Armed Orion planes flew rapidly to the scene on Saturday morning when a fishing boat reported that it had almost collided with a submarine at Vestfjord. A search west of Bodø yielded no results.
Armed Forces had received no information about Norwegian or allied submarines in the area; it was therefore decided to send an Orion aircraft from Andoya to investigate, writes the website AldriMer. The five-hour search by plane produced no results.
‘We didn’t find anything corresponding to the vessel reported to us. We were not able to detect anything with the help of the Orion aircraft sensors’, spokesperson Brynjar Stordal at Joint Headquarters (FOH) told Klassekampen newspaper.
According to AldriMer, FOH worked from the assumption that the reported vessel might have been the Russian submarine “Podmoskovye”. According to Russian sources, this submarine left the area of Arkhangelsk on Saturday. AldriMer reports that it is not uncommon for dates deriving from Russian sources to be incorrect.
Stordal told Klassekampen newspaper that the defense forces had received no information indicating that there should be Russian submarines in the area. If a Russian submarine entered the Vestfjord, it would be a violation of Norwegian territorial waters.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
