4-7 thousand people have that surname) and only 2 relatively obscure people with that surname (in Russian wikipedia) who are not directly related to Putin.
The nebula version cuts off before the end of the video mid sentence, so have come here to hear the ending as well. It cuts off at 34:00 "Regular pilots were" and that's it.
I don't know what's going on; this is the third time I've rendered the version for Nebula, and it always cuts off at the exact same place. It's weird, but I'll fix it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
The film is largely historically authentic, but some of those key events which happened in the movie unfolded over a much longer period of time in reality, and the movie definitely wasn't entirely accurate. Stalin and the NKVD were not committing murder on a large scale anymore at that point in history, and tended not to order or authorize anybody to be killed unless they saw it as absolutely necessary, so that wasn't entirely accurately portrayed in the movie either. For example, many soldiers were casually executed just because they supposedly knew too much about Stalin and his Dacha, but there is no good evidence that this ever happened (and no good reason for it to have happened either). But... Stalin, and other members of the NKVD really were murderers, and responsible for a lot of deaths and brutal oppression over the years... But most of it happened long before the date that the film is set in.
That's funny my dad served on a Knox class in the late 60s. They were shadowed by Soviet surface ships while transiting north of Japan for a day. He even had pictures of the Soviet ship.
It was a paper on this incident that Tom Clancy got the inspiration for Hunt For Red October from, when he had a readers' ticket for (I think) the US Naval Academy library.
It was a wonderful comedy of errors from the USSR. I do hope that you have a bottomless pit of these stories because they're always interesting and amusing. There's ineptitude throughout the military of most nations, but the USSR's have been hidden for so long that finally hearing of them ought to be classed as a public service. As usual, thanks very much for your time and efforts. 😊😊😊❤❤❤😊😊😊
USSR Blunders has been kept secret for a while, of course we love it when we finally hear about it. Compared to US Blunders where it gets broadcasted almost immediately it gets boring.
@@Someone-wj1lfI suspect radio was probably chaotic, with numerous simultaneous transmissions stepping on each other, and any clear channel space was taken up with useless or minimally useful information.
@@jamielonsdale3018 Like that time when two soviet passenger planes collided, because ATC was new on job and had no oversight or help on one of the busiest airways in soviet union and there were lots of mixed-up radio communications?
There was a story I heard and I don't have the source for it, but apparently the sweds were listening in on the whole operation because of a listening post that on Gotland island, during the mad scramble of the yak28s I heard in their rush they forgot to turn on the radio encryption devices and were talking with no scrambling, and the sweds heard the whole thing go down, they never revealed they knew what was happening cause Cold War politics and they would have to explain why they have a secret listening post on Gotland in the Baltic sea, if anyone has the source that would be nice
Few things: 1. The Nebula version of this video seems to end prematurely? 2. Your narration and pronunciation is excellent. Like ASMR for military nerds. 3. Had there been actual war between USSR and NATO, Soviet military would have self-destructed due to sheer incompetence within a week.
@@wildbill6976 I think he was speaking in general, regarding both sides of the iron curtain. Our side has tried to keep up with the Eastern bloc when it came to bumbling and fumbling!
@@wildbill6976 Well...NATO didnt got too far from them, they need to keep a score after all. How about almost destroying a carrier, by loading planes that are not even ready for take-off with fully armed and rusted WW2 bombs?
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907an incident displaying widespread NATO inefficiency based on deep rooted corruption and reliability issues?? Well tried, but still a ridiculous statement!
While it's a relatively well known event you should absolutely do a video about the Whiskey on the Rocks incident, or U 137 as it's called. The convoluted mess and excuses the crew had is the funniest shit coming from a military submarine. Plus it'd be interesting to hear if there's any other sources than the mainstream ones about the event.
Nothing convoluted about the U137 incident, they were making a deliberate penetration of Swedish territory that failed due to a a manouver error mid way through the operation. You simply cannot get to where the U137 was by mistake as you need to follow a very specific route exactly. If they did not know where they were the sub would have run aground much earlier.
I'm honestly debating in my head if I can afford nebula just to watch more of your videos. Stories of Soviet incompetence are the funniest dark comedy stories I've ever heard about
Fascinating stuff. I LOVE the Yak-28 family. Would you do an episode specifically on these machines? There's a fascinating incident where one crashed in a lake in Berlin and there was a covert NATO operation to salvage it.
My family is Latvian. The craziest thing about this entire thing is that nobody in Riga that was not military knew this ever happened. I told them the story in 2019 and they were entirely unsurprised. Me trying to wrap my head around that still hasn't happened yet.
People used to be scared of the USSR because of it's perceived might, but they were no more eager to start WWIII than the west. But this constant litany of Soviet misshaps is very scary indeed.
One thing I think that is overlooked is that the regular purges of senior ranks from the 1930s onwards meant that Soviet military was perpetually locked in 'new boss' mode. Something made worse by the fact the cultural system regarded change as suspect, especially anything thar could be considered radical.
Because this channel is known for only bashing the USSR for the mistakes it made. Just read up Operation Attrina and SS-N-19 and you will get to know how competent and powerful the soviet navy really was
@@oggaBuggaDon't make me laugh, the Millennium 2002 was quite an overblown and misunderstood incident. The retired Marine General was doing what he does best, like any marine would and did what was in all effect Gamer Moves. Which is the problem because he was not only breaking the system, he was exploiting it. Try to imagine how a dude in a motorcycle can send a letter in a bottle instantaneously from point A to point B in mere seconds? His tactics wouldn't work in the real world and might have set his battle plans behind by days or even weeks with the means of communications he was using. Knowing that he was a Marine, I respect that and I expect that but if we try to study what he was doing and how the navy was doing by reading those over glorifying shits who spew Pierre Sprey logic wouldn't net you for shit!
@oggaBugga During the millennium 2002 challenge, General van Riper 1. Put missile Systems on boats that could, in reality, not carry them without sinking. 2. Had motor couriers as his communications system so that it couldn't be hacked, yet pretended that was instantaneous, Edit: So, yes, I do know what im talking about. Why do you have to dangle your ignorance where everyone can see it?
As a non native english speaker. I appreciate that you are adding subtitles. Its small thing but so many channels are not bothering to add. Thanks. Your videos are always informative and well explained. I wonder what would happen if Sablin reached to Leningrad?
Oh wow. I know no military is without massive gaffes, but this just keeps getting worse and worse. The Yak's trying to take off from both sides of the runway was truly impressive incompetence, but then also attacking the chasing fleet? Truly an amazing example of Soviet military preparedness. Great breakdown!
Друже, обожнюю твій контент. Саркастична, влучна і доволі об'єктивна характеристика подій, де ти не цураєшся ані компліментів, ані жорсткої критики радянських військових і інженерів. Врешті, це та частина нашого спільного минулого, яку варто пам'ятати і вивчати детальніше. Привіт з Києва, мирного неба тобі і твоїм близьким)
Простите, а за что критиковать инженеров? СССР в 1980 имело вооружение сопоставимое с США, я уже молчу что эти дедки еще живы и так же работают. Или ты думаешь модификации для украинских Т-64 придумывают молодые 20ти летние студенты? Да нет, там куча людей с советским образованием которые еще и учат людей молодых, с чего смеяться? Я конечно понимаю негатив, но отрицать положительные тенденции из-за бомбежа - это бред Сохрани и модернизируя половину вооружения что осталось в наследство Украине - РФ даже не подумала нападать, но нет, продали все, распили и обогатили сотни олигархов
@@Spectre4490 насчет 1980х все же загнул, в 1980х союз во многом отстал от западного мира, тратил нефтедоллары на разработку не очень перспективных вещей хотя интересных безусловно.
