nuclear submarine disasters

Nuclear

Submarine

Disasters

andREFORMS RAMIFICATIONS

Christopher Higgins

CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERSPhiladelphia

Nuclear

Submarine

Disasters

CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERS

Editor in Chief Sally CheneyAssociate Editor in Chief Kim ShinnersProduction Manager Pamela LoosArt Director Sara DavisProduction Editor Diann Grasse

Staff for NUCLEAR SUBMARINE DISASTERS

Senior Editor LeeAnne GelletlyAssociate Art Director/Designer Takeshi TakahashiLayout 21st Century Publishing and Communications, Inc.

© 2002 by Chelsea House Publishers, a subsidiary of Haights Cross Communications. All rights reserved. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

First Printing

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

The Chelsea House World Wide Web address ishttp://www.chelseahouse.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Higgins, Chris.Nuclear submarine disasters / Chris Higgins.

p. cm. — (Great disasters, reforms and ramifications)Summary: Presents a history of disasters involving nuclear

submarines, including the Thresher, the Scorpion, and theKursk, and explores how the investigation of these accidentscan lead to safety reform.

ISBN 0-7910-6329-1 (alk. paper)1. Nuclear submarines—Accidents—Juvenile literature.

[1. Nuclear submarines—Accidents.] I. Title. II. Series.

V857.5 .H54 2001910.4'52—dc21

2001047238

Frontispiece: A U.S. nuclear submarine travelsalong the ocean surface. Since the first nuclearsubmarine was launched in 1954, there havebeen a number of underwater catastrophes,often resulting in the loss of entire vessels andtheir crews.

Dedication: To my wife, Sima; thanks for puttingup with seven months of submarines.

Contents

Introduction Jill McCaffrey 7

On the Bottom 11

Iron Coffins, Pigboats, and FBMs 25

Thresher 39

The SUBSAFE Program 57

Scorpion 65

Russian Disasters 77

Kursk 91

An Accident Can Be the Impetus for Reform 103

Chronology 112Further Reading 114Index 115

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3

4

5

6

7

8

THE APOLLO 1 AND CHALLENGER DISASTERS

BHOPAL

THE BLACK DEATH

THE BLIZZARD OF 1888

THE BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA

THE CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER

THE DUST BOWL

THE EXPLOSION OF TWA FLIGHT 800

THE EXXON VALDEZ

THE GALVESTON HURRICANE

THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE

THE GREAT PLAGUE AND FIRE OF LONDON

THE HINDENBURG

THE HOLOCAUST

THE INFLUENZA PANDEMIC OF 1918

THE IRISH POTATO FAMINE

THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD

LOVE CANAL

THE MUNICH OLYMPICS

NUCLEAR SUBMARINE DISASTERS

THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING

PEARL HARBOR

THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS

THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE OF 1906

THE SPANISH INQUISITION

THE STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1929

TERRORISM

THREE MILE ISLAND

THE TITANIC

THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST COMPANYFIRE OF 1911

THE WACO SIEGE

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING

andREFORMS RAMIFICATIONS

7

Introduction

Jill McCaffreyNational Chairman

Armed Forces Emergency ServicesAmerican Red Cross

Disasters have always been a source of fascination and awe. Tales ofa great flood that nearly wipes out all life are among humanity’soldest recorded stories, dating at least from the second millen-

nium B.C., and they appear in cultures from the Middle East to the ArcticCircle to the southernmost tip of South America and the islands of Polynesia. Typically gods are at the center of these ancient disaster tales—which is perhaps not too surprising, given the fact that the tales originatedduring a time when human beings were at the mercy of natural forces theydid not understand.

To a great extent, we still are at the mercy of nature, as anyone whoreads the newspapers or watches nightly news broadcasts can attest.

INTRODUCTION8

Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, wildfires, and floods continue toexact a heavy toll in suffering and death, despite our considerableknowledge of the workings of the physical world. If science hasoffered only limited protection from the consequences of natural disasters, it has in no way diminished our fascination with them. Perhaps that’s because the scale and power of natural disasters forceus as individuals to confront our relatively insignificant place in thephysical world and remind us of the fragility and transience of ourlives. Perhaps it’s because we can imagine ourselves in the midst of dire circumstances and wonder how we would respond. Perhapsit’s because disasters seem to bring out the best and worst instincts of humanity: altruism and selfishness, courage and cowardice, generosity and greed.

As one of the national chairmen of the American Red Cross, ahumanitarian organization that provides relief for victims of disasters,I have had the privilege of seeing some of humanity’s best instincts. I have witnessed communities pulling together in the face of trauma;I have seen thousands of people answer the call to help total strangersin their time of need.

Of course, helping victims after a tragedy is not the only way, oreven the best way, to deal with disaster. In many cases planning andpreparation can minimize damage and loss of life—or even avoid adisaster entirely. For, as history repeatedly shows, many disasters are caused not by nature but by human folly, shortsightedness, andunethical conduct. For example, when a land developer wanted tocreate a lake for his exclusive resort club in Pennsylvania’s AlleghenyMountains in 1880, he ignored expert warnings and cut corners inreconstructing an earthen dam. On May 31, 1889, the dam gave way,unleashing 20 million tons of water on the towns below. The Johns-town Flood, the deadliest in American history, claimed more than2,200 lives. Greed and negligence would figure prominently in theTriangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1911. Deplorable conditions inthe garment sweatshop, along with a failure to give any thought to thesafety of workers, led to the tragic deaths of 146 persons. Technologyoutstripped wisdom only a year later, when the designers of the

9INTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTION

luxury liner Titanic smugly declared their state-of-the-art ship“unsinkable,” seeing no need to provide lifeboat capacity for everyoneonboard. On the night of April 14, 1912, more than 1,500 passengersand crew paid for this hubris with their lives after the ship collidedwith an iceberg and sank. But human catastrophes aren’t always the unforeseen consequences of carelessness or folly. In the 1940s theleaders of Nazi Germany purposefully and systematically set out toexterminate all Jews, along with Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentallyill, and other so-called undesirables. More recently terrorists have targeted random members of society, blowing up airplanes and build-ings in an effort to advance their political agendas.

The books in the GREAT DISASTERS: REFORMS AND RAMIFICA-TIONS series examine these and other famous disasters, natural andhuman made. They explain the causes of the disasters, describe indetail how events unfolded, and paint vivid portraits of the peoplecaught up in dangerous circumstances. But these books are more thanjust accounts of what happened to whom and why. For they place thedisasters in historical perspective, showing how people’s attitudes andactions changed and detailing the steps society took in the wake ofeach calamity. And in the end, the most important lesson we can learnfrom any disaster—as well as the most fitting tribute to those who suffered and died—is how to avoid a repeat in the future.

On the

Bottom

We won’t hold out for 24 hours.

—from a note found on the recovered body of a Kursk sailor

On Saturday, August 12, 2000, the Russian Northern Fleet washolding a rare 50-ship training exercise in the icy waters of theBarents Sea. Located north of Russia, far from the capital city of

Moscow, the Barents Sea adjoins the Scandinavian Peninsula containingFinland, Sweden, and Norway. A cold and unforgiving place, the seais home to numerous Northern Fleet submarines and surface-shipbases. Patrolling and training in these Arctic Circle waters has been

11

The first nuclear submarinedisaster of the 21st centuryhappened to the Russiansubmarine Kursk, seen herein a May 2000 photo takenthree months before itsank to the bottom of theBarents Sea. The disaster,which took the lives of 118 sailors, received international media atten-tion for several weeks.

1

a part of Russian defense strategy for generations.

The United States and its North Atlantic TreatyOrganization (NATO) allies have been there for just aslong, observing every Russian move and developing theirown naval defense strategies and tactics. In the event ofwar, Russian naval forces based in the Barents Sea wouldmove into the Atlantic Ocean. With the information thatthey gathered from spying on the Russian vessels duringtheir training exercises, the United States and NATOwould have a wartime edge.

The August training exercises were the biggest insome time for Russia because of budget constraints. Theprevious 10 years had been very difficult economically forthe new government. Many Russian institutions andcitizens had found it hard to make ends meet in the yearssince the end of the cold war in 1990, with the subsequentfall of communism and transition to a capitalist economy.The Russian military had to cope with budget cuts,equipment shortages, low pay, a stubborn guerrilla war inChechnya, and an erosion of the quality of its soldiers.Under communism, professional soldiers had comprisedthe Russian military, but entering the 21st century, it waslargely made up of conscripts: soldiers who are draftedinto service rather than voluntarily joining the military.Today’s typical Russian conscripts are high school–agedmen who are given uniforms and receive what amountsto basic on-the-job training.

That summer day, doubts about military competencewere probably not distracting the crew of the massivesubmarine K-149, SSGN Kursk, the pride of the Russiansubmarine fleet. SSGN is a military classification thatis an acronym for Submersible Ship carrying Guidedmissiles and powered by a Nuclear reactor. NATOclassifies ships of all navies as well, and it classified theKursk as an Oscar 2–class submarine. Powered by two

NUCLEAR SUBMARINE DISASTERS12

nuclear reactors, Kursk weighed almost 14,000 tons andcould travel at a top speed of 28 knots submerged and15 knots on the surface.

Named for the location of one of the most decisive bat-tles against the Germans during World War II, Kursk wasone of the newest ships in Russia’s submarine fleet,launched in 1995. The people of the city of Kursk lookedto the namesake vessel with pride and lovingly sent theirsons to serve aboard the submarine. They also sent food.In times of both peace and war, submariners have one ofthe most dangerous jobs in the world, and naviesacknowledge this by providing sub crews with the bestfood possible. Since Russia’s budget crunch had cut downon the amount of food available to the navy, civilianfamilies of crewmen often stepped in to fill the gap.

Kursk was more than one and a half football fields inlength at the keel, or bottom, and about half the width ofa football field at the beam. It was built with a doublehull that was robust enough to withstand a torpedo attackfrom its natural enemy, an American Los Angeles–classnuclear-attack submarine. In the event of war, the doublehull would give Kursk a chance to complete its primarymission: Sink an enemy aircraft carrier and as much ofthe carrier’s task force as possible.

On the morning of August 12, Kursk was test-firingtorpedoes and participating in training exercises in conjunc-tion with other ships. American, British, and Norwegiansubmarines and surface ships were in the area monitoringthe activities. Kursk was probably carrying its full comple-ment of 24 cruise missiles plus 28 torpedoes and perhaps afew mines, as well. According to various news reports, itwas not carrying any nuclear warheads. At 505 feet long,59 feet wide, and 29 feet high, Kursk had more than enoughroom to pack on board all of its potent weapons and itscrew of 113, plus 5 extra observers for a total of 118.

13ON THE BOTTOM

Kursk had completed one torpedo launch that day andwas preparing to fire another salvo. Captain GennadiLyachin brought the vessel to a periscope depth ofapproximately 60 feet. He probably looked for a target bypeering through the scope, then ordered his crew toprepare to fire the weapon.

The executive officer would have taken over fromthere. He and other members of the control roomweapons crew would have fed information on the target’slocation into computers, which would have come up witha “solution,” or compass bearing indicating the directionthat the torpedo should travel and its proper depth andspeed. (The term solution refers to the answer to the com-plicated geometry problem that crewmen face: how to hita moving or stationary target on or beneath the surfacefrom a submarine that may also be moving from a loca-tion on or beneath the surface.) After the weapons crewentered the solution information into the computers con-trolling the torpedo, they would confirm the settings, andthe executive officer would then inform Captain Lyachinthat the weapon was ready to fire.

It is uncertain whether Captain Lyachin ever heardthe words “Solution set, Captain,” indicating that the tor-pedo was ready. Suddenly, at 11:28:27 A.M., an explosiontore through the torpedo room in the bow, or front, of thesubmarine. Captain Lyachin did not send an SOS orlaunch the emergency beacon. In fact, nothing was everheard from Kursk.

After the explosion, the sub began a slow descent,angling down at the bow, toward the bottom of the BarentsSea. It is likely that the underwater explosion killed orinjured many men in the forward spaces of the ship. Sur-vivors would have immediately emptied the water fromthe vessel’s ballast tanks to try to bring the submarine to thesurface. (Ballast, or weight, allows the submarine to dive;


when ballast tanks are emptied, compressed air replacesthe water, making the vessel buoyant.)

Flames probably broke out immediately inside thesub and water began pouring into the torpedo roomthrough cracked piping or through a breach in the seal ofthe torpedo room escape hatch. The Russian crew wouldhave quickly donned emergency gear: protective clothingand masks to help the men breathe while fighting theheat, smoke, and toxic gases of a fire.

Because fire presents a huge and especially difficultproblem aboard a submarine, all submariners undergoextensive training to fight such catastrophes. A sub-mariner cannot, of course, just open a hatch and jumpoverboard if all is lost—opening a hatch beneath the

15ON THE BOTTOM

Gennadi Lyachin, com-mander of the Kursk,salutes other Russianofficials upon returningfrom a trip to theMediterranean Sea inOctober 1999. The following year, Lyachin,along with the rest ofhis crew, died in theKursk disaster.

16 NUCLEAR SUBMARINE DISASTERS

A Russian technician

inspects a torpedo on board a nuclear subma

rine of the Oscar class,

the same class to which

the Kursk belonged. An explosion in the torpedo

room of the Kursk sent

the submarine 350 feet

to the sea floor below.

surface would doom the occupants of a sub to drowning.

And a fire can quickly use up the limited supply of oxygen,

causing death by asphyxiation or smoke inhalation for the

submariners. Furthermore, if fire occurs in a crucial com

ponent of a sub, it could prevent the vessel from rising.

Although the crew could survive a soft landing on a sandy

sea floor, rescue in such a situation could occur only in

shallow coastal waters-and most of the time submarines

travel in stretches of the ocean where ocean depth is mea

sured in miles, not feet. Water pressure would eventually

crush a sinking submarine flat if it descended beyond

what is known as its crush depth. Most nuclear subs have

a crush depth of between 700 and 3000 feet.

A fire requires a quick response and an emergencytrip to the surface. If a fire did break out on Kursk, itprobably grew larger when a second explosion occurredtwo minutes later. In Norway, seismologists—technicianswho normally record the vibrations of earthquakes—registered an explosion that day in the Barents Sea mea-suring 3.5 on the Richter scale—the size of a smallearthquake. (U.S., British, and Norwegian ships in thearea also noted the two explosions. According to numer-ous news reports, sonar operators listening in had to tearoff their headsets to avoid damaging their ears becausethe blasts were so loud.) Scientists later theorized that thisexplosion had the force of about two tons of TNT andwould have killed anyone still alive in the torpedo roomand killed or disabled most of the men in the forwardpart of the ship. As divers would later discover, theexplosion also blew a hole through the hull of the ship,exposing the torpedo room to the sea, and effectivelyending the life of Kursk.

Water poured through the gaping wound of thetorpedo room, drowning crewmen, drenching elec-tronic equipment, and crunching bulkheads. Eventstranspired so quickly that the men had no chance toclose the watertight hatches that would have sealed thebreached compartment. As the ship sank deeper, waterpressure increased as well, further hindering efforts tostop the influx of water. The weight of the water flow-ing into the ship would have counteracted any blowingof the ballast tanks.

As more water entered the ship, its downward angleincreased, sinking it faster and faster as more spacesflooded. Additional equipment probably failed and moremen died—drowned, burned to death, or crippled by therising air pressure as water poured in and compressed theremaining air. After the radio space flooded, survivors

17ON THE BOTTOM

would not have been able to radio emergency messages tothe surface.

The control room appears to have quickly flooded,preventing anyone from using the escape pod located inthe sail of the sub. Located directly above the controlroom, the sail, commonly called the conning tower, is theraised finlike tower above the deck of a submarine thatprovides the sub’s familiar distinctive shape. Periscopesand many necessary antennae are fitted to the sail of amodern submarine, which is streamlined to cut throughthe water with no resistance. Russian submarine design-ers include an escape pod in the sails of their subs—andKursk’s pod would have saved the entire regular crew of113. However, disaster investigators believe that waterflooded the ship all the way to the nuclear reactor space inthe stern, or rear of the ship, blocking the way to the pod.In the stern, however, protective shielding meant to blockradiation effectively stopped the water, allowing thesailors in the stern to survive the explosion.

Apart from the explosions and their consequences, themen in the forward spaces and control room died for yetanother reason. All submariners train to save their ship,which for the military is more important than an individ-ual life. The doomed sailors in these areas would haveremained at their posts until the absolute last minute,doing everything in their power to keep Kursk undercontrol and bring her back to the surface, stemming theinflux of water and keeping the two nuclear reactorssafely functioning.

The survivors in the stern of Kursk rode the subma-rine as it sank to the bottom. The twin propellers contin-ued to turn, moving the ship forward as the ship plowedinto the mud. The men who could have stopped themwere dead at the control panels. Captain Lyachin’s voicewould never give the order to stop. As the sub collided


with the sea bottom, the impact would have thrown theremaining crewmen (and loose equipment) around liketoys, injuring and perhaps killing many.

