Soviet submarine K-314 was unable to spot the USS Kitty Hawk supercarrier after an entire day of
poor weather conditions and a fog so deep that the captain couldn’t see mere feet from his vessel.
The submarine had been sent to the Sea of Japan to trail an American Navy task force performing
training exercises with South Korea, and for a week, the crew of the Victor-class
submarine armed with 18 nuclear weapons had been tailing the task force’s largest ship.
However, the Soviets suddenly lost track of the Americans on March 21,
1984, and Captain Alexander Evseenko
ordered his crew to raise the submarine to a depth of 32.8 feet to try and locate the task force.
Then, as the impatient captain looked through his vessel's periscope, his limbs went flaccid and his
face turned white. He immediately ordered the crew to submerge the submarine, but it was too late.
With the Navy Carrier Strike Group unknowingly heading towards them,
the 1,800-ton American supercarrier approached the submarine at full throttle.
A crash between the two opposing nuclear-armed vessels was now imminent,
with the global ramifications looming large over the crew’s shoulders…
The Ultimate Supercarrier
On April 29, 1961, the USS Kitty Hawk supercarrier was
commissioned at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.
Introduced in the middle of the Cold War, the aircraft carrier was put into active
service only 17 days after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel to space.
The supercarrier, named after the North Carolina beach town
where the Wright brothers first powered airplane flight, was the first of three aircraft carriers
of its class to be commissioned and the last to be decommissioned.
Throughout the next two decades, Kitty Hawk and her evolving complement of 5,624 crewmembers
participated in several world conflicts, including in numerous Cold War-era operations
and during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam,
where she became the first carrier to receive a Presidential Unit Citation.
In March of 1984, the supercarrier, led by Captain David N. Rogers, sailed toward the Sea of Japan to
participate in Team Spirit, a joint effort between the United States and South Korea to perform a
series of drills and military training exercises between their naval forces between 1974 and 1993.
The supercarrier was accompanied by a naval task force of eight escort ships
and was a critical component of the Americans’ participation in the exercise.
With a massive 1,068.9 feet from the hull to the waterline,
the ship was nearly as large as three football fields and could carry up to 80 aircraft.
Incidentally, the appearance of such a powerful carrier strike group not far from the Sea of
Okhotsk did not go unnoticed by Russia, and soon, Commander of the Soviet Pacific Fleet
Emil Spiridonov sent several ships near the training area to track the American vessels,
assigning covert and long-term surveillance operations to one particular nuclear submarine.
Chasing An Aircraft Carrier
The nuclear submarine K-314, project 671 "Ruff," was a Victor-class attack vessel
armed with 18 torpedoes that first entered service in the late 1960s.
With a complement of about 90 officers and sailors, K-314,
led by Captain 2nd Rank Alexander Evseenko, began shadowing USS Kitty Hawk in mid-March 1984, as
the aircraft carrier left the port of Kusan, South Korea, and started sailing parallel to the vessel.
The submarine's crew chased the supercarrier for a week bymonitoring her every move
and sending all recovered data to the Soviet Pacific Fleet’s headquarters.
The Americans soon discovered that they were being followed by a 5,200-ton Soviet submarine, not an
uncommon occurrence during exercises so close to the mainland, and tried to break away repeatedly.
This cat-and-mouse game went on until poor weather conditions arose over the Yellow Sea on March 20,
and the submarine lost sight and contact
with Kitty Hawk and the rest of the American task force.
Captain Evseenko then ordered his crew to raise the submarine to a
depth of only 32.8 feet to assess the situation.
Looking through the periscope, Evseenko was shocked to realize that the entire Navy
Carrier Strike Group was only three miles away, unknowingly heading towards them at full speed.
Should the nuclear weapons aboard the two Cold War-era vessels explode,
a crash would not only provoke a disastrous ecological catastrophe,
but also a significant conflict between the world's two superpowers.
Although Evseenko gave his crew an immediate order to dive, it was too late:
an unplanned collision between a Soviet submarine and an American vessel was about to take place.
