According to BBC, the Swedish military is back out searching for “foreign underwater activity”, meaning Soviet…er, Russian submarines. So I went to Wikipedia and refreshed myself on the “whiskey on the rocks” incident from 1981:

Soviet submarine S-363 was a Soviet NavyWhiskey-classsubmarine of the Baltic Fleet, which became famous under the designation U 137 when it ran aground on October 27, 1981 on the south coast of Sweden, approximately 10 km from Karlskrona, one of the larger Swedish naval bases. U137 was the unofficial Swedish name for the vessel, as the Soviets considered names of most of their submarines to be classified at the time and did not disclose them. The ensuing international incident is often referred to as the Whiskey on the rocks incident…

his produced the most dangerous period of the crisis and is the time where the Swedish Prime MinisterThorbjörn Fälldin gave his order to “Hold the border” to the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces. The coastal battery, now fully manned as well as the mobile coastal artillery guns and mine stations, went to “Action Stations“. The Swedish Air Force scrambled strike aircraft armed with modern anti-ship missiles and reconnaissance aircraft knowing that the weather did not allow rescue helicopters to fly in the event of an engagement. After a tense 30 minutes, Swedish Fast Attack Craft met the ships and identified them as West German grain carriers.

The boat was stuck on the rock for nearly 10 days. On November 5 it was hauled off the rocks by Swedish tugs and escorted to international waters where it was handed over to the Soviet fleet.

How many times were the two sides locked and loaded during the Cold War, and are we just lucky that cooler heads almost always prevailed?