Operation BLACK SUN
Operation BLACK SUN was the GRU Division P emergency response to the loss of the submarine KRASNYJ KAMEN in the Norwegian Sea, June 1981. Led in person by Vasili Orlov.
The Department's knowledge of it derives from intercept and from material recovered later; no American personnel were present at the engagement.
Division P lost the deep-submergence apparatus and nineteen further personnel in under four minutes. Orlov's report declines to characterise the event as an engagement, on the grounds that only one party was fighting.
The anomaly, designated AO-1981 BLACK LEVIATHAN, remains active and uncontained. It has never risen above three thousand metres and has never approached a coast.
American Special Projects Staff activity aboard USNS Halcyon was logged by the Soviet side and not engaged.