Underwater ram
After the introduction of NATO ships into the Black Sea, the half-century Cold War, after a short pause, seems to have continued again. But the Cold War in the offices of politicians is one thing, and the Cold War in the ocean, in the compartments of submarines, is completely different ...
Americans did not say a word about this collision. Ours were silent too. So it is almost forgotten. But that old story could turn into a tragedy no less than the misfortune of the Kursk. Actually, after the death of "Kursk", the few who are alive now spoke about her ...
So, the fall of 1974. The height of the Cold War in the ocean. Northern Fleet. Western Faces. 1st flotilla nuclear submarines.
Multipurpose - torpedo nuclear submarine K-306 under the command of captain 1 of the rank of E. Guriev reached the shores of England with a special task. It was necessary to secretly approach the exit from Clyde Brit Bay, where American nuclear missile boats of the “George Washington” type were based, to wait for one of them to exit and record its noise “portrait”. That is, to do everything the same as the American submariners did in relation to our new submarines.
Captain 1 of the rank of reserve Alexander Viktorovich Kuzmin, who went to K-306 as the assigned commander of the navigational unit:
Captain first rank Kuzmin A.V. He heads the All-Ukrainian Association of Veteran Submariners. (Official photo from http://ex-submariners.org.ua)
- Actually, we prepared thoroughly for that combat service. The most experienced divisional navigator Anatoly Soprunov also walked with us, whom all young navigators called Uncle Toll.
Soprunov Anatoly Nikolaevich. In those days, the captain of the third rank. Photo 1967 Vidyaevo (from the family archive).
They also gave us for the navigation of the navigator watches the assistant navigation commander from the 705 boat of the Bogatyryov project. Only four navigators, along with staff navigator Lieutenant Vinogradov.
Clyde Brit Bay, we got quite safely. Except for one incident, about which only a few people knew. A few days before the collision with the American boat, our "swallow" touched the ground.
Here it should be noted that “touching the ground”, no matter how soft it was, is considered one of the most serious navigational incidents in the fleet. And although the "touch" was indeed a touch, not a blow to the ground, but the soul of the commander, navigator and boatswain-helmsman scrubbed the cats. In the database for the "touch" will have to answer in full. If they knew what lies ahead of them!
- And in front of us, our Soviet RZK was waiting - the reconnaissance ship, which tumbled around in the area for more than one week, had already decayed on the tunic officers. - Kuzmin continued the story. - But they waited for their high point: November 4 from the Gulf went on combat patrol by the American "strategist" Nathaniel Green with a bunch of Polaris missiles on board. Well, we are most welcome. Further our work. In order to give us contact with the target, with the control panel we had to give us a conditional signal: throw three noise grenades into the water. They dropped them ...
Everyone acted as prescribed by the governing documents: RZK gave us a contact, according to the instruction - by the explosions of three grenades ... And since the depth was relatively small - 86 meters, powerful sound reverberation went. After each explosion of the grenade, the sonar screen flashed for almost a minute. Thus, K-306 went blind for almost four minutes. As the boats walked towards each other and almost at the same depth, they collided. K-306 hit Nathaniel Green in the stern area, damaging the two mines to the Americans. Fortunately, there were no human sacrifices on either side.
The reason for this emergency can be considered the imperfection of the technology of transfer of contact. The rules were developed in the offices without real depths, hydrology and other conditions. No one could have imagined that the boat could become deaf and blind for a few minutes. Later, the instruction was refined. But if the reconnaissance system had a ZPS system - a submarine communication, the contact could be passed to us absolutely silently. The fault of the crew in the incident was not.
The former foreman of the torpedo team of the retired midshipman Mikhail Mikhailovich Smolinsky was the closest to the point of impact.
- According to the broadcast "Battle Alarm!" Torpedo attack! ”, Ran to the battle post. By the edge of my ear I caught the acoustics report - “I don’t hear anything!” And then Tolya Korsakov, the head of the underwater acoustics team, gloomily dropped: “Now let's face ...”
Hit!! We vmazali American in board. I looked - and on the starboard racks the upper torpedoes came out of the hooks and twitched to the back covers of the torpedo tubes ... This is the end! And then - a miracle: all the torpedoes returned to their lodgements and hooks themselves snapped! Someone strongly prayed for us for us ...
