Submarine documentary 19. Collision with Gato

Story submarine K-19 dramatic: for the Soviet Union, it became a symbol of nuclear power, the main trump card in the Cold War, and for many sailors who served on it, it became a ruthless killer. The crew of the cruiser in different years experienced terrible disasters - the threat of a nuclear explosion, a collision with an American submarine and a fire. Because of these dramatic events, the American filmmakers who filmed the documentary about the K-19 called the submarine "the widowmaker", and the sailors themselves call it "Hiroshima" to this day.

The submarine entered the Northern Fleet in 1960. It was an innovative vessel, a thunderstorm for the Soviet fleet, a giant that should have gone unnoticed to NATO bases during the Arctic Circle exercise. It should be noted that the exercises took place at a turbulent time: an open confrontation broke out between the USSR and the West over the fate of Berlin. The submarine managed to reach the North Atlantic bypassing US radars. It seemed that the operation was successful, but suddenly tragedy struck. On June 4, 1961, at 4:15 am, Captain II Rank Nikolai Zateev received alarming data: the sensors recorded overheating of the fuel rods. The situation was frightening: a malfunction threatened to explode a submarine equipped with missiles with nuclear warheads. In this case, not only 149 crew members would have suffered, a massive explosion threatened an environmental catastrophe.

The decision to eliminate the accident was made without delay: there was no need to wait for outside help (the situation was aggravated by the secrecy of the operation), so a team of volunteers undertook to independently build a backup cooling system. The crew members coped with the task, but at the same time received a shock dose of radiation. By the time the K-19 surfaced, the 14 sailors who took the hit were already showing symptoms of radiation sickness. Eight of them subsequently died suddenly.

After the accident, it took three years to repair the K-19. In the winter of 1963, the K-19 returned to service, took up combat duty. It seemed that the hard times were over, the sailors were successfully serving on the formidable cruiser. However, six years later, the fate of the entire crew was again in the balance of death: during the next exercises, the Soviet cruiser collided with the American submarine USS Gato. The Americans mistook the K-19 maneuver for a ram, and they already wanted to open aimed fire, but the tragedy was prevented by the captain of the torpedo compartment, who understood the situation.

Fate prepared for the K-19 crew one more terrible test. On February 24, 1972, a severe fire broke out on the submarine, engulfing 8 and compartments. 26 crew members and two rescuers who came to the rescue were killed - some from carbon monoxide poisoning, others burned to death. After the fire was extinguished, the boat was towed to the base, but the story did not end there. A dozen more sailors for 23 days were in those compartments that were located behind the burned ones, their evacuation was impossible due to the high concentration of carbon monoxide. Fortunately, these sailors managed to survive.

The history of the K-19 ended in 1990 when it was finally decommissioned. In the 2000s, the sailors who served on the cruiser turned to the country's leadership with a proposal not to dispose of the ship, but to open a memorial museum on it in memory of the combat past of the K-19, of the exploits that were performed on board this submarine, in memory of those who, at the cost of their own lives, saved their comrades. However, the requests were not heard: the K-19 was cut into scrap metal, and only a part of the cabin remained as a keepsake, erected as a monument at the entrance of the Nerpa shipyard.

In the entire history of the fleet, eight cases are known when accidents on nuclear submarines led to their death. ...

The famous Soviet submarine K-19, whose history is one of the most iconic in the Russian fleet, is known for its unhappy fate. On it in different years there were many incidents that took the lives of sailors.

Fame K-19

What is the most famous submarine K-19? The history of this ship will be remembered by the modern masses thanks to the 2002 feature film starring Harrison Ford. This picture under the same name "K-19" bypassed most of the world's cinemas and reminded of how close the world was to. Nevertheless, the film, due to its format, did not show everything that happened on the ship.

K-19, the story of which would not fit into several Hollywood action films, began in 1958. Then the Soviet government decided that it was time to create the first nuclear missile carrier in the fleet. It could become an important argument in the aggravated dispute with the United States. Much of the submarine's service took place during the Cold War. Due to the fact that the K-19 almost became the cause of the radiation leak, it was unofficially called "Hiroshima".

Submarine project

When the submarine K-19 existed only on paper, it became clear to Soviet designers that this project would become a stage in the next race with the United States. In the same 1958, the American authorities created a secret bureau, which was developing a similar vessel "George Washington".

The Soviet engineers were rushed no less. On October 17, 1958, work began on the creation of the first nuclear submarine in the USSR. Shipbuilders and designers worked on the project around the clock without interruption. The process was continuous. Three shifts worked, which were laid out 24 hours 7 days a week. One such "stream" could have involved three thousand people. The overly hasty preparation of the vessel made itself felt very quickly. A fire broke out while painting the holds at the shipyard. Two workers were killed.