The twin nuclear reactors may have functioned awhile longer, providing heat, light, electricity, fresh air,and water. However, not long after Kursk settled ontothe sea bottom, the reactors would have stopped auto-matically. The water needed to cool them had to bedrawn from ports at the keel of the ship, so once theseintakes had clogged with mud, control rods would havedropped into each radioactive core, stopping the nuclearreaction before a meltdown, or uncontrollable overheat-ing, could occur.

19ON THE BOTTOM

Because the crew of theKursk did not maintainradio contact with thesurface after the twoexplosions occurred, thecrew members’ actionsfollowing the disaster—as well as its cause—havenot been completelydetermined. This illustra-tion shows one possiblesequence of events thatmay have happened afterthe blasts.

Nuclear submarines rely on their reactors for power,propulsion, clean air, and fresh water. The submariners ofKursk were now without most of these essentials. If theship’s batteries had not been destroyed in the blast andcollision with the sea floor, electricity would have lasted alittle while; but after the batteries died, the only lightwould have come from emergency battle lanterns. Someauthorities believe that Kursk was not even carrying anybatteries due to equipment shortages.

Meanwhile, the chill of the frigid arctic waters gradu-ally crept over the ship. The unlucky men of the strickenvessel would have waited for a rescue at 350 feet belowthe Barents Sea, trying to conserve air by sitting still orlying in their bunks. The sailors would have put on anyclothing they could find and huddled in groups to staywarm. Any men who had managed to escape from thebow to the stern were probably soaked to the skin. Airquality would have been poor. As water leaked into thedry space, it would have compressed the remaining airand increased atmospheric pressure, causing pain in theeardrums and requiring the sailors to swallow to equalizethe pressure.

As time passed, the air would have become stale withcarbon dioxide (CO2), exhaled from the men, and carbonmonoxide (CO), emitted by the fire. To absorb the CO2

from the air, the sailors would have lit special candles andspread special powders on the floor. These methods wouldhave worked for a while, but nothing could have replen-ished the oxygen or gotten rid of the carbon monoxide.Eventually the air would have become so oxygen-depletedthat the candles would not stay lit. At first a lack of oxygenwould afflict the survivors with crushing headaches worsethan any migraine. Eventually the men would looseconsciousness. Finally, death would occur.

It was clear to the ships on the surface that some men


aboard Kursk had survived the explosion. Sonar equip-ment picked up tapping sounds, probably coming fromsomeone banging a hammer on the hull. The hammeringwould have helped raise the morale of the survivors, givingthem hope that the ships above them would hone in on thesound and rescue them; the act itself probably helpedwarm up the sailor doing the hammering as the temper-ature dropped. But as the air soured, at some point eventhe lightest blow of the hammer would have requiredsuperhuman strength to manage. Eventually, the sonarequipment could no longer detect any tapping.

Although they probably knew that their fate wassealed, the men of Kursk had no choice but to hope forrescue. They made no attempt to swim to the surface fora number of reasons. The submarine lay 350 feet down,and although it is possible in theory to make a swimmingescape from a submarine (called a free escape) at thisdepth, in practice the odds against success rise as thedepth increases.

The escape breathing equipment of the U.S. andBritish navies permits submariners to escape from depthsof up to 500 feet. And while the Russian navy probablyhad the same kind of equipment, it is unlikely the Kursksailors had undergone the necessary hours of practicerequired for a successful free escape. Such an attemptwould be dangerous: if the swimmers hold their breathwhile ascending, their lungs would explode as the waterpressure decreased on the way to the surface. Deathwould be instantaneous.

Another concern was “the bends,” which resultsfrom a too-rapid rise to the surface. As the swimmerascends, nitrogen, a component of air, is forced out of thebloodstream and into the body’s joints and tissues. Thebends will cause an excruciating level of pain, paralysis,and often death. Increased water pressure can also cause

21ON THE BOTTOM

oxygen narcosis, a condition in which the oxygenbreathed by the swimmer produces a dangerousdrunken feeling of euphoria. This feeling can cause eventhe most experienced diver to make a deadly mistake heor she would never make at a more shallow depth.

The bends and oxygen narcosis are both conditionsthat occur in deep waters, and both require the diver tomake a careful controlled ascent to the surface. Divers usea watch, a line with depth markers, and decompressionchambers to combat the effects of water pressure. Somedives require hours of decompression. Therefore, even ifthe Kursk sailors could have escaped on their own andreached the surface, it is likely there would have been nodecompression chamber to greet them. And with thewater temperature close to freezing, even in the event ofa successful ascent, they might well have frozen to death,


Submarine sailors trainwith escape suits, whichcrewmen can use as pro-tection during an under-water emergency exitfrom the vessel. Someexperts claimed that alack of training usingthese suits preventedmembers of the Kurskcrew from escaping from the sunken sub.

anyway. The odds were very much against escaping fromthe stricken sub.

The men of Kursk are one crew in a long line ofsubmarine sailors who have been killed in maritimedisasters. In the past 50 years no submarines have beenlost in combat, but the United States, Britain, Israel,and Russia (formerly of the USSR) have all lost at leastone submarine with all hands. Men have been dying insubmarines ever since a sailor closed the hatch on thefirst prototype and disappeared beneath the waves.

23ON THE BOTTOM

25

An illustration from anedition of Jules Verne’snovel, 20,000 LeaguesUnder the Sea, first published in 1870. Theadventure of CaptainNemo and his fantasticsub, Nautilus, inspiredthousands of readers toimagine the possibilitiesof underwater travel.

2Iron Coffins,

Pigboats,

and FBMsYou like the sea, Captain?Yes, I love it! The sea is everything. . . . In it is supreme tranquility. The sea does not

belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear oneanother to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet belowits level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears. Ah!sir, live—live in the bosom of the waters! There only is independence! There I recogniseno masters! There I am free!

—Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Captain Nemo’s submarine, Nautilus, is one of the most famousvessels to ever ply the seas of imagination or reality, and the captainand his ship have been inspiring prospective submariners for

generations. Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, first published in

1870, chronicles the adventures of Professor Aronnax,his butler Conseil, and a whaler named Ned Land.They are rescued from the ocean by the mysteriousCaptain Nemo and travel beneath the waves in hiswhalelike submarine, Nautilus. Nemo introduces hiscrew to dining on sea delicacies, smoking cigars madefrom tobacco-like sea plants, and walking on the floorof the ocean using scuba equipment. But the captainhas a darker side: he likes to ram warships with hissubmarine, sinking them with all hands.

Verne’s tale is remarkable for a number of reasons.He tells of a ship that can submerge beneath thewaves, manufacture its own oxygen, and travel usingelectric power. Captain Nemo is self-sufficient, able toget everything he and his crew need to live from theocean itself.

Verne’s ideas were years before their time. Yetinventors had been experimenting with ideas of sub-marines since Leonardo da Vinci designed one whileworking for the Duke of Milan between 1485 and 1490.The first working submarine—powered, in fact, byelectricity as the Nautilus was—would not appear untila few years after the publication of Verne’s book. Scuba(self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) wouldnot be invented until 1943. Verne, a Frenchman, wouldprobably have been proud that the inventor of scuba wasanother Frenchman: Jacques Cousteau. Submarineswould not be able to manufacture their own fresh oxygenuntil the world’s first nuclear submarine—named Nautilusafter Verne’s creation—was launched in 1954. Nuclearpower, an offshoot of the government project thatinvented the atomic bomb, allowed scientists to create atrue submarine, a machine that could circle the globeunderwater without ever needing to surface. A machinewith only human limitations, the vessel would come


home when the mission’s three-month supply of foodran out.

Most historians attribute the first recorded subma-rine design to Leonardo da Vinci. However, da Vincileft out some crucial information: he never revealedhow the sub was to be powered. Subsequent inventorsattempted to build submarines, often with spectacularresults. Historians credit Dr. Cornelius Van Drebble, aDutch physician, with building and demonstrating theworld’s first functional submarine in 1620. Made ofgreased leather and wood, the underwater ship waspowered by oars. Van Drebble presented his submarinein London, England, by submerging it in the ThamesRiver, as King James I and crowds of British citizenslooked on. When Van Drebble returned to the surface,he became a hero. Some historians doubt that the doctorcreated a true submarine, but at least the legend tells ofhis survival. Many other submarine inventors wentdown with their ships.

In 1774 John Day bought a wooden ship namedMaria and created a watertight compartment onboard. He planned to submerge the ship in the harborat Plymouth, England, remain alive inside the water-tight compartment for a time, and then drop his ballaststones and return to the surface. Day was so confidentof his success that he took wagers on his chances,expecting to dive and then surface to cheers and afinancial windfall. But the plan did not work out ashe had envisioned. Day had no way of knowing thatwater pressure increases 15 pounds per square inchfor every 30 feet of depth. At 130 feet the ship wouldhave been subjected to 60 pounds of pressure persquare inch. His ship reached the bottom, but Daydrowned on the way down as the water pressurecrushed the wooden vessel. John Day did indeed

27IRON COFFINS, PIGBOATS, AND FBMS

receive recognition, though not the type he sought: hehas gone down in history as the first man to dieaboard a submarine.

The American Revolutionary War saw the creationof a submarine by David Bushnell. Named Turtle, thesmall vessel carried one man, who was also its soleoperator. The American navy designed the submarineto destroy enemy shipping by sneaking up to Britishvessels and screwing a timed explosive charge into thewooden keel. If the plan worked, once Turtle got farenough away, the device would go off and the Britishvessel would explode. Turtle never sank any ships,however, since the large explosive devices provedimpossible to screw into the tough wooden planks of aship’s keel.

During the Civil War, submarine warfare took on asignificant role. Historians credit CSS Hunley, a hand-powered Confederate navy submarine, with the firstsinking of an enemy vessel by a sub. Hunley sank theNorthern warship USS Housatonic on February 17, 1864,using a crude can torpedo. A can of gunpowder on a verylong pole affixed to the front of the Confederate sub wasrammed into the ship to set off the charge. However,the explosion that crippled Housatonic also appears tohave opened the seams in Hunley’s cigar-shaped hull,allowing water to leak in. Hunley went down with allnine hands. In fact, the submarine had sunk many timesbefore, causing the deaths of a total of 42 men, includingits inventor. Interestingly, marine archeologists recentlyraised CSS Hunley, hoping to piece together whathappened on its last and most intriguing mission.

Once a submarine sank a warship, the world ofwar was changed forever. Every nation with a navybegan to worry about this undersea danger that coulddestroy prized battleships without warning. At the


time military leaders based their defense planningand strategies on the battleship, so the nation with themost battleships was considered the most powerful.Now navies had a new weapon; submarines allowedthem to protect their own battleships and sink thoseof the enemy.

After determining that human-powered submarinesand those made of wood were impractical, inventorsbegan to work on new designs. Experimental vesselswere powered by steam, electricity, diesel, gasoline, andchemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. Instead of wood,designers used riveted iron plate to streamline hulls.


With the help of moderntechnology, researchersraised and examined theConfederate submarineHunley in April 2001.The vessel had beensunk during a battle in1864, after successfullydestroying the Northernwarship USS Housatonic.

Many new submarine designs took to the water afterthe Civil War. Some designs were better than others, andinventors learned from their mistakes; but submarinesare unforgiving, and the smallest miscalculations resultedin death. Submarines from 1865 to 1900 had colorfulnames: Intelligent Whale, Nautilus, The Fenian Ram,Plunger, Argonaut, Narval, Peacemaker, and Porpoise.They often suffered colorful fates, as well. Someexploded when toxic gases built up inside their hulls;others sank to the bottom and refused to come back to thesurface; and some poisoned crews with chlorine gas fromstubborn batteries or carbon monoxide from engineexhaust. Subs would sink with all hands, receive a refur-bishing after being raised, and then sink all over again onthe next voyage. It is no wonder the submarine servicehas traditionally been a volunteer service.

The Fenian Ram, Plunger, and Porpoise were all sub-marines built by an Irish-immigrant inventor namedJohn Holland, a schoolteacher who lived in Paterson,New Jersey. His designs were some of the first reliablesubmarines, and he is considered the father of the U.S.submarine service.

Some jokingly refer to subs as “iron coffins”—anickname a bystander invented after watching theHolland II founder on its test voyage. In 1900, the USSHolland (SS-1) became the U.S. Navy’s first subma-rine purchase. Small by today’s standards, the shipmeasured 53 feet long and carried a crew of seven.Holland featured equipment still used on submarines,including torpedoes and torpedo tubes, a periscope,and battery-powered electric motors for travelbeneath the ocean’s surface. John Holland’s company,Electric Boat Company, still makes submarines forthe navy at its shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, andsome of his original submarines have been preserved


and are on display in Paterson, New Jersey.World War I saw extensive use of the submarine in

combat. The Germans developed hundreds of subsreferred to as U-boats—an abbreviation of Untersee-boot, which literally means underwater boat. U-boatsfirst sank Allied merchant ships, destroying materialneeded in the British war effort. The U-boat thenbecame a terror weapon when one sank the passengerliner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing 1,195 passen-gers. The action outraged the world and encouragedthe United States—which up to that point had resistedparticipating in the war—to join the British andFrench in fighting the Germans. Although the Britishthought submarine warfare was an ungentlemanly wayto fight, all nations noted the effectiveness of the sub asa weapon.

After the Germans lost World War I, they wereprohibited from building submarines according to theterms of the Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919. TheAllies divided up the remaining German U-boats asspoils of war and then used the captured U-boat tech-nology to improve their own subs. Unlike the Allieddesigns, U-boats were powered by diesel engines on thesurface and battery-powered electric motors (whichwere charged by the diesels) underwater. The technol-ogy was especially valuable to the British, who at thetime were using an extremely dangerous method—steam engines—to power some subs.

Ignoring the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, theGermans began building U-boats again during the1930s as Hitler and the Nazi party militarized theThird Reich and once more positioned Germany forwar. When World War II broke out, the Germans wereagain at an advantage over the Allies with theirimproved U-boats. These submarines could easily cross


the Atlantic Ocean, and the Germans took the warliterally to the shores of the United States.

U-boats controlled the Atlantic from the start ofthe war in 1939 until 1943. They sank more than 4,770ships using wolf-pack techniques: groups of U-boatswould attack single ships and convoys, much like apack of wolves attacks prey. The U-boats wouldattack on the surface in daylight with impunity. Even-tually, improved antisubmarine warfare and the over-whelming numbers of American ships and planesdevoted to the U-boat problem turned the tide, andfrom mid-1943 until the war ended in 1945, theGermans lost U-boats in staggering numbers—a totalof 740. For every 10 subs that left port, 7 or 8 neverreturned. German submariners refer to this period as“the sour pickle time.”

The United States used its own fleet of sub-marines to great effect in the Pacific Ocean. Thesesubs took the war to the shores of Japan, where,using wolf-pack techniques modeled after U-boattactics, they sank thousands of tons of merchant andmilitary shipping. During World War II the U.S.Navy lost 38 submarines to enemy action, with manyof these losses occurring before they employed thewolf-pack techniques.

After Germany and Japan lost the war, the Alliesagain divided up the enemy submarines as part of thespoils. The subs were taken apart and analyzed, andtheir technology helped improve the next generationof vessels. Germany had been experimenting withsnorkels for its submarines; the snorkel—which tookup about the same amount of space as a trash can—allowed a diesel submarine to remain hidden belowthe surface, yet able to run its engines, charge thebatteries, and freshen the air. This technology was


IRON COFFINS, PIGBOATS, AND FBMS 33

very valuable because it moved submariners closer to

the ideal submarine, one that would never require

surfacing. The less time a sub remains on the surface,

the better. During wartime the reasons for remaining

hidden are obvious-if a sub is spotted, it can be depth

charged or torpedoed into oblivion. During peacetime,

traveling along the surface of the ocean can be just as

dangerous. Submarines are very hard to see in the

open ocean, and many have been accidentally rammed

by merchant ships.

A submarine with a snorkel is also very valuable for

use in espionage. A spy sub can observe an enemy's

German sailors in the

engine room of their

World War I-era sub.

Equipped with the latest

submarine technology,

German subs, or U-boats,

presented a powerful

threat to the United

States and its allies.

shoreline or shipping activities or monitor radio trans-missions without being detected. By the 1950s theUnited States and the USSR were no longer allies, andeach side wanted to keep tabs on the other. The coldwar helped spying become one of the primary missionsof the attack-type submarine.

A U.S. Navy officer named Hyman Rickover sawanother way besides the snorkel to design submarines.Making use of the technology of the mighty atomicbomb that ended World War II, he helped invent thefirst nuclear-powered submarine, Nautilus, which the


German researcherspulled this U-boat, whichhad seen service duringWorld War II, from theBaltic Sea in May 2001.After the war, the Allieshad divided up survivingGerman submarines andcopied the advanceddesign elements andtechnology.