The broadcast barked: "Look around in the compartments!"
I turned on the mnemonic. And then I heard, and then I saw: water flows into the first compartment - into our compartment!
Quickly figured out what was happening - they shut off the ventilation valves of the torpedo tubes, and stopped the flow. But trim on the nose is growing. Degrees for 17 has passed! It is difficult to stand. And in my head there is only one thing - the ground is near, now let's go. And here is another miracle: our mechanic - the captain of the 2 rank, Vladimir Katalevsky, blew through the nasal tanks, the trim began to move away ...
A.V. Kuzmin:
- Our commander of the warhead-5 was on top - worked in automatic mode: without waiting for commands, blew the ballast in the bow group of tanks. You could say the ship saved us all. Death flashed like a bullet at the temple. What is there a bullet! There are five torpedoes with SBP (nuclear filling) swept past the temple. Torpedo fool bubble well done!
M.M. Smolinsky:
“And I don’t take my eyes off the mnemonic schemes and see with horror that the torpedo tubes with SBP - nuclear weapons - were filled with water. Sodden. Our main weapon. My first thought: well, everything ... now the handcuffs are secured. In places to stand with posts removed ...
A.V. Kuzmin:
- American SSBN was forced to surface. We followed the periscope and immediately saw it. The Nathaniel Green was sitting in the water with a big roll on the starboard. Confused sailors climbed onto the hull, the commander from the bridge tried to understand what had happened. It was necessary to photograph the picture through the periscope, but there was no film in the navigator's camera. I had to take a pencil and quickly sketch ... The American SSBN has the tail number 636.
We also looked around in the compartments. In addition to tarnished torpedoes with SBP, there seemed to be no other problems. One could only imagine what our nose looks like, crumpled to the point ... Later it turned out that all of our torpedo tubes were damaged, except for one. The Americans had their main ballast tanks pierced.
So, “Nathaniel Green, with all his bunch of“ Polarises ”, did not go to a given area ...
The continuation of this story I heard in St. Petersburg from the former boatswainer K-306 of the midshipman of the reserve Nikolai Molchanov. / Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of Nikolai Molchanov. In St. Petersburg I will photograph. This is the best boatswain of the Northern Fleet, a graduate of Vice-Admiral Yevgeny Dmitrievich Chernov, a submariner with 33-year experience.
- We have seen, heard, led this “Nathaniel Green” right up to the point of immersion. So that we would not be spotted, we came closer to our reconnaissance ship, which kept to our right - we went under the cover of its noises. This is what played a fatal role.
The acoustics report: "The boat is sinking."
And here with RZK gave a signal to transfer the contact. We didn't need it at all. We have already kept in touch. But they didn’t know about this at the RZK, and did what the instructions required ... The acoustics didn’t even have time to take off the headphones when the first explosion thundered. We were too close to RZK, and therefore the explosion sounded especially loud, it was heard in all compartments. And the acoustics of the ears went blood.
We did not immediately understand what had happened. Push, pretty soft. But the depth suddenly went right away. The dial with meter marks enveloped like mad. Fell to 29 meters ...
The commander gave the command: "Bubble in the middle!"
I noticed that the dip to the depth slowed down dramatically. Then they stopped ...
Immediately filled the middle and surfaced under the periscope.
The weather was good, and the Americans also surfaced - in a positional position.
Guriev later told me: I see the commander “Nathaniel Green” in the periscope, people in sweaters run around the body, run and look around, cannot understand anything.
We left the periscope depth. From the compartments of the reports - all examined, no comments. All units work. They went another hundred meters, and the commander began to prepare a radiogram about the collision.
Returned home at a depth of 40 meters to reduce the pressure on the rear covers of the torpedo tubes.
I must say that my interlocutor at that time was considered the best boatswain if not the entire Northern Fleet, then the 1 fleet of nuclear submarines for sure. Could hold a depth in centimeter 3-4! Up to three points of the sea under the lenses of the periscope kept the depth. There was an intuition in the fingers. Could control a submarine in reverse. In order to reduce the breaker behind the raised periscope, the commander sometimes dropped the turnovers to zero, and then the boat went on inertia. Michman Molchanov knew how to control the rudders of the depth and in such an extremely difficult mode. He held the depth, squeezing the arms of the manipulators, so that the fingers became numb ...
