The Widowmakers Read online

Bombs: CBU-100 cluster bombs (CBUs); Mark 80 series of unguided bombs (including 3 kg and 14 kg practice bombs); Paveway series of laser-guided bombs (LGBs); Joint Direct Attack Munitions; Mark 77 napalm canisters

  K-19 Soviet Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine

  “They say there was a cosmonaut who orbited the earth before Yuri Gagarin. But he was not loyal enough to hold his breath when his life support system gave out, so he never existed. Gagarin was lucky… …let us drink to luck.” –Conversation among the senior officers of the K-19 enjoying a drink just before the launch of the ship, as depicted in the film “K-19:The Widowmaker”

  Introduction

  The K-19 was the first nuclear submarines with nuclear missile-carrying capability launched by the Soviet Union, near the height of the Cold War era. This “widowmaker” differs in a major way from the others chronicled throughout this book. While the others were vehicles manufactured in larger quantities, the K-19 was a single ship that earned its “widowmaker” reputation through a disaster-laden first mission. What follows is the story of the K-19.

  K-19 Construction, Launch and Sea Trials

  The year was 1959, near the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had enough nuclear weaponry to wipe out the entire population of the planet twice over, and the United States had enough nuclear weaponry to wipe out the world’s population ten times over. And both nations were locked in a race to build even more nuclear weapons.

  One of the major weapons of the cold war was, of course, the nuclear submarine. With its ability to remain submerged far longer than conventional diesel-powered subs and its capability for carrying nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, the nuclear submarine was the one major nuclear weapon that could not be taken out with a massive “first-strike” nuclear attack by either side.

  The Soviet Union was far behind its archrival the United States in terms of nuclear submarines (the US Navy’s own USS Nautilus having entered service in 1954), and the leaders of the Soviet Union’s naval forces were determined to catch up. The ship’s keel was laid on 17 October 1958, K-19 was launched on 11 October 1959, and its official commissioning took place on 30 April 1961. The ship appeared cursed out of the starting gate, as during the construction of the K-19, one electrician was crushed to death by a missile tube cover, six workers were killed from fumes during the installation of insulation, and an engineer was killed when he fell between two compartments of the sub. A possible indicator of the fate that lay in store for the K-19 occurred at the launch ceremony when the customary bottle of champagne was thrown against the hull and the bottle failed to break, a typical sign of bad luck among seafarers.

  The major problem with the K-19 was that the overall design was sound, but in the efforts of the Soviet Union to catch up with the United States in nuclear submarine capabilities, the sub had been rushed into production. Manufacturing had been rushed and had been fraught with construction-related accidents, numerous systems had not been sufficiently tested, and many emergency supplies were not on board simply because they had not arrived at K-19’s home port before the ship left port on the way to its sea trials. Captain Nikolai Zateyev, commander of the K-19, is reported to have said that the entire fleet of Soviet nuclear submarines, his own ship included, were simply not ready for combat at the time of their launch.

  Bad omens and construction accidents aside, the K-19 immediately put to sea for a series of trials following her official commissioning. A total of 139 men were aboard the K-19, including the ships’ reactor officers and crew, the missile crew, the torpedo crew, medical personnel, and a number of observing officers who were on board for this first mission, but were not a part of the regular crew.

  The sea trials of the K-19 were not inspiring by any means. While at its maximum operating depths of nearly 1,000 feet, a major leak developed inside the reactor compartment, and Capt. Zateyev ordered K-19 to surface. Once on the surface, the leak was discovered to be caused by the omission of a simple rubber gasket during manufacturing. It was this sort of careless assembly that boded an ill omen for the future of the K-19.

  In June of 1961, the K-19, under Capt. Zateyev’s command, left its home port on its way to its first mission. As part of a series of readiness exercises, K-19 was to approach the US coastline undetected, and then play the role of an attacking American submarine, returning to Soviet territory underneath the polar ice cap and simulating a missile attack on Moscow. K-19 completed the first part of its mission without a major incident, spending over two weeks in the North Atlantic, in international waters off the coast of North America. Finally, orders were received from Moscow, and K-19 was on her way back when disaster struck.

