Red Star Rogue: the Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.

Red Star Rogue: the Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. By Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond. New York: Simon Oc Schuster, 2005. ISBN 0-743-26112-7. Photograph. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 320. $25.00.

In 1968, K-129, a submarine of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, sank in deep water off" Hawaii. The vessel was eventually retrieved at considerable cost by the U.S. government. Around these facts the authors of Red Star Rogue have fashioned a book that claims that K-129's mission was to launch a nuclear guided missile attack on the United States. But there is more. Sewell and Richmond go on to entertain the hypothesis that the submarine was masquerading as a Chinese vessel, with the intent of starting a war between the U.S. and China.

The authors have put together what at first glance seems a fairly tight...