A.V. Kuzmin:
- We returned home two weeks. "Nathaniel", something that - lay on the opposite course and here it is - the base. We had to go a good two thousand miles. Soon it became clear that the trouble was that the hydroacoustical antennas were severely damaged by a blow to someone else’s side. We went deaf on the whole starboard. But we foiled our entry into the military service of the foe.
On the approach to Litsa, the commander of the division, Rear Admiral Yevgeny Dmitrievich Chernov, came to meet us on the boat. He walked around the boat, examined his nose, which was almost flattened. I went up to the ship, talked to the commander and, on the whole, reacted very calmly to the emergency. As an experienced sailor, Chernov understood perfectly well that there were unforeseen situations at sea.
The special torpedoes were unloaded in a wet way: they removed the breakwater guards and pulled them out. The tadpoles arrived and, silently, without any complaints, took them away.
The flotilla commander ordered an emergency investigation. Commander K-306 captain 1 rank Eduard V. Guriev was severely reprimanded. Just in case. And the American crew, as we later learned, awarded the “golden dolphin” signs for their courage. And so always - who kicks, who dolphins.
But we, the crew, as shown by further investigation, were not to blame for anything.
It was the best crew, not only in the division, but also in the entire Northern Fleet. Seven sailors were qualified as masters of military affairs. All team foremen are professional midshipmen. A crew like this - Captain 1 rank Viktor Khramtsov, later Vice-Admiral.
The fate of the participants of this underwater ram was different. Neither the then commander of the ship Eduard Guriev (he died in the 2007 year and was buried in Sosnovy Bor near St. Petersburg) nor the valiant mechanical engineer V.Katalevsky are already alive.
The commander of the turbine group Veniamin Azarev went to the United States to his daughter, who married an American. There he found the former commander of "Nathaniel Green". But he never admitted to the collision.
The captain of the 1 rank, Alexander Kuzmin, who went out on that trip as a assigned navigator (he himself served on the K-513 nuclear-powered ship), later became the commander of the world's largest nuclear submarine of the Shark type.
Today he lives in Kiev and successfully heads the All-Ukrainian Association of Submariner Veterans. In the seas and oceans he was lucky on adventures. Our newspaper has already talked about them.
Unfortunately, my father, the captain of the first rank, Anatoly Nikolaevich Soprunov, passed away. But graduates of the navigational faculty VVMUP them. Leninist Komsomol members remember their astronavigation teacher with a kind word.
Reference Information:
3 November 1959 of the year was approved the technical requirements for a new torpedo nuclear submarine with a displacement of 2 000 tons and a depth of not less than 300 m. The main designer of the project was G. N. Chernyshev.
K-306 "Ersh" NATO classification "Viktor-I":
Onboard: 604
Pledged: 20.03.1968
Launch: 04.06.1969
Entering the Red Banner Northern Fleet: 04.12.1969
Entered: 5 December 1969 of the year.
January 9 The 1970 of the year is incorporated into the CSF.
It was originally listed as the KPLP, and on July 25, the 1977 of the year was assigned to the BPL subclass.
In the period from September 25 1979 to January 19, 1983 of the year on the Nerpa shipyard in Olenya Bay (Vyuzhny village) underwent an average repair.
24 June 1991 was excluded from the Navy due to delivery to the OFI for dismantling and disposal, and in Gremikha Bay (Ostrovnaya) put on a joke.
3 November 1959 of the year was approved the technical requirements for a new torpedo nuclear submarine with a displacement of 2 000 tons and a depth of not less than 300 m. The main designer of the project was G. N. Chernyshev.
K-306 "Ersh" NATO classification "Viktor-I":
Onboard: 604
Pledged: 20.03.1968
Launch: 04.06.1969
Entering the Red Banner Northern Fleet: 04.12.1969
Entered: 5 December 1969 of the year.
January 9 The 1970 of the year is incorporated into the CSF.
It was originally listed as the KPLP, and on July 25, the 1977 of the year was assigned to the BPL subclass.
In the period from September 25 1979 to January 19, 1983 of the year on the Nerpa shipyard in Olenya Bay (Vyuzhny village) underwent an average repair.
24 June 1991 was excluded from the Navy due to delivery to the OFI for dismantling and disposal, and in Gremikha Bay (Ostrovnaya) put on a joke.
Information