Quackers (from -- onomatopoetic word based on a Russian rendition of frog's sound) are mysterious sounds, similar to a frog
noise, widely reported by the crews of Soviet Navy submarines from various parts of the
North
Atlantic
and Arctic Oceans
during the peak of the Cold
War, as well as their assumed sources. They are an
example of
Unidentified
Submerged Objects.
Story
During the
Cold War, when Soviet
ballistic missile submarines
went to patrol northern seas, their crews started reporting the
mysterious frog-like sounds, which soon were dubbed "quackers",
from the Russian rendition of a frog noise. These sounds appeared
when
submarines passed certain zones in
the sea, and behaved as if they were emitted by some moving
underwater object, which, however, failed to register on the
active sonar. When the sub left their
"patrol zone", the objects disappeared after emitting one final
"quack".
These objects exhibited behavior not unlike some
living being or manned vessel, showing obvious
interest in the passing submarine, circling around it, trying to
actively avoid sonar pulses, and so on. The speed of some of these
objects (estimated from
Doppler shift
of their sound frequency) was in the range of 200 km/h, much higher
than any then-known man-made vessel.
Contact was attempted on several occasions,
but, apart from some obvious reactions to these attempts such as
changing the pitch of the sounds or movement of the apparent sound
source), nothing came of it.
The peak
of quacker observations occurred at the end of the 1970s, when the
areas where the sounds appeared started to multiply and spread over
from the Barents
Sea
to other areas including the North Sea
and the North Atlantic in general. The Soviet Academy of Sciences
was invited to create a joint commission with the
representatives of the Navy, as this phenomenon was identified as a
potential national security risk. This commission worked for
about a decade, but despite extensive investigations results
remained inconclusive, and it was eventually disbanded. In the
1980s the phenomenon slowly faded, and now quackers may have
disappeared completely.
Proposed explanations
There never was much consensus about the nature and origin of these
sounds, and the only hard fact about them is that they existed.
Official reports of the commission remains classified until the
present day, even if it was known that it never reached a
conclusion. Several hypotheses were proposed, but none reached full
acceptance, as they all failed to account for at least some of the
phenomenon properties.
The three main theories about the origin of
this phenomenon propose some secret new technology developed by the
US
or NATO
, an unknown
marine animal or alien
activity.
Secret technology
This was the most popular theory explaining this phenomenon. During
the height of the
Cold War these mysterious
happenings greatly affected the morale of submarine crews, and as
such were seen as direct threats, even if they exhibited no hostile
intent. Initially it was believed that these sounds are sonar
pulses from American fixed sonar barrages, analogous to passive
SOSUS network. However, it soon became
apparent that their sources are mobile and active, so they were
then believed to be small tracking subs, deployed to keep an eye
over Soviet boats' movements.
Some experts are said to hold this opinion to this day, although
apparent speed, mobility and noise level of these "subs" (that are
moving absolutely silently and could be only identified by their
"quacks") are still unmatched for any known man-made vessel. They
also failed to be observed by active sonars, despite numerous
efforts, also casting doubts on their human origin. Also, while
such technology appears at least theoretically possible for the
current engineering and manufacturing techniques, the cost of it
seems to be prohibitively high even for the most affluent nations
like US.
Sea serpent
Marine animals is another proposed source of these sounds, and now
are viewed as the most probable hypothesis. At first, it was
ascribed to the
orca's mating calls, which
sound rather similar, but orcas usually mate on the surface or
close to it, while quackers were always observed at depths of no
less than 200m. Other
cetaceans were also
proposed as a candidate, both living and extinct, like the ancient
somewhat snake-like whale
Basilosaurus.
Basilosaurs are of special interest to
cryptozoologists, who propose that they are
somehow still alive, and
sea serpents of
marine lore are true sightings of these animals. Their purported
habitat also roughly matched areas of quackers observations.
Another animal that could be responsible for it would be some type
of
giant squid of the
Architeuthidae family. That would explain the
quackers' active behavior, as squids are known to possess a high
level of intelligence and could possibly mistake subs for their
eternal rivals,
sperm whales. They are
also deep-sea creatures, and are reported to have mobility matching
some of the quackers. Being
cephalopods,
they also lack rigid internal
skeleton, and
that might contribute to their invisibility to sonars. However,
squids do possess an internal shell remnant known as a gladius or
pen.
These
theories, however, fail to account the dynamic of the phenomenon,
which slowly started in the mid-60s, grew in frequency and area
through 70s, when quackers' "patrol zones" begun to appear as far
as around Greenland
, while in the beginning they were observed only in
the Barents
Sea, the slow fade-out in the 80s and its disappearance
by the end of century. Matching this in living animals
requires enormous behavioral changes to happen species-wide and
almost immediately, no less than two times, which is unheard of in
modern biology.
Space aliens
Extraterrestrial activities were also proposed as an explanation,
but this claim was already quite dubious in the 1960s, so it
received the least attention of all three major theories. No
evidence, except some conjectures, were collected towards this end.
The said conjectures are patrol-like pattern of quacker behavior,
as if they tried to protect their underwater base, their active
interest in the submarines, and mobility unmatched by human
vessels. Dynamics of their observation would also match the
life-cycle of a large Cold War monitoring project, that was
eventually closed as tensions dropped and
nuclear
exchange became less and less probable.
Outcome
No conclusion was ever reached about this phenomenon, and even
those results that were obtained remain secret for the time being.
But, as the effect has all but disappeared now, the point might be
essentially moot. One positive outcome of the hunt for quackers
might be the April 1970 rescue of the
Soviet submarine K-8 by the
oceanographic vessel R/V Khariton Laptev that was
conducting research on the project close to the accident location.
These sounds might forever remain a mystery of nature.
See also
References
- We've never seen them, SecretPlanet.Ru , in Russian
- Capt. Vladimir Shigin, Ocean ghosts, secretufo.info 22 December 2007, in Russian
- Capt. Vladimir Shigin, Ghosts from the ocean floor,
Taynaya Vlast' #9, 2006, in Russian
- Andrey Moiseev, Quacking in Ocean, Komsomolskaya
Pravda 21 June 2006, Interview
with Capt. Vadim Kulinchenko (ret), former Navy General Staff
officer, in Russian
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