U.S. launched in 1954. In the process he became knownas the father of the nuclear navy and was promoted toadmiral. Admiral Rickover ruled over his nuclear sub-marines with a legendary iron fist until he was wellinto his eighties.

Since its invention, the submarine had always beena dirty place filled with unpleasant smells—dieselfumes, condensation, and the odor of rarely bathedcrews. As a result, submarines were often referred to as“pigboats.” But though the commander of a pigboatknew he would probably not rise any higher in rank,no proud submariner would switch from the “silentservice,” as submariners call their military duty, to thesurface navy.

However, no one could call Rickover’s atomic sub-marine a pigboat. Nautilus was clean, spacious, com-fortable, and air-conditioned, and it did not smell ofdiesel fumes. The ship did not need to surface andcould circle the globe without ever having to stop forfuel. The crew could even take occasional showers.


It is important to understand how a submarine works. A basic submarine is a tubeof steel known as the pressure hull. Once the entrance hatches are closed to

keep the water outside and the oxygen inside (for the crew), the tube descends inthe water by using what are known as ballast tanks. Located outside the pressurehull, the ballast tanks are filled with water when the crew wishes to dive. The extraweight of the tanks makes the sub heavier than the surrounding water (known asnegative buoyancy), and causes the ship to go down.

Wings on the outside of the sub, called diving planes, direct the sub’s down-ward movement. Once the sub reaches the desired depth, the crew uses theplanes and special smaller ballast tanks, called trim tanks, to keep the sub level andbalanced. To make the sub surface, the crew purges the tanks of water and fillsthem with compressed air. The ship will rise because it has become lighter thanthe surrounding water (positive buoyancy). These basic principles govern thedesign of all submarines, regardless of what source is employed to power the ship.

The USSR soon copied the design, and the nuclearsubmarine race followed the nuclear arms race.

The United States and the USSR experimentedwith designs of all kinds for their subs. Each came upwith the Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine, or FBM.Slow, longer than a football field, completely silent, andcapable of carrying and firing great numbers ofnuclear-tipped ballistic missiles to targets anywhere onthe globe, the FBM became an integral part of defensestrategy. Today, the United States, Britain, France, andRussia all operate FBMs, which are shadowed byattack submarines designed to destroy them. The


On January 21, 1954, the first atomic-poweredsubmarine, USS Nautilus,entered the ThamesRiver at Groton, Con-necticut, at its officiallaunching. The eventmarked the beginning of a long race with theUSSR to build the mostpowerful and energy-efficient nuclear vessel.

major military powers operate attack subs of varioustypes, as well. These vessels operate year-round in theoceans of the world.

Still, as technologically advanced as submarinesnow are, as long as nations continue to build andoperate these vessels there will be accidents. All sub-mariners train against such an eventuality and rely onthat training to help them to survive if and when anaccident occurs. Nuclear submarine disasters addanother level of difficulty to the problem: the nuclearfuels and weapons on board consist of some of thedeadliest poisons known to man.


Thresher

The method of handling material in the United States [shipbuilding industry] was very, very sloppy.

—Frank T. Horan (engineer for Nautilus), quoted in Forged in War

On April 10, 1963, the nuclear-powered attack submarine USSThresher (SSN-593) was conducting tests about 240 miles off thecoast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Thresher, the first of a new class

of deep-diving U.S. nuclear submarines, was capable of cruising at 1,000feet below the surface and had a maximum depth (crush depth) of approx-imately 1,300 feet. Thresher was 279 feet long and 32 feet wide and usuallycarried a crew of 9 officers and 76 enlisted men.

39

The loss of the attack submarine USS Thresher,which sank off the coast of Massachusetts with 129men aboard, shocked theAmerican public and raisedquestions about the safetyof nuclear warships.

3

It was the height of the cold war between theUnited States and the USSR. The two superpowershad gone to the brink of nuclear war during theCuban missile crisis just a few short months before, inOctober 1962. The confrontation had ended when theSoviets had eventually removed their missiles fromCuba, but they were still building nuclear submarinesto compete with the United States and NATO.

Soviet nuclear subs were rumored to be capable oftraveling much deeper than American nuclear subscould. In response to this threat, the U.S. navy createdThresher. Its success would allow the navy to copy itand create a group of identical ships—Thresher-classsubmarines—that would be ready to fight the Sovietsin deep waters. If the cold war turned hot, Thresher’smission would be to hunt down and destroy Sovietfleet ballistic missile submarines (FBMs) before theSoviets could fire their nuclear missiles at theUnited States.

Thresher had just been repaired at PortsmouthNaval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. When a ship hasbeen repaired, or, in technical terms, has received arefitting or overhaul, it needs to go to sea for testscalled sea trials—much like a mechanic’s road testfor a car after repairs. These trials ensure that everysystem on the ship has been fixed and is functioningcorrectly. During a refit, technicians also update shipswith new equipment, and these new systems receivetests, as well.

Sea trials allow both new and old crew to becomeacquainted, or reacquainted, with the ship, learn tooperate its new equipment, and make certain thevessel is ready to return to service. The biggest concernfor a nuclear submarine (or any submarine for thatmatter) during these tests is the integrity of the hull.


Although some might joke that submarines are theonly kind of ship designed to sink, these vessels canhave absolutely no water leaks. On any ship a leak ishard to control, but since water pressure increases as asubmarine travels deeper beneath the surface, at greatdepths a spray of pressurized water from a leak couldbe powerful enough to slice a man in half.

On the morning of April 10, Thresher was checkingits hull for leaks as it tested its deep-diving capabili-ties. Its crew consisted of 129 men: 16 officers, 96enlisted men, plus 17 civilian technicians (employees ofthe Portsmouth shipyard and representatives from theNaval Ordinance Laboratory). The sub was headingeast along with USS Skylark (ASR-20), a submarinerescue ship, and the two vessels communicated via anunderwater voice-powered telephone system. Theytraveled through the Georges Banks, a shallow com-mercial fishing area known for dangerous currents,then reached the area where the continental shelfdropped off, and the depth of the ocean changed frombetween 200 and 300 feet to more than 8,000 feet. Thisdepth would allow Thresher enough room to performsome deep-diving tests.

At 7:50 A.M. Thresher’s lieutenant commander,Wes Harvey, gave the order to start the deep dive.Quartermaster Jackie Gunter informed Skylark thatThresher would be diving to 1,000 feet, and Skylarkacknowledged the order. Thresher’s crew first took thesubmarine very slowly to 400 feet, while the crew andcivilian technicians checked every surface of the hulland every hatch, seal, pipe, seam, and weld for leaks.They found none.

The hull of a nuclear submarine is basically a steelpipe with caps welded on the ends. Special steel is usedin sub construction. For example, the commonly used

41THRESHER

HY-80 steel can withstand pressures of up to 80,000pounds per square inch—hence the 80 in its name.This single layer, just a few inches thick, is the onlybarrier against the crushing pressures of the ocean.

In a perfect submarine, the hull would consist ofjust one piece of impermeable steel, but in reality anuclear submarine’s hull is peppered with weldsbecause it is constructed by fusing together a series ofdonut-shaped pieces of steel. Each “donut” is joinedto the next, eventually creating the submarine’shydrodynamic, cigar-like shape. Inspectors x-ray eachwelded piece to certify its strength, and any piece thatfails this rigorous test is torn apart and re-welded.Besides welds, a submarine’s hull contains accesshatches, periscopes, missile tubes, torpedo tubes, apropeller shaft, and numerous other openings neces-sary for the vessel to function—all of which must, ofcourse, be watertight.

Thresher had been designed as an attack subma-rine. This kind of sub must be able to move quickly inorder to surprise and destroy enemies. Because thethickness of the hull helps determine the weight andtop speed of the submarine, attack submarines mustbe light. These vessels are like hot rods: they can“burn rubber” in case an enemy torpedo is heading itsway. Thresher’s hull was just thick enough to with-stand the pressures of deeper depths, but light enoughso as not to sacrifice speed. But while U.S. nuclearsubmarines are fast because of their single hulls, thissame design makes them more vulnerable to leakage.Soviet and Russian nuclear submarines use a double-hulldesign, increasing the odds the vessel could survive anaccident or battle.

As testing procedures continued, Thresher main-tained a depth of 400 feet for 50 minutes. At 9 A.M.


Lieutenant Commander Harvey ordered Thresher todescend to 1,000 feet. For every 33 feet of depth that a subtravels down, the water pressure on its hull increases byone atmosphere. At 1,000 feet, Thresher would be sub-jected to more than 30 atmospheres of pressure.

Quartermaster Gunter informed Skylark thatThresher would be proceeding deeper. The two mensteering the ship pushed down on the airplane-likesteering wheels that controlled the submarine, and theangle of Thresher’s dive increased. The submarine beganto make creaks and groans as the outside water pressure

43THRESHER

Workers at the ElectricBoat Company in Groton,Connecticut, weld thedonut-shaped pieces ofsteel used to construct thehull of a new submarine.

increased. Though such noises are disconcerting, allsubmarines make them as they travel deep beneath thewaves. It is a fact of physics that submarines cannotcompress water; instead, water compresses a submarine.But engineers had designed Thresher to withstand thepressure, and the crew and civilian technicians contin-ued to check everything to make certain the shipremained watertight.

At 9:12 things began to go wrong. At the test depthof 1,000 feet water began pouring into the ship. A pipefitting had burst in the engine room, and seawaterused for cooling the nuclear reactor was sprayingeverywhere. The men in the engine room contactedthe control room and informed Lieutenant Comman-der Harvey of the problem. Harvey ordered the water-tight doors between Thresher’s interior compartmentsclosed. This contained the water to the engine room,where the men tried to staunch the flow of very cold,pressurized water.

The water sprayed onto vital electronic compo-nents, causing them to short out. Detecting the loss ofpower caused by the water damage, the safety sensorsin the reactor automatically shut down the reactor—a procedural measure known as a reactor scram.Control rods made of graphite dropped into the reac-tor’s uranium-235 core and stopped the reaction. Withthe reactor out of operation, no more steam was beingproduced and sent to the engine turbine. With theturbine stopped, the propeller did not turn.

Thresher was dead in the water.The submarine was in a precarious position. It

could not safely go much deeper than 1,000 feet, butas the ship filled with water, the extra weight wastaking Thresher deeper. The reactor was off-line, andthe sub badly needed that power because blowing the


ballast tanks would not provide a quick enough liftfor a trip to the surface. Thresher needed to surfacefast. Propeller power was required to drive the shipto the surface, but it would take seven minutes torestart the reactor and get the ship moving again.

Lieutenant Commander Harvey ordered an emer-gency blow of all ballast tanks, which usually means alast-resort dash to the surface. A submarine making anemergency blow will break the surface in a roar of airand water, sail into the air, and then fall back to thesurface with a huge splash. But with Thresher theopposite happened. Because of the pressure at thatdepth, the lack of propulsion, the electrical problems,and the extra weight of the water, Thresher continuedheading toward the bottom.

45THRESHER

When its ballast tanksare blown, a submarinewill quickly ascend to the ocean surface. Thisemergency blow proce-dure failed to save thestricken Thresher, how-ever, and it continued its deadly descent to the bottom of the sea.

Skylark received a message at 9:13 A.M. from Lieu-tenant Commander Harvey: “Experiencing minordifficulty. Have positive up-angle. Attempting toblow.” At 9:17 A.M. Skylark received another message:“Exceeding test depth.” The men of Skylark thenheard sickening sounds of crunching as Thresher’shull imploded. At some point beyond Thresher’s crushdepth, the ship was literally crushed and torn apart,killing all crew members and passengers within sec-onds. In his book Explorations, underwater explorerRobert D. Ballard imagines what happened:

A crushing slab of seawater slammed into the rupturedpressure hull, tearing watertight bulkhead doors fromtheir hinges like scraps of wet cardboard. The air insidethe hull was instantly compressed to 750 pounds persquare inch. Thresher’s hull became a huge combustioncylinder, the sea a piston. One hundred twenty-ninemen were killed within seconds by the invisible blastof the superheated air. Diesel fuel and lubricantsexploded. The thick curved flanks of the pressurehull were shredded. Thresher erupted like a giantdepth charge.

The heavy pieces of the ship sank and came to restat a depth of more than 8,000 feet below the ocean’ssurface. Oil, rubber gloves, pieces of cork, and otherlight materials from Thresher rose to the surface—butno bodies. Skylark stayed on location over the acci-dent scene and relayed the news of Thresher’s disasterto shore.

The navy and the public were stunned that anuclear submarine could be destroyed and disappearwith all hands. Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine,had been an incredible achievement—a submarinethat could travel underwater for years without need of


surfacing, its only limits being those of its humancrew. The American public was growing used to see-ing pictures of U.S. nuclear submarines breakingthrough the ice of the North Pole. And Americannuclear submarines patrolling the oceans were thefirst line of defense in the case of a nuclear attackfrom the USSR.

In the public’s mind, U.S. scientists had beatenJapan with the atomic bomb, and now the atom hadconquered the ocean. Soon U.S. scientists would put aman on the moon. Indeed, the invincibility of the U.S.military in general and its nuclear submarines in par-ticular was so fixed in the American consciousness thatAdmiral Rickover and the navy were just as shockedand surprised as the public when Thresher did notreturn to port.

Rickover and his handpicked men had made surethat every possible safety precaution had been taken inthe creation of the U.S. nuclear submarines. Rickoverbelieved that his submarines, and he literally believedthey were his personal property, had to be over-engineered for safety. In his view, the public wouldnever allow the military a second chance if a meltdownor any other nuclear accident occurred on a subma-rine. He knew that any foul-up with the nuclear fuelthat resulted in civilian contamination and casualtieswould spell the end for nuclear submarines.

Rickover and the navy went to work to find a causefor the disaster and ensure that a similar catastrophewould never occur again. It was not easy to get thedesired answers. First, the navy needed to find thewreckage. There was a remote chance that Thresherhad not been destroyed by accident. President John F.Kennedy needed to be sure that Soviets had notdestroyed the sub or that Thresher’s crew had not

47THRESHER

defected to the Soviet Union, taking the state-of-the-art submarine with them. The possibility also existedthat radioactive material from the reactor vessel wasleaking and poisoning the ocean. To put these fears torest, the American people needed positive proofbrought to the surface.

With Thresher’s wreckage lying at a depth of 8,000feet, the navy had to use sonar to scan the seabed forimages. Meanwhile, ships dragged long lines throughthe deep water, hoping to snag pieces of the sub. Sonareventually found the approximate location of thewreck, and the search team brought a bathyscaphe (asmall submersible designed for deep-sea exploration)called Trieste to the location.


In this 1952 photograph,Captain Hyman Rickover,then director of theNuclear Power Divisionof the Navy’s Bureau ofShips, shows a model ofthe first atomic-poweredsubmarine. Rickoverbelieved that all neces-sary precautions hadbeen taken to makenuclear submarines safe.

Trieste looks like a submarine with a ball stickingout of its keel. Made of thick, high-strength steel, theball has a window at which a crew of three sits. Therest of the craft is filled with high-octane aviationgasoline and magnetized iron pellets. Trieste descendsand ascends by venting the gas and releasing these ironpellets. The bathyscaphe holds the record for the deep-est dive ever—35,000 feet. However, compared withother subs Trieste has limited maneuvering capabili-ties: it functions solely as an elevator to the bottom,going down and coming back up.

In 1963 Trieste was one of the few submersiblescapable of diving deep enough to look at the Thresher’swreckage. Using Trieste, scientists took many photo-graphs of the wreckage of the sub. A piece of pipe and afew other items were recovered and brought to thesurface. The pipe had serial numbers that conclusivelylinked it to Thresher. The condition of the wreckage wasconsistent with an accident. There were no telltalemarks of a torpedo explosion or other type of attack.The navy also measured the level of radioactivityaround the wreck and found no leakage of nuclearmaterial. (In fact, to this day the navy continues tomonitor Thresher, and to date there has been no releaseof nuclear materials.) This information helped put torest the question of Soviet attack or possibility ofdefection of Thresher’s crew.

Now the navy had two questions: What happened?And, would it happen again? After analyzing therecovered bits of Thresher; interpreting the wreckagephotographs; conducting exhaustive tests; and inter-viewing scientists, engineers, sailors, and shipyardworkers, the navy’s investigators released their find-ings on the disaster. They believed the accident hadbeen caused by the failure of a silver-brazed joint in a

49THRESHER

pipe in the reactor’s seawater cooling system. Underthe extreme pressures of the 1,000-foot depth, the pipehad exploded—and the water flowing from the pipecould not have entered the sub at a worse spot. Theseawater had destroyed electrical circuits critical toreactor operations, causing the nuclear reactor toscram (run its emergency shutdown) and stop. Finally,after descending beyond its crush depth, the shipimploded. The navy’s report was, of course, merelybased on theory since Thresher was too deep to recoverand there were no survivors to provide evidence.

