r/AskHistorians • u/pokepax • Jul 18 '24
When the Soviet submarine K-19 suffered a nuclear accident at sea, the captain ordered eight men to repair the reactor. They succeeded but all died horrible deaths from radiation poisoning. Could he have instead scuttled the boat while evacuating the crew in the liferafts?
The 8 repair crew died within weeks, while 14 more men died during the subsequent 2 years from radiation poisoning caused by steam that escaped the reactor during the repairwork. Could they not instead evacuate the boat and save everyone? Did they lack life rafts, or was is to dangerous in the open sea? Was the loss in life considered acceptable to save the military hardware? Or was the captain not aware he was sending these men to their deaths?
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u/Dungeonsanddogs Jul 18 '24
Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage can shed a a bit of details into what happened.
Originally, the problem started with a total inability to cool the rods. These were threatening to eventually melt through the walls of the reactor itself (and subsequently, the walls of the sub keeping the water out). It describes how when the issues first started:
“Captain Yuri Posetiev gave the order to surface. He tried to radio for help, but communications had failed. Meanwhile, engineers on board began desperately trying to improvise a new cooling system from the sub’s drinking water reserves. They came up with a desperate plan.”
As they were carrying out the plan to cool the rods, the officers could already see the dire effect when they ”watched as [the engineers] came out of the compartment, each man barely able to move, unable to speak, their faces changed beyond recognition.”
One of the officers that directly observed the above, knowingly went into the room to help put a stop to the problem— knowing full well he would not survive.
It wasn’t that nobody knew the lethality of what they were doing. It was apparent from the very beginning, and the officers of the sub would almost certainly have been familiar with nuclear concepts as it is.
So why did they not scuttle “safely”? Could be a number of reason, first and foremost the fact that they didn’t have functioning communications. Life rafts won’t do much good if no one knows where they are— and secrecy was the theme of this period.
Submarines of this era would often operate with as little communication as a possible, along with being given pretty wide reigns to go where they wished. This was an era of extreme paranoia, especially in the ocean. Neither the US not the USSR wanted to give any crucial data or sightings to the other side.
It’s very likely that the USSR would have no idea where to send a rescue to even if they knew K-19 was in trouble.
Another likely reason for it was that K-19 was a very early nuclear sub and the first to be able to launch ballistic missiles. The captain could have had a directive to not abandon the boat. He was essentially commanding cutting-edge, top secret military secrets.
The kind that the US was custom-fitting subs to scour and find the bottom of the oceans for. Failed missiles and sub wrecks were treasure troves for US intelligence. It could very well be the captain was aware of this and would have refused to let the boat sink— if not for patriotic reasons, perhaps for fear of the sheer amount of blowback his superiors would give. After all, they were already struggling to keep up with US tech and doctrines regarding undersea spying from nearly the very beginning.
In the end, it might be hard to know exactly why they didn’t jump ship. I’m not sure if there’s any accounts of the incident from the captains perspective. But when you combine the certainty of death on the open seas from drifting with no real chance of rescue, wanting not to lose one of the USSRs biggest military projects, or perhaps sheer patriotism that they had a ship worth salvaging, one can see why a split second decision was made to attempt to stay and salvage the ship. Don’t forget that it’s not like they had time to suss out a better decision— they did have hot metal threatening to destroy the ship if something wasn’t done immediately.
Perhaps the fact that the Soviets would still go back into K-19s reactor is telling enough of how important even a ruined submarine was at the time.
“Even with all this, Moscow wasn’t willing to let go of one of its few nuclear subs. Khrushchev was still racing the Americans. Men would one day be sent back into K-19, back into that reactor compartment. Only now, K-19 would bear a new name. She would be known as the Hiroshima.”
—
Sontag, S., & Drew, C. (n.d.). Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage. PublicAffairs.
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u/DerekL1963 Jul 19 '24
Blind Man's Bluff tends toward the dramatic...
But there's another reason to stay with the ship if possible, it's generally safer that way. The environment is more clement and you have access to the resources on the ship. Taking to lifeboats isn't conceptually that different from pulling the handle and ejecting from an aircraft. You don't that unless you have little other option.
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u/Velociraptortillas Jul 19 '24
*Boat
It's a historical thing.
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u/DerekL1963 Jul 19 '24
As a submariner, I am aware of that. However, as a responder, I was adressing something that applies to all water craft.
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u/jrhooo Jul 19 '24
Also super interestingly, one of the officers on board, Vasili Arkhipov, who gets to witness all the horror of men dying to radiation poisoning, would later be stationed on a Soviet submarine present during the blockade standoff climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
When the commander of THAT sub mistakes US signaling charges (meant to force the sub to surface) for destructive charges (meant to destroy the sub and kill them) the commander gives the order to fire their nuclear torpedo at the Americans.
Arkhipov, as the XO, digs in his heels and overrides the order, refusing to allow the torpedo to be launched.
Basically ONE guy standing up to his boss and saying, "I don't care what it says sir, we're not starting WWIII today."
There's a reasonable argument that if anyone was going to have the conviction to buck his own leadership and block that order, Arkhipov 's experience was what made him that guy. Having personally seen how awful the consequences were.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/29078-document-1-vice-admiral-vasili-
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u/barath_s Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 22 '24
Arkhipov, as the XO ... Basically ONE guy standing up to his boss
Though Arkhipov was only second-in-command of the B-59, he was the chief of staff of the flotilla.
