Mine atom. The crew of the submarine "Pike" found in the Black Sea fought for life for four days. Full list of the dead Legends about sunken submarines

Chapter 7. The emergence and rise of ships with full sail equipment 1400–1600 At the beginning of the 15th century, large ocean sailing ships had one mast and one sail. Fifty years later they already had three masts and five or six sails. Unfortunately, such big changes have occurred in

Document No. 3.4 Report on the voyage of the submarine M-96 from August 9 to August 25, 1942 I report that going to the position (in the Tallinn-Helsinki area) and returning back from the position, I adhered strictly to the recommended courses, excluding the area of ​​​​Gogland Island, which was abandoned to the south. On the way to

Document No. 5.16 Political report No. 15 cc “On party-political work in the combat campaign of the submarine S-13 of the submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet in 1944” The submarine S-13 under the command of captain 1st rank Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, fulfilling a combat order, was on a combat campaign with October 1

Appendix No. 3 Raising the German battleship “Grosser Kurfurst” (From the magazine “Sea Collection” No. 8 for 1879) Work on raising this battleship began in late May. Research carried out by divers found that the position of the ship's hull was not at all

The idea of ​​the combat use of an underwater vessel was first expressed by Leonardo da Vinci. He subsequently destroyed his project because he feared the devastating consequences of submarine warfare. The idea of ​​using a submarine in combat was popularized in Jules Verne's novel 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, written in 1870. The novel describes the Nautilus submarine, which rams and destroys surface ships.

Although the most important tactical property and advantage of a submarine is stealth, until 1944 all submarines spent most of their time on the surface and were essentially submersible boats - surface ships.

Today we will remember the largest submarine disasters, because sometimes these metal monsters go under water forever...

US Navy submarine SS-109 (1927)

40 people died when the US submarine SS-109 (USS S-4) sank after it was rammed by a US Coast Guard ship off Cape Cod.

An amazing fact: the submarine returned to service a year after this accident and served actively until its decommissioning in 1936.

Soviet submarine S-117 "Pike", 1952

"Shch-117" is a Soviet diesel-electric torpedo submarine from the Second World War, belongs to the V-bis series of the Shch - "Pike" project. On June 10, 1949, renamed S-117.

Shch-117, 1930s:

By the early fifties, the S-117 was no longer a new ship, but it successfully performed the tasks assigned to it. In December 1952, in the Sea of ​​Japan, the Pike was supposed to take part in exercises. On the way to the maneuver area, its commander reported that due to a breakdown of the right diesel engine, the submarine was going to the designated point on one engine. A few hours later he reported that the problem had been fixed. The boat never made contact again.

The exact cause and place of death of the submarine are unknown. It was as if she had disappeared.

There were 52 crew members on board the boat, including 12 officers. Searches for the C-117, carried out until 1953, yielded nothing. The cause and place of the boat's death are still unknown.

US Navy submarine USS Thrasher, 1963

An American submarine sank during a training exercise off the Cape Cod Peninsula off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 129 crew members.

Mechanical failure caused the boat to quickly sink and explode. According to the conclusions made by expert Bruce Rule, who examined the death of the boat, the final destruction of the Thresher’s hull occurred at a depth of 732 m and took no more than 0.1 seconds. Its wreckage was discovered at a depth of more than 2,500 meters. The boat's hull split into six main parts - the bow section, the sonar dome, the wheelhouse, the tail section, the engine room, and the command compartment, all located within a radius of 300 meters.

Photo of the Thrasher's vertical rudder lying on the bottom:

The sinking of the Soviet submarine K-129, 1968

The diesel submarine of the USSR Navy K-129, which, according to various sources, carried from 96 to 98 crew members, went on combat duty in the North Pacific Ocean in February 1968.

On March 8, 1968, the diesel-electric missile submarine K-129 from the Pacific Fleet, equipped with nuclear warheads, was lost. The submarine carried out combat service in the Hawaiian Islands, and since March 8 it has stopped communicating. According to various sources, there were from 96 to 98 crew members on board the K-129, all of them died.

The cause of the disaster is unknown. There are a number of theories regarding the accident, including a collision with an American ship, but Washington has consistently denied this, and, according to the official US Navy report, the sinking of the Soviet submarine was blamed on a “tragic explosion on board.” Subsequently, the Americans discovered K-129 and recovered it in 1974.

The Soviet side organized a search for the missing submarine, which did not bring any results. Subsequently, K-129 was discovered by the Americans, who organized its recovery.

