Sometimes history becomes forgotten history because somebody powerful doesn't want it
to be remembered, events are kept secret, are suppressed, are held from the historical record.
And we don't really know how many important historical events might have been lost that way,
but we know that sometimes there are historical events that governments,
and powerful people try to keep secret, but they still manage to get out. And one of those was an
accident with a reactor on a Soviet nuclear submarine in 1961 that the Soviet Union very
much did not want anybody in the world to know about, but the details of which eventually did
come out. They came out because, frankly, it is history that deserves to be remembered.
In 1957, the Soviet Union started producing its first nuclear-powered attack submarine under the
title Project 627 and the NATO designation November class. While the class demonstrated
the extraordinary endurance of nuclear-powered submarines, being the first Soviet submarines to
travel under the North Pole, it also demonstrated their complexity. It was a troubled class of
submarine with 131 Soviet sailors dying from various fires, reactor leaks, and accidents
during the class's service, including the loss of submarine K-8, the first Soviet loss of a
nuclear submarine. In 1958, the Soviets started producing a diesel electric powered ballistic
missile submarine under the title Project 629, and the NATO designation Golf class. One submarine
of that class, the K-129, was lost in 1968 when, for unknown reasons, it exceeded its crush depth.
Parts of that summary were later recovered by the United States, and a then secret project called,
Project Azorian. In 1959, the Soviets started producing a class of nuclear-powered ballistic
missile submarines that married the November class design, to the missile compartment of the
Golf class. Called Project 658, eight of these submarines were built and classified by NATO as
the Hotel class. This was the first generation of Soviet nuclear submarines equipped with
nuclear ballistic missiles, initially three R-13, submarine launched short-range ballistic missiles.
The class was rushed into production because Soviet leadership were desperate to build a
nuclear submarine fleet that could match that of the United States. It was so rushed in fact, that
some Soviet naval officers thought that the class was not fit for service. The first of the Hotel
class to be built was the Soviet submarine K-19. Constructed over a period of just over six months,
between October of 1958 and April of 1959, the rush to construct the submarine showed,
in the fact, that nine workers died, in different accidents, during the vessel's construction.
Launched on April 8th 1959, the submarine had a bad start. Breaking with naval tradition,
the Soviets had a man, rather than a woman, christen the submarine. As it slid down into the
ocean and he hit it with the bottle of champagne, the bottle refused to break, instead bouncing off
of the submarine's rubber skin. According to Mariner tradition, that is a sign of ill omen.
The boat had problems quickly. In January 1960, before it even started sea trials, confusion
during a shift change resulted in an improper operation of a reactor, bending a reactor rod,
and required the entire reactor be dismantled for repairs. Problems continued as the boat suffered
a number of early issues during sea trials. Most notable among those was a pressure dive test in
which the reactor compartment started to flood, requiring the captain to order the main ballast
tanks blown in order to emergency surface. The boat took on so much water that it lost stability,
surfacing on its portside, and nearly colliding with a support vessel. Investigations found
that the leak was the result of a faulty gasket that should have been replaced during
construction. Other accidents were troubling but less serious. After a high-speed trial,
the crew found out that the boat's rubberized coating had all peeled off, and the entire boat
had to be repainted. But despite these issues the K-19 was among the newest,
and most modern boats in the Soviet Navy. Its captain, Captain Second-Ranked Nikolai Zateyev,
was a talented and veteran Submariner who had been personally promoted by Defense Minister Marshal
Georgy Zhukov. The 139 man crew of the K-19 were veterans of the submarine service, albeit their
experience was with diesel-powered boats. The K-19 was considered the pride of the Soviet fleet, it's
most cutting-edge vessel, and service aboard the boat was a matter of distinction. With the crew,
for example, getting the best rations in the fleet. Although Zateyev questioned the quality of
the boat and its construction, there was no reason to believe that it could not successfully perform
its first mission in June of 1961 to participate in a month-long war game. The K-9 team began its
mission on June 18th. The submarine had to enter the Atlantic without being discovered by NATO,
and then to await orders. At first the mission went fine, on June 30th the crew
celebrated Captain Zateyev’s 35th birthday with a double ration of homemade ice cream and wine.
The boat was positioned south of Greenland, and had just been given orders to start to proceed
north under the sea ice. In the early morning hours of July 4th 1961, Lieutenant Yuriy Povstyev,
who was the officer in charge of propulsion, noticed that the pressure gauge for the coolant
system for the starboard reactor was vibrating. As he watched, the gauge dropped to zero. The
coolant system for the reactor had failed. Apparently a pipe had burst, the resulting loss
and pressure had disabled both pumps. At 4:15 a.m. he issued an urgent call to the captain.
The nuclear core was designed to flow coolant continuously over the uranium fuel rods. That then
removes the heat generated by fission, where it is transferred to the turbine that turns the screws,
giving the ship propulsion. Without coolant, the core can quickly overheat. The system
automatically shut down, a process called SCRAM, but the reactor continued to overheat. The result
of what is called decay heat from fission products that remain after reactor SCRAM.
The K-19 was now without power, 300 feet below the ocean. The temperature in the reactor room
soared past 140 degrees Celsius, 284 degrees Fahrenheit, as high as their gauge went.
