The ocean hides many secrets and mysteries. Including strange sounds that submariners and scientists talk about. What is behind the phenomena recorded by impartial technology and weakly amenable to scientific explanation? Let's try to figure it out.
Elusive wahs
In the mid-1970s, the Soviet nuclear submarines encountered an unusual and threatening phenomenon. When moving through NATO anti-submarine lines in the Atlantic - North Cape-Spitsbergen and especially Faroe-Iceland - submarine acoustics began to massively monitor strange unidentifiable noises around the boats. They were nicknamed “Quakers” for their resemblance to the croaking of frogs.
Already in our days, it was not disheveled ufologists with burning eyes who spoke about their meetings with Quakers, but venerable Soviet caperangs, submarine commanders and admirals, including Yuri Kvyatkovsky, Anatoly Komaritsyn, Vladimir Monastyrshin. And even the last Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, President of the Russian Union of Submariners, Fleet Admiral Vladimir Chernavin.
According to the sailors' reports, the Quakers actively accompanied the boats, randomly moving around them at a frightening speed, impossible for a man-made object.
They did not try to attack, but annoyingly circled around Soviet submarines in the most unsuitable area of the world's oceans - filled with sensors of the American SOSUS tracking system, teeming with anti-submarine ships, planes and NATO submarines. After all, it was here that the strategic missile carriers of the USSR Northern Fleet entered the Atlantic in order to turn the cities of the eastern coast of the United States into radioactive ruins at H-hour. And the Americans were ready to do everything to prevent this from happening.
According to Admiral Chernavin, in October 1977, special instructions for monitoring Quakers appeared in the Soviet fleet. They tried to find these “objects” and marked them on maps, which they compared after the hikes.
Meanwhile, the distribution area of the Quakers expanded, eventually covering almost the entire North Atlantic, and then other oceans. There were even reports of Quakers being spotted in waters off the Philippines.
The surface ships did not notice anything like this. The active sonar did not show any metal or even plastic object of reasonable size for a submarine at the detection site. Attempts to go to a stationary Quaker led to its disappearance. However, after that it often appeared in other places.
The logic of the Cold War and the location of events clearly hinted at the involvement of an “imperialist aggressor.” The thought that the Americans had technology of this level in their hands made any Soviet military man feel sick. On the other hand, what was happening ignored the laws of physics too brazenly even for the Yankees.
Having racked their brains, the sailors turned to scientists.
Who's watching from the bottom of the ocean?
Scientists from the USSR Academy of Sciences, after a long study of materials, were inclined to believe that Quakers were sounds of a biological nature of unknown origin. That is why, they say, active sonars do not see anything. A Live nature makes the most bizarre sounds: from the grinding and clicking of sea crustaceans to the cries of killer whales during the mating season. That's just biological objects do not move at speeds up to 150 knots (under 280 km/h) or more. And the sailors insisted on precisely these figures.
There are also more exotic, but quite “earthly” versions: oscillatory processes at the boundary of water layers of different salinity and density, or even something related to side effects operation of nuclear reactors. Moreover, the diesel-electric submarines of the Quakers were also completely ignored.
The most boring, but realistic version says: Quakers are American active aircraft sonar buoys with water-filled batteries.
These were dropped from patrol Orions and Nimrods, tracking the movement and characteristics of Soviet nuclear submarines spotted by other surveillance means.
True, supporters of this version categorically deny the “croaking” nature of the sound, describing it as broadband clicks typical of such a technique. Well, “super-speed jumps” are the sounds of different dropped buoys of the same type, triggered in a chain, creating the illusion of movement.
The same version easily explains the unknown nature of the phenomenon to Americans who love everything mysterious, as well as the connection of the Quakers to the Icelandic-Faroe border and the environs of the straits of Southeast Asia. Well, and at the same time their abrupt disappearance in the early 90s. After all, with the end of the Cold War, it was no longer necessary to monitor Russian submarines so carefully.
But experienced submariners continue to claim that the “objects” were croaking protractedly, and not clicking. And they “sensibly” responded to the activation of the active sonar, changing the tone of the croaking and the direction of movement. And the depth of their usual appearance does not really fit with light aircraft buoys. Quakers were usually found at depths of 200 meters, but the buoys were located at a different depth. And the assumption that the sailors could mistake the well-known sound of the American buoy for something anomalous was perceived as a personal insult and an accusation of incompetence.
Be that as it may, according to the sailors, almost thirty years have passed since the Quakers stopped pursuing Russian submarines.
Royal Navy and bio-ducks
However, the statement that Western submariners knew nothing of the kind is not entirely accurate.
Since the early 1960s, the British have been faced with a very similar phenomenon. The mysterious rhythmic “croaking” was tracked by the submarines’ acoustics, but active sonars showed absolutely nothing at the place of origin of the sound.
But it was difficult to blame everything on the machinations of insidious communists. For one simple reason: it was in the waters off Antarctica and Australia. And unfold the latest system anti-submarine tracking there would only make sense for occult Nazis on flying saucers from New Swabia.
The British submarines were in these waters for a good reason: Australia was the main nuclear test site her majesty. But specifically keeping an eye on British submarines on Davy Jones's horns - and in such an expensive way - was too much even for the most sinister Bolsheviks.
Deciding that the sound was similar to a duck quack (due to the absence of communists among penguins) and most likely associated with some kind of sea life, English submariners dubbed it Bio-Duck - “biological duck”.
Moreover, unlike the “Soviet” Quakers, the bio-ducks quacked exclusively seasonally, did not make sudden maneuvers, did not chase the boats and did not intend to disappear.