Failure to create

The unfortunate submarine K-19, whose history is literally teeming with various incidents, ran into trouble again during the first launch of the reactor. A technological error led to the fact that the pressure inside the chamber exceeded the safety standards by a factor of two. It was only by sheer coincidence that no one received a lethal dose of radiation.

In addition, the designers allowed a slight list of the vessel in one degree. This defect led to the fact that when the K-19 submarine sank into the water, it almost capsized. It had to be lifted in emergency mode within a matter of seconds. During this operation, the nuclear missile carrier almost rammed the neighboring ships that were participating in the tests.

Political importance

Later, experts argued among themselves about whether it was worth rushing so much with the creation of a submarine. In this case, professional arguments were in the background. The decisive word was for the politicians. The communist leadership wanted to get K-19 as soon as possible in order to have an argument in their dispute with the United States. Potential operational errors in Moscow were of little interest. They hoped that the defects could be corrected already during the use of the submarine.

Some designers and military experts justified this point of view from a professional perspective. When it comes to ships of a new generation (such as the Soviet submarine K-19), it is impossible to predict all possible complications on paper. Errors in this case have to be corrected already upon their presence.

First incident at sea

K-19 was launched on October 11, 1959. A few months earlier, it received a similar "George Washington" at its disposal. However, at the beginning of operation it was better than the Soviet one. She had a higher radius of destruction, more atomic missiles were placed on it. The shells on the George Washington were several times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

1961, on the day when Yuri Gagarin triumphantly visited space, a tragedy almost struck in the Barents Sea, from which the whole world could suffer. The K-19 sailed very close to the Nautilus submarine, which belonged to the United States and was conducting reconnaissance off the Soviet coast. Collisions were avoided at the last moment. However, due to a sharp maneuver, the submarine collided with the bottom. The ship was not damaged only by a happy coincidence.

Breakdown in the reactor

In the summer of the same 1961, a tragedy happened on K-19, which became known many years later, after the declassification of documents. Then the submarine took part in naval exercises in the Arctic. The reactor broke down, causing some of the compartments to be in the radiation zone. The crew had to get rid of the defect without special means and tools. The ship was saved from destruction, but some sailors paid with their own lives. They were exposed to radiation and died in terrible agony.

The consequences of an accident in a bad combination of circumstances would be dire. The entire World Ocean could be contaminated. And the reason for this would be just one submarine K-19. The story of that incident during the exercise turned out to be classified. The deceased received state awards.

Return of the submarine to service

After the tragedy of 1961, the Soviet military department decided to sink the K-19. The history of the submarine in such a short time was already full of all sorts of misfortunes, and its hull was hit by radiation. However, at this critical moment the crew had their say. The sailors themselves volunteered to deactivate the emergency jet compartment and remove the dangerous warheads. People worked in unbearable conditions. Many later died just like their comrades during the incident in the Arctic. The higher officials turned a blind eye to the situation. The military wanted to save a strategically important ship at any cost, regardless of casualties.

When the K-19 was finally washed, she was taken to her home port. However, on the way, the unexpected happened again. Not far from Severodvinsk, the boat was aground. The stuck ship ran out of energy and the generators sat down. The crew was running out of food. The fleet had to carry out another rescue operation. After those events, the old missile compartment was sunk near Novaya Zemlya. The submarine K-19 (its dimensions, for the most part) have undergone changes and modernization. Only after 1961, she was able to fire from a submerged position due to the increase in the firing range.

Colliding with Gato

For some time, the fate of the K-19 submarine did not cause concern. In 1967, she was recognized as the best ship in the service of the Command and the sailors felt that the misfortunes associated with the K-19 were left behind. However, this was not the case.

On November 15, 1969, on a training mission in the Barents Sea, a Soviet submarine collided with an American "sister". Gato conducted reconnaissance off the coast of the USSR. The collision was accidental, but the Americans decided that the Russians had deliberately rammed. Then the commander of the torpedo compartment on Gato gave the order to open fire on the enemy. The Americans also had a nuclear warhead. A deadly battle could have caused the Third World War. However, the captain of the entire ship did not dare to attack the neighbor and ordered to turn back. The catastrophe was avoided.

Fire in 1972

On February 24, 1972, the ship's crew noticed smoke in the ninth compartment. A fire soon broke out. Sailors from other parts of the ship heard muffled screams and coughs. The sinking of the K-19 submarine was closer than ever. According to the rules, sailors could not open a compartment covered by fire in order to avoid a fire throughout the ship. The sealed part of the K-19 turned into a furnace in which it was not possible to survive. Despite the precautionary measures of the crew, the fire still began to spread throughout the submarine.

