Taps

11 July 2008. CAPT Peter Huchthausen, USN-Ret., Amfreville, France. CAPT Huchthausen was a consummate line and intelligence officer who  served with distinction at the focal points of both hot and Cold Wars, and who established a formidable second career as an author and historian. 

Commencing his service as a junior Deck Officer in USS Blandy, the Cuban blockade (1962). The Soviet Navy component of Operation ANADYR, the deployment of short-range nuclear missiles to Cuba was code-named KAMA. It was to b e initiated by a vanguard of four Project 641 Foxtrot diesel attack submarines, sailing from the Kola Peninsula, and followed by seven Project 629 Golf-class ballistic missile submarines, each carrying three SS-N-4 SARK nuclear missiles. 

Golf-class Ballistic Missile Submarine 

The Soviet plan was to base these submarines in Cuba where they could threaten the southern United States, deterring US missiles then based in Turkey. After extensive research and interviews conducted in retirement, Huchthausen documented how close to the brink of nuclear war the blockade came. In his 2002 book October Fury, he revealed that each of the Foxtrot submarines were equipped not only with a full conventional weapons load, but also a single ten-kiloton T-5 nuclear torpedo. Admiral Gorshkov's orders were blunt: "You will use these weapons if American fo rces attack you submerged or force your units to the surface and the attack...."

USS Blandy (DD-943)

CDR Edward G. Kelley, Blandy's pugnacious CO, dropped small signaling depth charges on Foxtrot B-130 to force it to the surface. The Foxtrot was commanded by the equally adept and wary Captain First Rank Nikolai Shumkov. 

28 October 1962: The U.S. Navy shadows the second Soviet F-class submarine to surface, after repeated rounds of signaling depth charges on 27 October. Official Navy photo.

In his account of the confrontation, Huchthausen includes a disquieting account of an incident aboard B-130 during the deployment of the signaling devices. In a move to impress the Communist Party Zampolite (political officer), Shumkov ordered the preparations of torpedoes, including the nuclear torpedo. After hearing that the security officer had fainted, Shumkov told his subordinates that he had no intention of using the torpedo "because we would go up with it if we did."

Shumkov chose to follow the rules of engagement promulgated by RADM Leonid F. Rybalko of the Northern Fleet, who had countermanded Gorshkov’s bellicose orders. Shumkov and Rybalko are the among the unsung heroes of the crisis, whose actions forestalled disaster and whose careers went into eclipse because of it. 

With Huchthausen embarked, Blandy later participated in the search for USS Thresher (SSN-593), which sank during sea trials with all hands in 1963. 
 

Aerial View of Blandy and other units conducting the search for SSN-593 (official Navy Photo) 

Moving up the surface line career ladder, LT Huchthausen served as Chief Engineer (CHENG) aboard the FRAM destroyer USS Orleck, which operated off the coast of Vietnam from Yankee Station to Saigon as plane guard, SAR and gunfire support. In 1967, he transferred ashore to command River Section 513, a NAVFOR-V unit of ten river patrol boats assigned to the Binh Thuy Naval Base on the Bassac River near Can Tho, ninety miles southwest of Saigon. His experiences there would for m the topic of his first book, “Echoes of the Mekong.”

While in command, Huchthausen met a young girl selling fruit named Nguyen Thi Lung. She had been wounded by VC mortar fire and was taken by Huchthausen's unit to the provincial hospital where doctors were forced to amputate her leg below the knee. Fitted with an artificial limb in Saigon, River Section 513 sponsored her placement at a Catholic boarding school at My Tho. 

Nguyen at her boarding school

Huchthausen coordinated contributions to pay for the school's $100 monthly room and board. In January of 1968, the school was overrun by Viet Cong troops during the Tet offensive. The bodies of 47 schoolgirls were reportedly found in a nearby ditch. The Americans believed Nguyen had been killed as the war in the Delta transitioned to a new phase. A new aggressive strategy was implemented to exploit the tactical defeat of the VC , although ultimately it was a strategic victory for the North. VADM Elmo Zumwalt’s Southeast Asia Lake, Ocean River and Delta (SEALORDS) strategy of forward engagement resulted in significant success in a war that would ultimately be abandoned.