In 2014, the mystery of the bio-ducks was finally solved. They turned out to be whales, southern minke whales. Before a deep dive in search of food, mammals for some reason make exactly the sound that sowed bewilderment in the ranks of English sea wolves. Russian communists and occult Nazis had nothing to do with it.
Truly fhtagn!
But what happened twenty years ago is quite reminiscent of some of the texts of the American writer Howard Philip Lovecraft.
After the end of the Cold War, the hydrophones of the American SOSUS underwater sound tracking system, deployed on the Pacific islands, due to the absence of the red threat, were provided to scientists from National Administration US Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
In the summer of 1997, many of these hydrophones immediately recorded an ultra-low-frequency sound of monstrous power, spreading over a distance of more than 5 thousand kilometers. There was nothing strange in the power itself - a common thing for underground earthquakes and volcanic explosions, splitting giant icebergs and other phenomena.
But this sound, called “The Bloop” by surprised scientists, had a profile characteristic of a living creature. And judging by the power of the sound it made, this creature was quite capable of snacking on large blue whales instead of anchovies, and treating Godzilla like a rotisserie chicken.
Using the triangulation method (one of the methods of radio direction finding), the source of the sound was determined in a desert area in the south Pacific Ocean. Approximately there is the underwater city of R'Lyeh, described by Howard Lovecraft, where the ancient monstrous god Cthulhu awaits his awakening.
In 2012 it was announced that it was the sound of a breaking iceberg. large sizes, and there is nothing mysterious about it at all. True, oceanographers would hardly make a fuss over such a banal phenomenon in those waters. And the spectrograms of the Bloop and breaking icebergs are very different - this is clear even to a non-specialist.
So what is it really? The mystery has been solved, and are these just breaking glaciers? Or are the authorities hiding the truth, and the phenomenon is “the light of Venus reflected by a weather balloon”? It remains for the reader to judge.
Be that as it may, it was from then on that tensions in world history began to increase again. Isn’t it the one who, according to myth, sleeps in a dead city at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, woke up and pushed humanity somewhere towards bloody madness and countless new wars?
It was the mid-60s, the height of the Cold War. “Quakers,” a completely unscientific term, were our sailors, and then officials began to be called an inexplicable and paradoxical phenomenon that submariners encountered in the western part of the Pacific Ocean, in the areas between Scotland and America, Greenland and Iceland, in the Gulf of Mexico. These meetings caused many unpleasant moments for the sailors, causing bewilderment and even fear. Behind the nimble unknown underwater objects, it was likely that there were the latest American developments, and anything could be expected from them. “Quakers” got their name from the signals they made, reminiscent of the croaking of frogs. Entries in submarine log books and captains' reports to superiors multiplied, and the Navy leadership had to take some measures.
She was not only in submarines detected by acoustics strange sounds. There was a strong impression that the “Quakers,” appearing suddenly and out of nowhere, were persistently trying to establish contact with the sailors. At high speed, as if playing, they circled around the submarines or swam nearby. They changed the tone and frequency of their strange signals, unlike anything else and unfamiliar to hydroacoustics, not previously recorded in the depths of the sea, as if trying to convey something. - Quakers - clearly reacted to the work of the boats' hydroacoustic devices, sometimes seeming to imitate the signals. They could copy and repeat them exactly several times in a row. True, there have never been any clashes with the “Quakers” over many years. They did not show aggression, but who would like it if the bearing shows that an unknown object is rushing towards your boat and disaster seems inevitable. Or this “something” crosses the submarine’s course again and again, even when it tries to avoid meeting, and then disappears without a trace.
Attempted solution
Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, Fleet Admiral S.G. Gorshkov created a special group of officers under the intelligence department and assigned them the task of finding, studying and analyzing all the information about the “Quakers” available to the sailors. Ichthyologists from the Institute of the Seas of the Academy of Sciences were involved in the problem, ships were allocated to explore the depths of the sea, and a series of ocean expeditions were organized. Decoders meticulously studied the recorded signals, trying to understand their meaning and determine who was emitting these signals - living beings or technical devices. A lot of time, effort and money were spent on solving the problem. The results of work on the topic of “Quakers” were concentrated in the folders of several thick files. But suddenly, in the early 80s, the program was curtailed. All information received classified as “Top Secret” disappeared in the special archive. The research group was disbanded. The reason for such a sudden cessation of its activities was absolutely incomprehensible. Perhaps the “Quakers” were considered living beings who did not threaten our submariners, or maybe underwater UFOs (or rather, NGOs - unidentified floating objects)? But neither one nor the other were within the Navy’s circle of interests, and the materials were probably transferred to other specialized departments that dealt closely with these issues.
The darkness of the unknown
Very little is known about this paradoxical phenomenon and only to a narrow circle of specialists. There is no consensus on what it is, even among these few people. Scientists believe that “Quakers” are living, highly intelligent creatures unknown to science from the virtually unexplored depths of the ocean. Researchers have even put forward possible candidates for the role of "Quakers" - the giant Architeuthys squid and the mysterious cetacean Zeglodon. But the military had their own version, and it was that these were sensors the latest developments Americans and they are intended to detect our nuclear-powered ships. But this hypothesis, after a thorough analysis of all the materials received, was not actually confirmed, although some officers continued to adhere to it. And some still believed that these NGOs track our submarines when they come too close to the areas of underwater bases of sea creatures unknown to us. However, it was never possible to reliably determine what the Quakers actually were - and to this day they remain a mystery of the mysterious ocean depths.
Navy sailors nicknamed the sources of incomprehensible sounds “Quakers,” and then this term began to be used in official documents instead of the abbreviation “UNISO” (unidentified sound objects). "Quakers" more than once made the sailors of the Northern Fleet nervous when they tried to secretly bypass American anti-submarine lines in the Atlantic Ocean.