Then the captain of Kulibaba gave the order to surface. It was a tough decision. Now the Americans could spot the K-19. The history of the submarine, photos, main characteristics - all this was in Washington. However, even there they could not imagine that the unlucky ship would again find itself in trouble without ever entering the battle.

Crew rescue

The incident was reported to Moscow. A few hours later, the party leaders learned about the fire. It was decided to contact the submarine only once a day in order to minimize the chance of the Americans intercepting the message. At the same time, eight auxiliary vessels went to the rescue of the K-19.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that a storm was raging in the area where the submarine was located. The storm did not allow the arriving ships to help K-19 for three weeks. Rescuers tried to tow her. However, the ropes required for this operation were torn each time.

Meanwhile, the underwater crew tried to do everything to survive. His other task was to prevent the spread of fire to the missile compartment. If this happened, then the detonation of atomic warheads would occur. On the third day, the command room received a call from an emergency telephone in one of the closed compartments. The sailors who were locked up there survived. Nobody hoped for that anymore. However, now it was necessary to help isolated people. They could simply suffocate. The air was let through a pipe, which was originally intended for emergency pumping out of water.

All sailors tried not to waste their energy and not waste precious oxygen. The crew was rescued only on the 23rd day, when the weather finally calmed down. Killed 2 rescuers and 28 sailors on the submarine. After what happened in the fleet, disputes again flared up about whether it was necessary to write off the K-19. The submarine again found powerful defenders at the top who defended the nuclear submarine.

End of service

In subsequent years, the K-19 service was relatively calm. She was decommissioned in 1990. In 2003, a decision was made to dispose of the unlucky submarine. Only the felling was preserved, which is still located in the city of Snezhnogorsk, Murmansk region.

During the service, the K-19 has passed more than three hundred thousand. The vessel has conducted several combat operations and launched a total of two dozen ballistic missiles. However, despite these accomplished tasks, the K-19 is best known precisely for its numerous accidents and incidents.

They immediately took a non-disclosure receipt from the survivors for a period of 30 years. The dead were buried at night, with zinc coffins buried to a depth of 2 meters. And for those who were in the hospital on treatment for radiation sickness, for the purpose of secrecy, they wrote a diagnosis of asthenovegetative syndrome (depression). As the commander of "K-19" noted, the captain of the 1st rank Nikolay Zateev: "We turned out to be just crazy!" “Father began to make recordings in the 80s,” says AiF. Irina, daughter of Nikolai Zateev, - but he would not let me read them. He gave the folder with the manuscript to my mother and me in 1998 a few days before his death. "

Today, several dozen crew members who survived the accident survived. One of them, Yuri Filin, at that time a lieutenant engineer, told AiF: “The design of the K-19 reactor did not provide for an emergency water spill system in case of an emergency (it is necessary to cool the reactor). This system had to be tinkered with improvised means, using a welding machine. After the tragedy on our nuclear submarine, the cooling system began to be installed on all Soviet nuclear ships. "

External appearance of the K-19, re-equipped according to the 658S project. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

“In order to eliminate the accident, the sailors entered the reactor compartment with full strength and left half-dead. They began to vomit, a bloodstream oozed from under the hair roots. Their faces were swollen. We could hardly stand on our feet, "a crew member told AiF. Victor Sterlets, at the time of the accident, the foreman of the 2nd article.

Towards their

Nikolai Zateev understood that all those who passed through the reactor compartment were doomed. The task of the commander was to rescue the remaining 100-odd submariners - the radiation on the boat was growing every second, and there were 1,500 miles to the base in the North Sea.

Captain 1st Rank Nikolay Zateev. Photo: From personal archive

This meant that at 10 knots, the ship would get home in 6-7 days ... with a dead crew on board. At the same time, Zateev could not contact the shore and ask for help - the antenna of the main transmitter was out of order. Two officers lost their nerves, they began to demand from the commander to lead the boat to the nearest land area, which turned out to be the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen (in fact, it was unrealistic to save on this rocky island in the Arctic Ocean). Fearing that the sailors might be lured into a riot, Zateev ordered to throw overboard the submachine guns and pistols on the boat. He left five dumplings for himself and his assistants.

Being in the ocean without communication, thousands of kilometers from the native shore, on board a ship, where everything is poisoned by radiation, even food and fresh water supplies, the situation could be considered hopeless. And then, like a flash, a map flashed in Zateev's memory, which he had seen in the office of the commander-in-chief of the fleet. On it to the south of the place where the K-19 drifted, there were supposed to be positions of Soviet diesel submarines. “One chance in a million, but there is no other,” Zateev decides. "K-19" begins to move south, and the radio operator sends a distress signal to a spare low-power receiver with a range of about 50 miles. This went on for 10 hours.

