After the entry of NATO ships into the Black Sea, the half-century Cold War, after a short pause, seems to have continued again. But the Cold War in the offices of politicians is one thing, and the Cold War in the ocean, in the compartments of submarines, is completely different …
The Americans did not say a word about this clash. Ours were also silent. So it was almost forgotten. But that old story could turn into a tragedy no less bitter than the trouble of the Kursk. Actually, after the death of the Kursk, those few who are still alive started talking about it …
So, autumn 1974. The height of the Cold War in the ocean. Northern Fleet. Western Faces. 1st flotilla of nuclear submarines.
The multipurpose nuclear-powered torpedo submarine K-306 under the command of Captain 1st Rank E. Guriev came to the shores of England with a special mission. It was necessary to secretly approach the exit from the Clyde Britt, where the American nuclear-powered missile boats of the "George Washington" type were based, wait for one of them to come out and record its noise "portrait". That is, to do everything the same as the American submariners did in relation to our new submarines.
The captain of the 1st rank of the reserve Alexander Viktorovich Kuzmin, who went to the K-306 as the assigned commander of the navigational combat unit, tells:
- Actually, we prepared thoroughly for that military service. With us was also the most experienced divisional navigator Anatoly Soprunov, whom all the young navigators called Uncle Tolya.
They also gave us an assistant commander for navigation from boat 705 of the Bogatyrev project to carry out navigational watches. Only four navigators together with a regular navigator Lieutenant Vinogradov.
We got to Clyde Brit Bay quite safely. Except for one incident that only a few people knew about. A few days before the collision with the American boat, our "swallow" touched the ground.
It should be noted here that "touching the ground", no matter how soft it is, is considered one of the most serious navigational accidents in the Navy. And although the "touch" was in fact a touch, and not a blow on the ground, but in the soul of the commander, navigator and boatswain-helmsman crampons scraped. In the database, you will have to answer in full for "touching". If they only knew what lies ahead for them!
- And ahead of us was our Soviet RZK - a reconnaissance ship that tumbled in the area for several weeks, the officers' tunic had already decayed. - continued the story Kuzmin. - But they waited for their finest hour: on November 4, the American "strategist" Nathaniel Green went on combat patrols from the Gulf with a bunch of Polaris missiles on board. Well, we are very welcome. Next is our work. To give us contact with the target, the RZK had to give us a prearranged signal: to drop three noise grenades into the water. They threw them off …
Everyone acted as prescribed by the governing documents: RZK gave us a contact, according to instructions - by explosions of three grenades … And since the depth was relatively small - 86 meters, a powerful sound reverberation started. After each grenade explosion, the sonar screen was illuminated for almost a minute. Thus, the K-306 went blind for almost four minutes. Since the boats were going towards each other, and even at almost the same depth, they collided. K-306 hit the Nathaniel Green in the stern area, damaging two mines for the Americans. Fortunately, there were no human casualties on either side.
The reason for such an emergency can be considered the imperfection of the contact transfer technique. The rules were worked out in the offices without taking into account the real depths, hydrology and other conditions. No one could have imagined that the boat could go deaf and blind for a few minutes. The manual was later revised. But if the reconnaissance ship had a system of ZPS - underwater communication, the contact could be transmitted to us completely silently. The crew was not to blame for the incident.
Former foreman of the torpedo team, retired midshipman Mikhail Mikhailovich Smolinsky stood closest to the place of impact
- On the broadcast “Battle alert! Torpedo attack!”, Ran to the combat post. Out of the corner of my ear, the acoustist caught the report - "I don't hear anything!" And then the foreman of the hydroacoustics team Tolya Korsakov gloomily dropped: "Now we will face …" And for sure.
Hit!! We slammed the American into the side. I looked - and on the racks of the starboard side, the upper torpedoes came out of the hooks and jerked to the rear covers of the torpedo tubes … This is the end! And then - a miracle: all the torpedoes returned to their cradles and the hooks clicked on themselves! Someone strongly prayed to God for us …
The broadcast barked: "Look around the compartments!"
