Nation: In Pueblo's Wake

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In the wintry waters of the Sea of Japan, 26 miles off the inhospitable coastline of North Korea, the 906-ton U.S.S. Pueblo went routinely about her tasks as an electronic scavenger. She sampled the water around her with bottles strung from her sides, and listened for submarines below. She sniffed the skies above with the thickets of antennas that bristle from her superstructure, and scooped up every electronic signal for miles around with a formidable array of supersecret equipment.

Converted last spring from a lowly Army freighter of the sort that toted toothpaste and toilet paper around the South Pacific during World War II, the ship was on her first surveillance mission, gathering intelligence practically on the doorstep of Russia's Pacific fleet headquarters at Vladivostok. The spooking game is a lonely one at best, but as Pueblo's 83-man crew and the rest of the world learned last week, it can also be perilous.

It was noon, Korea time, when a Soviet-built North Korean torpedo boat bore down on Pueblo. Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, 40, was not overly disturbed. Harassment is one of the hazards of electronic snooping, and Skipper Bucher (pronounced booker) had expected to be buzzed by MIGS and bugged by surface craft when he began a month-long tour off the North Korean coast nearly two weeks earlier.

"All Stop." Using international signal flags, the PT boat asked Pueblo's nationality. When she identified herself as American, the Korean boat signaled: "Heave to or I will open fire." Pueblo replied: "I am in international waters." She maintained her course at two-thirds speed (8 knots), with the PT boat never very far away. An hour later, three more North Korean vessels came slashing in from the southwest. One was a 30-knot, Soviet-built subchaser, the others 40-knot PT boats. "Follow in my wake," signaled one of the small vessels. "I have a pilot aboard." The Korean boats took up positions on Pueblo's bow, beam and quarter. Two MIG jets screamed in and began circling off the American vessel's starboard bow.

Still, Bucher kept his cool. After all, U.S. planes not infrequently buzz the Soviet trawlers that serve as spy ships, whooshing in at mast level and sometimes shearing off antennas. It was only when one of the Korean PT boats rigged fenders—rubber tubes and rope mats to cushion impact—and began backing toward Pueblo's bow that Bucher realized what was happening; in the bow of the PT boat stood an armed boarding party. "These guys are serious," the skipper radioed his home port, U.S. Navy headquarters in Yokosuka, Japan. "They mean business."

Strangely enough for a ship of such sophistication and strategic value, Pueblo had no automatic "destruct" mechanism. As the Koreans swarmed aboard, U.S. Navymen feverishly set fire to the files, dumped documents, shredded the codes, and did their valiant best to wreck the electronic gear with axes, sledge hammers and hand grenades. In the process, apparently, one sailor's leg was blown off and three others were injured. According to a Defense Department official, Bucher's instructions "covered everything except being boarded."