Remembering RADM Rafael C. Benitez

Rear Adm. Rafael C. Benitez, who directed an extraordinary rescue operation when his submarine caught fire in one of the first American undersea spy missions of the cold war, died on March 6 at Memorial Hospital in Easton, Md. Admiral Benitez, who saw his submarine sink but lost only one of his 77 crew members, was 81 and lived in Easton.

On Aug. 12, 1949, Admiral Benitez, then a commander, guided his diesel submarine, the Cochino, out of the harbor in Portsmouth, England.

The Cochino and another submarine, the Tusk, were ostensibly on a cold-water training mission. But they had snorkels that allowed them to spend long periods underwater, largely invisible to an enemy, and they carried electronic gear designed to detect far-off radio signals.

The submarines were in fact the vanguard of an American intelligence operation. Their crews hoped to eavesdrop on communications that revealed the testing of submarine-launched Soviet missiles that might soon carry nuclear warheads, according to ”Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage” (Public Affairs, 1998) by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, with Annette Lawrence Drew.

The Cochino was submerged in waters above the Arctic Circle, 125 to 150 miles off the Soviet port of Murmansk, on Aug. 25, when one of its 4,000-pound batteries caught fire, emitting hydrogen gas and smoke.