The advent of nuclear submarines, capable of staying in the ocean for months without support from shore, was accompanied by an interesting discovery. In some parts of the World Ocean, Soviet submariners began to increasingly hear strange sounds in their hydrophone headphones, reminiscent of the croaking of a frog. In the noise direction finding mode of the Rubin complex (MGK-300), they were best received in the high-frequency range. The duration of the sound was 0.1-0.05 s, and each sound consisted of one pulse. At first, the sounds followed at intervals of 0.5-1 s, then the gap between sound pulses gradually increased to 5-7 seconds.
“Imagine the state of the commanders when, already on the approaches to the SOSUS system, you are greeted by a “croaking” as a sign of a possible detection! - said Captain 1st Rank E. P. Litvinov. - You turn away from him, and the bearing on him in seconds is the same!
Maneuvering a submarine, attempting to “expose” a target in active mode, and establishing underwater sound communications were apparently perceived by the other side as a game. But only submariners know how dangerous such a game is, when you cannot decipher the response signals that vary in frequency, when the LV source always strives to be at the bow viewing angles and at the same time quickly moves to cross the course...
I learned about the Quakers in 1970 while serving as a flagship miner in a division of nuclear submarines. A fellow staff member, RTS flagship specialist, captain of the second rank E. Ibragimov, said that the “Quakers” are surprisingly maneuverable. Calculations showed that they move silently at speeds of up to 150-200 knots (up to 370 km/h)... One way or another, this created an atmosphere of nervousness at the command post of submarines secretly proceeding to combat service.”
"Quakers" could not be sea animals - the sailfish, the fastest inhabitant of the ocean, reaches a speed of only 110 km/h. Military equipment neither in the 60s, nor in our days is it capable of developing such a speed under water, especially without giving itself away with other sounds (running engines, cavitation, noise from propellers, etc.). Soon the crews of diesel submarines of the Northern Fleet began to hear them. The Quakers' coverage area expanded: in the 1970s, they could be found not only in the oceans, but also in shallow seas, including the territorial waters of the USSR near the fleet's bases.
“We go out into the Norwegian Sea, and suddenly the acoustician hears that some enemies are surrounding us under water,” he said former commander submarine, who wished to remain anonymous. - Moreover, these enemies act very energetically: they actively maneuver around vertically and horizontally, their sounds are unknown to us, and we cannot classify them. Sometimes it seems that an unknown enemy is attacking, then the sounds disintegrate. Everyone is in shock. Upon returning to the base, we, the commanders, report on what happened. Now the command is in shock..."
According to Rear Admiral V.M. Monastyrshin, “almost every day we discovered several Quakers. We plotted them on maps, analyzed them by frequency, by place of manifestation. During our service, so many Quakers were discovered that one might think that the whole world was only engaged in in order to make them and place them around the World Ocean."
When the number of reports about the “Quakers” overwhelmed the patience of naval officers, the commander of the Northern Fleet, Admiral G. M. Egorov, ordered the creation of a special group under the leadership of the chief of staff of the fleet. The head of the analytical department of fleet intelligence, A. G. Smolovsky, took part in its work.
“The secrecy was terrible, and even we, members of the group, tried by hook or by crook not to be allowed into the logbooks,” he recalled. “Almost immediately we learned that the Americans were also dealing with the same problems...
When the bacchanalia with the “Quakers” began, Admiral G. M. Egorov invited the famous academician L. M. Brekhovsky to the Northern Fleet. “We will not hide anything from you, but give an explanation of what is happening,” asked the academician Egorov. The fleet commander was a very influential person, since he was also a member of the CPSU Central Committee. Therefore, the Institute of Hydroacoustics immediately got involved in the work and helped us a lot. To be honest, the work was not easy, and conflicts often arose. There was a misunderstanding due to the extreme secrecy of the issue being studied, which greatly hampered the matter. It just so happened that I continued to work on the topic of “Quakers” long years until his retirement. It is too early to talk about the main conclusions of our many years of work, since this is the area of state and military secrets. However, I can say that “Quakers” are a very complex phenomenon, behind which lie perhaps the deepest secrets of the ocean.”
Former senior officer of the Russian Navy General Staff, Captain 1st Rank Vadim Kulinchenko said that the source of the Quakers’ sound was impossible to determine: it comes from different directions, changing its tone. The submariners had the feeling that “something” wanted to call the submarine to talk. They were unable to detect this “something” - active scanning of the surrounding water column did not reveal anything that could make sounds. Sometimes the Quakers, on the contrary, seemed to be running away from the submarine - having issued a series of signals, the source of the sound began to move away at great speed. The Quakers responded to attempts to give back signals by changing the tonality of their sounds, but no one was able to figure out whether the reaction was meaningful.
“I heard “Quakers” in 1979, when we were sailing on K-455 (project 667BDR) along the southern route from Gadzhievo,” said another anonymous submariner. - Clicks were heard in the area of the Faroe-Iceland border. The clicks were audible to the naked ear in the 2nd compartment (it is the quietest). We went specifically to listen. We were sure that it was the NATO stationary system operating in active mode. It was only later that I realized that neither we nor they have a technique that can give such powerful impulses.
As Oleg Ivanovich Vasyuta, commander of Project 1851, told me, he tried to “catch” the source, not by order, but on his own initiative. Acoustics accurately determined the coordinates of the source of the clicks. They turned there, and when they arrived at the point, the source abruptly moved to another place. After several attempts, this activity was abandoned... Acoustics did not give marks for any subject. Only sound."