I have included a mnemonic diagram. And then I heard, and then I saw: water is entering the first compartment - our compartment!
We quickly realized what was the matter - they closed the ventilation valves of the torpedo tubes, and the flow stopped. But the trim on the nose is growing. Degrees exceeded 17! It's hard to stand. And in my head there is only one thing - the ground is nearby, now we will fuck. And then another miracle: our mechanic - Captain 2nd Rank Vladimir Katalevsky blew out the bow tanks, the trim began to move away …
A. V. Kuzmin:
- Our commander BCH-5 was on top - he worked in automatic mode: without waiting for commands, he blew ballast in the bow group of tanks. We can say that he saved all of us and the ship. Death flashed like a bullet to the temple. What's a bullet! Then five torpedoes with SBP (nuclear filling) swept past the temple. The torpedo is a fool, the bubble is good!
MM. Smolinsky:
- And I do not take my eyes off the mnemonic diagrams and with horror I see that the torpedo tubes with SBP - nuclear weapons - are filled with water. They got wet. Our main weapon. First thought: well, everyone … now the handcuffs are secured. In places to be removed from positions …
A. V. Kuzmin:
- The American SSBN was forced to surface. We swam under the periscope and immediately saw her. The Nathaniel Green sat in the water with a great heel to starboard. Confused sailors climbed onto the corps, the commander from the bridge tried to understand what had happened. It was necessary to photograph the picture through the periscope, but there was no film in the navigator's camera. I had to take a pencil and quickly sketch … The American SSBN has tail number 636.
We also looked around in the compartments. In addition to the soiled torpedoes with the SBP, there seemed to be no other problems. One could only imagine what our nose looks like, crumpled to the ground … Later it turned out that all of our bow torpedo tubes were damaged, except for one. The Americans had their main ballast tanks pierced.
So Nathaniel Green with all his bunch of Polaris did not go to the given area …
I heard the continuation of this story in St. Petersburg from the former K-306 boatswain of the reserve midshipman Nikolai Molchanov. / Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of Nikolai Molchanov. I will be in St. Petersburg, I will take a picture. This is the best boatswain of the Northern Fleet, a pupil of Vice Admiral Evgeny Dmitrievich Chernov, a submariner with 33 years of experience /.
“We saw this Nathaniel Green, we heard it, we drove it right up to the point of diving. To avoid being spotted, we came closer to our reconnaissance ship, which kept to the right of us - we went under cover of its noises. This is what played a fatal role.
The acoustician reports: "The boat is sinking."
And then the RZK gave a signal to transfer the contact. We didn't need him at all. We've already kept in touch. But the RZK did not know about this, and did as the instructions required … The acoustician did not even have time to take off his headphones when the first explosion thundered. We were too close to the RZK, and therefore the explosion sounded especially loud, it was heard in all compartments. And the acoustician was bleeding from his ears.
We didn't immediately understand what had happened. The push is quite soft. But the depth suddenly went straight away. The meter dial spun like mad. Sank down 29 meters …
The commander gave the command: "Bubble in the middle!"
I noticed that the sinkhole slowed down sharply. Then they stopped …
We immediately filled the middle one and surfaced under the periscope.
The weather was good, and the Americans also surfaced - in a positional position.
Guriev later said: I see the commander of Nathaniel Green through the periscope, people in sweaters are running around the hull, running and looking around, they cannot understand anything.
We left the periscope depth. Reports from the compartments - everything has been examined, there are no comments. All units are working. We went another hundred meters, and the commander began to prepare a radio message about the collision.
They returned home at a depth of 40 meters to relieve the pressure on the rear covers of the torpedo tubes.