  Breach in the Reactor

  On 4 July 1961, Capt. Zateyev and his bridge officers received an alarming report from the reactor room. Pressure within the reactor’s cooling system has dropped precipitously- to zero, as a matter of fact. A leak had developed in the reactor’s primary cooling system, the set of pipes that carry coolant to and from the reactor core (see accompanying figure). As a result, the reactor’s core temperature was rising uncontrollably, and had nothing been done, the result at the very least would have been a massive chemical explosion, and at worst, possibly a small thermonuclear explosion..

  A fatal shortcoming in the design of the K19 was that in the rush to launch, this first generation Soviet nuclear submarine didn’t have backup cooling systems for the nuclear reactor; the backup cooling system was simply one more item that the shipbuilders lacked time to install. And to make matters worse (if they could have possibly been any worse), the sub’s long-range radio antenna had been damaged in an earlier accident when the K-19 surfaced through a section of the polar ice cap. At least one week away and hundreds of miles from its home port, the K-19 was unable to communicate with Moscow or to radio other Soviet subs to ask for assistance.

  A Trigger for World War III

  At this point, K-19 is not just a danger to herself and to her crew. She poses the risk of causing nuclear war between the world’s two superpowers, and Capt. Zateyev and his senior officers know this. A US Navy destroyer is patrolling the area, and a NATO naval base is nearby. If the K-19 were to suffer a meltdown that triggered a thermonuclear explosion, the explosion would take out the nearby US Navy destroyer and probably the NATO base as well. Given the cold war tensions present at the time, the U.S. could have interpreted this as a first strike attack by the Soviet Union, and would likely have retaliated, effectively launching a thermonuclear World War III.

  A Widowmaker Mission

  Capt. Zateyev had already vetoed the only other viable possibility, which was to abandon the ship in lifeboats and intentionally sink the ship, so he and his officers came up with what was a suicide plan for those involved. A team of eight volunteers would have to enter the reactor compartment, and improvise a system that would get seawater into the reactor’s coolant pipes. The K-19 had not been equipped with radiation-protective suits; the crew had only chemical suits at their disposal. (Radiation protective suits were to be provided for the Soviet Navy’s nuclear subs, but the ones ordered for the K-19 had not arrived before the ship left port.) The volunteers were told by the officers (incorrectly) that the chemical suits would help protect them from the radiation, when in fact all the suits did was to absorb deadly doses of radiation.

  Working under lethal radiation exposure conditions, in roughly one hour the men managed to weld a pipe onto an existing air vent pipe, allowing cooling seawater to flow into the reactor core. Showing terrible signs of radiation poisoning, the first team of volunteers emerged from the reactor compartment, and over the next few hours, additional teams of volunteers had to enter the highly contaminated reactor compartment to deal with leaks in the improvised system. Each team sent on the suicide mission had to contend with both intense heat and with the increasingly debilitating radiation poisoning brought on by exposure to the reactor compartment.

  Radiation Spreads

  Capt. Zateyev and his crew quickly encountered
yet another problem to deal with: the spread of slower yet still lethal radiation throughout the sub. With the reactor compartment jury-rigged to allow for the improvised cooling system, radioactive steam had been sucked into the sub’s ventilation system. Additionally, crew members were pumping radioactive water out of the reactor compartment. As they did so, radioactive water began leaking out of sewage drains in compartments 3 through 8, comprising well over two-thirds of the entire ship.

  With the radioactive gases and drainage water spreading throughout the sub, Zateyev and his senior officers came to the realization that none of the crew would survive the week-long, 1,500-mile trek back to Soviet territory. With the ship’s short-range radio still operational, Zateyev took a bold gamble that paid off. He turned his stricken ship southward, away from home, but towards a nearby area where three older Soviet diesel-powered subs were known to be patrolling the waters. Initially, the Soviet submarine S-270 responded to the short-range radio transmissions of the K-19. (American warships also picked up the K-19’s short-range distress calls and offered assistance, but Zateyev turned down the American offers for help, not wanting to divulge any Soviet state secrets.) The S-270 met up with the K-19, and Zateyev boarded the S-270 to radio Moscow and ask for instructions. The most critically ill men (including those who undertook the suicide mission of repairing the reactor) were evacuated to the S-270. The S-270 attempted to tow the stricken K-19, but the tow ropes broke under the strain of attempting to tow the larger, heavier K-19.