@@topgear3128 ну вот Америка и немцы отставали от СССР по танкам до того как построили М1 абрамс и Леопард 2, электроника, металообработка и оптика у запада на голову было выше чем у СССР По ракетоносителем и зенитным ракетам скорее паритет, может даже СССР чуть лучше Но советы выкручивались, так Toshiba продала СССР в 1982 CNC машину которую советы использовали для обработки винтов подводных лодок, до этого это делалось вручную и шум издаваемый винтом был хорошо виден сонарами, а в чем прикол? Тошиба увидела что Франция продает CNC машины СССР и не хотела остаться без прибыли и обошли запрет от США Как говорил Ленин "Капиталисты сами продадут нам веревку, на которой мы их повесим" Понятно что запад смог и обеспечить качесво жизни людей и хорошую армию, советы же не особо заботились о благополучии граждан
Actually, it is one of theories of how Moscow sunk. Soviet turbine engines used on ships like these had a tendency to explode, if VERY poorly maintained. And you wouldnt want to be near anything with more then 10 000 HP when it explodes.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 the Moscva sunk because 2 Neptune missles flew straight across the open ocean and right into the side of her while the radar officer was looking at tic tok....
I’ve come to expect the absurd, thanks to this fantastic channel, but when we got to the aftermath, I was floored. Unbelievable that they demoted and discharged the only clear hero of the story.
The clear hero was Sablin wanting to start a socialist revolution, fighting corruption, who nearly got into Swedish territorial waters thanks to the corruption in the Russian army. The irony is they shot Sablin for treason, and the only logical reason is Russians love their corruption and see it as treason if someone wants to fight this.
The CAF also had it's issues in the early 60;s of being scrambled AKA Snowball during a holiday and although I was kid at the time I remember two of the fighters failed takeoff and flew into the black forest and exploded killing the pilots. So the Soviet Military is no different than any other in this regard. Thanks for the story.
@@stscc01Ah, the Canadair licensed production model of the Starfighter...... Is it any surprise something went wrong when the aircraft was less than 1km off the ground? EDIT: This is coming from a fairly massive fan of the military, and a Canadian. The Starfighter was NOT good for anything other than just going zoom.
@airplanemaniacgaming7877 yes, not the aircraft with the best safety record. But most pilots loved those birds anyway. A good friend of my father was a Starfighter pilot in the Luftwaffe (they lost one third of their F-104Gs in accidents, mostly killing the aircrew), and he was very unhappy to change to the Phantom...😀
@@airplanemaniacgaming7877 The good old days when they let the Canadian Air Farce HAVE air planes! LOL Is the entire Canadian submarine fleet still stationed at the West Edmonton Mall?
@@inconnu4961Air _Farce_ is perfect to call the RCAF. Considering we still fly C/F-18s as our MAIN COMBAT AIRCRAFT I wish we actually gave the CAF (Canadian Armed Forces) more than just rolls of old duct tape and pre-chewed gum to fix our shit. (of which reminds me that Trudumb tried to pull us out of the F-35 program, before going "Oh shit, it's actually a good aircraft and we need to spend more GDP on military to stay in NATO." and putting an order for the thing.)
This is not so dissimmilar to the Royal Navy and Air Force response during the German channel dash in 1942. Panic, leading to confusion, leading to chaos, leading to disaster...or near disaster. It is funny, until you actually get bombed by your own aircraft. I feel sorry for the poor sailors and airmen in these events, who were completely at the mercy of surperior incompetence. Good thing the only victim in this was the dignity of the Soviet Airforce as an institution.
@@artynomenus After almost sinking several british warships and loosing gigant warship that could not even manoeuvre, also several times. The more you learn about RN, the more you question how these guys even survived till the end of the war (considering suicidal tendencies rivaling that of japanese and fuck-ups in ships construction rivaling that of INCOMPLETE japanese ships build from scrap metal near end of the war).
@@virmirfan Jutland and sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse. Basically a bismark situation...but if germans were stupid and had bad ships. Prince was essentialy doomed by first hit of torpedo and received very heavy flooding, that its hull protection was supposed to hold, and like that one of major hubs of allies power in far east had fallen in japanese hands.
Typical of the mindless bureaucracy that was the old Soviet Union, an officer runs into the duty office and tells you that a crew has mutinied and stolen a ship. You: A) Can take him at his word; or B) Send for a doctor to determine his sobriety, and then decide whether to take him at his word; or C) Look out the window and see for yourself whether the ship is still there… Personally I would have gone with Option C, but apparently B was the correct choice?
I mean, I assume the ship was slated to sail anyway so they'd expect it to not be in port. The whole crew wouldn't be on board the ship otherwise and Sablin couldn't sail without them.
hello, great video, but you missed one important thing about Jonas Pleškys, who did it in 1961 and successfully swam to the Gotland Islands, then to America, where he escaped from the KGB and died naturally. in the movie Red October, we learned that the captain is Lithuanian, just like Jonas Pleškys. there is even a book about it "Jonas Pleškys - the man from the red October hunt". a second part would be great.
I'm not the only one who thinks this video is best listened to while either Lenin Is Young Again or the Partisan's Song is also playing in the background, considering our wholesome boy led this mutiny?
To this day, myself and my family will spontaneously burst out with, Emergency! Everybody to get from street! We get weird looks a lot.....its worth it
Valery Sablin struck down as one of the most iconic young revolutionaries during the end of cold war. It is unsure if his uprising would be anywhere plausible, but it is somewhat confirmed that high-ranking soviet politicians such as Suslov tried to save him. Brezhenev is really gamer-moving. Alas here is the quote we heard over a thousand times: Russian Reunification "Be strong in the belief that life is wonderful. Be positive and believe that the Revolution will always win." - Valery Sablin Lenin lives again
TH-cam: no naughty you cant monetise this with ads Also TH-cam: no ads allowed on videos designated for children Also TH-cam: lets put ads on every video now even the demonitised ones, i dont care if the video creator says no ads
How does one guy, possibly two, take over a ship (that needs engineers, not political officers), and sail it anywhere?I think there is even more to this story and there were more people involved in the mutiny but the Russian command didn`t need that to come out, at all.At the least, it shows a lack of initiative among 150 navy guys minus one.
Watched on Nebula, came here to comment.. Yet another AMAZINGLY GREAT Paper Skies production.. As someone who doesn't have much opportunity to view old Soviet TV, are the scenes used in this video from an actual melodrama about the event? and if so, is the story "adjusted" such that the complete circus of response is downplayed and the heroic actions are magnified?
Attempting to start a socialist revolution in the Soviet Union makes perfect sense to me. The Soviet Union, under Stalin, skipped over "the workers own the economy", and touched on "the government owns the economy" only as a formality to cover "Stalin personally owns the economy"
Finally, I discover the story of Sablin! I've seen him mentioned in memes and alt-history stories before, but never knew exactly what his claim to fame was... and I am not at all surprised to see the Soviet military tripping over itself and falling into chaos once again! 😂
In addition to the fascinating stories, which are well told here, I love the old film clips from Soviet movies and newsreels that illustrate them. Well done all around!