Other attempts to find the Quaker's direction yielded strange results. One of the submarines, traveling near the Bering Islands, took a long time to find the source of the sounds. Hydroacoustics concluded that it is located near the Hawaiian Islands, at a depth of about 5,000 meters. According to their data, the impulses reached thousands of kilometers of water from depths accessible only to bathyscaphes!
In the early 1980s, the Quaker studies program was suddenly closed and the group working on it was disbanded. The collected materials, containing about 15,000 reports of sounds of an unknown nature recorded by sailors, were classified. One of the reasons for the secrecy was explained by A.G. Smolovsky: “The information concerns the routes of our nuclear submarine cruisers, which means it is directly related to the security of our country. Therefore, in the near future, this information will remain secret.” To this we can add that the project materials contain information about the operation of the sonar equipment of nuclear submarines, about the maneuverability of submarines and other data, which is undesirable to be released even today.
What could "Quakers" be? The version that these are the latest American RGAB (anti-submarine radio-acoustic buoys) was almost immediately rejected. Such a buoy, even if it had an autonomous engine for maneuvering, could not avoid detection: it gives itself away magnetic field, metal content, surface area sufficient to produce a clear echo. Soviet sailors repeatedly caught American buoys and eventually became convinced that their signals had nothing in common with the sounds of the Quakers. Even in 2005, the idea of supplementing ocean listening networks with autonomous underwater devices had not yet gone beyond single, expensive experiments.
Perhaps they did not find anything because there is nothing to discover: it sounds like water itself, subjected to some kind of external influence. Energy can be supplied to a specific location, for example, using two intersecting beams of radiation (similar experiments were carried out in air). The difficulties here are enormous: you need to detect a nuclear submarine in the ocean and transfer energy in accordance with its maneuvers, and through unstable water with different densities, layers and currents. The task is impossible for earthly technology, so it is not without reason that the “Quakers” were studied in conjunction with underwater UFOs.
These cannot be animals unknown to science, either. at least, in our usual understanding. Incredible maneuverability suggests rather that we are not talking about moving the sound source, but about moving the sound itself. The closest analogy is the maneuvers of a school of fish, performing maneuvers all at once at a speed greater than the propagation of any signals in the water. Perhaps some animals, gathering into a single cloud, form a single “neural network” with much greater capabilities than each animal individually. The sound can be produced by a temporary thickening of the cloud, dissipating at the slightest danger, then a second thickening is formed at a distance, a third, etc. For an acoustician, this process will seem like the movement of one body from the first point to the second and third. Something similar was described in Frank Schätzing's science fiction novel The Flock.
The stories of some submariners speak in favor of the latter assumption. The head of the Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense for Navigation and Oceanography, Admiral A. A. Komaritsyn recalled: “Sometimes, passing through the Quaker’s coverage area, we came with some kind of gray biological substance on the rubber coating of the submarine. For quite a long time it still glowed like firefly. But after a while, under the influence of sunlight, the glow faded."
Senior Lieutenant Pyotr Streltsov said that in 1985, when the K-433 nuclear submarine was in the North Pacific Ocean, the Quakers sounded for an hour. And suddenly, at a depth of one hundred meters, they encountered “something soft and viscous, the sound was similar to the slap of raw meat on a cutting board.” The obstacle was such that the submarine cruiser K-433, with a displacement of more than 13,000 tons, shuddered and shook while submerged. Nevertheless, the submarine did not receive any damage, and most likely, the “obstacle” did not either. If it was a huge cloud of small creatures, such an outcome of the collision does not seem surprising.
The sudden cessation of research means that the answer has been found, and the discovered phenomenon did not pose a threat (otherwise instructions would have been developed for actions in the Quaker zone of action). But on the other hand, this phenomenon had potential scientific or military significance - otherwise the conclusions would not have been classified along with the observational material. The version of a natural “neural network” fits into this framework. The military could begin to think about how to control it, whether it is possible to make the organisms entering it distract enemy submarines, jam sonars, etc. After all, were there trained dolphins in service with the Soviet fleet?
We will learn the truth only after the period of secrecy expires and the naval specialists of our day speak, and not those who sailed under Soviet power. It may turn out to be more shocking than we could have imagined.
In the era of the omnipotence of science, it would seem that there are no unsolvable problems left for it. Nevertheless, sometimes incidents still occur when she turns out to be powerless in the face of the task assigned to scientists. Or they prefer to keep the conclusions of these same scientists secret from the general public. One such case is the history of the so-called “Quakers.”
This story began in the late 1960s and early 1970s of the last century, when new Soviet nuclear submarines were able to dive to previously unattainable depths. At the same time, they acquired new highly sensitive hydroacoustic detection devices. And while sailing in the North Atlantic, they began to notice some strange sound signals of unknown origin.
Sometimes it seemed that the underwater kingdom at great depths was inhabited by some unknown creatures. These creatures behaved quite intelligently. They were in no hurry to reveal themselves, but they themselves persistently tried to study the metal guests.
They accompanied our submarines for a long time, sent signals to the sailors, but at the same time it was as if they were playing hide and seek with the nuclear-powered ships. As soon as the submariners tried to better study the approaching object, it immediately left the viewing sector and gave signals from the other side.
The former commander of a nuclear submarine, Igor Kostev, told the famous television journalist Igor Prokopenko:
— When we entered the expanses of the Atlantic, we spotted some strange objects. They were clearly sending us signals. But it was impossible to identify them. They were unlike anything we had previously encountered. To the ear they resembled the croaking of a frog. Therefore, later in official documents these objects were called “Quakers”. They then begin to quickly croak - “kva-kva-kva-kva”, then switch to “kva-a-a, kva-a-a”. Moreover, the frequency and tonality of the sound change simultaneously. It was like transmitting coded information, as if the “Quakers” were trying to talk to us in a language we don’t know.
