Norwegian fishermen snagged U.S. nuclear-powered submarine

The young men were sailing for halibut, but instead got a cruise-missile attack submarine.

“We had just emptied the nets and put them out again, and was on our way back to shore at Sommarøya when we were called by the Coast Guard on channel 16 on the VHF-radio,” says Harald Engen (22) to NRK Troms. Engen is captain on Øygutt, the 10 meters small fishing vessel. The Coast Guard could inform that a submarine had sailed into the net and dragged it two nautical miles north were it was cut off. The net is lost deep down, but the fishermen in their early 20s now have a good story to tell at the local pub. “I know about other vessels that have sailed over fishing nets, but no-one out here have ever heard about a submarine doing so,” says Engen.

The incident occurred outside Malangen, west of Tromsø on the coast to the Norwegian Sea. The submarine was the USS Virginia, a nuclear-powered 115 meters long attack sub. Such submarines are in recent years more frequently surfacing in the sheltered fjords outside Tromsø. Norway’s Coast Guard are assisting in bringing onboard supplies or new crew members. The US Navy confirms via the Embassy in Oslo to NRK the incident with the small Norwegian fishing boat.

The submarine got part of the gear from the net in her propeller, likely when she was still sailing at surface. Amid tensions with Russia The new security situation in Europe, including in the north, requires closer naval cooperation between NATO members. Keeping track of the Russian Northern Fleet’s submarines sailing out from the Kola Peninsula to the North Atlantic is a priority. The new Northern Fleet submarines sail more silent than the older Soviet-designed vessels. And they sail more frequently out from the Barents Sea to the west of North Cape, into the deeper Norwegian Sea.

That worries NATO. Typically, an American submarine on a mission in the Norwegian Sea would not want to sail all way south to Haakonsvern near Bergen or to a naval base in the United Kingdom to put on shore a crew member or pick up some new devices or supply. Surfacing near the area where the cat-and-mouse hunt with the Russians takes place saves time.