Unless the government eventually recovers thewreckage, it cannot confirm the navy’s theory, but withthe discovery of many silver-brazed pipes from othernuclear submarines, the theory is beginning to gainmore credence. A brazed joint is soldered together andis never as strong as a welded joint, in which metals areactually fused. The piece of pipe recovered fromThresher should have been welded to comply with U.S.Navy submarine specifications, and during Thresher’sconstruction, shipyard workers were supposed to weldeverything. But in the claustrophobic interior of a sub-marine, some pipes were in locations nearly inaccessi-ble to welders. Apparently, some workers had cutcorners by brazing instead of welding, and inspectorshad cut corners by not testing the pipes in those hard-to-reach locations.

The navy also found that Thresher’s ballast tankshad a serious design flaw. Though it is difficult, it ispossible to blow ballast tanks despite the pressure of adeep dive. However, Thresher’s construction team hadblundered by placing strainers in the piping systemsthat carried the air from the compressed air tanks tothe ballast tanks. This design change was completedwithout consulting the navy, whose plan did not call


for strainers in the pipes. When Thresher’s crew triedto pipe the compressed air to the ballast tanks to blowout the water and allow the ship to rise, ice had alreadyformed on the strainers because of the change in pres-sure, a phenomenon called the Venturi effect. Thissame effect will cause an automobile carburetor to fillwith ice on a cold day and stop the car’s engine fromrunning. Similarly, the ice clogged the pipes, prevent-ing Thresher’s tanks from pumping out water. Thenavy subsequently found that other submarines hadalso been fitted with strainers and ordered themremoved. In the construction of later submarines,larger pipes were installed to alleviate this problem.

This effort to increase the effectiveness of theemergency blow was part of the navy’s SUBSAFEprogram, under the guidance of Dr. John P. Craven ofthe navy’s Special Projects Office. Craven proposed atheory that the captain of Thresher might have spentprecious moments checking the sonar to make surethe submarine would not hit a surface vessel whenexecuting the emergency blow. Those extra secondscould have been enough to doom the vessel. Craven’stheory motivated the navy to reevaluate the emer-gency blow procedures and come up with ways tospeed up the process.

There are other theories about the loss of Thresher,as well. Some critics maintain that the navy’s shocktests caused the disaster. In a shock test, explosives aredropped near a submarine to test its resistance toenemy depth charges. In 1963 this test was routine forall submarines. In the course of testing Thresher, somesay, the explosions had been placed too close and dam-aged the pipe so it later burst during the deep dive.

Some analysts say that the HY-80 steel skin—atthe time a brand-new steel, and Thresher was one of

51THRESHER

the first subs built with the material—crackedbecause of the shock testing. HY-80 is very brittle andfractures easily. If an impurity gets into a weld inHY-80, the steel will crack like an eggshell. Duringthe construction of a submarine, each weld must beleft alone for seven days to make sure it has notcracked. Perhaps the shock testing had proved toomuch for the brittle HY-80.

Others note that Admiral Rickover was an engi-neer by training, not a ship designer, and very good atdesigning conservative, robust nuclear reactors. Criticsbelieve that in designing the nuclear submarine Rick-over had focused on the reactor, and allowed criticalflaws in other parts of the ship to escape his attention.


A submarine constructionworker at the ElectricBoat Company steadies a sheet of steel as it isshaped by giant rollers.Theories regarding thefailure of the Thresherincluded the possibilitythat the sub’s steel skincracked because of a flaw introduced during its construction.

Another theory is primarily founded on the dam-age that Thresher sustained on previous voyages. Somebelieve a ballast tank damaged the year before mighthave been the cause of the accident. Still othersbelieve the navy was using too many experimentalmaterials in the submarine—such as flexible steampipe couplings—that were not yet ready to go to sea.

Regardless of the cause, after the disaster the navymade certain that its stringent regulations were followedfrom the moment submarine construction began untilthe day the vessel was removed from service. In theconstruction of materials used for military purposes,rigorous specifications must be followed. Because mili-tary equipment must function in all types of weatherconditions, as well as under enemy fire, constructionstandards must be high. If, for example, the sleeve of awinter army coat falls apart at the North Pole or a sub-standard pipe bursts on a navy submarine at 1,000 feetbelow the ocean, it becomes a matter of life and death.Still, accidents and mistakes happen with submarinesbecause shipyard workers and navy crewmen arehuman and therefore fallible.

One example of human shortcomings occurredwith Nautilus. The first nuclear submarine was almostdestroyed because substandard piping was installed bymistake. Although its design standards called forseamless pipes made from a specific type of heavy-dutysteel, shipyard workers took pipes from a dismantledgrandstand—used, ironically, during a party forNautilus. The substandard pipes had been stored nextto the heavy-duty pipes meant for nuclear subs, andthey ended up being inadvertently installed in Nautilusand other subs being built at the time. Later, during adockside test of Nautilus’s reactor, the grandstand pipeexploded. Miraculously, no shipyard workers were

53THRESHER

seriously injured; but if the sub had been underwater, theaccident might have destroyed the sub and its crew.

Because each piece of a nuclear submarine ismarked with a serial number, and the pipe thatexploded had no such number, investigators were ableto figure out what happened after interviewing work-ers. The navy later instituted safeguards to ensurethat substandard or counterfeit materials could notmigrate into the system either at the subcontractorlevel or in the shipyard construction or refit process.The builder of Nautilus, the Electric Boat Company,made it a policy to use only seamless pipe in its ship-yard to prevent another accident of this type fromoccurring again.

In addition to the construction safeguards, thenavy addressed another element of safety. As part ofthe SUBSAFE program, Dr. John P. Craven was givencharge of the creation of a Deep Submergence RescueVehicle (DSRV), a mini-submarine whose purpose wasto rescue submariners trapped below the ocean’s sur-face. At this time the navy had no modern program inplace for saving its submariners. The navy did possessthe McCann Rescue Chamber, a diving bell, but itcounted on the sailors to save themselves by donning aSteinke-hood breathing device (which provides an airsupply and serves as a flotation device) and swimmingto the surface from a stricken submarine. This type ofascent is known as a free ascent.

It is unlikely that anyone will know for certainwhat happened to Thresher, but the 129 men on boarddid not die in vain. Because of their deaths, the navycreated policies and equipment for the purpose ofrescuing trapped submariners. It was also able toimprove its subs and make them easier and safer tooperate. And its newly instituted policies helped


ensure that navy ships were constructed to conform tonaval regulations.

The nuclear submarine program continued afterthe navy instituted its new policies. The Thresher-class subs became Permit-class subs, renamed afterThresher’s sister ship USS Permit. Before long, the U.S.Navy was prepared to do battle with the Soviets in thedeep oceans.

55THRESHER

57

The salvage of the USSSqualus on September 13,1939. Four months earlier,half the vessel had floodedduring a test dive, drown-ing 26 crew members. The remaining 33 crewmembers, although trapped240 feet below the water’ssurface, were eventuallysaved. The effort provedthat underwater sea rescues were possible.

4The SUBSAFE

Program

As of 1963 the U.S. Navy had no modern equipment for the rescueof trapped submariners—and there had been dozens of submarinedisasters. The only rescue method in place depended on the sailors

themselves. They were issued personal breathing devices and instructed inhow to use them. If their submarine ran into trouble, they were expected toswim out of the sub and up to the surface for rescue—a very dangerousproposition under the best of circumstances.

There had been only one rescue of crewmen trapped underwater.That occurred in 1939 when the McCann Rescue Chamber saved 33men from USS Squalus—the only time the chamber was used in adisaster. The McCann chamber had limitations: it was a diving bell, nota submarine; plus it required that cables be attached to the deck of the

stricken submarine, so divers first had to get to the subto attach the cables. Furthermore, the chamber couldbe attached only to a horizontal deck, and if the sub’sdeck was not reasonably level, the chamber would notwork. Finally, if a lost sub was deeper than humandivers could work, the guide cables could not beattached, and the submariners would die.

The U.S. Navy needed another way to save subma-rine crews.

Although many ideas had been presented as waysto save submariners, the navy preferred to developsubmarines for combat use rather than for rescuepurposes. Many still believed that Admiral Rickover’snuclear submarines were invincible—after all, theycould supposedly run forever on their nuclear fuel.The only foreseeable loss of a submarine would be incombat against the Soviet Union, and in such a casethere would probably be no survivors left to rescue.But accidents can influence change, and the Thresherdisaster changed the navy’s attitude.

After the Thresher disaster, the navy commissionedDr. John P. Craven’s Special Projects Office to create asubmarine that could rescue the crews of sunken sub-marines. The resultant Deep Submergence RescueVehicle, created at great expense (the first model costsomewhere around $41 million), was cigar-shaped, 49feet long and 8 feet wide, constructed of HY-140 steel,and propelled by a battery-powered electric motor.Under the HY-140 steel skin were three spheres: one forthe operators, one for the airlock, and one for up to 24survivors. The three-sphere design served a safety func-tion. When a submarine is trapped on the bottom of theocean, the air inside eventually becomes saturated withcarbon dioxide from the air exhaled by survivors.Fouled air causes lethargy and affects the brain in odd


ways—oxygen deprivation can cause a person to behaveas if he or she were drunk. Therefore, the three-spheredesign keeps a potentially dangerous rescued crewmanfrom interfering with the operators of the DSRV.

In the event that the navy receives word of a nuclearsubmarine stranded beneath the surface, it will dispatchthe DSRV. The mini-submarine travels attached to thedeck of a mother sub to the disaster location. Once itarrives at the site, the DSRV crew opens the mother sub’sexit hatch and climbs into the mini-sub. The DSRV liftsoff and descends to the stricken sub. Upon reaching thestranded vessel, the crew of the rescue vehicle inspect thesub and then attach the DSRV to the best availableescape hatch.

Unlike diving bells, which need a horizontal deck onwhich to attach and make an airtight seal, the DSRV hasa docking mechanism and can adjust itself to a tilted deckof up to 45 degrees and make a proper seal, allowingsurvivors to climb into the DSRV and ride back to safetyto the mother sub. A DSRV is capable of saving mentrapped in American and NATO-type submarines andcan descend to more than 3,000 feet below the surface(though its true maximum depth is kept secret).

Any sub that meets with disaster on the continentalshelf of the coast of the United States can be assisted by aDSRV. The United States has two of them, Mystic andAvalon—one for each coast—and they are ready to beairlifted by cargo jet to any submarine disaster at anytime, in any location in the world. But so far the navy hasnever used a DSRV in an actual emergency.

An interesting aside to the story of the DSRV is itsuse as an undersea spy vehicle. The DSRV program ranmany millions of dollars over budget, prompting aSenate investigation—in fact, Wisconsin senator WilliamProxmire “honored” the DSRV with his Golden Fleece

59THE SUBSAFE PROGRAM

(continued on page 62)


“SUBMARINE DOWN OFF NEW ENGLAND COAST”

In 1939 the U.S. Navy made headlines around the world when 33 men aboardthe USS Squalus (SS-192) were rescued. Squalus was a new fleet-type submarine,

310 feet long and 28 feet wide. On May 23, the submarine left Portsmouth NavalShipyard for sea trials. Lieutenant Oliver Naquin was in charge. Aboard were 59men: 5 officers, 51 enlisted men, and 3 civilian observers from the shipyard.

Naquin was putting the ship through diving tests that day to ensure that Squaluswas ready for service. At 8:40 A.M. Squalus dived and was unable to come back tothe surface. The sub came to rest on the bottom, 240 feet below the surface. Amain induction valve for the diesel engines had failed to close, and half the shipflooded. Twenty-six men drowned in the accident, while 33 men in the front halfof the ship waited on the bottom for help.

“Submarine Down Off New England Coast” read the newspaper headline on

Survivors of the USS Squalus, which sank on May 23, 1939, stand on the open deckof a U.S. Coast Guard ship as it carries them to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Anewly developed diving bell, called the McCann Rescue Chamber, brought the mento safety a day after the sinking.


May 24, 1939. The entire world waited for word on the missing submarine. TheU.S. Navy acted quickly and dispatched diving expert Lieutenant CommanderSwede Momsen to the scene. A submariner himself, Momsen had been workingfor years on methods for rescuing trapped submariners. Before 1939 no navy withsubmarines in service had come up with a way of saving men trapped at thebottom of the sea. The U.S. Navy did not like to be reminded of that fact, andMomsen’s career had suffered because of it. But Momsen had continued his workand helped design an experimental device called the McCann Rescue Chamber.

Momsen and his divers arrived at the scene aboard USS Falcon. Ship divers quicklydescended to Squalus and attached guidelines on either side of the sub’s forwardescape hatch. The McCann Rescue Chamber, which resembled an upside-down coffeecan, traveled down these lines to the deck and was attached over the hatch. All told,the diving chamber made five trips to the sub and brought back all 33 survivors.

The device worked perfectly except for the last trip to the surface, when thecable connected to it began to unravel, and the chamber could not move. It was adicey moment. If the cable snapped, the chamber would tumble to the bottomof the sea, and all the men inside would drown. Momsen made a split-seconddecision to haul the chamber up by hand. The crew of Falcon worked as a team,carefully pulling the chamber to the surface. Oliver Naquin, the submarine’s skipper,was the last man out. The U.S. Navy had successfully rescued the first submarinerstrapped on the bottom of the ocean, and Swede Momsen became a hero.

The rescue had not been an easy one by any measure. The depth of 240 feetwas beyond the limits of safe diving, and the divers involved in setting the guide-lines for the rescue chamber risked suffering from the bends. Any sudden changein pressure from a slip and fall from the deck of Squalus as they attached the lineswould have instantly killed a diver with the “squeeze”—the diver’s body wouldhave been instantly compressed into his helmet.

The rescue led by Momsen seemed even more impressive after Britain’s Thetisdisaster in July 1939. That sub’s front torpedo room flooded, and Thetis was stuckwith its bow on the bottom and its stern just below the surface. Four men madeit out, but 99 died. Without a device like the McCann Rescue Chamber, no one onthe surface could help them.

award because, he said, the program wasted so many taxdollars. It was revealed in two books, Blind Man’s Bluffand The Silent War, that the DSRV program ran overbudget because the Special Projects Office used it to spyon the USSR. This particular use of the DSRV was topsecret, and the Senate’s grumbling over the wasted taxdollars was an effective smokescreen for the SpecialProjects Office.

Craven and others realized the DSRV would probably


The Deep SubmergenceRescue Vehicle Mystic(DSRV1) is moved fromthe naval air station atNorth Island, California,for air-lift transport toTurkey, where it wouldbe used in NATO sub-marine rescue exercisesin the Mediterranean Sea.

(continued from page 59)

never be needed because most submarines travel in waterstoo deep for DSRV-assisted rescues. The laws of physicsstate that no one would survive aboard a submarineheaded to the bottom of the deep ocean. Still, the DSRVwould be a perfect vessel for spy missions. It could tapunderwater telephone lines and gather sunken enemyequipment—all far from the sight of enemies. It is quitepossible, even though the cold war has ended, that thenavy is still using the DSRV for classified spy missions.


Scorpion

If something can be installed backward, it will be.

—John P. Craven

On the afternoon of May 27, 1968, the families and friends of thecrew of USS Scorpion (SSN-589) were gathered on a dock atthe Norfolk, Virginia, naval base. The submarine had been

gone since February 15, 1968, and those who were gathered couldhardly wait to see their husbands, fathers, brothers, and boyfriends.The men of the Scorpion had been at sea for three months and had a lotof catching up to do with friends and loved ones. Scorpion was due toarrive at 12:40 P.M., and the people gathered at the dock waited in a

65

It took several months tolocate the USS Scorpion,seen here at its July 1960launching ceremony, afterit disappeared on May 27,1968. Even after the subwas found, researcherscould not definitely saywhat had caused the loss of the nuclear submarine.

5

light rain, watching the water, hoping to catch the firstglimpse of the rounded hydrodynamic hull of the fast-attack submarine.

The scheduled arrival time came and went with nosign of Scorpion, but most members of the waitinggroup didn’t worry. They figured that the submarinewas just running late. After all, Scorpion’s activitieswere top secret and a matter of national security. Per-haps the submarine had completed a mission that tooklonger than expected. This was a way of life fornuclear submarine families: the missions were secretand so they never knew where the submariners werefor months at a time.

However, as the minutes turned to hours, the peoplegathered began to suspect something had happened toScorpion. The navy began to wonder, as well. The lastmessage from the submarine had been received on May21. Lieutenant Commander Francis A. Slattery hadgiven his position as 50 miles south of the AzoresIslands, near Portugal, and indicated that the sub wason its way home. The crew had been silent ever since;Scorpion had sent no message that morning to informNorfolk of its position and projected arrival time. At3:15 P.M. on May 27, 1968, the navy informed the worldthat USS Scorpion was missing. The families andfriends of Scorpion’s crew left the dock in stunnedsilence, praying the navy’s message was a mistake. Butit was no mistake. Scorpion was gone, along with 99crewmen. The U.S. Navy had lost its second nuclearsubmarine within a five-year period.