  Within a day, more help arrived, first in the form of the other two Soviet submarines in the area (the S-159 and the S-268), and finally a Soviet Navy destroyer dispatched as a tow ship. The stricken K-19 was evacuated and towed back to port near the city of Murmansk in the Soviet Union.

  Aftermath

  Inside of a week, eight sailors of the K-19’s first mission had died of radiation poisoning. Fourteen more would be dead within a two-year span, and the entire remaining crew—117 in all—suffered through varying degrees of radiation-poisoning related illnesses throughout their lives. Adding insult to the ultimate sacrifice, the men who sacrificed their lives to the crisis were not honored at the time, because the incident was then regarded as a ‘state secret.’ For reasons of secrecy, the official diagnosis was "astheno-vegetative syndrome". rather than "radiation sickness." The intentional misdiagnosis caused surviving crew members difficulty later in life, in finding employment.

  An investigation cleared Capt. Zateyev and the crew of any wrongdoing, but the entire crew was sworn to secrecy, and details of the event were not widely known until after the end of the Cold War. After the details became known, they inspired the creation of the American movie K-19: The Widowmaker, starring actor Harrison Ford in the role of Captain Nikolai Zateyev. (In February of 2006, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev penned a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee recommending that the crew of K-19 be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize as a result of their actions during the crisis. In March 2006, Captain Nikolai Zateyev was formally nominated for the award.)

  The Widowmaker Reputation Continues

  As for the K-19, upon her arrival in port, the ship initially contaminated everything within a 700-foot area. The damaged reactor core was removed and replaced, a process that took more than two years and resulted in radiation poisoning of a number of shipyard workers. After the ship was fully decontaminated and repaired, it was finally put back to sea in 1964. Sadly, K-19’s reputation as a widowmaker continued to haunt the ship. Roughly eight years after K-19 returned to active sea duty, hydraulic fluid leaking from control lines spilled onto a hot filter and ignited a flash fire that was both extensive and uncontrollable. Watertight compartments outside of the area of the fire had to be sealed to save the sub, but the result was the deaths of 28 sailors within the fire-ravaged compartment.

  Decommissioning and the End of the K-19

  Carrying its “widowmaker” moniker throughout its service life (the ship had been nicknamed “the Hiroshima” by sailors in the Soviet Navy), she was finally decommissioned in 1991. The decommissioning ceremony also served as a sort of reunion for Captain Nikolai Zateyev and the surviving members of the original K-19 crew. The ship itself came to a rather ignoble end; after spending years rusting while tied up at a pier near Murmansk, she was finally cut up for scrap metal in 2002.

  K19 Soviet Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine

  Name and relevant dates

  Name: K-19

  Laid down: 17 October 1958

  Launched: 8 April 1959

  Completed: 12 November 1960

  Commissioned: 30 April 1961

  Decommissioned: 19 April 1990

  Nicknames: The Widowmaker, Hiroshima

  Specifications:

  Class and type: Hotel-class nuclear attack submarine

  Displacement: 4,030 long tons surfaced, 5,000 long tons submerged

  Length: 114 m (374 ft 0 in)

  Beam: 9.2 m (30 ft 2 in)

  Draft: 7.1 m (23 ft 4 in)

  Propulsion: 2 × 70 MW VM-A reactors, 2 geared turbines, 2 shafts, 39,200 shp (29 MW)

  Speed: 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph) (surfaced)

  26 kn (48 km/h; 30 mph) (submerged)

  Range: 35,700 mi (57,500 km) at 26 kn (30 mph; 48 km/h)

  32,200 mi (51,800 km) at 24 kn (28 mph; 44 km/h) (80% power)

