Active sonar broadcasts short bursts of sound, known as pings, that travel through the ocean before bouncing back towards the ship that made them. There are two types of sonar: active and passive. All in the interest of stealing a top secret Russian towed sonar array. She had been outfitted with an unusual set of tools: a pair of remote-controlled heavy steel cutting blades and television cameras. Just two months later, the nuclear-powered Conqueror was nine thousand miles away, in the Barents Sea. The sinking was only the second sinking by submarine torpedo since the Second World War. During the Falklands War u sank the Argentine Navy light cruiser ARA General Belgrano when it was determined the ship posed a threat to the Royal Navy task force steaming south to retake the Falkland Islands. HMSConqueror was a Churchill-class nuclear-powered attack submarine and one of the most powerful ships in the Royal Navy in the 1980s. The role of HMS Conqueror in Operation Barmaid points to a larger world of no-holds-barred undersea cloak and dagger warfare during the Cold War. In 1982, fresh off a combat patrol in the Falkland Islands, a British submarine committed a brazen act of theft-it stole a secret sonar array right out from under the nose of a Soviet Navy ship. I had never heard of this, and thought it was cool.

Cold waters towed array