In May 1968 the United States was embroiled in theVietnam War, and antiwar sentiment gripped thenation. At the same time the U.S. Navy’s nuclear sub-marine force was hard at work shadowing the Sovietnuclear submarine force, protecting against possible


nuclear attack. Scorpion had been cruising the Mediter-ranean Sea, observing Soviet activities and taking part inantisubmarine training exercises with foreign navies.

Scorpion was a Skipjack-class nuclear fast-attacksubmarine. Launched in 1958 and commissioned in 1960,it was 252 feet long and 32 feet wide, capable of travelingat more than 20 knots per hour in the water. On thismission the sub had been armed with the Mark 37torpedo. Scorpion also carried a reliable crew. LieutenantCommander Francis A. Slattery and his 99 fellow ship-mates had received commendations for their leadershipand professionalism on earlier missions.

The captain and his crew had made this trip to theMediterranean before, and Scorpion had received anoverhaul just a year earlier, so it seemed unlikely that amechanical failure had occurred. The navy had mademany changes after the loss of Thresher, but had themilitary overlooked another problem in the Americannuclear submarine program? Had Scorpion hit anuncharted underwater object and disappeared? HadScorpion collided with a Soviet submarine? OtherAmerican submarines had hit underwater objects andsuffered significant damage. And collisions betweenSoviet and U.S. Navy submarines had occurred before, asthe two sides observed each other’s operations. In fact, inDecember 1967, just six months earlier, USS George C.Marshall, a fleet ballistic-missile submarine, had collidedwith a Soviet attack submarine in the Mediterranean.

President Lyndon B. Johnson had only one question:Had Scorpion been sunk by the Soviets? If so, it was anact of war. The U.S. Navy needed to find Scorpion fastin order to answer all these questions, but the problemof locating it seemed immense: the submarine could beanywhere beneath the 3,000 miles of ocean between Spainand Norfolk, Virginia.

67SCORPION

The navy began the search by sending ships toScorpion’s last known location, and it brought in Dr.John P. Craven of the Special Projects Office to leadthe investigation. In 1966 Craven had found a lostU.S. Air Force hydrogen bomb in the Mediterraneanby using Bayes’ theorem of subjective probability.Thomas Bayes was an 18th-century mathematicianwho constructed a formula used to make a series ofeducated guesses concerning the whereabouts of amissing item. In usual practice, his obscure theorem isa way to place a bet where the missing item in questionis the jackpot.

Craven was an enthusiastic poker player, so thegambling cachet of the theory appealed to him as ameans to locate Scorpion: Bets are assigned levels ofprobable reliability whereby a grid is constructed; thisgrid then becomes the map for a search area. AlthoughBayes’ theorem might at first glance generate a searchgrid that appears counterintuitive to an experiencedsearch professional, Craven’s offbeat mathematicalapproach had in fact helped the air force retrieve anuclear weapon from the Mediterranean on April 7,1966, after weeks of fruitless searching.

Craven realized there were probably soundrecordings of Scorpion’s last moments. The U.S. Navyand the U.S. Air Force both had hydrophones (under-water microphones) positioned at strategic locationsin the oceans; the navy’s network of hydrophones(abbreviated as SOSUS for sound surveillance system)was used to eavesdrop on the underwater activities ofSoviet submarines.

SOSUS technicians listening to the hydrophonescollected recordings of the passing Soviet submarines.Because each sub has a distinctive sound pattern, orsignature, the U.S. Navy could track and record the


entire missions of individual Soviet submarines. Theskilled technicians could note a submarine’s speed,course, and noise emissions from internal machinery,and even speculate on a vessel’s condition and repairstatus. SOSUS, combined with satellite photographs ofSoviet naval bases, spies on the ground in Soviet navalbases, U.S. Navy patrol planes, and navy submarinesshadowing Soviet submarines, gave the U.S. militaryintelligence a comprehensive understanding of Sovietsubmarine activities.

Checking SOSUS seemed like a good idea, but itturned out that the network had picked up nothingbecause the equipment was calibrated to pick up noises

69SCORPION

An oceanographic cableship. To search for sunkenships, the vessel trails acable that carries cameraequipment or sonar sensors behind it. Navyinvestigators eventuallyphotographed Scorpion’swreckage using equipmenttowed by USNS Mizar.

from submarines, like propeller noise, and filter outpops, explosions, and other similar sounds that occurfor a number of reasons in oceans. Craven then asked acolleague named Gordon Hamilton, who ran anoceanographic laboratory in Bermuda, if he had anyhydrophones positioned in the Atlantic. It turned outhe had one in the water at a lab in the Canary Islands—very close, in fact, to Scorpion’s last known position.The records from the lab were collected. They revealedthat loud noises had been generated in the areabetween May 21 and May 27.

Craven’s team found other records from air forcehydrophones located in Newfoundland. When puttogether, the records allowed Craven to determine thattwo enormous explosions, just 91 seconds apart, hadoccurred along Scorpion’s expected course. This infor-mation indicated that Scorpion was most definitely lostwith all hands. The water in this area was miles deep,and two underwater explosions that were large enoughto register on equipment as far away as Newfoundlandwould certainly have destroyed the submarine beforethe men had a chance to escape.

Other intelligence information indicated that therehad been no Soviet activity in the area during the timeof Scorpion’s passage. Officials informed PresidentJohnson that the Soviets had nothing to do with thesubmarine’s loss. One part of the Scorpion mystery, atleast, was answered.

USNS Mizar was sent to the coordinates thatCraven determined as the site of the explosions. WhileMizar and other ships were hunting for Scorpion,Craven kept working and calculating. He noticed thatScorpion appeared to be heading back toward Europe,not toward the United States, and he also discoveredthe reason: a runaway torpedo. A submarine will turn


180 degrees during an emergency maneuver to stop arunaway torpedo, known to submariners as a “hotrun.” The guidance system of a torpedo contains safetymechanisms that will deactivate if the vessel turnsaround, preventing it from destroying the very sub thatlaunched it. (This is an unlikely occurrence, but it hashappened: USS Tang, one of the most successful sub-marines of World War II, was sunk by its own torpedoduring a battle on October 24, 1944; 73 men died, and15 of its survivors were imprisoned by the Japanesenavy.) Submarine commanders drill until this maneu-ver becomes second nature. Scorpion had plenty ofdestructive force on board; aside from the 14 Mark 37torpedoes, it was also armed with 7 Mark 14 torpedoesand 2 nuclear-tipped Astor torpedoes.

In December 1967 a hot run had taken place onScorpion, and Lieutenant Commander Slattery hadacted quickly and saved the sub. Craven found out thatother hot runs had happened on submarines. The navyhad sent out a bulletin warning that it was possible toinstall electric leads on test equipment in reverse order,and that later this faulty equipment could activate atorpedo during servicing. (Sailors service their equip-ment often, and this work goes on whether the ship ison a cruise or tied up at a dock.)

Craven theorized that one of the torpedoes hadbeen tested with incorrectly installed equipment,which started a hot run, and though Slattery man-aged to turn the ship, he had not been fast enough.The torpedo’s explosion would have killed the menin the torpedo room, possibly detonating other torpe-does in the process The breached hull would havesent Scorpion toward the bottom until it passed itscrush depth and imploded.

However, the navy did not take Craven’s theory of

71SCORPION

a runaway torpedo seriously. The Ordinance SystemsCommand stated that a hot run was impossible, but itdid not provide any evidence to back up this claim.Undeterred, Craven continued to work, while Chester“Buck” Buchanan, a civilian oceanographer and NavalResearch Laboratory scientist, continued to search forScorpion using cameras towed by Mizar.

Craven used Bayes’ theorem to construct a map ofthe wreck site. His crew made bets on the torpedo


Dr. John P. Craven led thenavy investigation thatdetermined Scorpion’smost likely resting place.He later theorized thatthe sub had beendestroyed by one of its own torpedoes.

theory, Scorpion’s course heading during what theybelieved was a hot run, and the landing spot of thewreckage on the bottom. Meanwhile, the navy foundsome wreckage—a pipe and other items—and becameconvinced the investigators were on the right track.

The months of June, July, and August passed with-out finding Scorpion. Finally Buchanan began search-ing the coordinates provided by Craven. On October29, 1968, the nuclear submarine was found more than11,000 feet underwater in the Atlantic Ocean, 200 milessouthwest from the Azores, on the edge of the SargassoSea—just 220 yards from where Craven and his teampredicted it would be (although its exact locationremains classified). Craven had done it again.

Mizar’s cameras took many photos of the wreckage,and the navy sent the bathyscaphe Trieste II down toexamine the wreck. Observers found Scorpion largelyintact but crushed from the extreme water pressure.There appeared to have been no survivors, and nobodies were ever found. Nor was there evidence of ahole from a torpedo explosion. However, the hatches inthe bow of the ship were missing, which could havebeen caused by an explosion inside the torpedo room.

In January 1969 the navy released a press release thatread, in part, that there was “no incontrovertible proof ofthe exact cause” of the submarine’s destruction. In 1993,after the end of the cold war, the navy released its fullreport from 1969. Its number one supposition was that ahot-running torpedo sank Scorpion.

It is unfortunate that the cause of Scorpion’s sinkingmay never be known, but there are numerous theoriesabout what happened to the submarine. Scorpion had notyet been outfitted with the new SUBSAFE changes, so itis possible that a mechanical failure sent the submarine tothe bottom. Perhaps the sub was destroyed because it did

73SCORPION

not have the improved emergency blow capabilities andother SUBSAFE improvements.

Some analysts theorize that a massive explosion inScorpion’s battery compartment caused the sub’sdestruction. Because storage batteries generate hydro-gen gas when they are charging, a nearby spark couldcause an explosion. Battery explosions have been thecause of many sub disasters, so this theory is plausible.The wreckage of many subs shows damage to theirbattery compartments for precisely this reason.

Perhaps the most intriguing theory concernssomething John Craven found out many years later.A defect existed in some of the batteries that poweredthe Mark 37 torpedo; some of them had a tendency toexplode during random durability tests. The batteriesthat exploded were manufactured by a company thathad never made batteries before—and their recall hadbeen ordered at about the same time that Scorpionwas destroyed.

The batteries had been manufactured with cheap,fragile foil diaphragms. Unfortunately the cheap foilcould be partially punctured by the sloshing of a battery’selectrolyte, which may have been caused by the vibrationsoccurring during the submarine’s normal operations.Powering up the battery prematurely would heat thebattery’s three-foot-long body, and since the battery waslocated next to the 330-pound, highly explosive warheadof the torpedo, the great heat generated by the cookingbattery could have been enough to ignite the explosive.

Experts theorize that a defective, overheatedbattery caused the torpedo to either completelyexplode or partially “cook off ”—a slow burning orpartial detonation of the warhead. Either instancewould have been enough to blow a hatch or crack thehull, causing water to instantly flood the torpedo


room and sink the Scorpion. A piece of foil that costpennies possibly caused the loss of the sub and thedeaths of its crew. Making matters even worse, thenavy had known about the bad batteries, but becauseit needed submarines to shadow Soviet operations sobadly, it approved their use anyway.

The U.S. Navy checks the wreckage site of Scorpionperiodically for radiation leakage, and so far none hasbeen detected. The wrecks of warships are owned for-ever by their countries of origin, unlike civilian vesselslike Titanic, which are governed by the laws of salvage.The U.S. Navy’s official word on Scorpion is that thewreckage site is classified, and the cause of the accident isunknown. Pictures taken by the divers aboard the TriesteII in 1968 and by explorer Robert Ballard in 1986have been released to the public. For years Scorpion’smysterious accident has haunted the navy and thefamilies of the disaster victims.

75SCORPION

This 1968 photographshows the top of Scorpion,which remains more than11,000 underwater in the Atlantic Ocean. Thecenter right circle, whichcontains a mooring line, isa cavity normally used forstoring a messenger buoy.Also visible are circularmain ballast tank ventsand two rectangularhatches of the sub.

Russian

Disasters

It had happened before to other men in other Soviet boats; one crew rode out a terriblegale, trapped in the after compartment of a burned-out hulk of a sub that refused to sink.They’d sealed themselves up and lived for three weeks until the submarine was towedinto port. No light, no food other than what they’d stuffed into their pockets, no waterexcept what they could drain from lines passing through the space. It was unimaginable.

—A description of the 1972 K-19 accident from Hostile Waters

During the cold war, the Soviet Union constructed and operatedmore submarines than the United States, the United Kingdom,and France combined. The USSR launched its first nuclear sub-

marine K-3 in 1957, just two years after Nautilus, the world’s first nuclearsubmarine, slid down the ways. After that vessel’s creation, the Soviets

77

A Soviet nuclear submarine,damaged on the hull near itsconning tower, sits motion-less in the waters of theAtlantic. The USSR pro-duced a great number ofthese vessels, often with littleregard to safety. As a result,most nuclear submarineaccidents have involved shipsbelonging to the Soviets.

6

experimented with nuclear subs of various types. Theybuilt vessels with twin propellers and twin nuclear reac-tors; they constructed submarines with titanium hulls thatwere capable of diving far deeper than American sub-marines; they created subs that were faster than Americansubmarines and employed ingenious propulsion designsthat made them extremely quiet; and they constructedmany types of nuclear reactors, some of which used liquidmetal as coolant.

The U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine program wasconservative in approach both because of Admiral Rick-over’s emphasis on safety and because the program wasbeholden to the American taxpayer. In contrast, theSoviet’s communist regime never solicited the opinionsof the citizens, and the government invested heavily inits submarine program, siphoning money from socialprograms to fund it. In the book Running Critical,Patrick Tyler notes that the Soviets outspent the UnitedStates 10 to 1 in the early 1970s. Because of its lack ofbudgetary concerns, the Soviet navy could afford toexperiment with designs, materials, and reactors. Itsnuclear submarine program was secret, as well. If asubmarine did not perform to expectations, the Sovietnavy never reported it to the public.

The USSR also attempted to keep its submarinedisasters secret, but too many accidents occurred for thispolicy to work. The environmental group Greenpeaceestimates that 121 Soviet nuclear submarine accidentstook place over the years. The Russian newspaper Izvestiaestimates 507 men have died since the Russian nuclearsubmarine program began. It is impossible to fix an exactnumber of accidents because of the Soviet-era policy ofsecrecy, but during the 1990s the Russians released infor-mation when it declassified files from this time. Manyaccidents occurred because the Soviet navy put a very low


priority on crew safety and other important matters. Itbuilt submarines without many of the safety systemsfound on American and NATO submarines; both thecrews and the environment suffered as a result.

Some Soviet submarines were light and fast under-water, able to keep pace with an aircraft carrier traveling18 to 20 knots. But they were fast because they werebuilt without using the proper amount of lead shield-ing—a very heavy metal—for the nuclear reactors. Thisshielding prevents radiation produced by the reactorfrom escaping the chamber and harming the crew.American designers, on the other hand, were notallowed to use lighter materials and so built U.S.nuclear submarines with the proper shielding. There-fore, since the designers had the Los Angeles-classattack subs built for speed to combat the faster Sovietsubs, as a compromise they made the hull thinner to cutweight. Consequently, Los Angeles-class submarineswere fast and able to keep pace with their Soviet coun-terparts, but they were not able to dive deep.

On July 4, 1961, the Soviets suffered their first nuclearsubmarine accident. K-19, a Hotel-class ballistic-missilesubmarine, developed a leak in its reactor cooling system,resulting in irradiation of the entire interior of thesubmarine. Although the crew was evacuated, and K-19was towed into port, nine men died from radiation poi-soning and burns received when they shut down thenuclear reactor. According to an August 2000 New YorkTimes article, the sailors referred to their work in thereactor chamber as stepping “into the Boa’s Mouth.” K-19earned the dubious nickname “Hiroshima,” after the siteof the U.S. atom bomb attack on Japan at the close ofWorld War II.

It is hard to speculate what the U.S. Navy wouldhave done in case like the K-19 incident, but it most

79RUSSIAN DISASTERS

likely would have scrapped an irradiated submarine.The Soviets, however, simply removed the damagedreactor equipment from K-19, installed new reactorequipment, refitted the sub, and sent it on patrol with anew crew.

Less than a year later, in June 1962, the November-class submarine K-3, the Soviet Union’s first nuclearsubmarine, suffered a severe reactor fire. The public doesnot yet know if any casualties resulted from this accident,but it is reasonable to suspect that there were. The sub-marine was overhauled for two years and then returnedto service. As part of the overhaul, the damaged reactorwas cut out of the vessel and disposed of—dumped intothe Kara Sea. The ill-fated K-3 was then plagued by yetanother accident. On September 8, 1967, a fire broke outin the ship’s hydraulic system, and 39 men died.

