Jonas Pleškys (March 10, 1935 – April 14, 1993) was a Soviet Navy barge captain who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States in April 1961. As a captain of a barge, he directed his vessel to Gotland, Sweden, where he asked for political asylum. The crew and the barge were returned to the Soviet Union. His defection served as an inspiration for Tom Clancy's book The Hunt for Red October. Biography Early life Pleškys was born on 10 March 1935 in near Tverai in western Lithuania to a family of landless peasants. The family had 17 children, but only seven reached adulthood. One of his sisters was actress Eugenija Pleškytė. Pleškys' mother died of tuberculosis in 1946 and his father married a woman who before the war owned of land. It was likely sufficient to label the family as "bourgeoisie". The step-mother's family also had connections with the Lithuanian partisans. As such, Pleškys' parents were deported to Siberia during the Operation Vesna in May 1948. Pleškys and two siblings were also taken, but their father managed to push them out of the moving train. In 1952, Pleškys was expelled from a pedagogical school in Telšiai due to writing down anti-Soviet statements during a class. Pleškys then continued his education at the Telšiai Gymnasium and joined the Lithuanian Komsomol. He received excellent grades, but was not admitted to the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute likely because his deported parents made him "politically unreliable". In 1954, he was conscripted to serve in the Soviet Navy. After nine-month courses in Leningrad, Pleškys was admitted to the higher submarine courses in Leningrad. He graduated in June 1959 as a submarine navigator. Pleškys briefly served in a submarine before reassignment as captain to an auxiliary vessel collecting waste fuel from marine engines. Pleškys received the rank of lieutenant. Defection In early 1961, Pleškys married Zoja Rozenkranc who was already pregnant with their daughter Sondra. On April 6, 1961, upon learning that his vessel would be transferred from Klaipėda to Paldiski in Estonian SSR, Pleškys directed his barge Smolny north to dump the collected waste fuel in neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. The ship had nine crew members. By Liepāja, Pleškys changed course directly towards Gotland, an island of Sweden. Due to stormy weather, the crew was unaware of the changed course. When the barge reached the shores of Gotland, Pleškys ordered to fire