When the boat returned from the cruise and a report was made about strange unidentified objects, it turned out that the same “Quakers” were in contact with other submarines. They are literally pursuing our nuclear-powered ships. The signal from the object is stable and can be heard well. And this is at great depths in the open ocean, where there should be no one nearby for hundreds of miles.
Agree, there is something to drive a submarine commander crazy about. After all, the submarine’s combat duty route is carefully classified. On board there are missiles with nuclear warheads, and nearby someone unknown is teasing you. And at the same time he sees you, but you cannot detect him. What if he's about to attack the boat?
By the decision of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Sergei Georgievich Gorshkov, a special, highly classified group was created at the Fleet Intelligence Directorate, which was supposed to find out the nature of the “Quakers”. The collection and processing of information was organized and a whole series of ocean expeditions were undertaken.
At the request of the naval leadership, both the USSR Academy of Sciences and our military institutes, primarily hydroacoustic, dealt with this problem. Other organizations were also involved. Everyone assessed this underwater phenomenon in their own way.
American intrigues?
At first, the main version was that the “Quakers” were the work of the Americans. True, the version that we are talking about supernova submarines was immediately rejected. A large underwater object equipped with a motor cannot behave and behave like this.
On the rest, opinions differed. Some considered the Quakers to be jammers for Soviet submarines. The submariners themselves objected to them: the Quakers did not create any serious interference. Some were convinced that these were devices that made navigation easier for American submarines. And some saw in the “Quakers” elements of a global surveillance system.
There were more and more Quakers. At first they were found only in the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea, but then they appeared in the Barents Sea. Everything seemed logical: the Americans, with the help of the Quakers, were expanding their detection system.
But there was something confusing about this hypothesis. If "quakers" are navigation beacons or elements of a detection system, then the devices must be stationary. They must have a geographical reference. However, submariners' observations often contradicted this. In addition, organizing such a global system is extremely expensive even for the United States. To cover the most important areas of the World Ocean, tens of thousands of such sources are needed.
Fleet Admiral Vladimir Nikolaevich Chernavin testifies: “We also had such a theory when there were still Anti-Submarine Warfare Forces, headed by Admiral N.N. Amelko, and his chief of staff was Admiral E.I. Volobuev. They developed one of the options for blocking the World Ocean with buoys. Special sonar buoys that were dropped and recorded the underwater situation.
Ultimately, it was all developed down to a technique that could be applied. But each buoy was a bulky technical complex and was so expensive that our production and our resources were incapable of not only throwing them at the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, but even supplying a hundred of them.”
Nevertheless, often, soon after the “croaking”, American anti-submarine ships appeared in the area where our submarines were passing. Yes, and in one of the Leningrad research institutes we found a craftsman who designed something like a “Quaker” - a simple sensor with an elementary signal reception and transmission circuit.
The picture of the use of such sensors, as described by Vladimir Azhazha, is perhaps as follows: they are scattered in huge quantities in the required areas. As a submarine passes by each of them, the Quaker detects it by the noise of its propellers or electromagnetic field. Then, having caught the boat, the Quaker begins to squeak.
These sound signals are picked up by more complex devices that sum up the signals and, by analyzing them, obtain the course, location and speed of the submarine. After this, anti-submarine forces are called to the area, which immediately begin their hunt, having all the data for its successful completion.
“Underwater UFOs” or super squids?
But the real “Quakers” had one more oddity. Some submarine commanders had the impression of their deliberate actions. Sometimes it seemed that they were persistently trying to establish communication with our nuclear-powered ships, surrounding the submarine, changing the frequency and tone of the signals, as if inviting the submariners to a kind of dialogue.
They react especially strongly to hydroacoustic transmissions to the target. Accompanying our submarines, they followed next to them until they left any area, and then, having “croaked” for the last time, disappeared without a trace. There was no aggressiveness on the part of the Quakers. At the same time, it seemed that they were deliberately demonstrating their peacefulness.
According to Vice Admiral Yuri Petrovich Kvyatkovsky, what “Quakers” are, “...the question is still inexplicable. At the Academy of Sciences, the answers were also vague - perhaps these are marine organisms; plankton, manifesting itself in this way at a certain period; or killer whales, or someone else.
It was also said that 'Quakers' are unknown living beings, and with high level intelligence, this is a natural phenomenon about which we still know so little, as well as about the oceanic abysses in general. TO today visited places at kilometer depths less people than in space."
It was also suggested that the “Quakers” are “underwater UFOs”, which are unsuccessfully chased by military sailors of the most different countries. They begin to accompany the submarine if it is near their underwater bases. To declare this publicly in those years meant exposing yourself. After all, the USSR has officially stated more than once that no UFOs exist.
Apparently, the group studying the “Quakers” did not come to any final conclusions. However, in the early 1980s, the program for their study was closed, the departments were disbanded, and the officers who worked in them received other assignments. The entire mass of accumulated developments in plump folders marked “top secret” disappeared to God knows where.
Part former employees groups to this day believe that “Quakers” are nothing more than living beings, and with a very high intelligence. This version is adhered primarily to the employees of the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute
seas of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation, who at one time were attracted to the topic “Quaker”. There is nothing incredible in this, because there is plenty of evidence of unknown inhabitants of the ocean depths.
Perhaps the “Quakers” belong to some subspecies of the mysterious architeuris squid, whose dead carcasses are periodically thrown ashore by the waves. Perhaps this is a subspecies of a giant eel or even a plesiosaur. The presence of sensory organs operating in the acoustic range makes it most likely that the “Quakers” may have kinship or at least some features of cetaceans.