Submarine K-129 at the bottom:

During the rise, the submarine broke in two, but several of its compartments were delivered to one of the US Navy bases. During their examination, the bodies of six Soviet submariners were discovered. The Americans gave military honors to the dead and buried the dead submariners at sea.

American USS Scorpion (SSN-589), 1968

The keel of the US Navy ship took place on August 20, 1958. The boat sank on May 21, 1968, 740 km southwest of the Azores at a depth of 3,000 meters, 5 days before returning to base in Norfolk. 99 people died.

They searched for the sunken boat for 5 months; more than 60 ships and vessels, and up to 30 aircraft were involved in the search. A week after the search began, a German submarine, sunk during the Second World War, was discovered 100 miles from Norfolk. The search was in vain for a long time.

Soon the boat was found at a depth of 3047 meters and photographed by the Mizar vessel. The cause of the ship's death has not yet been established; the most likely version is a torpedo explosion. But there are other versions...

For almost 40 years, by mutual agreement, the United States and Russia have been carefully concealing the fact of the destruction of the American nuclear submarine Scorpion by a combat torpedo fired by a Soviet submarine, says the author of the new investigative book “Scorpion Down” published in the United States, military journalist Ed Offley.

Offley claims that the destruction of the Scorpion was the “revenge” of Soviet submariners who believed that the United States was involved in the death of the Soviet submarine K-129, which sank to the bottom after an explosion on board with its entire crew of 98 people in the Pacific Ocean in March 1968.

The tragedies of 1968 were part of an underwater “reconnaissance war,” many of the details of which are still classified, the author of the book believes.

Fragment of a boat hull. Visible deformations from excessive pressure:

Soviet submarine K-8, 1970

The Soviet nuclear submarine K-8 of Project 627A “Kit” joined the Northern Fleet on August 31, 1960.

The submarine, which was on combat duty in the Mediterranean Sea, was sent to the North Atlantic region to participate in the largest exercise in the history of the Soviet Navy, Ocean-70, in which the forces of all USSR fleets participated. Its task was to designate the “enemy’s” submarine forces breaking through to the shores of the Soviet Union. The start of the exercises was planned for April 14, the end - for the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin - April 22, 1970.

The last hours of the life of K-8 and part of her crew:

The nuclear submarine K-8 was lost on April 12, 1970 in the Bay of Biscay of the Atlantic Ocean as a result of a severe fire, which led to the loss of buoyancy and longitudinal stability. The submarine sank at a depth of 4680 meters, 490 km northwest of Spain. 52 crew members were killed. While dying, they managed to shut down the nuclear reactors.

Monument to the K-8 crew:

The death of K-8 and 52 crew members was the first loss of the Soviet nuclear fleet.

Nuclear submarine K-278 "Komsomolets", 1989

The Soviet 3rd generation nuclear submarine K-278 Komsomolets was the only submarine of Project 685 Plavnik. The boat holds the absolute record for diving depth among submarines - 1027 meters (August 4, 1985). The boat had six bow 533-mm torpedo tubes with a quick loader. Each TA had an autonomous pneumohydraulic firing device. Shooting could be carried out at all diving depths.

The nuclear submarine K-278 Komsomolets sank on April 7, 1989 in the Norwegian Sea. The submarine was moving at a depth of 380 meters at a speed of 8 knots. As a result of a fire in two adjacent compartments, the main ballast tank systems were destroyed, through which the boat was flooded with sea water. 42 people died, many from hypothermia.

Russian submarine "Kursk, 2000"

K-141 "Kursk" is a Russian nuclear submarine missile-carrying cruiser of Project 949A "Antey". Laid down at Sevmash in 1990 and put into operation on December 30, 1994.

The Russian submarine Kursk sank on August 12, 2000, at a depth of 108 meters during naval exercises in the Barents Sea, in waters between Norway and Russia, after two explosions occurred on board caused by a torpedo motor fuel leak.

Most of the 118 people on board were killed instantly. 23 people managed to get out into the rear compartment, but died of suffocation the next day.
In terms of the number of deaths, the accident became the second in the post-war history of the Russian submarine fleet after the explosion of ammunition on a B-37.

