Blind Mans Bluff Essay, Research Paper

Blind Man s Bluff

Sometimes in literature, the characters in the story make an important contribution to society. In the novel, Blind Man s Bluff, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, the brave men and women that served in the Navy s Secret Service did just that. If it wasn t for them, many more lives would have been lost and more land would be destroyed. They had to endure many hardships and suffer for this country.

This book is compiled of many missions that happened throughout the Cold War. It shows what the Naval Program was like during that period and how it changed due to advancing technology. These people operated the spy submarines and risked being killed or captured by the Soviets. One example of this is when Commander Charles R. McVean took his crew and tapped a Soviet telephone line at the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk. This stopped a potential nuclear war. They also started to make submarines that could dive deeper and explore murky depths.

Other submarines are used for surveillance. If we were suspicious about a certain ship, a surveillance submarine would so out and spy on the ship and see what they were up to. These subs played a huge roll in the war. If a ship was transporting weapons or bomb making materials to the enemy, the sub could ratio to US forces and take over the ship. One very brave commander in the war was Norman G. Bessac. He commanded the USS Gudgeon, which was an old diesel engined submarine straight into enemy territory. The Gudgeon was caught and pounded by enemy subs. One of the very important subs in the war was the Cochino. It monitored the development of the atomic bomb that the soviets were making. Unfortunately the Cochino crashed into the Tusk and set the after-battery on fire. This eventually caused the end of Cochino. Nine days after the Cochino sank the Air Force found evidence that the Soviets detonated a nuclear device. This made the anticipated threat that inspired the spy mission real.

As you can see, without these brave officers and subs, our society would have been much different. Some of us might not be here without them. They prevented the Cold War from turning into a Nuclear Holocaust. By tapping the telephone line under the Okhotsk Sea, we got to hear the Soviets plans and stop them before they started.