  Endurance: 60 days (limited by food, and physical health)

  Max. depth: 250 m (820 ft) (test); 300 m (980 ft) (design)

  Complement: 125 officers and men

  Armament: three short-range nuclear ballistic missiles, four 21-inch torpedo tubes (forward bay), two 16-inch torpedo tubes (forward bay), two 16-inch torpedo tubes (aft bay)

  Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

  F-104 Starfighter (USAF photo)

  “The cheapest way to obtain an F-104 Starfighter is to buy an acre of land, and simply wait.” –popular West German saying in the 1960s as a result of a high number of crashes of the jet among the NATO-allied German air force

  Introduction

  The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was a single engine, supersonic fighter jet, originally made for the U.S. Air Force, and later sold to a number of nations, many of them part of the NATO alliance. The first F-104 Starfighters came off the production line in 1958, and the last F-104 to be retired from active service was retired by the Italian air force in 2004. Hence, the F-104 Starfighter was an active duty fighter aircraft for a total of 46 years.

  Development

  The F104 Starfighter was inspired by requests from U.S. Air Force pilots fighting in the Korean war. The pilots wanted a fighter jet that could hold its own against the Soviet MiG-15. Many American pilots considered the Soviet jet to be superior to the North American F-86 Sabre jet that most of the pilots were flying at the time. In response to the request made by the USAF pilots in Korea, Lockheed developed a prototype and was awarded the contract to develop a supersonic, interceptor fighter jet. At the time, jets of that era used either a swept back wing configuration, or a delta wing configuration. Lockheed took a different approach with the F-104, coming up with a design that took a fuselage with a single seat cockpit, mated it to two short, trapezoidal wings and a high T-tail, and wrapped this around a new and powerful jet engine, the General Electric J79 turbofan. The result was a fighter jet with outstanding takeoff and climb capability, and the ability to sustain Mach 2 flight for lengthy periods of time. However, the same short, trapezoidal wings that gave the F-104 Starfighter its exceptional straight-line speed proved to be a detriment in tight turns, and the wing design contributed in a number of ways to the overall difficult-to-handle nature of the jet.

  Widowmaker Traits

  The F-104 Starfighter was a challenging jet for pilots to deal with, as evidenced by its troublesome safety record. The high wing loading of the short, trapezoidal wings required that airspeed be kept up and the maximum pitch angle of attack not be exceeded in order to keep the plane in the air. If the plane was pitched up into an extreme
ly high angle of attack, it would stall and fall into a spin that was usually impossible to recover from. The short wingspan also gave the aircraft an extremely poor glide ratio in the event of an engine failure. Lose all thrust for any reason, and an F-104 Starfighter would basically drop like a brick. Takeoff and landing speeds were also very high when compared to other jets that were then in use by NATO forces. Takeoff speed was around 220 miles per hour, and during landing, speed had to be kept above 209 miles per hour.

  The F-104 Starfighter was also the first jet to use the new J79 engine from General Electric, and the J79 engine had its share of teething problems. One problem that definitely contributed to a high noncombat accident rate was a condition called "T-2 reset" that was prone to result in an engine flameout on takeoff. Compounding the flameout on takeoff issue of the early Starfighters was the fact that the planes used an emergency ejection system that featured a downwards firing ejection seat. Initially, there was some concern that a conventional ejection seat might not clear the aircraft's high T-tail. As a result, the first models of F-104 Starfighters used an ejection seat that fired through the bottom of the aircraft. The obvious problem with this design was that if the plane was close to the ground at the time a pilot needed to eject, there likely would not be sufficient time for the pilot to eject and deploy his parachute before striking the ground. After 21 pilots lost their lives after bailing out with insufficient ground clearance, a redesigned ejection seat mechanism that fired a seat in the traditional upward direction was installed and used in all future builds of the F-104 Starfighter.

  Finally, a number of NATO air force crews experienced a continuing problem of severe shimmy of the nose wheel upon landing. When this condition appeared, the usual result was that the aircraft left the runway. In some cases it would flip over on its back as it did so, with generally disastrous results for the pilot.