All stages of the operation to raise the Kursk were carried out over the course of a year. About 120 companies from 20 countries were involved in it. The cost of the work was estimated at 65 - 130 million US dollars. As a result of the operation of raising the Kursk boat, 115 bodies of dead submariners were found and buried. Three bodies were never found. A boat's potentially dangerous ammunition and two nuclear reactors were evacuated from the bottom of the Barents Sea

Chinese submarine "Min 361", 2003

The submarine was launched in 1995. Assigned to the Eastern Fleet of the People's Republic of China Navy

On April 16, 2003, during an exercise, the diesel engine of the Min 361 submarine broke down while it was in Bohai Bay in the Yellow Sea off the northeastern coast of China. The breakdown led to a sharp decrease in oxygen on board and suffocation of all 70 crew members.

This was the first time China has made public the death of its diesel-electric submarine. According to Xinhua on May 2, 2003, the boat was discovered by Chinese fishermen on April 25, 2003, when they caught its periscope with nets. The submarine was later raised to the surface and towed away.

Argentine submarine "San Juan", 2017

The Argentine Navy submarine San Juan stopped communicating on November 15 while en route from the Ushuaia naval base to Mar del Plata. At the time of the last communication session, the submarine reported an accident. There were 44 people on board.

15 days after the disappearance of the submarine, the Argentine Navy announced that the operation to rescue the 44 crew members of the San Juan submarine was being stopped, but the search for the submarine itself would continue.

The captain of the missing Argentine Navy submarine San Juan promised his mother that this would be his last voyage. That's how it happened.

As for nuclear submarines, a total of 8 nuclear submarines sank from 1955 to 2017: 4 Soviet, 2 Russian, 2 American. All of them died as a result of various accidents: three due to technical malfunctions, two as a result of fires, two due to problems with weapons, the cause of the death of one boat is not reliably known.

The mystery of the death of the submarine K-129

On February 24, 1968, the diesel submarine K-129 (side number 574) left its base in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean, carrying on board three R-13 ballistic missiles with underwater launch and high-power nuclear warheads, as well as two torpedoes with nuclear charges. Two weeks later, at the turning point of her route, 12 thousand miles from the coast of Kamchatka and 350 miles north of the Hawaiian Islands, for unknown reasons, she did not make contact...

An iron curtain hung over the mystery of the disappearance of K-129. The press remained deathly silent. Officers of the Pacific Fleet were prohibited from having any conversations on this topic.

To lift the curtain on the mystery of the submarine’s death, we need to go back 45 years, when all the participants in this tragedy were still alive.

K-129 should not have gone to sea then, because only a month and a half before this tragedy she returned from a planned cruise. The crew was exhausted by the long raid, and the equipment required restoration. However, the submarine, which was about to set sail, was not ready for the trip. In this regard, the command of the Pacific Fleet decided to send the K-129 on patrol again instead. The situation developed according to the principle “for myself and for that guy.” It is still not known whether the commander of the unprepared submarine was punished. It is only clear that by his sloppiness he saved not only his life, but also the lives of all the members of the crew entrusted to him. But at what cost!

K-129 urgently began preparing a new campaign. Only some of the officers were recalled from vacation. The missing crew was forced to be supplemented with specialists from other submarines. In addition, a group of student sailors from the submarine was accepted on board. Witnesses of those events recall that the crew went to sea in a bad mood. The submarine left land from the bay, the name of which was translated from French as “Tomb.”

On March 8, 1968, the operational duty officer at the central command post of the Navy announced the alarm - the K-129 did not give a signal to pass the control line, due to the combat order. And it immediately became clear that the squadron’s command post did not even have a crew list signed personally by the submarine commander and certified by the ship’s seal. From a military point of view, this is a serious crime.

From mid-March to May 1968, an operation of unprecedented scope and secrecy was carried out to search for the missing submarine, in which dozens of ships of the Kamchatka Flotilla and aviation of the Northern Fleet were involved. They searched persistently at the calculated point of route K-129. The faint hope that the submarine was drifting on the surface, without power and radio communications, did not materialize two weeks later. The overcrowding of the airwaves with constant negotiations attracted the attention of the Americans, who accurately indicated the coordinates of a large oil slick in the ocean located in Soviet waters. Chemical analysis showed that the stain was solar and identical to the fuel used on submarines of the USSR Navy. The exact location of the death of K-129 in official documents was designated as point “K”.

The search for the submarine continued for 73 days. After their completion, the relatives and friends of all crew members received funerals with the cynical entry “recognized dead.” It was as if they had forgotten about the 98 submariners. And the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, S.G. Gorshkov, made an unprecedented statement, refusing to acknowledge the death of the submarine and the entire crew. The USSR government's official abandonment of the sunken K-129 resulted in it becoming "orphan property", thus any country that discovered the missing submarine would be considered its owner. And of course, everything that is inside the underwater ship. If we take into account that in those days all submarines leaving on a voyage from the shores of the USSR had their numbers painted over, then if discovered, the K-129 would not even have identification marks.