I had a professor who wrote a book about this! His name is Greg Young and the book (unfortunately out of print) is called The Last Sentry. Great book, highly recommend it to those who can find a copy
WHERE'S JOHN BELUSHI WHEN YOU NEED HIM? There's academy awards waiting for someone to pull this together into a movie. The the fact that it's based on reality is incredible, the Shakespearean interaction of the participants is classic, but the chaos is priceless. There's Gold in them their drills! 🎉 .
My god the USSR was a joke…a paper tiger of incompetence and nothing has changed in the subsequent decades. To think we as a society feared them is preposterous.
I say that made them even more dangerous. If the Soviets were incompetent to not know what nuclear missiles could really do - they might actually have launched them.
You know your military is absolutely fucked when you don’t trust a report from an officer because “he’s probably just drunk” Edit: holy shit, that’s just the least clusterfucked part of all of this shitshow
It's worth noting that the October Revolution that Red October is named for actually happened in November but Russia was still using the Julian Calendar when the rest of the world was using the Gregorian Calendar.
2:30 That train had a special lightweight design to show to authorities and generals , that there is a possibility to cross a river by train employig the pontoon bridge. It was a begining of army made of plywood and shives.
i appreciate the effort to add custom subtitles. but i can't comprehend how a native english speaker would find your accent too strong to make your English indecipherable. your english is good enough that i first thought you were an american who was using a practiced, subtle, accent. i only know Spanish aside from english but that's enough to give me perspective on my native language and I'm often hit with the thought that; "if i had to learn it as a second language i might not be able to do it" because of things like meaning of a sentence being radically altered by which words get emphasis and the seemingly totally arbitrary rules for order of adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc... for example this piece of a poem that is completely correct: "Love is a thing as any spirit free". I also find it amazing that Joseph Conrad, who is one of the most revered authors in the english language who is taught in the highest level university english classes, spent half of his life speaking polish and english is his second language. my youtube profile is actually his name and picture when he was younger and before he anglicized his name as an author. did i mention he didn't learn english in any formal classes? he was actually a sailor who just started thumbing through some copies of Shakespeare plays on long boring voyages. so kudos to you for being able to parse this weird amalgam of archaic languages so well. PS: if you ever pick up a joseph conrad novel avoid "under western eyes". he lived during the time of the soviet revolution and being polish his life intersected with it somewhat. his view of it was very dim. "under western eyes" is his rebuke of the whole movement and while his other novels talk about colonialism and race without sounding racist, the same cant be said for "under western eyes" where he says some harsh things about russians. some of it mightve been true for the time but some of it is definitely just mean spirited racism that just builds on the harmful stereotypes.
I heard about this accident but mostly in terms of desperate heroism of Sablin, but never about such incredible mess that surrounded interception of the rebel frigate. There is an old Soviet joke: who has served in the army never laughs in the circus.
Wahahaha 😀 That's a really good one mate 🙂
I'd just love to know what his full plan was- how could he possibly think bringing a ship and probably only a few real supporters to Leningrad would inspire a full-blown revolution? I mean was he THAT incredibly indoctrinated that he really thought he'd repeat the Aurora 'incident'? It's really hard to fathom... no pun intended ;)
@@mattl3729 it was really the case. 13 yrs before the revolt as young officer he sent a letter to Soviet Premier Khrushchev and denounced corruption of the Communist Party and betrayal of the ideals of the Russian revolution, this letter was intercepted, but he was considered as a good officer and didn't have serious problems, but since then everything he did was a careful preparation for this revolt, including entering the elite Soviet navy academy. It's clear he was inspired by revolutionary movie Battleship Potemkin (he watched it with sailors who supported him when they were chased by Soviet Navy ) and another inspiration was Don Quixote (the pencil drawing of DQ and wind mills made by Sablin in prison cell was returned to his wife by KGB after execution). His demand included a daily access to Soviet TV to broadcast his ideas and in addition he wanted to print a newspaper.
@@mattl3729he probably was THAT indoctrinated.
I’d amend that to “The Army” as a general sense.
I was in the USN as a GMG when we were sent on deployment in 1986. Well one Sunday at sea we held a steel beach picnic, the ships band was playing, burgers and dogs on the grill, sailors tossing balls around to name a few. Along comes my E7 (chief petty officer) and tells us to stay close to our general quarters station.
We also noticed GMGs started disappearing off the fan tail. After about 20 minutes later we found out why. Coming up fast behind us was a USSR frigate or destroyer, I cannot remember which. After it caught up to us, it stayed about 100 off our stern. If we threw trash over the side, they would collect it then speed back up as to sit about 100 yards astern of us. Also noticed not a single USSR sailor was walking the decks, they were buttoned up for a fight.
But we did not stop our steel beach picnic. Some of the guys bought ships ball caps, few brass ships lighters, put them in a trash bag and tossed them over the side. As expected the Soviet ship picked the bags up. That ship followed us for about 4 or 5 hours and not once was there a Soviet sailor walking the decks of that ship. What the Soviet ship did not know was that the 5" guns were manned and ready for a fight just in case.
When chief told me to stay close to my general quarters station he said " If they start something, they will not get far."
Yes, I was a 16 inch gunnersmate ( aft turret center gun) on the battleship Missouri BB -63. Then when they were done the Soviets made a hard starboard turn and left at flank speed. So now if you see a Russian with a U.S.S. Missouri ships ball cap or lighter, you know how they got it.
wow, awesome story.
I do have a question: Why was the Missouri alone, with no escorts?
@@Persian-Immortal, I would not say the Missouri did not have an escort. Capitol ships when deployed tend to have a submarine escort. Never found out if the Missouri had one or not as location of subs is classified.
@@samuelschick8813 of course, thanks for the reply.
also, thank you for your service.
It was rather stupid of them to rear down the barrel of a 16" gun turret in their dinky frigate against the largest battleship in world.
@livethefuture2492 That's why the phrase, 'F around and find out!'
Imagine freeing your Captain and help restore the chain of command on your ship, and then being demoted and unceremoniously discharged from the Navy!
Classic "no good deed goes unpunished".
Especially in the same breath where you're told you deserve a medal.
Imagine surviving, rather than getting bombed and drowning
Yeah, that sounds about right for the Red Banner Fleet. Suppress the 'incident' by getting rid of even the heroes, so you don't have to admit anything. Now they just give them medals and tell them to keep quiet.
From what it sounds like, the RU army is basically doing the same thing with their missle air defenders. Shoot down your own valuable Su-35? Get in trouble.. but also get a medal for doing your job... right?
There's cold comfort knowing that even the highest level of military leadership isn't imperious to forgetting the password to their critical equipment.
You're missing a "v" there!
Russia is not a great example of military leadership to begin with lol
@@Luke14616 The have their gems sprinkled throughout their history. Typically, and sadly history was more fair judge of them, however.
You mean “impervious” not “imperious”
aside from nukes, if the cold war went hot and we entered a war with the soviets, i actually dont see what we were worried about.