Unknown architects may mistake submarines for their own worst enemies- sperm whales. But why don’t they flee in this case, but make themselves known? Maybe because these are some special architeurises, for which sperm whales themselves are prey. But submarines still somehow confuse underwater hunters, and they circle around them for a long time, trying to understand what it is that has come to visit them.
Be that as it may, the peak of the mass appearance of “Quakers” was the 1970s. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the habitats of the mysterious frogs began to rapidly decrease in size. Today they have again become quite a rare occurrence.
“The problem is extremely complex and new for us, and therefore we will not spare effort and resources to solve it. We will give both people and ships. The result is important!”
Commander-in-Chief S.G. Gorshkov
“..they multiply and croak, and when they croak then they multiply!..”
“..Or maybe these are the souls of dead sailors?..”
“..I think it’s some kind of gas emissions from the bottom of the seas and oceans that create such acoustic vibrations...”.
In addition to the well-known term UFO, there is also the term UFO (Unidentified Floating Object) - the perception of an object or glow in the Earth's hydrosphere, the origin of which remains unknown.
In the 60-70s of the last century, at great depths, our nuclear-powered ships began to pick up some strange sounds that came from clearly moving objects. The sounds are different - both in duration and tone. But most resembled the drawn-out croaking of a frog. Usually it happened like this: hydroacoustics began to hear very strange signals, somewhat reminiscent of the croaking of frogs... It was for this croaking that the unknown objects received the name “Quakers” from naval wits, which was later legitimized in official documents.
Every year, “Quakers” were encountered more and more often, as a rule, starting from a depth of 200 meters. Their range of action has expanded from the Barents Sea to the North Atlantic.
Acoustics hear many different noises in the depths of the ocean. But the “Quakers” were sharply different from all the others. Those who heard the “Quakers” had a strong impression of awareness of the actions of unknown sound sources. It seemed that the “Quakers”, appearing from nowhere, were persistently trying to establish contact. Judging by the constantly changing bearing, they circled around our submarines and, changing the tone and frequency of the signals, seemed to invite the submariners to talk, actively responding to hydroacoustic “messages” from the boats.
There were no aggressive actions on their part; it even seemed that the “Quakers” were actively demonstrating their friendliness.
But the commanders were still afraid of unknown underwater objects. Still would! How should the commander of a submarine feel when the acoustician suddenly reports that, judging by the changing bearing, a Quaker who has appeared out of nowhere is crossing the course of the submarine! As soon as the boat turned to the side, the tireless pursuer again rushed to cross the course. And although over all the many years there was not a single collision with the Quakers, the commanders and the entire crew of the submarines constantly had to be on edge. So they accompanied our submarines until they left a certain area, then, after croaking for the last time, they disappeared. However, there were also secretive “Quakers”. An experienced acoustician can determine the speed of an enemy submarine from the noise of the propellers, and sometimes they detected croaking right next to the boat, but then it seemed that the source of the sound was fleeing away at a speed two to three times the speed of any submarine vessel.
It was then that, by the decision of the Minister of Defense, Marshal A.A. Grechko, a special group of several officers was created at the Navy Intelligence Directorate. Officers continually traveled through the fleets, collecting bit by bit everything that was somehow related to the problem of the “Quakers.” The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy ordered the organization of a whole series of ocean expeditions. One of them (the expedition of the Khariton Laptev reconnaissance ship in April 1970) coincided with the death of our nuclear submarine K-8 in the North Atlantic. Having interrupted listening and recording the sounds of the ocean, the Laptev rushed to the dying nuclear-powered ship and managed to save most his crew...
The navy issued instructions ordering submarine commanders to report all strange phenomena without fail. There is information that the Americans also had similar instructions. The operational departments of the headquarters of all fleets were ordered to collect information about acoustic phenomena, marking the areas of their occurrence on maps. The officers charged with collecting this information were nicknamed “Quakers.”
At the end of the 70s it was carried out Scientific Conference on this topic, which did not come to definite conclusions. In the early 1980s, the Quaker program was suddenly closed and the groups disbanded. The entire mass of accumulated developments in plump folders marked “Top Secret” disappeared into the archives.
Alas, very little is known about them even now, and opinions on this matter are very different even among former workers of the groups that dealt with the problem.
So what are these opinions?
Some of the group's former employees still believe that the "Quakers" are nothing more than unknown living beings, and with a very high level of intelligence. This version is adhered primarily to workers of the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Seas of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who at one time were involved in the “Quaker” topic. Of course, we are not talking about the mythical fish - capsili, the size of a whale and a dog's muzzle. And not about the less fabulous fish - uletif, with the head of a huge cat. And not about the legendary monsters of the northern seas of the Middle Ages - Golferamba and Maschuger, some underwater witches or the even more terrible monkfish. We are talking about some very real, but still unknown to science, underwater creature. There is nothing impossible about this, because there is ample evidence of unknown inhabitants of the ocean depths! Even about a whale known to man more than two thousand years ago, we still don’t know much; about the whale 200 years ago we only knew that “it’s a very fatty fish.”
Perhaps the “Quakers” belong to some subspecies of the mysterious giant architeuris squid, whose dead carcasses are periodically thrown ashore by the waves. Perhaps this is a subspecies of a giant eel or even a plesiosaur. The presence of sensory organs operating in the acoustic range makes it most likely that the “Quakers” may have some features of cetaceans. In this case, their constant interest in submarines is understandable. The architects may well mistake them for their worst enemies - sperm whales. But why don’t they flee in this case, but make themselves known? Maybe because these are some special architeurises, for which sperm whales themselves are prey. But submarines still somehow confuse underwater hunters, and they circle around them for a long time, trying to understand what it is that has come to visit them.