However, to investigate the causes of the death of the submarine K?129, two commissions were created: the government one under the leadership of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR L. Smirnov and the Navy, which was headed by one of the most experienced submariners, First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy V. Kasatonov. The conclusions reached by both commissions were similar. They admitted that the submarine crew was not to blame for the death of the ship.

The most reliable cause of the disaster could have been a failure to a depth below the maximum due to freezing of the float valve of the RDP air shaft (operating mode of diesel engines under water). Indirect confirmation of this version was that the command of the fleet headquarters ordered commanders to use the RDP mode as much as possible. Subsequently, the percentage of sailing time in this mode became one of the criteria for successfully completing the mission tasks. It should be noted that the K-129 has never lagged behind in this indicator during long-term voyages at extreme depths. The second official version was a collision with a foreign submarine while underwater.

In addition to the official ones, there were a number of unofficial versions expressed over the years by various experts: a collision with a surface vessel or transport at periscope depth; failure to depths exceeding the maximum immersion depth and, as a result, a violation of the design strength of the hull; the impact of internal ocean waves on the slope (the nature of which has not yet been precisely established); explosion of a rechargeable battery (AB) during charging as a result of exceeding the permissible hydrogen concentration (American version).

In 1998, the book “The Game of Blind Man's Bluff” by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew was published in the United States. The Unknown History of American Underwater Espionage." It presented three main versions of the death of the K-129: the crew lost control; a technical accident that developed into a catastrophe (explosion of a battery); collision with another ship.

The version of the AB explosion on a submarine was obviously false, because throughout the history of the world's submarine fleets many such explosions have been recorded, but none of them resulted in the destruction of the durable hulls of the boats, at least due to sea water.

The most plausible and proven version is the collision of the K-129 submarine with the American submarine Swordfish (translated as “swordfish”). Its name alone makes it possible to imagine the structure of this submarine, the conning tower of which is protected by two “fins” similar to sharks. The same version is confirmed by photographs taken at the site of the death of K-129 from the American nuclear submarine Helly-Bat using the Glomar Explorer deep-sea vehicle. They depict the hull of a Soviet submarine, on which a narrow, deep hole is visible on the left side in the area of ​​the bulkhead between the second and third compartments. The boat itself lay on the ground on an even keel, which meant that the collision occurred when it was under water at a depth safe for a ramming attack by a surface ship. Apparently, the Swordfish, which was tracking the Soviet submarine, lost hydroacoustic contact, which forced it to follow the K-129 location, and the short-term restoration of contact between them a few minutes before the collision could no longer prevent the tragedy.

Although now this version is also being criticized. Journalist of the newspaper “Top Secret” A. Mozgovoy rejects it, citing primarily the damage to the K-129, because the Swordfish’s roll angle did not allow it to cause such damage to the Soviet submarine. A. Mozgovoy defends the version that K-129 died as a result of a collision with a surface vehicle. And there is evidence for this too, although the same “swordfish” appears in them again. In the spring of 1968, reports began to appear in the foreign press that a few days after the disappearance of the K-129 submarine, the Swordfish entered the Japanese port of Yokosuka with a crumpled conning tower fence and began emergency repairs. The entire operation was classified. The boat was under repair for only one night, during which it was given cosmetic repairs: patches were applied, the hull was tinted. In the morning she left the parking lot, and the crew signed a non-disclosure agreement. After this incident, Swordfish did not set sail for a year and a half.

The Americans tried to explain the fact that their submarine was damaged by its collision with an iceberg, which was clearly not true, since icebergs are not found in the central part of the ocean in March. And in general, they do not “swim” into this area even at the end of winter, let alone in the spring.

Also in defense of the version of the collision between two submarines is the fact that the Americans surprisingly accurately and quickly determined the location of the death of the K-129. At that time, the possibility of detecting it with the help of an American satellite was excluded, however, they indicated the area with an accuracy of 1-3 miles, which, according to military experts, could only be established by a submarine located in the same zone.

