THE SOVIET–ISRAELI BATTLE IS JOINEDC. An increasingly active naval role
The Soviet naval presence was also drawn into the confrontation with Israel. After the
Abu Zaabal bombing, Nasser had threatened to spread the war into the naval arena,
and in early April Eg ypt again declared that “it would seize the initiative at sea.”^30 This
coincided with Israel’s formal unveiling of the Cherbourg boats and, more signifi-
cantly, their armament with home-developed Gabriel missiles, the first Western
answer to the Styx.^31
In the last week of April, submarine adviser Kryshtob was summoned to his
Eg yptian superior and told of an impending mission to “strike at the Jews.” He was
ordered not to tell other Soviets about it, but the three top advisers were present
when the operational order was handed to him and his boat’s captain, Bagir. The
Soviet officers had no problem with the mission—to sink enemy shipping off the
Israeli coast—but they clarified to Kryshtob that he must not execute it without ris-
ing at least to periscope depth to verify the targets’ identity. In other words, the
Soviets were not trying to restrain offensive action, but to ensure its legitimacy. The
risk involved was brought home to Kryshtob by the crewmen, who went to pray and
wrote wills.
During an eleven-day cruise, the submarine twice identified large targets by means
of sonar alone. Kryshtob managed to persuade Bagir to surface before attacking the
first, off Tel Aviv, which turned out to be a 20,000-ton freighter. Checking it out
exposed the submarine because its diving systems were slow due to poor maintenance,
and three of the “Cherbourg boats” gave chase; “now they were already hunting me.”
Shaking them off demanded more than ten hours at maximum depth. Another tech-
nical fault, with the air compressors, caused some of the crewmen to faint. When a
second target appeared, off Haifa, Bagir ordered torpedoes readied. Kryshtob insisted
on surfacing first, prevailed—and was horrified to see that the Eg yptian had almost
sunk a Greek car ferry. He needed to use his strongest language, Bagir lodged a com-
plaint, and Kasatonov himself chaired an inquiry that reprimanded Kryshtob for
disgracing the Navy. The adviser was so upset he could not eat for five days. Not
having sunk anything, for him “it would have been a routine cruise, [but] for them it
was heroism. All their training had been done while moored at the pier.”
On the night of 13–14 May, returning to Port Said on the surface, Kryshtob
logged strong flashes and explosions. Soon after, the submarine was buzzed by Israeli
Mirages. After putting into harbor, he learned that the Eg yptian “missile boats on
duty” had attacked and sunk an unidentified target without the knowledge of their
Soviet adviser. Again, Kryshtob was shocked that it might have been a civilian vessel.
In fact, it was—the 75-ton Israeli fishing boat Orit, which was blown out of the water
by two Styx missiles with the loss of half its four-man crew.
The Soviet officer comforted himself with a retrospective Eg yptian claim that the
Orit was a large freighter converted to an intelligence-gathering ship with a comple-