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Red Herring

August 7, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In October 1981, a Swedish fisherman left his home before dawn and found a Soviet submarine beached in a rocky inlet. For 13-year-old Magnus, living in Stockholm, this was a defining moment—like the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 for Americans. The Cold War was at its peak, and Sweden, though neutral, lived in constant fear of the blank white space on the map that was the Soviet Union, just 140 miles across the Baltic Sea. The submarine incident ignited a national panic, and the Swedish military promised to protect their thousand-mile coastline by listening for subs underwater.

The following year, periscopes were spotted in a harbor near Stockholm, right outside a naval base. The Swedes deployed helicopters with hydrophones, and they picked up what became known as "the typical sound"—the unmistakable signature of a Soviet submarine. They dropped depth charges, chased the sound for a month, and captured nothing. This pattern repeated through the 1980s: alarms, chases, bombs, and no submarines. The military classified the sound and built their entire defense strategy around it. Every time they heard it, they ranked the encounter as a definite submarine.

The sound that changed everything

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:00) **Cold War Summer Intro** - Lulu Miller introduces the episode as part of "Cold War Summer," a tale of espionage from the archives.
  • 2 (02:59) **The 1981 Submarine Incident** - Magnus Wahlberg, a 13-year-old in Stockholm, recalls the day a Soviet submarine beached on Sweden's shore.
  • 3 (07:43) **The "Typical Sound" and Failed Chases** - After the sub is released, Sweden invests in underwater listening, leading to years of phantom chases.
  • 4 (12:40) **The "Rank One" Sound** - The military creates a ranking system for sightings, with "Rank One" being a definite Soviet sub, always confirmed by a specific sound.
  • 5 (13:55) **The Cold War Ends, But the Sound Persists** - After the Berlin Wall falls in 1989, the Swedish military continues to report Russian submarine sounds into the 1990s.
  • 6 (15:28) **A Biologist Answers the Phone** - Magnus, now a university student studying underwater sounds, accidentally takes a call from the Royal Swedish Navy.
  • 7 (17:58) **Hearing the Top-Secret Sound** - Magnus and the other scientists are the first civilians allowed to hear the "typical sound" that has haunted the Navy for 15 years.

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Show Notes

It was the early '80s, the height of the Cold War, when something strange began happening off the coast of Sweden. The navy reported a mysterious sound deep below the surface of the ocean. Again, and again, and again they would hear it near their secret military bases, in their harbors, and up and down the Swedish coastline. After thorough analysis the navy was certain. The sound was an invasion into their waters, an act of war, the opening salvos of a possible nuclear annihilation. Or was it? Today, Annie McEwen pulls us down into a deep-sea mystery, one of international intrigue that asks you to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, your deepest beliefs could be as solid as...air.

Special thanks to Ben Wilson, Ola Tunander, Hans Gordon, Andreas Timmelstad, Klaus Helmersen, and Meg Bolz.

LATERAL CUTS -

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Annie McEwin
with help from - Magnus Ormstadt
Produced by - Annie McEwin, Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom

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