Did US Navy ships follow Russian ships?

[tigisfat]

You Navy buffs out there told me about how Russian ships tailed US ships a lot. Did the same thing happen the other way around?

[PRB]

Don’t know about surface ships, but US submarines did tail Soviet subs, without their knowledge, which was pretty cool. Read Blind Man’s Bluff, an excellent account of this practice, among other things.

EDIT: I would guess no, because we did that sort of thing with carrier based planes and P-3s (and submarines). Part of the Soviet navy's plan for taking out US carriers in time of war would have been for those surface ships to get close enough to the US battle group to lanuch their ship-killer missiles. Maybe that's what they were practicing. That's just a guess, though...

[TARPSBird]

Yes, USN surface ships have done many surveillance and intel collection ops against Russian Navy units. The other NATO navies have also done these ops, in company with us and individually. New-construction ships are always of high interest when they're operating for the first time, for example the Kiev class CVHG's and their (sometimes disastrous) flight ops with the Yak-38 Forgers back in the 1970's/80's. We also send surface ships to observe Russian open-ocean exercises. We always liked to let them know we care. At least we used to, I'm not sure about nowadays.

[Willy]

I've seen some of the damage to subs from playing bumper cars underwater.

[leroy10]

Absolutely,

US subs also used to stop off near submerged telecommunication cables and place listening devices on them. It was rather common for the US and NATO subs to shadow Russian subs and surface vessels during the cold war and I couldn't imagine anything has changed much in that department.

Cheers :ernae:
Lindsay

[Roadburner440]

I have never been on a ship that per say followed another ship.. as part of the HSL detachments we use our antennas and such to intercept communications and monitor their position with the helicopter. It is hard in the daytime because you have to stay out of range (not like they don't know they are being followed anyway I am sure, but have to take all precautions to not start an incident). I am only really knowledgable about the aviation side of the house. In my career I have only seen Russian ships 1 time. Mainly done the South American drug interdictions where we actually intercept and take down the drug smuggling boats.

[6297J]

I know my dad was always 'aware' there were Russian Ships/Subs in the area when he did extensive tours from the 50's to the 80's (he had an exceptionally long career - 39 years) but sometimes the Royal Navy would take an unusual interest in what the US Navy was doing too!

Everyone was suspicious of everyone else in those days, no matter whose side you were supposed to be on.

[X_eidos2]

My younger brother has a few interesting stories from the time his USN minesweeper was assigned the task of trailing the Soviet spy ship that was trying to follow the USS Ohio during it's sea trials.

Annoyed at being followed all the time, the Soviet ship used flashing light to signal the minesweeper. "Why do you keep following us? What do you want?"

"Vodka." came the reply.

[cheezyflier]

My younger brother has a few interesting stories from the time his USN minesweeper was assigned the task of trailing the Soviet spy ship that was trying to follow the USS Ohio during it's sea trials.

Annoyed at being followed all the time, the Soviet ship used flashing light to signal the minesweeper. "Why do you keep following us? What do you want?"

"Vodka." came the reply.

[Bjoern]

My younger brother has a few interesting stories from the time his USN minesweeper was assigned the task of trailing the Soviet spy ship that was trying to follow the USS Ohio during it's sea trials.

Annoyed at being followed all the time, the Soviet ship used flashing light to signal the minesweeper. "Why do you keep following us? What do you want?"

"Vodka." came the reply.

The cold war would have been a lot less cold if everyone just met somewhere and had the biggest drinking party ever.