Scottish Woman Collecting Shells Finds Submarine Data on Beach

A woman collecting seashells found a bundle of 800 papers about the U.S. nuclear submarine fleet at a naval base in Scotland, a newspaper reported Friday.

But the U.S. Navy said the papers apparently found at Helensburgh, seven miles from the U.S. Navy base at Holy Loch, contained no classified information.

The Scotsman newspaper, based in Edinburgh, said the papers contained details of the running costs and the maintenance of the 10 Lafayette and Benjamin Franklin class submarines operating out of Holy Loch, the largest U.S. submarine base outside the United States.

The 10 submarines are armed with Poseidon and Trident nuclear missiles.

The newspaper said the papers contained financial details on the refitting of three submarines at the base, the amount given for servicing and engineering at Holy Loch and items needed for the submarines and for the submarine support vessel, the Simon Lake.

In a statement issued in Washington, the Navy said the bag was “routine refuse that fell ashore by accident and contains only routine maintenance and logistics documents.”

“It is easy to understand, given the incomplete and cryptic nature of the data in the refuse, how it could have been misinterpreted,” it said.

Holy Loch is the principal U.S. submarine base in Europe and is of key strategic importance to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.