Not only in Ukraine, but their failed invasion of Afghanistan, and general incompetent leadership, along with sub par equipment, it seems Russia has always been a white Elephant.
If Ukraine (granted with Foreign aid) can hold against the Russians, imagine if all of Nato fought Russia, they wouldn’t last very long imo.
6:24 "The Soviet leadership obviously did not appreciate Sablin's initiative"
Well, that's the understatement of the year 😂
The boy just want to be Lenin for one day
initiative isnt appreciated in a totalitarian regime
Man, how bad does it feel to rescue the captain, break a mutiny, then be told "you deserve a medal, but you're getting a dishonorable discharge instead."
The Russian command didn`t want to be reminded of the situation and why give an enlisted man a chance to tell his grandchildren a great story of what he did in the navy?
"You're a hero... and you need to leave"
@@tedzehnder961 At least if wasn't "...and why give an enlisted man a chance to tell his comrades *in the Gulag* a great story of what he did in the navy?
Overseer, final dialogue in Fallout 1.
you forgot, no pension!!
now that you mentioned it, i want to see a "the hunt for storozhevoy" dark comedy.
"Death of Stalin" style?
@@b1646717 My thoughts exactly! Though the CGI budget would be big, Death of Stalin cost less than it often looked.
@@b1646717was just going to say 👍 man that movie is a diamond mine of comedy
Honestly a lot of Russia's military history could be turned into a dark comedy, the story of Russia's 2nd Pacific Squadron could be easily turned into a movie.
@@evinbraleya 2nd Pacific squadron dark comedy with Jason Isaacs as Rozhestvensky and Ken Watanabe as Tōgō.
That the Soviet Union got something legitimately good for them out of this (the realization that their air force was woefully untrained for maritime combat and thus could course correct) is itself a minor miracle given every other Soviet Union Air Force story I've seen here.
10 years later, a West German teenager flew his plane all the way to Moscow. That would make a wonderful Paper Skies video on Soviet response to it. You can just see the chain of failure all around.
@@dyingearththis is the guy involved in that incident, for anyone wondering: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
Edit: now that I've read the article myself... Wow. Rust was, it seems, quite unhinged. When he later served his Civil Duty as a hospital orderly (after he'd been released early from Soviet prison), he stabbed a female colleague who had rejected him; she barely survived.
The USSR never had a problem having a lot of intelligent and able people around. Their problem was that these people were very rarely in any position to use their intelligence.
@@jakublulek3261 the only time intelligence and position where Russia could use it met was the "шарашки". It's a bloody joke how 99% of the time russoan people do great the further away they are from Russia😅 Как в анекдоте, "я же говорил, место проклятое".
They were politically unreliable.@@jakublulek3261
When Tom Clancy first published Hunt for Red October he got a visit from the State Department wanting to know how he had come by a lot of the information he included in the book.
It turned out a lot of it was just guesses. They were just very accurate guesses.
In any case, they kept a close eye on him for a while.
i have to wonder if we've got more than just tom's word on this. i assume there's primary sources out there, but I haven't really got the time to vet out those.
Great marketing stunt
@@dzhang4459 Yea, but it wasn't a stunt.
Apollo really just gave Tom the gift of prophecy for shits and gigs and hunt for red October, and red storm rising is proof of this
@@OutbackCatgirl The one part of it that rings true to me, is that when a CIA employee introduces themself to anyone outside the agency, they claim to be from "the state department". You can usually tell which state department they are actually from the quality of their suit and how well it fits.
Oh boy another Paper Sky upload about the Soviets. I wonder what went terribly wrong this time
What's exactly wrong?
He means that the chance is high the video is about how the sovjets screwed up.
@@elidas1008I mean, the sky is blue
@@elidas1008 He is just heavily biased against the soviets and russians in his work. That´s why he is ONLY bringing up soviet errors
@@КрасиваясоветскаядевушкаI fail to see why that's a bad thing.
To everyone who has ever been part of a military operation on short-notice, we feel for these guys. :)
On the other hand, as soon as he threw up the scramble-diagram for the airfield with squadrons of fighters taking off at BOTH ends, I knew this would be good.
Love the animations and niche media additions, Paper Skies! Please keep it up!
I’ve been wondering about that ludicrous idea of scrambling fighter jets from both ends of the same runway. 😣 Could that really have been an established tactic, or were they blithering idiots in panic mode?? 🤷🏼♂️ I guess it could technically have been a viable tactic to limit the number of jets getting shot down during an air raid on the aerodrome. But that would an extremely dangerous tactic, unless the runway was wide enough (and the pilots are trained to keep left/right) and little to no crosswind was present!!
@@BoHolbocan be done the other way and have planes start off from the middle but take off outwards
@@BoHolbo Is a real WP tactic. Can be seen in the video "Shield 1984"
@@BoHolbo From the video, it's established that it's in their standard procedures to scramble that way. I believe it's just part of how the airbase has been set up due to terrain and space requirements. From the looks of it, it does give every squadron the shortest route to the runway so they can be quick if they're only launching 1 squadron. The coordinated takeoff procedures shouldn't be a problem since the idea is the squadron that's awaiting takeoff on the opposite end of the runway would be sitting on the end of the taxiway until they get given the "go". But alas its not only box-standard military grade SNAFU but also a panic scramble after a big night of drinking so instead of slowing down to unfuck the situation they just went all gas no breaks into it. Otherwise, the leader of 1st squadron in the video would sense something's wrong when he's taking off before 3rd squadron, and he'd probably be double and triple confirming with command before committing to takeoff
You can't beat the last minute WARNO. One minute you're relaxing in your billet. Next you're getting a quick briefing on a short mission. You roll out of the wire, dismount, deviate from the plan and then you spend 56 hours sleepless in the rain scanning a ridgeline with a MK48 wishing you had packed more than ammunition while listening to the platoon on the other side of the valley engage in sporadic firefights when they're not trading MRE's to the locals for dry firewood.
No amount of comedy could ever prepare me to the wacky world of the Russian/Soviet navy... They better make a movie about this!
It does seem like a story-arc that would fit in Tanyas universe of alternative WW2 and corrupt Russy Federation
Inevitable when the biggest by territory country in the world proclaim to be the most peaceful in the history of mankind had the military power five and half million strong, bigger than the next four armies: the US, people's republic of China and Iran with Iraq clinched in the forgotten decade long war in 80s ...
The problem with peacetime armies is they have no conception of war outside the last one they fought.
A pity Kubrick is not with us anymore... I would love a "The Hunt of the Storezhovoy, or How l learned to love the Soviets and Stopped Worrying About WWIII"
They did, it's what the Police Academy series was based on.
When the guy whose entire job is to keep people in line gets out of line ... things worked differently in Soviet Union.
They equated party membership with national loyalties, but it was mainly a method of career advancement
The age-old question of "who watches the watchers" and mankind still hasn't found an effective answer to it yet.
@samsonsoturian6013 As a German, that reminds me of the stories of the Third Reich... it's always a bad idea to rate party membership higher than real competence.
@@stscc01 that only happened when they were losing
@samsonsoturian6013 in the end they lost always and everywhere...
Fun Fact: When the Russians were speaking Russian, English subtitles were provided. Then in the scene where the Commissar was reading Oppenheimer's book in Ramius' cabin, he's reading in Russian until he gets to the word "Armageddon", which is the same in Russian and English. From that point forward, the Russians spoke English.