The Crash
At 10:07am, about 150 miles east of Pohang, South Korea,
in the Sea of Japan, USS Kitty Hawk hit Soviet submarine K-314 at full speed.
Captain Rogers, who was on the bridge of the supercarrier at the time of the collision,
suddenly felt a violent shudder.
As he and his men ran to the starboard lookout to find out what happened, Captain Rogers spotted
the outline of a submarine's sail moving away from the carrier, failing to display
navigational lights required by international law precisely to prevent such accidents.
The 80,000-ton supercarrier only suffered a hole in her bow,
causing thousands of tons of fuel to leak into the ocean, but the overall damage was
minor. In contrast, the 5,200-ton Soviet submarine's propeller was heavily damaged.
While waiting for emergency tow ships, two American helicopters stationed in the carrier
inspected the unlit submarine using night vision goggles
to find out if she had suffered significant or even dangerous damage.
Ignoring the American's offers of assistance, the Soviets instead
chose to contact the Petropavlovsk cruiser, the Soviet’s task force flagship, by flashing light.
However, the ship did not respond,
and the submarine was able to remain seaworthy despite the damage.
Official Inquiry
With the help of other ships and escorted by an American frigate for a large portion of the route,
the damaged K-314 was taken to Chazhma Bay
and docked for repairs on her bow. Then, as the Team Spirit drills with South Korea were over,
USS Kitty Hawk slowly and carefully made her way to the Japanese Yokosuka port for repairs.
Both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted their own investigations
without exchanging information, but their conclusions were similar.
While the failure of the US Navy's escort vessels to detect the approaching submarine
raised speculation about how they could have permitted a Soviet submarine to
approach so close to a significant ship like a carrier, the answer was simple.
The United States would have never lost sight of the Russian submarine during wartime.
However, because the 1984 training exercise was being performed during peacetime,
it was not unusual to lose contact with a foreign submarine.
At the time, both nations were in agreement not to interfere with each other's maritime operations.
The One To Blame
While Kitty Hawk had no sonar systems of her own, the remaining cruisers,
destroyers, and frigates in the Team Spirit task force did. However, according to Captain Rogers,
the submarine did not appear on their radar scopes as it was submerged or partially submerged.
Pentagon officials also stated that the Soviet boat's skipper was unaware
of the presence of the carrier when the submarine attempted to surface.
The United States Navy claimed
that the collision’s responsibility lay only with the Russians. However,
the reason behind the Soviet captain's slip in judgment was the only question left to answer.
According to the Chief of Naval Operations, Rear Admiral James D.
Watkins, Captain Evseenko: [QUOTE] "Showed uncharacteristically poor seamanship
in not staying clear of Kitty Hawk. That should cause concern in Moscow."
Despite solely blaming the captain, the Americans did not demand any compensation.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Naval Command's own investigation agreed with the Americans.
As crewmembers from the Soviet submarine later recalled, the fleet commander directly cursed
and urged them to prepare for the consequences of the clash at the last minute. Evseenko was
consequently suspended from the post of captain and continued his service on the mainland.
No further action was taken, but the former captain never agreed with the verdict,
stating in a first-hand account of the event that:
[QUOTE] "Everybody was lucky. We didn't sink, no one got burned."
An Averted Nuclear Disaster
According to several sources, there was a risk of a nuclear incident during the collision,
and such an explosion in the Sea of Japan would have most likely caused a shift in the Cold War.
USS Kitty Hawk carried several dozen tactical nuclear weapons at the time of the incident,
while the Soviet submarine also had numerous missiles with quite a similar warhead.
Luckily, none of the nuclear weapons on board the Soviet and American vessels detonated,
and the March 1984 incident ended in mechanical damage only.
As a result of the collision, USS Kitty Hawk was considered by many
to be the world's first anti-submarine carrier weapon, and her cheeky crew
even painted a short-lived red submarine on her island near the bridge.
Kitty Hawk then returned to her homeport in North Island San Diego
and eventually returned to combat service, where she served for 25 more years.
No aircraft carriers have ever rammed any submarines since.
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