Take, for example, the mysterious prehistoric cetacean Basilosaurus (lat. Basilosaurus cetoides - “royal cetacean lizard” or lat. zeuglodon cetoides, “zeuglodon”) - the oldest inhabitant of the ocean depths. Basilosaurus had a snake-like shape, lived at great depths and, quite possibly, had the same sound transmission organs as modern whales and dolphins. . Perhaps creatures similar to basilosaurs still inhabit the depths of the ocean.
Perhaps they have even evolved and now make daring forays into the upper layers of the ocean and get very excited when they meet the mysterious NGOs there, that is, our submarines.
There is evidence that sea snakes seen by people developed speeds of up to sixty-five kilometers per hour on the surface of the sea! It is unknown at what speed they can move underwater, but it is quite possible that it will be enough to overtake submarines rushing in the darkness of the depths. To a certain extent, the habitats of sea serpents and “Quakers” coincide: the area between Greenland and Iceland, the area between Scotland and the coast of America, the Gulf of Mexico and West Side Pacific Ocean.
At one time it was believed that “croaking” was the work of female killer whales, who made very similar sounds during mating games. However, killer whales have not become extinct and continue to mate calmly even today, when the “Quakers” have disappeared somewhere. They appeared in the early 70s, peaked between 1975 and 1980, and then disappeared within five years. Since the 90s, there has not been a single official report of meetings with “Quakers”.
.
Decoders studying the recorded Quaker signals are also at a loss. While some heard them as clearly having a living origin, others believed that these signals were still more of a technical origin. The version that the “Quakers” are submarines of aliens is not particularly popular, although it has not been completely ruled out. Perhaps it is the aliens who accompany the submarines sailing above their underwater bases and escort the boats to the exit from these areas.
There is a version that the “Quakers” are nothing more than new developments of the Americans, that they are American miniature submarines or stationary objects, the task of which is to find the direction of the boat of a potential enemy. There are a number of weighty arguments in favor of this version; very often, soon after the appearance of the Quakers, American anti-submarine ships appeared in the area where our submarines were located. For the sake of objectivity, however, it must be said that the areas where the sea serpent is most often found coincide with the areas where the most powerful NATO anti-submarine forces are located.
The hypothesis that these were stationary objects was not confirmed: the “Quakers” pursued the boats, changing course after them, which indicated their autonomy. If they are autonomous, then someone must control them, or it must be a robot with artificial intelligence, which would be too expensive even for the US.
In the early 90s, a message suddenly appeared in the press that the US Navy was intensively studying the ocean floor and searching for unknown inhabitants of great depths, whose signals were repeatedly recorded and allegedly even partially deciphered. Who knows, maybe it was all about the same mysterious “Quakers”! And perhaps the day will come when the secret of the mysterious ocean signals will not only be fully revealed, but will also become known to the general public.
One can only guess what is happening behind the steel sides of the submarines. According to the International Submariners Union, over a hundred years, from 1904 to 2004, about 230 submarines were lost worldwide under unclear circumstances.
The ship's doctor D.F. Derbek claimed that on August 22, 1909, while sailing on the Okhotsk steamship in the Sea of Okhotsk, at 23:00 he observed a rapidly increasing greenish-white light spot under the stern. Soon the spot surrounded the ship and moved with it for some time. Then, picking up speed, the spot left from under the ship and after 2-3 minutes reached the horizon. The glow there was so strong that the clouds were reflected. Following this glow, three more went from under the ship to the horizon in the same way.
In 1925, the crew of the French destroyer Prussen noted: “Suddenly everything around the ship lit up. The light came from many balls floating up from great depths with a diameter of no more than a quarter of a meter. They rose upward at a speed of half a meter per second with an interval of 20-30 seconds. Directly below the surface, the balls sharply inflated to double their size, and finally surfaced, jerkingly stretched in different directions, turning into giant disks with a diameter of up to 120 meters. These bright silver-green formations swayed above the surface of the water for some time and then seemed to fade into darkness.”
On November 14, 1949, US Navy Captain J.R. Baudelaire piloted his ship through the Strait of Hormuz on a moonless night. Near Little Coin Island, a rotating luminous spot with a diameter of 300-400 meters was noticed on the left side of the ship. The phenomenon resembled the movement of light beams from spotlights rotating in one plane (a phosphorescent “wheel” with “spokes”). After some time, covering the center of the “wheel”, the ship, by order of the captain, moved several miles away from it. Immediately another, less bright luminous spot appeared to his right. After 30 minutes the third “wheel” appeared.
On July 20, 1967, the crew of the Argentine ship Naviero, as reported in the logbook, at a distance of 120 miles from the Brazilian coast for 15 minutes observed a smooth cigar-shaped object 30 meters long moving through the water near the ship, sparkling with a bluish-white radiance, which then sank under water, passed under the ship and disappeared under water.
In 1973, in the Strait of Malacca (Indonesia), at 2 o’clock in the morning, the crew of the Soviet motor ship “Anton Makarenko” observed a “luminous wheel” under water for about 40-50 hours. The captain of the ship, E.V. Lysenko, recalled that “at first... luminous spots appeared on the waves. There were more and more of them. Then they stretched out in a line - 6-8 meters wide and all the way to the horizon. From the bridge of the ship, a space of up to 12 miles is visible, and all of it was filled with luminous, strictly drawn straight lines. The distance between them is about forty meters. It became very light, as if a month had appeared in the sky. The glow is coldish, silvery and quite bright... Then the lines began to move. They began to spin like the spokes of a giant wheel, the epicenter of which was somewhat behind the ship. The rotation is slow, smooth and right up to the horizon. The spectacle is extraordinary and unforgettable. You know, it got to the point where we, experienced sailors, felt dizzy and nauseous, as if we were spinning on a carousel.” This rotation gradually accelerated, and the ends of the “rays” bent, the newspaper “Top Secret” reported.