Ten hours of hope and furious expectation, as in the famous song "Save Our Souls" by Vysotsky:

Hurry up to us!
Hear us on land
Our SOS is getting fainter, fainter
And horror cuts souls
In half ... "

As it turned out, several Soviet submarines in the vicinity heard the K-19, but only two commanders responded - Jean Swerbilo in and Grigory Wasser... By sending their diesel boats to the rescue of the K-19, they committed a selfless act, because violating the rules of the exercise could cost them a military career.

Veterans, members of the K-19 crew, with cadets from Yaroslavl, students of school # 50, named after one of the dead sailors of the submarine - Valery Kharitonov. Photo: AiF / Maria Pozdnyakova

From the Sverbilov ship, Zateev transmits an encrypted message to the command post of the Navy, explaining the situation and asking for permission to evacuate the crew. In response, there was a deathly silence that lasted 5 (!) Hours. Only once was it interrupted by the advice to feed the irradiated sailors ... with fresh fruit, which, of course, were not on the submarine.

Taking responsibility for himself, Zateev evacuated the crew. Those heavily affected by the radiation were transported to another submarine on a stretcher. The clothes of the submariners from the "K-19" so fonile that they had to completely undress, throwing everything overboard. Zateev, who also had to leave his clothes, greatly regretted that he had not saved the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, presented by his mother. He was the last to leave the boat. "K-19" was taken in tow.

Six of the 8 sailors who died immediately after the accident were buried in Moscow at the Kuzminskoye cemetery. One of them, sailor Valery Kharitonov, is from Yaroslavl. In this city, school No. 50 is named after him, in which there is a naval cadet class. Photo: AiF / Maria Pozdnyakova

At the base in Severomorsk, people from a special department were engaged in simultaneous work with doctors Zateev and his subordinates. They were interrogated right in the hospital. Academician Aleksandrov, the project manager for the construction of nuclear submarines, saved the commander from the tribunal. He reported Khrushchev that the crew accomplished the feat - keeping the nuclear submarine cruiser.

Also, keep in mind that the K-19 carried R-13 ballistic missiles equipped with 1.4-megaton warheads, each of which could destroy part of a large city. It is scary to imagine what could have happened if the boat accident had not been brought under control. And the day of the incident itself was symbolic - July 4, US Independence Day. In the realities of the Cold War, Americans could imagine anything. What if they decided to answer? ..

Captain 1st Rank Vladimir Pogorelov, who survived the accident, despite his advanced age, came from Kiev to Moscow to honor the memory of his comrades. Photo: AiF / Maria Pozdnyakova

But no one was going to give the title of Hero even to those who soon died from radiation. Nor were they going to admit that a design flaw led to the accident. “With all the obvious shortcomings, the K-19 could not but go to sea in the summer of 1961,” the historian and chief of the K-19 crew tells AiF. Alexander Nikishin.“This was our response to the United States and their first missile submarine, George Washington. The presence of this American boat in the World Ocean did not let the leadership of the USSR sleep. The deadlines for the completion of the K-19 were adjusted, regardless of the reality. "

Marine brotherhood of veterans "K-19" Photo: AiF / Maria Pozdnyakova

Tenacious

Nikolai Zateev gave his first interview about the tragedy in the 90s. Before the Hollywood film about "K-19", where the role of the commander was played by Harrison Ford, he did not live. “I watched the film with tears,” says Irina. - Although a lot is invented there. The Americans did not fly to our submarine in a helicopter, they did not even suspect that the K-19 was there. "

After the accident, they wanted to write off the boat, but the updated crew did not allow it to be done - risking their health, the sailors washed the submarine from radioactive dust by a centimeter. And the "K-19" again went to sea, although it was not without an emergency: in 1969 she collided with an American submarine, and in 1972 a fire on board took the lives of 28 submariners. However, when the K-19 is spoken of as unlucky, the submariners object: "She got out of situations in which other submarines were drowning." In total, "K-19" has traveled 332 thousand miles - more than the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

The boat was scrapped in 2003. The enthusiasts managed to save the wheelhouse in the hope that the K-19 museum would be created, because such stories are not scattered about.

The daughter of the commander of "K-19" Irina Zateeva next to her father's grave. Photo: AiF In the first two weeks after the accident, 8 submariners died from the consequences of a high dose of radiation: Lieutenant-Commander Yuri Povstyev, Lieutenant Boris Korchilov, Chief Petty Officer Boris Ryzhikov, Petty Officer 1st Class Yuri Ordochkin, Petty Officer 2nd Class Yevgeny Koshenkov, sailor Semyon Penkov, sailor Nikolai Savkin, sailor Valery Kharitonov. And on August 1, 1970, Captain 3rd Rank Anatoly Kozyrev passed away. The rest of the crew, who also received radiation doses many times higher than the permissible ones, underwent treatment for radiation sickness for many months.