Then in the scene after the DSRV attaches to the Red October and the Dallas crew come aboard, the Russians speak Russian but without subtitles. After all, the Dallas crew did not know Russian and had no idea what they were saying, just like the audience. When Jack Ryan joins them and translates what they say into English for the Americans, we then get subtitles as the Russians talk to or refer to Ryan. Then Ramius speaks English with a Russian-Scottish accent to the Dallas captain and crew.
While the book is more detailed than the movie, "The Hunt for Red October" is a great *guy movie.* 10/10 would recommend.
I love your line about the Russian Scottish accent!
They definitely gave some thought about how the language would play out and it's that kind of attention to detail that really makes this such an enjoyable movie to watch.
it's a really clever cinematic device, one which was also used previously in "Judgement at Nuremberg" [also a great film, but very different]
@@alexroselle "Stay Calm and Convict Nazis"
the new mission impossible movie uses this device too. I won't give it away but it's definitely an homage to HFRO
Deeply impressed by the dedication of Valery Sablin, and of Shein who reportedly still supported Sablin even after he was released from the labour camp 8 years later.
@Paper Skies: the last minute or two of the video (not counting the ad for Nebula) is currently missing from the version on Nebula.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It is fixed now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The tragi-comedic irony of this story is that one zealous man and his compatriots, whose trust in the state he believed in was shattered, was allowed to get as far as he did in his ill-thought out revolution because the men who broke his trust had a distinct lack of trust in the military they commanded, a distrust that crept all the way down to the rank-and-file.
I know "you couldn't write it better if you tried" gets bandied about a lot, but my god, you really couldn't.
EDIT: Typo - thanks to @discorp for pointing it out, and apologies for my month-long delay in a response.
brandied?
you mean bandied, mate
@@dlscorp Yep, typo there, thanks for pointing it out.
Ironic, in trying to stop him, they proved him right in spades.
Clancy gave a talk at the NSA in the early or mid 80's, which you can find on TH-cam ;) and Clancy explicitly states that this incident was part of his writing method, where he read about such incidnets, and he filed them away, to include as parts of, or as full plot lines in his books. This incident was the inspiration for The Hunt For Red October
Watching that video I first learned about this first time. Also Tom Clancy's way of portraing the story was excellent.
It is funny that Clancy himself seemed to not have a very high opinion of the Soviet military, but still maintained the myth that they were scary for the benefit of his books. I recall seeing him interviewed about the autoloader of the T72 once and he said something like 'it's a death trap- like everything the Soviets ever made' LOL
This is obvious propaganda, he do you expect anyone to believe that Clancy would give a talk at a nonexistent agency?
@@mattl3729 Which is a very uneducated thing for him to say since (at the time it was built) it was safer than every Western tank. Being so low to the ground, and with the autoloader at the very bottom of the tank, the kinds of hits that could strike the autoloader and cook it off would have already killed the crew. In comparison the Challenger 2, designed about 20 years after the T-72, still uses 2-piece ammo and stores the powder charges and HEAT warheads inside the hull at chest height where they can be hit by any penetrating sabot, HEAT jet, or spalling.
@@thelastdwemer A private citizen, an author no less that gave talks to the intelligence communities inside the FBI and the NSA among others says Soviet gear was junk I would believe him over you...just saying
Knowing the Soviets love of secrecy it’s probably that those guys on that cargo ship would live the rest of their lives unaware of what happened. Like imagine being bombed and then just never finding out who did it.
Have you experienced terrifying, dangerous, and suspiciously unexplainable attacks at sea?
Try our companies patented: “Shut up and blame it on a mermaid or something sailor, now get back to work!” Mental Health Program.
I mean... they might've never known... but they probably KNEW. Had anyone else done it, they would've known.
@@IncredibleMD Yeah. They reported being bombed to the relevant authorities, and never heard anything about it, or more likely were told never to talk about it again. They for sure "knew" who bombed them
Wow it’s really spectacular how he mentions the political officer in the film “Hunt for Red October” is named Putin, and the actor even has a faint resemblance to the real Putin - even though the film was made in 1990 when nobody knew of Putin (and the book in 1984). The character is pretty similar to how I imagine Putin was in the KGB. Of course the author likely chose a random name, though I’ve never heard of another Putin as a Russian as it’s not a common name as far as I know (from what I see only 4-7 thousand people have that surname) and only 2 relatively obscure people with that surname (in Russian wikipedia) who are not directly related to Putin.
The nebula version cuts off before the end of the video mid sentence, so have come here to hear the ending as well. It cuts off at 34:00 "Regular pilots were" and that's it.
I don't know what's going on; this is the third time I've rendered the version for Nebula, and it always cuts off at the exact same place. It's weird, but I'll fix it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
We’ve officially broken the fourth, fifth, and sixth walls with the amount of Sablinposting.
TNO no
Our brains are currently rotting because of the copious amounts of TNO Buryatia wholesome sablin big chungus references
NO
@@NinjaHaloKiller7 Nothing like turning a flunkie into a hero.
Truly a wholesome Sablinus Chungus 69420 moment
Friends: "Have you guys seen Death of Stalin? What a great comedy!"
Me: "That's not a comedy, it's a documentary..."
One of my favourite documentaries/comedies. It has to be seen - then read up on to be believed🤣
The film is largely historically authentic, but some of those key events which happened in the movie unfolded over a much longer period of time in reality, and the movie definitely wasn't entirely accurate.
Stalin and the NKVD were not committing murder on a large scale anymore at that point in history, and tended not to order or authorize anybody to be killed unless they saw it as absolutely necessary, so that wasn't entirely accurately portrayed in the movie either. For example, many soldiers were casually executed just because they supposedly knew too much about Stalin and his Dacha, but there is no good evidence that this ever happened (and no good reason for it to have happened either). But... Stalin, and other members of the NKVD really were murderers, and responsible for a lot of deaths and brutal oppression over the years... But most of it happened long before the date that the film is set in.
The hunt for the red October is one of those films I don't get tired of watching
That's funny my dad served on a Knox class in the late 60s. They were shadowed by Soviet surface ships while transiting north of Japan for a day. He even had pictures of the Soviet ship.
It was a paper on this incident that Tom Clancy got the inspiration for Hunt For Red October from, when he had a readers' ticket for (I think) the US Naval Academy library.
22:50 the comedic value to this scene is legendary😂 the way you make these videos is truly an art
It was a wonderful comedy of errors from the USSR. I do hope that you have a bottomless pit of these stories because they're always interesting and amusing. There's ineptitude throughout the military of most nations, but the USSR's have been hidden for so long that finally hearing of them ought to be classed as a public service.
As usual, thanks very much for your time and efforts. 😊😊😊❤❤❤😊😊😊
Should say a lot that you ONLY hear about some of the USSR´s errors in this channel...
USSR Blunders has been kept secret for a while, of course we love it when we finally hear about it.
Compared to US Blunders where it gets broadcasted almost immediately it gets boring.
Also US blunders somehow end up being exceedingly destrucive to the enemy.
@@Красиваясоветскаядевушкаso what? As if your immature RuZZian propaganda weasels are busy spreading objective information? 🤔🤣😴😴🥱
🇺🇦SLAVA UKRAINI🇺🇦
I simply live your accent, storytelling and most of all the hilarious stories!