Fishermen from Mississippi stated that on November 6, 1973, they observed an unidentified object 3 feet long and 3-4 inches wide with a surface similar to metal, emitting an amber light, at the mouth of the Pacaguola River (Mississippi). Fishermen and coast guards tried to retrieve the object with oars and hooks, but it floated away and disappeared from sight after 40 minutes.
On November 14, 1975, a fisherman from the city of Tronte (Adriatic) Tony Pamaka told a correspondent of the Europeo magazine: “I was at sea in the evening, about 5-6 kilometers from the coast. Near four hours In the morning, when I was picking out gear from the depths, I suddenly saw a red light coming from under the water. As soon as I took out the gear, I hurried to move away from that place, but the red light moved after me, then rising to the surface and scattering across large territory, then sinking to the bottom and turning into a crimson star. I don't remember how I got to the shore. It was terrible, terrible, I lay in chills and convulsions of fear for more than two hours and did not go to sea for a week. Now I’m afraid to swim further than 200 meters...”
On March 27, 1976, in the Gulf of Thailand, several parallel beams of fire were seen from a ship under water, which took the shape of a wheel. At some point, the “spokes” (each 70 feet, with the same distance between the “spokes”) of the wheels “grazed” the ship and began to cross it at a frequency of 2 crossings per second, rotating in a clockwise direction. The wheel rotated faster and faster, and the glow became brighter. After a few minutes, the “wheel” again took the form of parallel fiery beams, then a “wheel” was formed again, which within a few minutes rotated in the opposite direction. In total, the phenomenon was observed for about 17 minutes.
On March 6, 1980, underwater white lights were recorded in the Arabian Sea, taking the form of whirlpools and cart wheels that stretched to the horizon. The width of the "whirlpools" varied from 4 to 6 feet, and the length was approximately 45 feet. “Cart wheels” of “spokes” 6-8 feet wide, and their centers glowed brighter than the edges. The phenomenon could be observed for an hour and a half.
In 1988, in the South Atlantic, the radars of a US nuclear submarine repeatedly detected the presence of an underwater object half the size of the submarine dangerously close to the submarine. The object either allowed the boat to come to a distance of 200 meters, then moved away at high speed, then sank to a depth of one and a half kilometers, then suddenly surfaced “across the boat.” After some time, the NPO disappeared at a speed of 300 km/h. en.wikipedia.org
Reserve Rear Admiral O.G. Chefonov recalls:
“At that time I was in command of a nuclear missile boat. We returned to the base somewhere abeam Nakhodka. We walked on the surface. Fog, visibility zero. The radar station is working. Suddenly a target appears on her screen and quickly crosses our course. The speed is high. The mark is clear. It is absolutely clear that this is not a hindrance. I increase my speed to get through. The goal too. It’s dangerous to take risks, I decide to stop the move and let her through. In addition, they began to give all kinds of signals: they launched rockets, turned on the howler, lit the stern light and searchlight. I listen to the reports: “Distance - five cables, four... three... two... one...” Everyone on the bridge, with pain in their eyes, peers at where the unknown target should appear from. The acoustician almost shouts: “0.5 cable! The target has entered the dead zone! The tension is terrible. Everything is on edge. A minute passes, two, three. Now the target will appear from the other side.
So we waited for a quarter of an hour, but the target never appeared.
The second similar incident happened to me a year later. Again there is a clear light on the radar. The target is getting dangerously close. I order everything to be recorded in the logbook. They gave me a stop. The detected but invisible target again enters our dead zone and disappears forever. Then we discussed this case with other commanders. It turned out that many of them had something similar. That was the end of it."
During combat service, in 1985, in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, at a depth of one hundred meters, after an hour of croaking, the K-433 nuclear-powered icebreaker collided with something soft and viscous, the sound was similar to the slap of raw meat on a cutting board, but “a piece of meat "was so huge that it forced the submarine cruiser, with a displacement of more than 13,000 tons in a submerged position, to shudder and shake.
In 1989, while crossing the Japanese Sea K-211, at a depth of 100 meters, after a specific croaking, my acoustics discovered two underwater targets that easily caught up and overtook the cruiser traveling at 10 knots. When I identified their EDC (propulsion elements), their speed turned out to be more than 50 knots. The commander then deigned to joke: “Your renowned acousticians, head of the RTS, discovered an underwater aircraft!”
Quakers, military testimony.
Compilation based on the documentary film "UFO: The Mystery of the Three Oceans". Participating: Captain 1st Rank Igor Kostev in the 1980s. - commander of a nuclear submarine Captain 1st Rank Alexey Korzhev in the 1970s. - commander of a nuclear submarine, Vice Admiral Yuri Kvyatkovsky in 1987-92. - Head of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Navy Captain 1st Rank Evgeny Litvinov Chairman of the Commission for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena of the Russian Geographical Society Admiral Anatoly Komaritsyn Head of the Main Directorate of Navigation and Oceanography of the Russian Defense Ministry Rear Admiral Vladimir Monastyrshin Head of the International Association of Submarine Veterans Admiral of the Fleet Vladimir Chernavin in 1985-92 - Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy Captain 1st Rank Aurelius Nikitinsky, specialist in deep-sea vehicles of the Russian Navy
- In contact with 0
- Google+ 0
- OK 0
- Facebook 0