Enough to ignite a fire. Inside the reactor, the temperature rose to 800 degrees Celsius,
nearly 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. The potential consequences were disastrous, without cooling
the reactor would eventually melt, or have a thermal explosion. Either of which would not
only mean the loss of the ship and crew, but would cause a massive environmental disaster,
as the nuclear material from the boats two reactors, and three nuclear missiles were
released into the sea. Just as pressing, at the height of the Cold War an unexplained explosion,
or meltdown, could have been misinterpreted as an attack by either side, resulting in nuclear war.
Typically a nuclear reactor would have a backup cooling system. Engineers,
and Captain Zateyev himself had argued that such a redundant system
was necessary. But they had been told that, “The reactor was complex enough, already.”
Around 6 a.m. Captain Zateyev ordered the crew to blow the ballast to surface the boat, planning
to radio for assistance. On the surface they found out that the long-range radio transmission
antennas were not functioning. Zateyev could not contact Moscow. Lieutenant Yuriy Ordochkim, just
23 years old, was the officer in charge of the operation of the reactors. He proposed a radical
solution. The ship's engineers would jury-rigged a coolant system using the ship's drinking water
system by cutting one of the reactor valves, and connecting it to a pipe supplying water.
But this solution included a terrible problem. All the work would have to be done in the reactor room
which was now contaminated with lethal amounts of radiation. Giving that order would mean ordering
young men to their deaths. The order weighed heavily on the captain who later said, “At
one point, I considered going down to my cabin, taking out my pistol, and finishing my problems
all at once.” The members of the engineering crew were organized into three-man teams. Each would
only work for 10 minutes at a time, and attempt to limit their radiation exposure. They had no
appropriate protective gear, they would use only raincoats and gas masks. One of the volunteers
was Lieutenant Boris Korchilov, described as a blue-eyed ladies man. Captain Zateyev accompanied
him to the reactor room. He never faltered, none of them did, although they knew they were likely
headed towards their deaths. When Korchilov stumbled out of the reactor room, he pulled off
his gas mask, and vomited. The repair took hours, and then sprung a leak, requiring more time in the
compartment. The system worked well enough to bring the reactor temperatures down, but the eight
men from the engineering section had received more than three times the lethal dose of radiation.
Their faces were swollen and red. They started to sweat blood. Moreover, radioactive steam had made
it to the submarine's ventilation system, the entire boat was contaminated. Every crewman had
been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. The K-19 was able to use its short-range transmitter
to contact another Soviet submarine, the S-270, a diesel electric patrol submarine of the NATO
designation Whiskey class, which arrived alongside them 13 hours after the cooling system failed. Due
to the radiation, the crew was removed to the S-270. The eight members of the engineering crew
were so exposed that even after their clothes were destroyed, they still measured radiation
above background. That is to say, the sailors themselves had become radioactive. The K-19
was towed to the port of Polyarnyy. The boat was so contaminated that it contaminated the
port for some 700 meters around where it was docked. The most seriously sick were quickly
evacuated to hospitals. Lieutenant Korchilov, the blue-eyed lady's man was among the first to die,
along with two others on July 10th. Their comrades described them as being awake, and in extreme
pain, almost unrecognizable. They could not talk, but they could whisper, and when they did, they
begged their crewmates to end their suffering. By July 25th all eight members of the engineering
team had died from radiation exposure. Their bodies were so contaminated that they were buried
in a communal unmarked grave. Their families were not told of the burial, nor how they died.
14 other members of the K-19 crew died in the next two years of radiation exposure. The 22
members of K-19 crew who died are most certainly heroes, who gave their lives to save the lives
of others. Although the accident was kept secret, Soviet doctors established a protocol. A grueling
protocol, that included blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants that extended the lives
of the rest of the crew, even though some of them had been exposed to what was thought to be lethal
doses of radiation. Investigations after posited two possible explanations for what caused the pipe
to burst. In one, a welder might have neglected to use a thermal blanket when they were welding
another part, and sparks from the welding might have landed on the pipes causing micro abrasions
which eventually caused the pipe to fail. In another, there might have been a test where the
wrong pressure gauge was used, and the pipes were exposed to twice the amount of pressure that they
were supposed to be. That should have resulted in all the pipes being replaced, but the mistake
was apparently never reported to superiors. Either explanation underlies the fact that
it was the rush to build the submarine that was the ultimate cause of the accident aboard K-19.
The entire reactor section of the submarine was removed and dumped at sea. K-19 was returned to
service in 1963. It continued to suffer from accidents and breakdowns. In 1972,
30 crew members died in a fire aboard the vessel. It was decommissioned in 1990.
In 2002, a Hollywood film was made depicting the reactor accident aboard the K-19 starring
Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson. Members of the crew of the K-19 however said that the depiction of the
officers and their actions was inaccurate. The film gave the submarine the nickname,
the Widowmaker, but that nickname was actually never used by the Soviet Navy. Sailors who sailed
aboard the K-19 instead gave it another nickname, they called it, The Hiroshima. 26 members of the
crew were given awards for gallantry for actions during the accident. According to Captain Zateyev,
mostly to keep them quiet. They were instructed never to speak about the accident, which was
held as a closely guarded secret by the Soviets clear until 1991. It was only the memories of the
surviving crew that kept the reactor accident aboard K-19 from becoming forgotten history.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the History Guy, short snippets of forgotten
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