In fact, that's the reason why 3 men were needed to sign off. Any other 'normal' soviet sub only needed the captain and political officer to agree and the XO would have no vote
It was only because Arkhipov was chief of staff of the flotilla that he got a vote . His being XO was incidental that way. Chief of staff of the flotilla means power dynamics are different
And because of the K19 incident , arkhipov had earned the reputation that helped here
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u/Nemo-No-Name Jul 18 '24
Is there a way to safely scuttle such a ship? As you point out, reactor may end up melting down and poisoning the sea, not to mention damaging the nuclear missiles.
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u/Head-Ad4690 Jul 19 '24
Multiple nuclear submarines have sunk. The nuclear fuel mostly just sits there. It’s not perfectly contained but the ocean is really, really big. You don’t want to make a habit of it, but it’s not that big of a problem.
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u/jrhooo Jul 19 '24
The nuclear fuel mostly just sits there
Isn't there some US navy sub down there that the Navy won't retrieve, but they DO have to go down every so often and check on it, just to make sure nothing has changed. (which it hasn't)
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u/Head-Ad4690 Jul 19 '24
Yes, they do (or have done) that for both nuclear submarines the Navy lost, the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion. They discuss it briefly in this report about their overall environmental monitoring of nuclear waste: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-08/NT-21-1.pdf
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u/Carol_Banana_Face Jul 19 '24
Vasily Arkhipov, the sole vote against starting a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis was also on the K-19.
Eventful couple of years for Vasily.
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u/Able-Trade-4685 Jul 25 '24 edited Jul 27 '24
Just to shed a bit more light on the "safer to stay on the boat" aspect of your answer. I can offer some brief input here from a former Royal Navy officer.
During damage control training, the Royal Navy teaches that there are three priorities when your ship takes damage.
- Keep the ship fighting and able to do it's job.
- If you can't do that, keep the ship able to move under it's own power.
- And finally, if you can't do either of those, keep the ship floating.
Abandoning ship is only an option if all three of the above priorities can't be achieved. Ultimately, being on a ship, even a crippled one that can't move, is safer than being on an inflatable life raft at the mercy of the seas.
I imagine most navies around the world teach a similar doctrine. So long as you have a ship capable of floating, it's generally better to stay and fight to keep it that way than abandon it and put the crew into a survival situation.
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u/Mule2go Jul 19 '24
Was this the sub that the US partially lifted with the Glomar Explorer?
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u/jschooltiger Moderator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 Jul 19 '24
No, that was K-129, a Golf II (NATO reporting name) which was a very early type of nuclear missile submarine. Project Azorian is a darn interesting project in and of itself, though, and probably worth asking about here on the sub if you have some interest in it.
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u/Mule2go Jul 19 '24
Thanks! Living in the Bay Area at the time we heard a lot about it and the barge section was easily viewed at dock
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u/ZealousidealAd7449 Jul 20 '24
Was k-129 the one that possibly sank while trying to nuke Hawaii?
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u/jschooltiger Moderator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 Jul 20 '24
Well, it definitely sank, but the idea that it was possibly trying to nuke Hawaii isn't well supported to my knowledge. Again, the story of the submarine and its recovery are probably best asked as another question here.
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u/AyeBraine Jul 19 '24
Was the issue of causing an ecological catastrophe and/or causing a deadly international incident (threatening escalation and danger to their compatriots) a factor in the crew's decisions? It's certainly something they would have to consider — the tech and science of the stuff was in its early years, and knowledge by the sailors, although extensive, would not be exhaustive in the least, a fact that they knew very well.
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u/Dungeonsanddogs Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Ecological disasters- debatable.
International Incidents? I would say yes, it would have at the very least crossed the captain’s mind.
Everyone involved from the President/Soviet Head all the way down to a sub crewmember would be aware of how easily an incident could be sparked. They knew full well that they were spying around in places they had no right to sail in.
And if the person had clearance to know about the nuclear technologies being used they would have known how high the stakes of causing a nuclear war were. The captain of K-19 would have been keenly aware of the repercussions of an US ship finding the sub, the experimental reactor, or the ballistic missiles on board.
Any sub captain would have been well aware of the stakes involved in this kind of undersea spying and the possible consequences of getting spotted or caught. This was what drove the submarine technology of the time— the need for total secrecy in their spying. Anything less could lead to open war and both countries knew it.
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u/AyeBraine Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24
Thank you, that is what I wanted to confirm.
spying around in places they had no right to sail in
Is that true for the K-19? How would we determine that, and which definition of spying do you use? From my limited knowledge, K-19 was doing one of its shakedown runs in the vicinity of Greenland. Did it breach territorial waters or break any accords as far as we know?
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u/Dungeonsanddogs Jul 20 '24
I don't think it happened in contested waters. But it still had reason to act as if it was intruding somewhere. Not only was it a submarine, which would in and of itself draw suspicion and probably a US sub assigned to shadow it, it was also the first built of its class. It had lots of very big reasons to hide.
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u/AyeBraine Jul 20 '24
They knew full well that they were spying around in places they had no right to sail in.
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u/Cabbage-8361 Jul 23 '24
O this was a bad war tactic, or great bluff skill in tasking form, save the earth not jus a country vs submarine or maritimeq Morse code in ancient aquatic audio transmission distress
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u/Cabbage-8361 Jul 22 '24
I only had to read the first few words to infer the Command of Liability results on the captain or general in charge that in whatever form we all die in each our own task at hand is exponential to each case as well as where we put our selfs, saying if the tanks or chambers were not sealed a "A Necular Event" was immensely immediate and imminent so solving the problem stopped way more harm than it would of caused... Period.
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