In 1968 at least two more Soviet submarines suffereddisasters. On April 11, 1968, the Golf-class submarineK-129, a diesel-powered ballistic-missile submarine, sankin the Pacific Ocean. K-129 was carrying a full comple-ment of nuclear-tipped missiles when an explosion ofunknown origin sent it more than 16,000 feet to thebottom with all hands. Although the Soviets searchedfrantically for the sub, they couldn’t locate the wreckage.

K-129 was an obsolete diesel submarine equippedwith obsolete missiles, and would not bear mentionexcept for the fact that the CIA spent hundreds ofmillions of dollars in a failed secret attempt to pluck thesunken sub from the ocean. Again using Bayes’ theorem,John Craven of the Special Projects Office had pinpointedK-129’s exact location. The navy then secretly photo-graphed the wreckage, which showed that the submarinewas not crushed, but had landed intact on the bottom.The most likely explanation for this is that the sub filledimmediately and completely with water after a sudden


explosion, and because the pressures both inside andoutside the hull were equalized, water pressure did notflatten the vessel.

The CIA eventually took control of K-129’s wrecksite in a mission called Project Jennifer. Craven and thenavy watched from the sidelines as the CIA created anelaborate cover story for the media, involving millionaire

81RUSSIAN DISASTERS

The November-class K-3 sub was the SovietUnion’s first nuclear-powered submarine. Itwould suffer from twomajor accidents during itsservice in the Soviet navy.

Howard Hughes, the mining of manganese nodulesfrom the bottom of the ocean, and a huge ship namedGlomar Explorer. This ship carried deep-sea drillingequipment, which the CIA modified for use as a deep-sea crane. The recovery vessel lowered the crane’sgrapple to the wreck and clamped onto the submarine.It took many hours for the crane to slowly raise thewaterlogged submarine from the bottom, and thensomewhere along the way the grapple failed. K-129broke apart and fell back to the seabed. The part of thesub that landed shattered on impact, though a smallportion of the sub was retrieved. The human remainsfound inside were buried with full military honors;the burial service was videotaped, and the tape waspresented to the Russians after the end of the cold war.Nothing of value was retrieved from K-129.

The second reported Soviet submarine disaster of1968 happened on May 24. K-27, a November-classnuclear submarine, was at sea when an undeterminedreactor accident occurred, and nine men died from radia-tion poisoning. Also in 1968, according to some reports,an unidentified nuclear submarine went down in theArctic Ocean. This report cannot be substantiated, but ifthe report is true there is a submarine containing theremains of 90 men and a reactor filled with radioactivefuel on the sea bottom off the Kola Peninsula.

The Soviet navy’s bad luck continued. On April 8,1970, November-class submarine K-8 had a major fire.The K-8’s crew got off the sub, which was dead in thewater, and the submarine was taken under tow. Moscowthen ordered the men to return to the stricken sub tomake sure it did not sink during the tow. About half thecrew returned to the sub. The captain and 51 crewmendrowned when the vessel suddenly sank in the Bay ofBiscay on April 12, 1970.


On February 24, 1972, K-19—the same vessel thathad been nicknamed Hiroshima after its 1961 radiationleak in the reactor cooling system—had a major fire, and28 crewmen were killed. Twelve men who had remainedon board in an attempt to extinguish the flames eventu-ally became trapped in the rear compartments of thesubmarine. K-19 was taken under tow, but the trappedmen could not be released from the submarine while itwas on the open ocean. The crewmen rode in the dark-ness and stale air of the stricken submarine for 24 daysuntil shipyard workers with torches cut a hole in the hulland released them.

Another major reactor accident occurred on June 13,1973, on the nuclear-powered Echo II–class cruise-missilesubmarine K-56. Twenty-seven men died. Then onSeptember 26, 1976, eight men died in a fire on EchoII–class K-46.

The 1980s saw a continuation of Soviet nuclear-submarine disasters. On August 21, 1980, nine men werekilled in a fire on another Echo II-class submarine. Andin August 1982 Alpha-class submarine K-123 developed acoolant leak in its liquid metal-cooled nuclear reactor. Nocasualties were reported, but the sub was out of commis-sion for eight years; the duration of the overhaul suggestshow severe the accident was. On June 24, 1983, a Charlieclass–cruise-missile submarine, K-429, sank in the NorthPacific Ocean. Most of the crew on board died, but theSoviets eventually salvaged the vessel—one of the fewoccasions when nuclear materials have been removedfrom a submarine wreck site.

Disaster was narrowly averted on October 6, 1986,when a Yankee-class–ballistic-missile submarine, K-219,sank near Bermuda after a missile explosion. Ballistic-missile submarines are affectionately nicknamedboomers because of the explosive payloads of their

83RUSSIAN DISASTERS

missiles—and K-219 carried 15 missiles, each armedwith two 600-kiloton thermonuclear warheads. Themissiles contained a liquid fuel composed of nitrogentetroxide and hydrazine.

When seawater leaked into one of the missile tubesthrough a faulty gasket, it mixed with the nitrogentetroxide and formed nitric acid. This nitric acid burnedthrough the missile’s casing and caused the hydrazineand the nitrogen tetroxide to combine. When thesechemicals ordinarily mix to provide thrust for themissile, it is supposed to happen in a controlled fashion;in this case, the mixing caused an explosion. The blastblew the hatch from the top of the missile’s tube, andwater flooded into the submarine. Fires broke out, and


U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft photographed this Soviet Yankee-classnuclear-powered submarine, the K-219, as it foundered off thecoast of Bermuda inOctober 1986.

the submarine almost went to the bottom. Remarkably,Captain Igor Britanov was able to bring K-219 back tothe surface, and the crew battled to save the submarine.

On that day, USS Augusta (SSN-710), a Los Angeles–class attack submarine, was shadowing the Soviet sub.U.S. subs shadowed Soviet boomers from the momentthey left port until the moment they returned. Augusta’screw observed the incident and at first thought K-219 waspreparing to launch a missile targeting the United States.Crew members went so far as to prepare torpedoes forfiring before they realized that the Soviet submarinewas in trouble. Augusta remained on location for theentire accident, silently observing, recording, andreporting everything.

K-219’s fires began to heat the missiles in their tubes,creating the danger of another explosion—possibly anuclear one. The fires had burned through the wiresconnected to the reactor’s remote control panels, makingit impossible for the men in the sub’s control room,forward of the damaged and burning missile room, tocontrol K-219’s twin nuclear reactors. If the reactors hadmelted down while the submarine was on the surface,the cloud of nuclear fallout would have enveloped theEast Coast of the United States.

The reactors were out of control, and the only way toturn them off was to crank the control baffles into placeby hand. This emergency maneuver required a man toclimb inside each reactor to turn the crank—a heroic featthat would result in sterilization and leukemia for thecrewman if he was lucky, and a painful, gruesome deathfrom acute radiation poisoning if he was not. In additionto the crises of the fires and the out-of-control reactors,the nitric acid from the missiles was eating through therubber gaskets of the ship. Noxious fumes seeped throughthe hatches that the crew had sealed to protect themselves,

85RUSSIAN DISASTERS

and the men were running out of replacement canisters ofoxygen for their emergency breathing devices. If the subbecame uninhabitable, they would have to abandon ship.

Two crewmen saved the day. Engineer-SeamanSergei Preminin and Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Belikovhand cranked the reactor control baffles into place andprevented a catastrophic meltdown. In the atmosphereof the reactor space, Preminin succumbed to the poiso-nous fumes, unable to escape because of the heat and thepressure difference, which had sealed the exit hatch andprevented it from being opened. He was posthumouslyawarded the Red Star for bravery. Belikov did notreceive a Red Star; he did receive a greater award, hesurvived the ordeal.

Despite the bravery of the two crewmen, K-219 couldnot be saved, and the men abandoned ship. To preventthe sub’s capture by the U.S. Navy ships that hadgathered to observe the disaster, Captain Britanovscuttled the sub, sinking it in 18,000 feet of water. A totalof four men died in the accident. A book—written byPeter Hutchthausen, Igor Kurdin, and R. Alan White—and a television movie, both titled Hostile Waters, tell thestory of this event. Many articles and news stories havedescribed the accident—but to this day the U.S. Navyrefuses to comment on the K-219 incident.

It is interesting to note that K-219 might never havesuffered an accident except for the Soviet reluctance tocreate safer solid-fuel rockets for submarines. The U.S.Navy had been using solid-fuel missiles for its boomersfrom the first Polaris-fleet–ballistic-missile submarines inthe early 1960s. The solid fuel was so safe that it wasshaped into objects like ashtrays to prove the point.

The Soviet Union suffered two more accidents thatdecade, both in 1989. On April 7, 1989, the Mike-class–nuclear-powered submarine K-278 sank, killing


most of the crew, after a fire in the Norwegian Sea on itsmaiden voyage. Some reports indicate there was only onesurvivor. This man and five other crewmen climbed intothe escape pod, located in the sail of the submarine.Unfortunately they did not know how to operate the podproperly, and only one survived the trip to the surface.

K-278, named Komsomolets, was capable of divingdeeper than any American or NATO submarine becauseits hull was constructed entirely of titanium. Titanium isone of the strongest, rarest, and most expensive metals onthe planet—though it is difficult to work with since itcannot be welded in a room with oxygen; welders must

87RUSSIAN DISASTERS

Rutger Hauer appears asCaptain Igor Britanov ina scene from the 1997television movie HostileWaters. The film wasbased on the near disas-ter involving the Sovietsub K-219, which caughtfire and came close to setting off a nuclearexplosion that wouldhave affected the EastCoast of the United States.

dress in space suits to perform hull welds in an atmos-phere of argon gas—and the Soviet Union had greatreserves of it. Ironically, in 1989, parts of the Soviet Unionwere without basic human amenities like food andsanitation, yet the government was capable of buildingtitanium-hulled submarines.

There was talk of raising Komsomolets because of itsnuclear fuel, but the project never began. Reportedly, theSoviets encased the sub in a gel or glue that sealed it fromthe corrosion of the sea.

The final accident of the decade involving a Sovietnuclear submarine occurred in June 1989, when EchoII–class submarine K-192 had a major reactor incident. Itis unknown if any casualties resulted, but the submarinewas removed from service, which suggests that a severeaccident took place. Navies usually remove a sub fromservice when it has been exposed to extreme radiationcontamination.

From 1990 until the Kursk accident of 2000, thepace of accidents slowed—partly because the fall ofcommunism and the end of the Soviet Union left theRussian navy with a shortage of money to operatemany submarines. But though the accident rate slowed,the accidents didn’t stop.

In 1991 a Typhoon-class boomer had a mishap witha missile during a training exercise. The Russians referto this sub as Akula, and it is gigantic: 561 feet long, 79feet wide, and capable of carrying 20 ballistic missiles.Then on January 26, 1998, the last major accident beforethe Kursk disaster occurred when an Oscar II–class sub-marine named Tomsk had an explosion in its reactorcooling system. One crewman died, and five otherswere hospitalized.

Perhaps the biggest accident is yet to come. TheRussian navy still sends submarines to sea, though it


operates on a shoestring budget. The government gen-erates some capital by selling its small diesel-electricKilo-class submarines to any nation in the world withhard currency. The money helps, but most of the once-vast Russian Northern Fleet is tied up at dockside,awaiting overhaul or decommissioning. The submarines—some reportedly barely afloat—are still loaded withradioactive fuel, though their radioactivity is not closelymonitored. As a result they pose a hazard both to theRussian people and the entire world. It remains to beseen what will become of these vessels. Russia lacks thefunds necessary to dispose of them, and the UnitedStates has not attempted to help. The possibility loomsthat the nuclear material in these submarines couldpoison the ocean or be vented into the atmosphere if anexplosion, fire, or meltdown were to occur.

A lack of Russian interest in submarine safetyconcerns continues to place not only its own navalpersonnel, but also the entire world, in jeopardy.

89RUSSIAN DISASTERS

After Oscar-II-class submarine K-149, named Kursk, sank in theBarents Sea on August 12, 2000, the Russian navy attempted torescue the 118 men trapped on board. Navy spokesmen were

optimistic at first, predicting that the men would be rescued quickly. Theyreported receiving radio messages from the crew, plus vigorously tappedcoded messages. They also reported receiving a message stating that all thesailors were alive and well.

The Russian navy brought a diving bell, referred to as a Bester, to thewreck site and lowered it 350 feet from the churning surface of the BarentsSea to Kursk many times—but with no success in sealing it to one of thesubmarine’s escape hatches. The rescuers could not secure guidelines tothe deck of Kursk, and the bell dangled at the end of its tether. The men

91

A rescue diving bell. In thedays following the sinkingof Kursk, the Russians triedunsuccessfully to lower adiving bell from the rescueship Altay to the hatch ofthe stricken sub. Theyeventually had to give up because of rough seas and the bitterly cold arctic weather.

7

guiding the bell kept hoping it would latch onto theright spot, but their task was equivalent to using amagnet on a string to pick up a nail while standing atopa 35-story building.

Further complicating their task were two factors: badweather on the surface and the fact that Kursk was restingat a 60-degree angle. In 1939 Swede Momsen and thesurvivors of Squalus had been lucky because their strickensub rested perfectly level on the bottom. The men ofKursk were not as fortunate. It was very difficult, if notimpossible, for the diving bell to make a proper seal atthat angle.

The Russian navy also possessed a rescue submarine,but it was reportedly either laid up for repairs at the timeof the accident or out of commission because of a lack ofrepair funds. Other Russian mini-subs were sent to thearea, but they were not capable of docking with thestricken Kursk. The U.S. Navy offered its DSRV to helpin the rescue, but the Russians refused American help. (Inpoint of fact, though, while the DSRV can seal to thehatches of American and NATO ships, it probably wouldnot have been able to seal to the hatches of Kursk.)

The Russians eventually asked for help from theNorwegian and British navies. The British governmentdispatched its rescue submarine LR-5, which arrived onthe scene on Saturday, August 19, seven days after Kursksank. But too much time had passed; the oxygen supplyfor the men had run out. The tapping hammer had gonesilent. The 118 men on board the submarine were dead.Norwegian divers were able to get down to the sub andopen the rear escape hatch, something the Russians hadnot been able to do. They found the sub completely filledwith water.

The Russians had wasted a lot of time during theKursk disaster. They also further complicated the situation


with misinformation and interference. According to oneof the Norwegian divers, Øystein Olav Noss, quoted onCNN.com, the Russians restricted the movements of theNorwegian divers working on Kursk. “They drew a circleon the middle section of the sub. Anything outside aradius of 25 meters from the hatch was off limits,” Nosssaid. The Russians refused American help throughoutthe disaster, possibly because they did not want the U.S.Navy to see secret submarine technology or weapons.Russian statements that there had been radio contact withsurvivors and that the sub had oxygen supplies that wouldlast at least two weeks were later retracted. There mighthave been vigorous tapping from the Kursk survivors atfirst, but after further analysis, many naval experts and

93KURSK

Norwegian divers RuneSpjelkavik (left) and PaalStefan Dinessen makepreparations for theirdive to the Kursk on Sunday, August 20, 2000.Because the escape hatchof the submarine wasbadly damaged, a Britishmini-sub could not attachto the sub, so Russianofficials turned to thedivers for help.

scientists believed that any taps from survivors were short-lived. In addition, the double-hull design of the sub wouldhave made it very hard for a tap to be heard outside, somost likely the taps came from trapped air escaping fromchambers within the hull.

Divers entered the submarine through hatches andholes cut into the hull with plasma torches. The workwas extremely dangerous. At 350 feet below the surface,the divers were at the limits of safe diving and had to usespecial gas mixtures and decompression chambers tocombat the effects of oxygen narcosis and the bends.Divers could have been killed by the extreme pressureand cold if their protective suits had been punctured byjagged pieces of debris.

Indeed, Russian admiral Vladimir Kuroyedovreminded the divers of the dangers, telling them thattheir lives were more important than the retrieval ofbodies or artifacts. “You should think of your families,”he said. “We understand you are capable of anything,but remember that your lives are more important tome today.”

Exercising extreme caution, the divers managed torecover 12 bodies, two messages, and the ship’s log fromthe rear compartments of the sub before they suspendedtheir work because of winter weather. The chambers theyexamined showed evidence of fire. The logbook had noentry concerning the accident. The two messages, foundwith the bodies of sailors, shed light on the last hours onthe ship. An unknown sailor wrote, “There are 23 peoplein the ninth compartment. We feel bad . . . we’re weak-ened by the effects of carbon monoxide from the fire . . .the pressure is increasing in the compartment. . . . If wehead for the surface we won’t survive the compression.”