„The soviet union wouldnt have been the soviet union…“
The radio traffic must have been absolutely bananas.
More like borscht
More like a lot of this happened from having no communication
@@Someone-wj1lfI suspect radio was probably chaotic, with numerous simultaneous transmissions stepping on each other, and any clear channel space was taken up with useless or minimally useful information.
@@jamielonsdale3018 Like that time when two soviet passenger planes collided, because ATC was new on job and had no oversight or help on one of the busiest airways in soviet union and there were lots of mixed-up radio communications?
There was a story I heard and I don't have the source for it, but apparently the sweds were listening in on the whole operation because of a listening post that on Gotland island, during the mad scramble of the yak28s I heard in their rush they forgot to turn on the radio encryption devices and were talking with no scrambling, and the sweds heard the whole thing go down, they never revealed they knew what was happening cause Cold War politics and they would have to explain why they have a secret listening post on Gotland in the Baltic sea, if anyone has the source that would be nice
Latvian pronounciations are correct, well done
@@you-dont-know-me Yes, but do you need subtitles to understand them?
"Instead they headed towards their target like an uncontrolled flock of birds".....great line
Few things:
1. The Nebula version of this video seems to end prematurely?
2. Your narration and pronunciation is excellent. Like ASMR for military nerds.
3. Had there been actual war between USSR and NATO, Soviet military would have self-destructed due to sheer incompetence within a week.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The issue with the Nebula version is fixed now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The more I find out about Cold War military bumbling, the more I realize how much of a miracle it is that the world didn't end
given the ineptness of those involved in this event, it sounds more likely that the USSR would've destroyed itself in an actual NATO attack...
@@wildbill6976 I think he was speaking in general, regarding both sides of the iron curtain. Our side has tried to keep up with the Eastern bloc when it came to bumbling and fumbling!
@@wildbill6976 Well...NATO didnt got too far from them, they need to keep a score after all. How about almost destroying a carrier, by loading planes that are not even ready for take-off with fully armed and rusted WW2 bombs?
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907an incident displaying widespread NATO inefficiency based on deep rooted corruption and reliability issues??
Well tried, but still a ridiculous statement!
While it's a relatively well known event you should absolutely do a video about the Whiskey on the Rocks incident, or U 137 as it's called. The convoluted mess and excuses the crew had is the funniest shit coming from a military submarine. Plus it'd be interesting to hear if there's any other sources than the mainstream ones about the event.
Nothing convoluted about the U137 incident, they were making a deliberate penetration of Swedish territory that failed due to a a manouver error mid way through the operation. You simply cannot get to where the U137 was by mistake as you need to follow a very specific route exactly. If they did not know where they were the sub would have run aground much earlier.
@@Vonstab No shit it was deliberate. Their excuses were the convoluted part.
I'm honestly debating in my head if I can afford nebula just to watch more of your videos. Stories of Soviet incompetence are the funniest dark comedy stories I've ever heard about
It's not a bad option - there are lots of good videos from different authors there
It's like you knew my workday was a slog today, these videos are the perfect thing to help me get through the grind.
Fascinating stuff. I LOVE the Yak-28 family. Would you do an episode specifically on these machines? There's a fascinating incident where one crashed in a lake in Berlin and there was a covert NATO operation to salvage it.
My family is Latvian. The craziest thing about this entire thing is that nobody in Riga that was not military knew this ever happened. I told them the story in 2019 and they were entirely unsurprised. Me trying to wrap my head around that still hasn't happened yet.
People used to be scared of the USSR because of it's perceived might, but they were no more eager to start WWIII than the west.
But this constant litany of Soviet misshaps is very scary indeed.
One thing I think that is overlooked is that the regular purges of senior ranks from the 1930s onwards meant that Soviet military was perpetually locked in 'new boss' mode.
Something made worse by the fact the cultural system regarded change as suspect, especially anything thar could be considered radical.
Because this channel is known for only bashing the USSR for the mistakes it made. Just read up Operation Attrina and SS-N-19 and you will get to know how competent and powerful the soviet navy really was
@@oggaBuggaDon't make me laugh, the Millennium 2002 was quite an overblown and misunderstood incident.
The retired Marine General was doing what he does best, like any marine would and did what was in all effect Gamer Moves. Which is the problem because he was not only breaking the system, he was exploiting it.
Try to imagine how a dude in a motorcycle can send a letter in a bottle instantaneously from point A to point B in mere seconds? His tactics wouldn't work in the real world and might have set his battle plans behind by days or even weeks with the means of communications he was using.
Knowing that he was a Marine, I respect that and I expect that but if we try to study what he was doing and how the navy was doing by reading those over glorifying shits who spew Pierre Sprey logic wouldn't net you for shit!
@@oggaBugga
Expecting the laws of physics to be adhered to in a exercise is truly the peak of incompetence.
@oggaBugga
During the millennium 2002 challenge, General van Riper
1. Put missile Systems on boats that could, in reality, not carry them without sinking.
2. Had motor couriers as his communications system so that it couldn't be hacked, yet pretended that was instantaneous,
Edit: So, yes, I do know what im talking about. Why do you have to dangle your ignorance where everyone can see it?
As a non native english speaker. I appreciate that you are adding subtitles. Its small thing but so many channels are not bothering to add. Thanks. Your videos are always informative and well explained. I wonder what would happen if Sablin reached to Leningrad?
God I love the documentaries that Paper Skies produces. This is now my favorite aviation channel on TH-cam. Keep up the great work.
Oh wow. I know no military is without massive gaffes, but this just keeps getting worse and worse. The Yak's trying to take off from both sides of the runway was truly impressive incompetence, but then also attacking the chasing fleet? Truly an amazing example of Soviet military preparedness. Great breakdown!
Mistaken identity in naval bombing is actually a really common mishap
The sarcasm by the writer and the narrator s deliver are master class. 😊
Друже, обожнюю твій контент. Саркастична, влучна і доволі об'єктивна характеристика подій, де ти не цураєшся ані компліментів, ані жорсткої критики радянських військових і інженерів. Врешті, це та частина нашого спільного минулого, яку варто пам'ятати і вивчати детальніше. Привіт з Києва, мирного неба тобі і твоїм близьким)
Простите, а за что критиковать инженеров? СССР в 1980 имело вооружение сопоставимое с США, я уже молчу что эти дедки еще живы и так же работают. Или ты думаешь модификации для украинских Т-64 придумывают молодые 20ти летние студенты? Да нет, там куча людей с советским образованием которые еще и учат людей молодых, с чего смеяться?
Я конечно понимаю негатив, но отрицать положительные тенденции из-за бомбежа - это бред
Сохрани и модернизируя половину вооружения что осталось в наследство Украине - РФ даже не подумала нападать, но нет, продали все, распили и обогатили сотни олигархов
@@Spectre4490 насчет 1980х все же загнул, в 1980х союз во многом отстал от западного мира, тратил нефтедоллары на разработку не очень перспективных вещей хотя интересных безусловно.
