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In North American defense terms, the most sensitive area of ocean on the globe is the stretch of the North Atlantic between Newfoundland and the Scotch coast. Over this area would fly any Russian bombers trying to end-run U.S.Canadian continental defenses; through these waters would likely come Russian submarines slipping out through the Norwegian Sea bound for attacks on Atlantic shipping or coastal cities. For more than a year, the U.S. Navy's around-the-clock fleets of radar patrol planes and radar picket ships have been keenly aware of Russia's fleet of radar-equipped fishing trawlers cruising constantly in the richly stocked Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Last week, in a fast-moving action made notable by first-rate teamwork between White House, State Department and Pentagon, the U.S. Navy performed a historic peacetime action by intercepting and boarding one of the trawlers.*

The provocation was the interruption of five of twelve U.S.-owned transatlantic cables—four owned by Western Union, the fifth by American Telephone and Telegraph Co.—in the short period of five days. All the interruptions, or cuts, occurred in about the same spot, in the icy seas some 195 miles northeast of St. John's, Newfoundland. Around that spot, Navy patrols reported, only one ship was operating: the Russian fishing trawler Novorossisk.

Old Convention. Hours after the fourth cable break, Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke called in half a dozen members of his staff and laid out the story. That morning, A.T. & T. had sent a plane over the trouble spot, dropped a note on the Novorossisk's deck: YOU HAVE CUT THE CABLE FOUR TIMES: STOP FISHING HERE AND GO SOUTH. The trawler moved a few miles. Burke's Judge Advocate General, Rear Admiral Chester Ward, then made a precedent-setting proposal: Send a Navy party aboard the Russian ship. Lawyer Ward cited an international covenant, signed by Czarist Russia and specifically recognized by the Communists since 1926. The Convention for the Protection of Submarine Cables of 1884, he said, authorizes naval ships to examine official documents of other vessels suspected of damaging and interfering with cables under the high seas.

Burke accepted the idea, got news of the fifth cable break, and checked out his plan with Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, who notified the White House. Minutes later, the order went from Burke to Norfolk, headquarters of Admiral Jerauld Wright's Atlantic Fleet. Norfolk messaged the U.S. Naval Base at Argentia, Newfoundland, which in turn radioed Lieut. Commander Ernest Korte, skipper of a converted destroyer escort, the radar picket ship U.S.S. Roy 0. Hale, outward bound on a routine month-long sea patrol. Hale immediately turned and steamed to the point where a twin-engined Navy P2V Neptune had located the Russian ship: 49°3O min. north, 49°20 min. west. Sixteen hours after Admiral Burke set the operation in motion, Hale had sighted Novorossisk, raised signal flags: HEAVE

TO: WE SENDING BOAT.