FROM OUR SUBMARINE WARFARE EDITOR, JULES NEMO

THE SUBMARINE USED to sink an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka may well have been the famed Red October, captured by the United States from the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, according to a report from a noted treasure hunter.

“The Americans have been using the old Red October for decades in commando operations,” says marine archaeologist Dr Jack Kusto, who hunts for wrecks in the Indian Ocean. “Both because of its silent caterpillar drive and for obvious plausible deniability. It’s even said that its internal communications are disguised as the voice of Sean Connery when it is on operations. What most people don’t realize is that the Hollywood blockbuster of the 1990s, The Hunt For Red October, was actually made to cover the fact that the US had indeed captured the Soviet submarine years earlier, a sort of double bluff. Clever, no?”