The desperate race between USA and Russia to find a fallen warplane in Scottish waters

A F-14 Tomcat, the most of advanced US warplane of its time. | Contributed

placeholder image — A F-14 Tomcat, the most of advanced US warplane of its time. | Contributed

The waters off the Orkney Isles became the scene of a frantic search by the US navy to find a fallen warplane - before the Russian did

It was one of the most little-known incidents of the Cold War, which saw the US and Soviet navies face off against each other in the usually quiet waters off the Orkney Islands.

The full story of a desperate race between the Americans and Russians to recover the wreck of the world’s most advanced warplane from Scottish waters, half a century ago, has now emerged.

On 14 September 1976, during a major NATO naval exercise being held off the coast of Scotland, a state-of-the-art F-14 ‘Tomcat’ fighter crashed into the sea 75 miles north of the Orkney Isles, after an engine malfunction caused the $20 million jet to career out of control off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy.

Fortunately, both of the plane’s crewmen, Lieutenants John Kosich and Louis Seymour, successfully ejected, though Seymour suffered minor injuries upon landing and had to be flown to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for treatment.

The NATO exercises were being closely monitored by a Soviet spy trawler and a naval cruiser, and the Americans feared the Russians would try to secretly salvage the wreck of the F-14 – which had only just entered US Navy service – and the highly advanced Phoenix air-to-air missile it was carrying, to steal the technology.

“We would just as soon not leave the plane lying around on the bottom for them [the Soviets] to pick up," one US Navy officer commented at the time.

A major US salvage operation was quickly launched to locate and retrieve the F-14 before the Russians got to it first, spearheaded by the most secretive vessel in the US Navy, the NR-1 nuclear-powered mini-submarine.

However, the crew faced extremely challenging conditions in the murky and treacherous Scottish waters, with the NR-1’s skipper, Commander James Holifield, comparing the task of locating the Tomcat to “looking for a needle in a grassy front yard with only the aid of a penlight”.

After a month of searching, the Americans finally found the F-14 around 60 miles northwest of the Orkney Islands, lying at a depth of 1,850 feet. Disturbingly, however, when the NR-1 mini sub examined the wreck site, the crew found netting tangled around the plane and concluded that the Soviets had got there before them and made an unsuccessful attempt to raise the wreckage, since no local fishing boats were thought to trawl at such depths.

Even more alarming, there was no sign of the Phoenix missile. To the relief of US naval commanders, the missile was eventually discovered two weeks later by the NR-1’s crew, not far from the position of the F-14.

Both the aircraft and the missile were raised by the salvage tug Taurus and towed to a sheltered anchorage between the islands of Egilsay and Shapinsay in the Orkneys, on 11 November. The cost of the salvage operation was later revealed to be $1.5 million (around $8.5 million in today’s money).

● Cold War Air Thieves by Steven Taylor is now available to buy in hardback (Pen & Sword Books, £25) Visit: www.steventayloronline.co.uk