Lieutenant-Captain Dmitry Kolesnikov, 23 years old,wrote, “All personnel from sections six, seven and eight


have moved to section nine [the last compartment ofthe stern]. There are 23 people here. We have made thedecision because none of us can escape.” Kolesnikov alsomentioned that the men were not able to open the escapehatch, which they referred to as the escape trunk. Thischamber has one hatch on the top and one on the bottom.To escape, a sailor opens the bottom hatch, climbs inside,and closes the hatch behind him. He then dons hisemergency breathing hood and floods the chamber with

95KURSK

The first body recoveredfrom Kursk was identifiedas that of Lieutenant-Captain Dmitry Kolesnikov.In this August 1998 photo-graph he proudly posedon the submarine thatwould cause his death.

water. Flooding equalizes the pressure between theescape trunk and the water above the top hatch. Withoutequalizing the pressure, the hatch cannot be opened dueto the level of water pressure bearing down on it. Whenthe pressures are equal, the top hatch bursts open, and thesailor inside can make a free ascent to the surface.

It is possible that something may have happened tothe hatch on Kursk. Perhaps the explosion or the jolt asthe ship struck bottom jammed the hatch. A lack of train-ing could also have prevented the men from attemptingan escape. It was reported that the men of Komsomoletshad had no idea how to work their escape equipment, andhad read the instruction manual for the escape pod justbefore they attempted to use it. Perhaps a similar lack oftraining prevented the crewmen of Kursk from openingthe hatch.

On the surface, a number of factors helped to doomKursk. The Russian navy was slow to notice it had lost asub. Ineptitude, a lack of equipment, a lack of trainedmen to operate the equipment, obstinacy, a fear of theWest, bad weather, and bad luck all worked against themen trapped on the bottom of Barents Sea. The cause ofthe accident was alternately chalked up to friendly fire, acollision with an unknown U.S. submarine, a World WarII mine, malfunction of a torpedo, espionage, humanerror, and sabotage.

The most probable explanation for the accident wasa torpedo explosion in either the torpedo room or thetorpedo tube. The divers found that the submarine showedmassive damage consistent with a torpedo explosion inthe bow, where the torpedo room is located. Kursk wastest-firing torpedoes during its training exercises, and themen in the torpedo room were preparing torpedoes forlaunch. Perhaps there was a hot run and the torpedoexploded before it could be deactivated, or the torpedo


exploded before the crewmen even loaded it. In eitherscenario the accidental explosion would have been anutter catastrophe, detonating the other torpedoes in thecompartment and killing everyone in the room. Theexplosion registered as strong as a small earthquake onnearby seismographs, so it is likely that most of theweapons in the torpedo room did detonate. This explo-sion sent Kursk to the bottom.

The Russians have stated that Kursk was carryingnew torpedoes propelled by liquid fuel instead of solidfuel or compressed air. Experts point out that the Russianshave a history of accidents with liquid fuel and sub-marines. (K-219 went to the bottom when a liquid-fueledballistic missile exploded inside the submarine.) If the fuelhad exploded, it would have created a huge fireball andshockwave capable of blowing through the submarine atthe speed of sound, killing or seriously injuring much ofthe crew before anyone knew what had happened.

It is also possible that friendly fire from the vesselsparticipating in the training exercise may have sunk Kursk.In a training exercise, anything can happen, so a torpedo,mine, or depth charge used in the exercise could have sunkKursk by accident. The Russian navy had not conductedtraining exercises on such a large scale for many years.Many untrained or partially trained men were taking part,which could have increased the chance of an accident.However, both the Russians and Americans have statedthat friendly fire did not destroy the sub.

Indeed, the Russians maintain that an American orBritish submarine observing the exercises got too closeand collided with Kursk, and the force of this collisioncrippled and sank the submarine. However, while manycollisions occurred between American and Soviet sub-marines during the cold war, and some of the subs weredamaged beyond repair, there is no record of a nuclear

97KURSK

submarine being destroyed by a collision with anothernuclear submarine. Furthermore, the Americans andBritish both emphatically deny that their submarinescollided with Kursk or any other Russian vessel duringthe exercise. Two U.S. Navy submarines, USS Memphis(SSN-691) and USS Toledo (SSN-769), were in the areamonitoring the exercises. They are not known to havesuffered any damage.

The Kursk disaster fascinated and infuriated theworld. Reports of the accident and the trapped crewmenfilled newspapers, magazines, TV programs, and theInternet. The story became even more fascinating whenthe Norwegian divers finally opened the sub’s escapehatch. If the Russians had swallowed their pride andasked for help faster, there may have been survivors fromthe accident.

This information, along with pictures taken at thetime of Russian president Vladimir Putin enjoying hissummer vacation—instead of cutting it short to deal withthe emergency—enraged the families of the Kursk sailorsand many Russian people. Putin eventually apologizedand expressed his sadness. “I have a great feeling ofresponsibility and guilt for this tragedy,” he said onAugust 23, 2000, but his approval rating still sufferedbecause of his lack of attention to the incident. Rumorsspread throughout the country that the navy did not wantto save the submariners because they would reveal to theworld the true condition of the Russian navy.

The disaster infuriated environmentalists around theworld because it involved yet another Russian nuclearsubmarine. The Russians have the dubious distinction ofhaving deposited the most nuclear submarine material onthe ocean floor. Organizations like Bellona are monitor-ing Kursk along with the other Russian submarines andreactors resting on the bottom of the world’s oceans.


The most fascinating aspect to the Kursk story is theattempt to raise the vessel. According to news reportspublished in May 2001, the Dutch salvage firm Mammoetplanned to raise the submarine by September 10, 2001,and by the summer of 2001 workers had already begun toprepare the site. From practically the day the submarinesank, there had been talk of raising it. An internationaleffort led by the Kursk Foundation, located in Brussels,Belgium, began raising money for the operation as soon asthe submarine went down—it was estimated that approx-imately $70 to $80 million was required for the job.

Successfully raising the submarine would prevent the

99KURSK

An illustration publishedin June 2001 outlines therisks involved with raisingthe Kursk submarine fromits watery tomb 350 feetbelow the surface of theBarents Sea.

nuclear fuel contained in its two reactors from contam-inating the Barents Sea and nearby fishing grounds. Itwould also allow the Russians to determine exactlywhat caused the accident and prevent a similar incidentfrom occurring again. There may be an unknowndefect in the Oscar II–class submarines still in service,and being able to examine the wreckage would helpscientists learn if there is a class-specific problem. Aninspection of the Kursk wreckage would also help scien-tists figure out if there was a problem or defect thatcould affect the entire Russian submarine fleet. Theinformation contained in the wreckage might alsoinspire the Russian navy to finally create a program likethe U.S. SUBSAFE program.

Submarines have been raised from the ocean before.In 1939 Swede Momsen not only saved the men ofSqualus, he also raised the sub and hauled it back to thePortsmouth navy yard for overhaul. This part of thejob was more dangerous than saving the men, requir-ing many dives to prepare the sub. The divers riskedthe bends and the squeeze among other hazards, andthere were mishaps. Luckily, no lives were lost in thesalvage operation.

The divers used technology similar to what would beneeded to raise Kursk. Air-filled pontoons raised Squalus tojust below the water’s surface, and ships then towed it intoPortsmouth. Kursk would probably require the same typeof recovery. For an effective salvage, divers need to descendto the wreck and clear channels underneath the sub. Thesalvage team has to pass cables under the sub through thesechambers, which are secured to balloons inflated withnitrogen. Next, the team drills holes into the hull, makingthe cables fast to the hull. The inflated balloons would thenlift the submarine off the seabed. Finally, the vessel canthen be secured to a tow ship and hauled back to port.


Another method of recovery would entail cuttingholes in the hull and securing cables that would beattached to giant cranes on the surface. In that case, Kurskwould be pulled up by the cranes, secured, and towedback to port. Once Kursk reaches port it presumably willbe dry-docked for removal of the reactors and bodies,then inspected to determine a cause of the tragedy.

The Russians have indicated that they will cut thedamaged bow section from the sub before lifting it fromthe bottom. They say they will retrieve this portion laterand without foreign help. This may mean a secretweapon of some sort is inside the bow. Whatever thereason, this would make raising the sub much saferbecause there would be no danger of torpedo explosion.

The raising of a nuclear submarine will be dangerousenough as it is. There is a risk of meltdown or explosionif the ship tilts as it is being raised. The control rods couldcome out of the reactors, causing a nuclear reaction tobegin again. It is hard to predict what could result fromtilting twin nuclear reactors sideways or upsidedown—it is quite possible that some type of devastat-ing explosion might occur.

The Russians hope to be able to raise Kursk withoutincident, recover the lost bodies of the crew, and deter-mine what happened. The grieving families of the 118men who died deserve an answer.

101KURSK

An Accident

Can Be the

Impetus for

Reform

Many nuclear submarine disasters have occurred since the world’sfirst nuclear submarine, Nautilus, was launched in 1954. TwoU.S. Navy submarines (Thresher and Scorpion) and at least four

Soviet/Russian navy submarines (K-8, K-219, Komsomolets, and Kursk) reston the bottom of the world’s oceans. Because nuclear materials are deadlypoisons and take many years to decay into nontoxic materials, the wrecksof nuclear subs and their discarded reactors and fuel will have to be boldlymarked on ocean maps and monitored for thousands of years to come.These sites are toxic dumps and must not be disturbed.

Critics note that an accident is often the only impetus for reform. This isvery true with nuclear submarine disasters. With the successful launching ofNautilus, the United States went on a public-relations blitz promoting “good

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In the United States, theSUBSAFE program hashelped ensure that better,safer designs and materialsare used for submarinesunder construction. Exist-ing subs have also beenretrofitted according tothe safety commission’sspecifications.

8

old American know-how.” The entire nation was tem-porarily lulled into a false sense of security. Nautilus hadproblems, but the government never revealed them to thepublic. It could not, however, cover up the loss of Thresherwith all its hands. The disaster brought the U.S. Navy andthe nation back to reality.

The navy instituted the SUBSAFE program in 1963as a result of the Thresher disaster. All nuclear sub-marines under construction were given better ballastsystems built to strict navy specifications, while sub-marines already built and in service were retrofittedwith SUBSAFE equipment during overhaul. Ballastpipes were enlarged for better operation, and dangerousstrainers that could cause ice formation and blockagewere removed from the pipes.

After the loss of Thresher, officials cracked down oncontractors and workers, demanding stringent adherenceto navy specifications. From the first to the last day ofa nuclear submarine’s construction, workers and con-tractors had to stick to these specifications at all times.Only equipment, spare parts, and raw materials that hadbeen approved would make it into U.S. Navy nuclearsubmarines. Such restrictions would prevent a reactorpipe explosion like the one that happened on boardNautilus from ever occurring again.

SUBSAFE also demanded that each weld specifiedin a submarine’s design would actually be welded, andchecked. The safety commission would not allow forthe brazing of pipes wherever a weld was specified.Another reform from SUBSAFE called for redundancyin the construction of electrical systems. Redundancy inthis case simply means doubling up on equipment—twosystems that do the same job, so if one breaks down, theother can take over. The electrical equipment that failedon Thresher might have continued operating if there


had been better redundancy in the system. Yet anotherSUBSAFE reform called for the curtailment of experi-mental equipment in active-duty submarines. Thresherhad some experimental flexible steam-pipe couplings,and while they are not believed to have contributed tothe accident, SUBSAFE believed that experimentswith equipment should be performed in test subs, notactive-duty ones.

SUBSAFE also evaluated the emergency blowprocedure, which the safety commission streamlinedfor maximum efficiency. The new system allowed forfaster implementation of the emergency blow, in thehopes of saving a submarine and preventing disaster.On February 9, 2001, while entertaining a group of

105AN ACCIDENT CAN BE THE IMPETUS FOR REFORM

National TransportationSafety Board membersinspect the USS Greeneville(SSN-772) as it sits in drydock at the Pearl HarborNaval Shipyard. In February2001, while demonstrat-ing an emergency blowprocedure off the coastof Hawaii, the Greenevillestruck a Japanese fishingvessel, sinking the shipand killing nine people.

political campaign donors aboard a thank-you cruise, theLos Angeles–class attack submarine USS Greeneville (SSN-772) performed an exhibition emergency blow, duringwhich it collided with a Japanese high school–training ship,Ehime Maru. In this case, crew personnel did not properlyfollow the safety procedures, and four students and fivesailors were killed when the sub shot up to the surface. At thiswriting no known changes have been made to the emergencyblow procedure following this submarine disaster.

The biggest ramification of SUBSAFE was thedevelopment in the 1960s of the Deep SubmergenceRescue Vehicle, a tiny submarine capable of diving downto a stricken sub and rescuing the crew members trappedinside. It travels to a wreck site on the back of a nuclearsubmarine and performs all of its functions underwater.Before the creation of the DSRV, the U.S. Navy had onlythe McCann Rescue Chamber and individual deep-seadiving equipment to perform rescue operations. Withthe development of this mini-sub, it became possible tosave any submarine crews trapped on the bottom ofshallow waters.

When the DSRV was created, nothing like it hadexisted before. The head of SUBSAFE, John P. Craven,and others had noted the difficulties in operating equip-ment in the depths of the ocean. The extreme waterpressure and cold, plus the lack of breathable oxygen,create problems for underwater rescue efforts similar tothe difficulties faced by astronauts exploring the vacuumof outer space. A piece of equipment built for the oceanmust endure its brutal habitat; the ocean will find anyflaw in a craft and destroy it.

Aside from its value as a rescue vessel, the DSRVhas also helped to advance the science of underwaterexploration. Technological advances have been madebecause of programs that created the DSRV and other


rescue craft like the British LR-5. Some of these inno-vations helped scientists find Titanic and will be usedin the future to find other wrecks of value to militarypersonnel and historians alike.

While the DSRV has never been used in a disaster,it has been used as a spy vehicle. Because it is able toarrive at a location, perform its mission, and leavewithout ever breaking the surface, it is ideal for suchpurposes. The DSRV’s spy missions are classified, butmany believe that during the cold war the vessel wasused to tap underwater Soviet phone lines and retrievepieces of sunken classified military equipment fromthe Soviets’ ocean test sites. Perhaps informationregarding the DSRV’s classified missions will bereleased in the future through requests under theFreedom of Information Act.

It is not known if the Russians have a program likeSUBSAFE to avert future disasters. If they have hadone, it can be inferred that it must not have workedvery well because over the years the Soviet and Russiangovernments have lost four complete submarines andsuffered dozens of other accidents. The crews suffered,as well, with an estimated 507 men killed or injured innuclear submarine accidents.

Whether or not the Russians have a program likeSUBSAFE, they do have two excellent submarine safetyideas. The double-hull submarine designs have helpedthe Russian vessels that meet with disaster through acts ofwar or accidents remain in one piece. If a sub ends up onthe sea bottom, the robust double-hull design may alsohelp contain nuclear materials in the vessel.

Russian submarine designers have also included intheir subs escape pods that are large enough to save anentire crew. An escape pod is a clever idea—though inactuality a pod has only been used in an emergency once,


when in 1989 a sailor escaped in one from Komsomoletsas it sank on its maiden voyage. The United States andNATO submarines have nothing like escape podsinstalled in their submarines, and they would dowell to try to include such devices in future vessels—especially if the subs dive deeper than existing rescuesubmarines can reach.

The Russians have also experimented with rescuesubmarines and mini-subs, but as of the turn of the21st century, they do not have the financial resourcesto properly maintain and operate the equipment. Infact, they barely have the finances to operate theironce-great navy or train their sailors. The Russiansmust reevaluate their place in the world and figure outhow large a navy they actually need and can afford.Some analysts speculate that Russia will soon onlyoperate a coastal naval fleet for self-protection.

The Russians may stop using liquid-fueled weaponryon their submarines, as well. As was evident from theliquid-fueled missile explosion that destroyed K-219—and, most likely, the Kursk—an accident with liquid-fuelinside a sealed submarine can be catastrophic. Solid fuelis much more stable, and the U.S. Navy has used it insubmarine missiles since the Polaris submarine ballistic-missile program of the early 1960s.

The entire world was watching as the drama of theKursk disaster unfolded. Perhaps the international interestin the fate of the sub and in its raising will benefit theRussian people as well. They need billions of dollars andthe services of brilliant scientists and skilled workers toclean up all of their dangerous leftover cold war–eranuclear submarines and nuclear materials. If the raising ofKursk doesn’t draw attention to this dangerous problem,then perhaps forward-thinking politicians, scientists, andenvironmentalists will influence world opinion to find a


solution to eliminating the nuclear dangers lurking inRussian harbors and shipyards.