@@topgear3128 ну вот Америка и немцы отставали от СССР по танкам до того как построили М1 абрамс и Леопард 2, электроника, металообработка и оптика у запада на голову было выше чем у СССР
По ракетоносителем и зенитным ракетам скорее паритет, может даже СССР чуть лучше
Но советы выкручивались, так Toshiba продала СССР в 1982 CNC машину которую советы использовали для обработки винтов подводных лодок, до этого это делалось вручную и шум издаваемый винтом был хорошо виден сонарами, а в чем прикол? Тошиба увидела что Франция продает CNC машины СССР и не хотела остаться без прибыли и обошли запрет от США
Как говорил Ленин "Капиталисты сами продадут нам веревку, на которой мы их повесим"
Понятно что запад смог и обеспечить качесво жизни людей и хорошую армию, советы же не особо заботились о благополучии граждан
@@Spectre4490ка ц ап кочумай в чебурнет
Набігли б ля д і мьішебратья
Just when this story couldn't get anymore russian, a ship lights itself on fire.
Not a whole lot has changed 😅
Careless smoking isn't new...
Actually, it is one of theories of how Moscow sunk. Soviet turbine engines used on ships like these had a tendency to explode, if VERY poorly maintained. And you wouldnt want to be near anything with more then 10 000 HP when it explodes.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 the Moscva sunk because 2 Neptune missles flew straight across the open ocean and right into the side of her while the radar officer was looking at tic tok....
@@thomaslove6494 Both are theories, nothing is confirmed. But the problem do exist.
I’ve come to expect the absurd, thanks to this fantastic channel, but when we got to the aftermath, I was floored. Unbelievable that they demoted and discharged the only clear hero of the story.
They saved him from serving in the navy any longer. May have been quite a reward.
@@miskatonic6210 😂good point
The clear hero was Sablin wanting to start a socialist revolution, fighting corruption, who nearly got into Swedish territorial waters thanks to the corruption in the Russian army. The irony is they shot Sablin for treason, and the only logical reason is Russians love their corruption and see it as treason if someone wants to fight this.
I watched Hunt for Red October just last night. I could not hope for a better follow-up!
The CAF also had it's issues in the early 60;s of being scrambled AKA Snowball during a holiday and although I was kid at the time I remember two of the fighters failed takeoff and flew into the black forest and exploded killing the pilots. So the Soviet Military is no different than any other in this regard. Thanks for the story.
Yes, that were two CF-104s out of Lahr if I remember correctly...
@@stscc01Ah, the Canadair licensed production model of the Starfighter......
Is it any surprise something went wrong when the aircraft was less than 1km off the ground?
EDIT: This is coming from a fairly massive fan of the military, and a Canadian. The Starfighter was NOT good for anything other than just going zoom.
@airplanemaniacgaming7877 yes, not the aircraft with the best safety record. But most pilots loved those birds anyway. A good friend of my father was a Starfighter pilot in the Luftwaffe (they lost one third of their F-104Gs in accidents, mostly killing the aircrew), and he was very unhappy to change to the Phantom...😀
@@airplanemaniacgaming7877 The good old days when they let the Canadian Air Farce HAVE air planes! LOL Is the entire Canadian submarine fleet still stationed at the West Edmonton Mall?
@@inconnu4961Air _Farce_ is perfect to call the RCAF.
Considering we still fly C/F-18s as our MAIN COMBAT AIRCRAFT I wish we actually gave the CAF (Canadian Armed Forces) more than just rolls of old duct tape and pre-chewed gum to fix our shit.
(of which reminds me that Trudumb tried to pull us out of the F-35 program, before going "Oh shit, it's actually a good aircraft and we need to spend more GDP on military to stay in NATO." and putting an order for the thing.)
This is not so dissimmilar to the Royal Navy and Air Force response during the German channel dash in 1942. Panic, leading to confusion, leading to chaos, leading to disaster...or near disaster. It is funny, until you actually get bombed by your own aircraft. I feel sorry for the poor sailors and airmen in these events, who were completely at the mercy of surperior incompetence. Good thing the only victim in this was the dignity of the Soviet Airforce as an institution.
But HMS did sank "Bismark" one year earlier, remember ?
I think the big difference is when the RN made a mistake they'd learn from it, the russians and soviets didn't seem to grasp this on the other hand
@@artynomenus After almost sinking several british warships and loosing gigant warship that could not even manoeuvre, also several times. The more you learn about RN, the more you question how these guys even survived till the end of the war (considering suicidal tendencies rivaling that of japanese and fuck-ups in ships construction rivaling that of INCOMPLETE japanese ships build from scrap metal near end of the war).
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907what do you mean with the last part?
@@virmirfan Jutland and sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse. Basically a bismark situation...but if germans were stupid and had bad ships. Prince was essentialy doomed by first hit of torpedo and received very heavy flooding, that its hull protection was supposed to hold, and like that one of major hubs of allies power in far east had fallen in japanese hands.
Given the lack of information everyone had, it was a terrifyingly, chaotic way to try and start a war.
Or we have a huge airforce, surely someone is defending the coast!
That was the pattern with most wars in the USSR. It ended the instant everyone figured out who was fighting who.
Typical of the mindless bureaucracy that was the old Soviet Union, an officer runs into the duty office and tells you that a crew has mutinied and stolen a ship. You:
A) Can take him at his word; or
B) Send for a doctor to determine his sobriety, and then decide whether to take him at his word; or
C) Look out the window and see for yourself whether the ship is still there…
Personally I would have gone with Option C, but apparently B was the correct choice?
I mean, I assume the ship was slated to sail anyway so they'd expect it to not be in port. The whole crew wouldn't be on board the ship otherwise and Sablin couldn't sail without them.
hello, great video, but you missed one important thing about Jonas Pleškys, who did it in 1961 and successfully swam to the Gotland Islands, then to America, where he escaped from the KGB and died naturally. in the movie Red October, we learned that the captain is Lithuanian, just like Jonas Pleškys. there is even a book about it "Jonas Pleškys - the man from the red October hunt". a second part would be great.
14:34 Deputy Chief of Stuff. :D
Excellent video as always!
I always keep making this mistake :)
@@PaperSkiesAviation Hey, I think that would be an awesome title to have. "I am in charge of ze stuff, bring me all the stuff!"
@@Tekisasubakani 😁
@@Tekisasubakani😂😂😂😂
I'm not the only one who thinks this video is best listened to while either Lenin Is Young Again or the Partisan's Song is also playing in the background, considering our wholesome boy led this mutiny?
wholesome 100
My favorite cold war movie was "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming".
Everyone get from street! Hilarious film.😂 So many great actors now in Hollywood heaven watching their old films for eternity.
@@jamesalexander3530 Yet also heartwarming. A golden age.
To this day, myself and my family will spontaneously burst out with,
Emergency! Everybody to get from street!
We get weird looks a lot.....its worth it
Valery Sablin struck down as one of the most iconic young revolutionaries during the end of cold war. It is unsure if his uprising would be anywhere plausible, but it is somewhat confirmed that high-ranking soviet politicians such as Suslov tried to save him. Brezhenev is really gamer-moving.
Alas here is the quote we heard over a thousand times:
Russian Reunification
"Be strong in the belief that life is wonderful. Be positive and believe that the Revolution will always win." - Valery Sablin
Lenin lives again
I was waiting to find that quote.
literally TNO
Does anyone else think the Yak-28 looks like something Gru would fly?