Between 1968 and 1973, the Americans examined the site of the death of K-129, its position and the condition of the hull with the deep-sea bathyscaphe Trieste-2 (according to other sources, Mizar), which allowed the CIA to conclude that the Soviet submarine could be raised. The CIA developed a secret operation codenamed "Jennifer". All this was carried out in the hope of obtaining encryption documents, combat packages and radio communication equipment and using this information to read the entire radio traffic of the Soviet fleet, which would make it possible to open the deployment and control system of the USSR Navy. And most importantly, it made it possible to find the key fundamentals of cipher development. Due to the genuine interest in Soviet missile and nuclear weapons during the Cold War, such information was of particular value. Only three high-ranking officials in the United States were aware of the operation: President Richard Nixon, CIA Director William Colby and billionaire Howard Hughes, who financed the work. Their preparation took almost seven years, and the costs amounted to about $350 million.

To lift the K-129 hull, two special vessels were designed: the Glomar Explorer and the NSS-1 docking chamber, which had a sliding bottom equipped with giant gripping pincers, reminiscent of the shape of the hull of a Soviet submarine. Both ships were manufactured in parts at different shipyards on the west and east coasts of the United States, as if repeating the tactics of creating Captain Nemo's Nautilus. It is also important that even during final assembly the engineers had no idea about the purpose of these ships. All work was carried out in complete secrecy.

But no matter how much the CIA tried to classify this operation, the activity of American ships in a certain place in the Pacific Ocean did not go unnoticed. The Chief of the USSR Navy, Vice Admiral I.N. Khurs, received a code message that the American ship Glomar Explorer was completing the preparatory work for raising the K-129. However, he answered the following: “I draw your attention to better implementation of planned tasks.” This basically meant: don’t interfere with your nonsense, but mind your own business.

As it later became known, a letter with the following content was planted under the door of the Soviet embassy in Washington: “In the near future, US intelligence agencies will take action to covertly raise a Soviet submarine that sank in the Pacific Ocean. Well-wisher."

The operation to raise the K-129 was technically very difficult, since the boat rested at a depth of more than 5000 m. The entire work lasted 40 days. During the lifting, the Soviet submarine broke into two pieces, so only one was able to be lifted, consisting of the first, second and part of the third compartments. The Americans rejoiced.

The bodies of six dead submariners were removed from the bow of the ship and buried at sea according to the ritual accepted in the Soviet fleet. The sarcophagus with the bodies was covered with the flag of the USSR Navy and lowered into the sea to the sounds of the national anthem of the Soviet Union. Having paid their last respects to the Soviet sailors, the Americans began to search for the ciphers that interested them so much, but did not achieve their desired goal. The reason for everything was the Russian mentality: during the repair of the K-129 in 1966–1967 in the city of Dalzavod, the chief builder, at the request of the submarine commander, Captain 1st Rank V. Kobzar, moved the code room to the missile compartment. He could not refuse this tall, tightly built man, who was suffering in the cramped and tiny cabin of the second compartment, and therefore retreated from the project.

But the secret of raising the sunken submarine was not respected. An international scandal erupted around Operation Jennifer. The work had to be curtailed, and the CIA never got to the rear of the K-129.

Soon the main actors who organized this operation also left the political arena: Richard Nixon was removed from his post in connection with the Watergate scandal; Howard Hughes went crazy; William Colby left intelligence for unknown reasons. Congress prohibited the CIA from further engaging in such dubious operations.

The only thing that the homeland did for the dead submariners after the lifting of the boat was that the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a note to the US State Department in which it accused the Americans of violating international maritime law (raising an alien ship from the ocean floor) and desecrating the mass grave of sailors. However, neither one nor the other had any legal basis.

Only in October 1992, the film on which the burial of six bodies of Soviet submariners was filmed was handed over to Boris Yeltsin, but did not provide any information shedding light on the causes of the tragedy.

Later, the American-Russian film “The Tragedy of the Submarine K-129” was shot, which reveals only twenty-five percent of the factual material, is replete with errors and the embellishment of reality familiar to Americans. There are many half-truths in the film, which are much worse than outright lies.

According to the proposal of the Minister of Defense I. Sergeev, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation of October 20, 1998, all crew members of the K-129 submarine were awarded the Order of Courage (posthumously), but the awards were presented only to eight families of the deceased sailors. In the city of Cheremkhovo, a monument was erected to the heroic submariners of the submarine K-129, who were born and raised in the Irkutsk region.

Thus, the circumstances that led to the tragedy on board the submarine missile carrier are still unknown. His death is considered one of the biggest mysteries of the Cold War period, which unfolded between two superpowers - the USSR and the USA.