I must say that my interlocutor at that time was considered the best boatswain, if not the entire Northern Fleet, then the 1st flotilla of nuclear submarines, for sure. He could hold a depth of 3-4 centimeters! Up to three points of the sea under the lens of the periscope kept the depth. I had a feeling in my fingers. He could fly a submarine in reverse. To reduce the breaker behind the raised periscope, the commander sometimes dropped the speed to zero, and then the boat went on inertia. Warrant officer Molchanov knew how to control the rudders even in such an extremely difficult mode. He held the depth, gripping the handles of the manipulators, so that his fingers went numb …
A. V. Kuzmin:
- We returned home for two weeks. "Nathaniel" - something - went on a return course and here it is - the base. We had to go a good two thousand miles. Soon it became clear what kind of trouble - from a blow to someone else's side, the hydroacoustics antennas were severely damaged. We were deaf to the entire starboard side. But we also disrupted the adversary's entry into combat service.
On the way to the Litsa, the division commander, Rear Admiral Yevgeny Dmitrievich Chernov, came out to meet us on a boat. He walked around the boat, examined the bow, which was almost flattened. I climbed onto the ship, talked to the commander and, on the whole, reacted very calmly to the emergency. As an experienced sailor, Chernov understood perfectly well that there are unforeseen situations at sea.
The special torpedoes were unloaded with a wet method: they removed the waveguards and pulled them out. The "tadpoles" arrived and, silently, without any complaints, took them away.
The flotilla commander ordered an investigation into the emergency. The commander of K-306, Captain 1st Rank Eduard Viktorovich Guryev, received a severe reprimand. Just in case. And the American crew, as we later learned, were awarded for their courage with the "golden dolphin" badges. And that's always the way - some kicks, some dolphins.
But we, the crew, as further investigation showed, were innocent.
This was the best crew not only in the division, but in the entire Northern Fleet. Seven sailors were qualified as military masters. All the foremen of the teams are professional midshipmen. Such a crew was put together - Captain 1st Rank Viktor Khramtsov, later Vice Admiral.
The fates of the participants in this underwater ram were different. Neither the then commander of the ship Eduard Guryev (he died in 2007 and was buried in Sosnovy Bor near St. Petersburg), nor the valiant mechanical engineer V. Katalevsky are already alive.
The commander of the turbine group, Veniamin Azariev, left for the United States to live with his daughter, who married an American. There he found the former commander of the Nathaniel Green. But he never admitted to the confrontation.
Captain 1st Rank Alexander Kuzmin, who went on that trip as an assigned navigator (he himself served on the nuclear-powered ship K-513), later became the commander of the world's largest nuclear submarine of the Akula class.
Today he lives in Kiev and successfully heads the All-Ukrainian Association of Submarine Veterans. In the seas and oceans, he was lucky for adventures. Our newspaper has already talked about them.
Unfortunately, my father, captain of the first rank, Anatoly Nikolaevich Soprunov, passed away. But graduates of the navigational faculty of VVMUPP them. Lenin Komsomol remember their teacher in astronavigation with a kind word.
Reference Information:
On November 3, 1959, the terms of reference for a new nuclear-powered torpedo submarine with a displacement of 2,000 tons and a submersion depth of at least 300 m were approved. Specifically, the assignment stipulated the dimensions of the hydroacoustic complex, which they planned to equip the boats with. G. N. Chernyshev became the chief designer of the project.
K-306 "Ruff" NATO classification "Viktor-I":
Onboard: 604
Laid down: 1968-20-03
Launching: 1969-04-06
Entry into the Red Banner Northern Fleet: 1969-04-12
Commissioned: December 5, 1969.
January 9, 1970 included in the KSF.
Initially, it was listed as KrPL, and on July 25, 1977, it was assigned to the subclass of the BLP.
In the period from September 25, 1979 to January 19, 1983, the shipyard "Nerpa" in the Olenya Bay (Vyuzhny settlement) underwent an average repair.
On June 24, 1991, she was expelled from the Navy in connection with the delivery to the OFI for dismantling and disposal, and in the Gremikha Bay (Ostrovnoy) was put on lockdown.