It is also important to note that the world prolifera-tion of submarines is still ongoing. Russia, Germany,and Sweden produce new, sophisticated diesel-electricsubmarines for sale to any nation with the money topurchase one, and the United States and Britain some-times sell or give their decommissioned diesel-electricsubs to friendly nations. Taiwan is planning to purchasenew diesel-electric submarines from Germany with the


As more nations haveadded submarines to theirnavy programs, more subscruise the waters of theworld than ever before.The proliferation ofnuclear submarines hasgreatly enhanced the oddsthat deadly accidents willcontinue to occur.

help of the United States. China will probably purchaseor build more subs to combat international threats toits security. Pakistan is supposedly creating a diesel-powered fleet ballistic-missile submarine for use in itsfledgling nuclear-arms race with India. There hasbeen no word from India on its submarine wish list,but presumably Indian scientists and marine engineersare working on a design to match Pakistan’s. Onlytime will tell.

One thing is certain: The history of the submarine isintertwined with the stories of subs that have met withdisasters, accidents, and death. Submariners refer tothose unfortunate vessels and crews lost in the oceandepths as being on “eternal patrol.” Nuclear submarineswill continue to operate in the 21st century withenhanced stealth technologies and more advancedweaponry. The United States, Britain, France, andRussia will continue to use nuclear submarines becausethey are integral to their country’s naval defense strate-gies. And more accidents will occur, but perhaps theseaccidents will not be serious disasters for the crews orfor the environment.

The Russians have suffered the most accidents andcasualties, having constructed and operated more sub-marines than the United States and NATO combinedduring the cold war, and with little regard for crewsafety. Their policy of dumping nuclear materials intothe ocean instead of placing them in lead or cementcontainment vaults has shown little regard for theenvironment, as well. Such a course of action mayeventually poison ocean fishing grounds, make certainareas of the world uninhabitable, and pose other prob-lems such as increased cancer and infant mortalityrates, as well as decreased life span and quality of lifein certain parts of the earth.


Many concerned citizens hope that Russia will teamup with the United States and NATO countries anddiscontinue such environmentally disastrous policies.Perhaps, too, with improvements in rescue equipmentand training, fewer nuclear-submarine disasters willoccur in the 21st century.


112

1620 Doctor Cornelius Van Drebble, a Dutch physician, builds anddemonstrates the world’s first functional submarine

1774 John Day dies while demonstrating his submarine Maria, a convertedwooden sloop, at Plymouth, England; becomes the first person to diein a submarine accident

1776 During the Revolutionary War, the American navy uses Turtle, a smallsubmarine powered by one man, in an attempt to destroy British vessels

1864 On February 17, CSS Hunley, a hand-powered Confederate navysubmarine, sinks the USS Housatonic, the first warship destroyed bya submarine in combat

1900 USS Holland (SS-1) becomes the first submarine purchased by theU.S. Navy; it features torpedoes and torpedo tubes, a periscope, andbattery-powered electric motors, as well as other standard apparatusthat will appear in future vessels

1914–1918 Germany uses hundreds of U-boats in combat in World War I

1915 A German U-boat sinks the passenger liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915,killing 1,195 passengers; the United States responds by entering WorldWar I

1939 On May 23, Lieutenant Commander Swede Momsen and diverscomplete the first underwater submarine rescue, saving 33 survivorsfrom the USS Squalus

1941–1945 During World War II, the U.S. Navy adopts German wolf-pack tactics in underwater combat against the Japanese in the Pacific; thewar spurs advancements in submarine technology

1943 Jacques Cousteau invents self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba)

1945 The cold war between the United States/NATO and the SovietUnion begins

1954 The United States launches the USS Nautilus, the world’s firstnuclear submarine

Chronology

113

1957 K-3, the first Soviet nuclear submarine, is launched

1959 The United States launches the USS George Washington (SSBN-598),the first nuclear-powered, fleet ballistic missile submarine.

1961 On July 4, the K-19, a ballistic-missile submarine, becomes the firstSoviet nuclear vessel involved in an accident after a major leak developsin the reactor cooling system and irradiates the interior of the vessel;nine men die from radiation burns and poisoning

1963 USS Thresher (SSN-593) sinks with all hands on April 10 whileconducting sea trials about 240 miles off the coast of Cape Cod,Massachusetts; 129 crewmen die

1968 On May 21, USS Scorpion (SSN-589) sinks with all hands; expertsbelieve a torpedo explosion caused the accident, which kills 99 crewmen

1970 On April 12, 53 men die after Soviet submarine K-8 suffers a fire andsinks, while under tow, in the Bay of Biscay

1986 Soviet nuclear-powered–ballistic-missile submarine K-219 sinks nearBermuda on October 6 after a missile explosion; four men die in theaccident, while the East Coast of the United States barely escapesradiation contamination

1989 Soviet nuclear-powered submarine K-278 sinks in the NorwegianSea on April 7 during its maiden voyage; most of the crew is killed

2000 During an August 12 Russian naval exercise in the Barents Sea, thenuclear submarine Kursk suffers two explosions and plunges 350 feetto the sea bottom; the Russian navy begins rescue operations of Kurskthe following day, as officials assure the public that the 118 trappedsubmariners are still alive; a week later, Norwegian divers openKursk’s escape hatch to find no survivors

2001 On February 9, USS Greeneville (SSN-772) has an accidental collisionwith a Japanese high-school training ship, Ehime Maru; four Japanesestudents and five sailors are killed; in May, the media announces thatthe Dutch salvage firm Mammoet will raise Kursk by September 2001

Chronology

114

Ballard, Robert D., and Malcolm McConnell. Explorations: A Life ofUnderwater Adventure. New York: Hyperion, 1995.

Clancy, Tom. Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship.New York: Berkley Books, 1993.

Craven, John Piña. The Silent War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

Gray, Edwyn. Few Survived. London: Leo Cooper, 1996.

Hutchthausen, Peter, Igor Kurdin, and R. Alan White. Hostile Waters.New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Kinder, Gary. Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. New York: AtlanticMonthly Press, 1998.

Maas, Peter. The Terrible Hours. New York: Harper Torch, 1999.

Sontag, Sherry, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew.Blind Man’s Bluff. New York: Public Affairs, 1998.

Tyler, Patrick. Running Critical. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.

Verne, Jules. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. New York: Tor Books, 1995.

Weir, Gary E. Forged in War: The Naval-Industrial Complex and AmericanSubmarine Construction. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1998.

Further Reading

115

Index

Atomic bomb, 34, 47Attack submarines, 42, 79,

85Augusta, USS (SSN-710),

85Avalon, USS, 59

Ballard, Robert D., 46, 75Ballast, 14-15Ballast tanks, 14-15, 44-45,

50-51, 104and emergency blow,

45, 50-51, 74, 105-106Ballistic-missile submarines

(boomers), 36-37, 40,79, 83-86

Bathyscaphes, 48-49, 73,75

Battery explosions, 74-75Bayes’ theorem, 68, 80Belikov, Nikolai, 86Bellona, 98Bends, 21, 22Bester, 91Britanov, Igor, 85, 86Buchanan, Chester, 72, 73Bushnell, David, 28

China, and nuclear submarines, 110

CIA, and K-129, 81-82Civil War, 28Cold war, 12, 66-67

and nuclear submarines,36, 40, 47, 55

and spying, 12, 34, 62,63, 68-70, 107

and submarine disasters,77-88

and Thresher, 48Conning tower. See Sail

Cousteau, Jacques, 26Craven, John P., 51, 54, 58,

62, 68, 70, 71-73, 74, 80,106

Crush depth, 16, 46, 71

Da Vinci, Leonardo, 26,27

Day, John, 27Decompression chamber,

22Deep Submergence

Rescue Vehicle(DSRV), 106-107for exploration, 106-107for rescue, 54, 58-59,

62-63, 92, 106for spying, 59, 62-63,

107Diving bell

and Kursk, 91-92McCann Rescue Cham-

ber as, 54, 57-58, 106

Ehime Maru, 106Electric Boat Company,

30-31, 54Emergency blow, 45, 50-51,

74, 105-106Escape pod, 18, 107-108Eternal patrol, 110

Fenian Ram, The, 30Fires, 15-17, 80, 82, 83-87Fleet ballistic missile

submarines (FBMs), 36-37, 40

Free ascent, 21-22, 54, 59,95-96

George C. Marshall, USS, 67

Germanyand nuclear sub-

marines, 109-110and U-boats, 31-32

Glomar Explorer, 82Greeneville, USS

(SSN-772), 106Greenpeace, 78Gunter, Jackie, 41, 43

Hamilton, Gordon, 70Harvey, Wes, 41, 43, 44,

45, 46Holland, John, 30-31Holland, USS (SS-1), 30Holland II, USS, 30Hostile Waters (book and

movie), 86Hot-running torpedo,

70-75Housatonic, USS, 28Hughes, Howard, 82Hulls, 40-42

and double-hull design,42, 107

single, 42titanium for, 87-88See also Welds

Hunley, CSS, 28Hutchthausen, Peter, 86Hydrophones, 68-70HY-80 steel, 41-42,

51-52HY-140 steel, 58

India, and nuclear submarines, 110

Iron coffins, 30

Johnson, Lyndon B., 67, 70

116

K-3, 77, 80K-8, 82, 103K-19, 79-80, 83K-27, 82K-46, 83K-56, 83K-123, 83K-129, 80-82K-192, 88K-219, 83-86, 97, 103, 108K-278 (Komsomolets),

86-88, 96, 103, 108K-429, 83Kennedy, John F., 47-48Kolesnikov, Dmitry, 94-95Komsomolets. See K-278Kurdin, Igor, 86Kuroyedov, Vladimir, 94Kursk, SSGN (K-149),

11-23, 88, 91-101, 103and British help, 92and collision with

submarine, 96, 97-98and deaths, 14, 17, 18,

19-23, 91, 92, 101description of, 12-13and diving bell, 91-92and environment, 98and escape, 21-23, 95-96and fire, 15-17flooding of, 17-18and friendly fire, 96, 97and liquid-fueled

weaponry, 108and media, 98mission of, 13and Norwegian help,

92, 93, 98and nuclear reactors,

12, 18, 19-20Putin’s response to, 98

raising of, 99-101and rescue, 20-21, 91-95and Russian misinforma-

tion and interference,92-96, 98

sinking of, 17-20and tapping sounds,

20-21, 91, 92, 93-94and torpedo explosion,

14-17, 96-97and United States help,

92, 93weapons carried by, 13

Kursk Foundation, 99

Lead shielding, 79Los Angeles-class attack

submarines, 79, 85LR-5, 92, 107Lusitania, 31Lyachin, Gennadi, 14, 18

Mammoet, 99Maria, 27-28Meltdown, 19, 47Memphis, USS (SSN-691),

98Mizar, USNS, 70, 73Momsen, Swede, 92, 100Mystic, USS, 59

Nautilus, in 20,000 LeaguesUnder the Sea, 26

Nautilus, USS, 26, 34-36,46-47, 103-104reactor-pipe explosion

on, 53-54, 104North Atlantic Treaty Orga-

nization (NATO), 12submarines of, 40, 59,

79, 87, 92, 108

Nuclear reactors, 19-20on Kursk, 12, 18, 19-20on Thresher, 44-45, 50, 52

Nuclear submarineshistory of, 26-27, 34-35invincibility of, 46-47, 58proliferation of, 109-110

Oxygen narcosis, 22

Pakistan, and nuclear submarines, 110

Permit, USS, 55Permit-class subs, 55Pigboats, 35Plunger, 30Polaris submarine ballistic-

missile program, 108Porpoise, 30Preminin, Sergei, 86Project Jennifer, 81-82Proxmire, William, 59, 62Putin, Vladimir, 98

Reactor scram, 44Redundancy, 104-105Rescue methods, 54, 57-59

Deep SubmergenceRescue Vehicle, 54, 58-59, 62-63, 92, 106

free ascent, 21-22, 54,59, 95-96

and Kursk, 20-21, 91-95

McCann RescueChamber, 54, 57-58,106

Revolutionary War, 28Rickover, Hyman, 34-35,

47, 48, 52, 58, 78

Index

117

Index

Safety precautions, 47, 50,53-55and Soviet/Russian

submarines, 79, 107-109

and Thresher, 54-55, 58,67

See also Rescue methods;SUBSAFE program

Sail, 18Scorpion, USS (SSN-589),

65-75, 103and battery, 74-75and deaths, 66, 70description of, 67and examination of

wreckage, 73, 75and location of wreck-

age, 67-70, 73and torpedo explosion,

70-75weapons on, 71

Scram, 44, 50Scuba, 26Sea trials, 40-41Shock tests, 51Skylark, USS (ASR-30),

41, 43, 46Slattery, Francis A., 66,

67, 71Snorkels, 32-34Solid fuel, 108Solution, 14SOSUS (sound surveil-

lance system), 68-70Soviet/Russian submarines

and cleanup after disas-ters, 89, 108-109,110-111

and disasters, 77-89,103, 107

and double-hull design,107

and escape pods, 107-108

and liquid-fueledweaponry, 108

and safety precautions,79, 107-109

See also Cold war;Kursk

Spyingand cold war, 12, 34,

62, 63, 68-70, 107Deep Submergence

Rescue Vehicle for,59, 62-63, 107

hydrophones for, 68-70snorkel for, 33-34

Squalus, USS, 57-58, 92, 100SSGN, 12Steinke-hood breathing

device, 54Submarines

in fiction, 25-26history of, 26-35submariners trained to

save, 18unpleasant smells in, 35

Submersibles, 48-49, 73SUBSAFE program, 54,

58, 73-74, 104-107and construction stan-

dards, 53-54, 104and emergency blow,

51, 105-106and experimental

equipment, 105and redundancy in

electrical systems,104-105

and welding, 104

See also Deep Submer-gence Rescue Vehicle

Sweden, and nuclear submarines, 109

Taiwan, and nuclear submarines, 109

Tang, USS, 71Thresher-class submarines,

40, 55Thresher, USS (SSN-593),

39-55, 103, 104as attack submarine, 42and ballast tanks,

50-51, 53crew on, 41crushing of, 46, 50and deaths, 54description of, 39and electrical equipment

failure, 104-105and examination of

wreckage, 48-49and experimental

equipment, 53, 105and HY-steel skin, 51-52and location of wreck-

age, 47-48mission of, 40and nuclear reactor,

44-45, 50, 52and recovered bits of, 49safety precautions

learned from, 54-55,58, 67

and sea trials, 40-44and shock tests, 51and silver-brazed joint

failure, 44, 49-50sinking of, 44-46, 50

Titanic, 75, 107

118

Index

Titanium, for hulls, 87-88Toledo, USS (SSN-769),

98Tomsk, 88Torpedoes

and Kursk, 14-17, 96-97and Scorpion, 70-75

Trieste, 48-49Trieste II, 73, 75Turtle, 28

20,000 Leagues Under theSea (Verne), 25-26

Tyler, Patrick, 78

U-boats (Unterseeboot), 31-32

Van Drebble, Dr. Cornelius,27

Venturi effect, 51Verne, Jules, 25-26

Water pressure, 16, 43-44,46, 73

Welds, 42and SUBSAFE program,

104and Thresher, 44, 49-50

White, R. Alan, 86World War I, 31World War II, 31-32

119

Picture Credits

page

2 U.S. Navy/NMI10-11 New Millennium Images15 Agence France Presse16 Agence France Presse19 Agence France Presse

Live Graphic Service22 Reuters Photo Archive24 Bettmann/Corbis29 Paula Illingworth/AP/

Wide World Photos33 U.S. Navy/NMI34 Wulf Pfeiffer/AFP36 AP/Wide World Photos

38-39 AP/Wide World Photos43 U.S. Navy/NMI45 New Millennium Images48 Bettmann/Corbis52 U.S. Navy/NMI57 AP/Wide World Photos60 AP/Wide World Photos62 U.S. Navy/NMI64-65 AP/Wide World Photos69 U.S. Navy/NMI72 Bettmann/Corbis75 AP/Wide World Photos76-77 AP/Wide World Photos

81 New Millennium Images84 AP/Wide World Photos87 Everett Collection90-91 U.S. Navy/NMI93 AP/Wide World Photos95 Agence France Presse99 Agence France Presse

Live Graphic Service102-103 New Millennium Images105 U.S. Navy/NMI109 New Millennium Images

Front cover: New Millennium Images Back cover: Associated Press/AP

120

CHRISTOPHER HIGGINS is an associate editor at Chelsea House. Helives in Philadelphia with his wife, Sima, and his new baby, Talia. He hopesthat Talia grows up to become the first female captain of a Los Angeles–classnuclear attack submarine.

JILL MCCAFFREY has served for four years as national chairman of theArmed Forces Emergency Services of the American Red Cross. Ms. McCaffreyalso serves on the board of directors for Knollwood—the Army Distaff Hall.The former Jill Ann Faulkner, a Massachusetts native, is the wife of Barry R.McCaffrey, who served in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet as director of theWhite House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The McCaffreys are theparents of three grown children: Sean, a major in the U.S. Army; Tara, anintensive care nurse and captain in the National Guard; and Amy, a seventhgrade teacher. The McCaffreys also have two grandchildren, Michael and Jack.

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