After completing his Vietnam service, Huchthausen was selected for lateral transfer from the Line to the Special Duty 1630 Intelligence Community. In that capacity he served as a Soviet naval submarine analyst and in staff ASW billets on the staffs of Naval Forces Europe, the U.S. FIRST and THIRD Fleets, and CINCPACFLT. In the Defense Attaché System (DAS), he served with distinction as ALUSNA to Yugoslavia and Romania. He was subsequently selected to become Chief, Attaché and HUMINT Collection Operations for Western Europe. 

Pete and Nguyen in jeep, 1967

In 1980, there was a dramatic resolution to a wartime mystery during his assignment in Belgrade. Huchthausen’s “stepdaughter” Nguyen smuggled a letter and photograph out of Vietnam and to the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. In the letter she made a plea for someone to help get her out of Vietnam and locate her “stepfather,” though she could not remember his name. The photograph was of Nguyen and Huchthausen as they stepped from a jeep in My Tho. A friend of Huchthausen's identified the photo and called him in Yugoslavia. Though it took years of effort, he was able to sponsor Nguyen and her daughter for immigration to the United States. 
 

Huchthausen and Nguyen reunited in Alexandria, VA, 1984

After Russian language training, he was assigned as the Naval Attaché in Moscow for the three years preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union. After retirement from the Navy, he returned to Russia and opened the Moscow office of an American firm. During that chaotic period when Soviet archives were opened for the first time, he began a new career as writer and historian. 

Pete Huchthausen's first book was about the River War as he and Nguyen experienced it, entitled “Echoes of the Mekong” (1996). His second book, “Hostile Waters,” an account of the loss of the Yankee-class SSBN K-219, appeared in 1997 as a companion to an HBO movie of the same name, selling more than 200,000 copies20worldwide. According to friends, the developing this project entailed an intense, rollicking few weeks of research in the Navy archives in Moscow, from which the production team returned with absolutely NO receipts.
 

Author Huchthausen and Harrison Ford

His book “K-19: The Widowmaker” was the basis for the 2002 Hollywood action film starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.

A long-time lover of Down East culture, he wrote a history of Frye Island, "Maine's Newest Town, 1748-1995" (1998) and a series of articles on the Balkans and Russia for the U.S. Naval Institute and the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies.

His last book, "America's Splendid Little Wars, A Short History of U.S Military Engagements 1975-2000," was published in July 2003. All his books remain in print and can be located on Amazon.com.

Pete and D-Day Vet at the Bed and Breakfast

Always an adventurer, he remarried and with his French wife, opened Huchthausen's American Bed and Breakfast near the village of St. Mere Eglise, in the famous 82nd and 101st airborne division drop zones, within biking distance from the D-Day landing beaches. 

Pete Hucthausen had a guileless manner that affected everyone he encountered, from shipmate to Cold War adversary. CBS and BBC correspondent Vicki Barker and her companion, film producer Bill Cran, put it this way: “The last we'd heard from him , six months or so ago, he seemed very happy, and repeated his invitation to us to come stay with him.  Alas we never did, and now we have lost one more brilliant Virgil who could have led us through all the circles of the hell that was the D-Day invasion.” 

In addition to his wife and many friends, CAPT Huchthausen is survived by his children, Paul and Donna. In Normandy, the Village of Amfreville held a memorial service for him in July at the church across from his B&B. It was attended by both his children and nearly two hundred mourners from the nearby villages and as far away as Paris. CAPT Huchthausen’s ashes will be interred with full military honors at Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC on the 3rd December at 9am. A reception at the Fort Myer Officer’s Club will follow.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com