A good day when Paper Skies uploads
damn i love watching videos on Soviet airforce stories. They are both wacky and cool to learn about keep the videos coming!
It looks like a typical Soviet emergency action: chaos, corruption , incompetence, lack of communication, politics.
The fact that he wanted to park the ship next to the Aurora is a fantastic Russian Second Pacific Squadron easter egg
"Do you see Torpedo boats?"
ironic
Kamchatka!!!!! Throws binoculars
@2:30 Holy crap! Is that a pontoon bridge with railroad tracks?! I have so many questions! Someone must do a video on this!
Yup, that is a railway pontoon bridge.
Risky...
Even in the Soviet Union there is no shortage of people who think they're the main character.
Thank you for making these videos, they're always my highlight of the week and allow me to view into the real soviet history
TH-cam: no naughty you cant monetise this with ads
Also TH-cam: no ads allowed on videos designated for children
Also TH-cam: lets put ads on every video now even the demonitised ones, i dont care if the video creator says no ads
This is like the Baltic fleet's trip to Japan all over again 😂
Do you see torpedo boats?
@@bloodrave9578 well, that fishing vessel of starboard sure does look like one...
@@toonieven 🤣
Russian history is a flat circle of Kamchatka.
this was a truly impressing tale
even the mutiny was not executed correctly. Could the soviets do anything right?
How does one guy, possibly two, take over a ship (that needs engineers, not political officers), and sail it anywhere?I think there is even more to this story and there were more people involved in the mutiny but the Russian command didn`t need that to come out, at all.At the least, it shows a lack of initiative among 150 navy guys minus one.
"You did the right thing for our country and deserve a reward. You're fired."
Damn, they did Aleksei Davydov dirty with that one.
every bit of this story is so hilariously entertaining that i'm surprised it hasn't been made into a movie.
Top level Story telling!
Its so indicative that the only guy that was able to solve the situation was fired without pension
Amazing video and story. To my surprise I've never heard of this before, it should make a great war comedy movie!
Watched on Nebula, came here to comment..
Yet another AMAZINGLY GREAT Paper Skies production..
As someone who doesn't have much opportunity to view old Soviet TV, are the scenes used in this video from an actual melodrama about the event? and if so, is the story "adjusted" such that the complete circus of response is downplayed and the heroic actions are magnified?
Attempting to start a socialist revolution in the Soviet Union makes perfect sense to me. The Soviet Union, under Stalin, skipped over "the workers own the economy", and touched on "the government owns the economy" only as a formality to cover "Stalin personally owns the economy"
All successful socialist/communist leaders are dedicated capitalists in their personal lives.
Not sure why TH-cam keeps unsubbing me from your channel, but I found you again, and great video as always!
Average War Thunder custom battle experience
They really should make a movie about the true story. Would be the blockbuster comedy of the decade.
Classic Soviet hijinks. I always wondered what the book/movie was inspired by, but never actually looked into it. Another great video
Finally, I discover the story of Sablin! I've seen him mentioned in memes and alt-history stories before, but never knew exactly what his claim to fame was... and I am not at all surprised to see the Soviet military tripping over itself and falling into chaos once again! 😂
tno
In addition to the fascinating stories, which are well told here, I love the old film clips from Soviet movies and newsreels that illustrate them. Well done all around!
Yes, where did you get period Soviet military footage?
There’s always multiple levels of ineptitude that Paper Skies shows, and yet it always surprises me the extent of ineptitude
12:27 boy... they really like their medals
Have you counted up all the ribbons on the chests of US generals? They may be more compact but just as numerous.
I had a professor who wrote a book about this! His name is Greg Young and the book (unfortunately out of print) is called The Last Sentry. Great book, highly recommend it to those who can find a copy
Seems like coolest movie idea
WHERE'S JOHN BELUSHI WHEN YOU NEED HIM?
There's academy awards waiting for someone to pull this together into a movie.
The the fact that it's based on reality is incredible, the Shakespearean interaction of the participants is classic, but the chaos is priceless.
There's Gold in them their drills!
🎉
.
My god the USSR was a joke…a paper tiger of incompetence and nothing has changed in the subsequent decades. To think we as a society feared them is preposterous.
I say that made them even more dangerous. If the Soviets were incompetent to not know what nuclear missiles could really do - they might actually have launched them.
These are the best mini-docs ice ever seen!!
You know your military is absolutely fucked when you don’t trust a report from an officer because “he’s probably just drunk”
Edit: holy shit, that’s just the least clusterfucked part of all of this shitshow
It's worth noting that the October Revolution that Red October is named for actually happened in November but Russia was still using the Julian Calendar when the rest of the world was using the Gregorian Calendar.
Paper Skies, as soon as I heard the magic words "Baltic Fleet", I was like "OH BOY HERE WE GO".
I was not prepared. Nobody was.
Old habits die hard.
"There's things in there that don't react well to bullets." I ❤ Shaun Connery.
Bit of a foreshadowing regarding Baldwin with a gun.
Never fails to astound, how little Soviet leaders cared about the lives of the people who served them
2:30 That train had a special lightweight design to show to authorities and generals , that there is a possibility to cross a river by train employig the pontoon bridge. It was a begining of army made of plywood and shives.
Liked before watching. We already know this man puts out incredibly good content.
In Soviet Russia, content puts out good man 😂
i appreciate the effort to add custom subtitles. but i can't comprehend how a native english speaker would find your accent too strong to make your English indecipherable. your english is good enough that i first thought you were an american who was using a practiced, subtle, accent.
i only know Spanish aside from english but that's enough to give me perspective on my native language and I'm often hit with the thought that; "if i had to learn it as a second language i might not be able to do it" because of things like meaning of a sentence being radically altered by which words get emphasis and the seemingly totally arbitrary rules for order of adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc...
for example this piece of a poem that is completely correct: "Love is a thing as any spirit free".
I also find it amazing that Joseph Conrad, who is one of the most revered authors in the english language who is taught in the highest level university english classes, spent half of his life speaking polish and english is his second language. my youtube profile is actually his name and picture when he was younger and before he anglicized his name as an author. did i mention he didn't learn english in any formal classes? he was actually a sailor who just started thumbing through some copies of Shakespeare plays on long boring voyages.
so kudos to you for being able to parse this weird amalgam of archaic languages so well.
PS: if you ever pick up a joseph conrad novel avoid "under western eyes". he lived during the time of the soviet revolution and being polish his life intersected with it somewhat. his view of it was very dim. "under western eyes" is his rebuke of the whole movement and while his other novels talk about colonialism and race without sounding racist, the same cant be said for "under western eyes" where he says some harsh things about russians. some of it mightve been true for the time but some of it is definitely just mean spirited racism that just builds on the harmful stereotypes.
Another great video! I would love to see more unusual and unknown stories like these of the Soviet armed forces.
The music change when the "flock" arrives! 😂
TNO Sablin fans love this episode
12:41 Just LOVE seeing Brezhnev looking menacingly at the generals from above.
Captain Sablin! Now where have I heard that name before…?
Your average TNO moment...
Good to see the based name is also based irl
I say this with utmost respect… your accent makes these stories even more compelling. It gives them credibility, somehow 😊. Great video
I love his accent, it makes it feel like a Russian oral tradition passed down. I don’t actually know if he’s Russian but that’s my educated guess