As Project 627 was getting under way, the country was in a state of political and economic turmoil.
When World War II ended, Stalin had allocated major resources to rehabilitate the damaged and destroyed shipyards and initiated the construction of a major oceangoing fleet. Programs were initiat-ed for large battle cruisers, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and even aircraft carriers.
In this period series production was begun of advanced diesel-electric submarines as well as chemical closed-cycle undersea craft.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Nikolai G. Kuznetsov, was aware that a nuclear-propelled submarine was being developed, but so great was nuclear weapons secrecy in the USSR that he was given no information about its giant nuclear torpedo. When the design was completed and he was
briefed on the project in July 1954, he is reported to have declared: “I don’t need that kind of boat.”20
A Navy panel chaired by Rear Admiral Aleksandr Ye. Orël reviewed the project and recommended that the submarine be changed to a torpedo-attack craft for use against enemy ships.21Admiral Kuznetsov supported the recommendations of Orël’s panel.
Although his tenure was to end soon, Kuznetsov’s opinions carried great weight. (When he suffered a heart attack in May 1955, Kuznetsov was effectively replaced by Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov, who would formally relieve him in 1956.)
In 1955—in response to the Navy’s objections and recommendations—the Tactical-Technical Elements (TTE) requirement for Project 627 was revised for attacks against enemy shipping, to be armed with conventional (high-explosive) torpe-does. The forward section of the submarine was redesigned for eight 21-inch torpedo tubes, with 12 reloads provided, a total of 20 weapons. (Later nuclear-warhead 21-inch torpedoes were added to the loadout of conventional torpedoes.) Advances in torpedo launching equipment permitted firings to depths of 330 feet (100 m) for the first time.22 The submarine was fitted with the Arkitka (Arc-tic) M active/passive sonar in her sail and the Mars-16KP passive sonar in the bow. The latter was an array sonar somewhat similar to the Ger-man GHG.
The K-3 was launched on 9 August 1957. Just over a month later—on 14 September—the K-3’s nuclear plant was started up and she went to sea for the first time at 10:30 A.M. on 4 July 1958. Academi-cian Aleksandrov, on board for the trials, wrote in the ship’s log, “For the first time in [the] country’s history steam was produced without coal or oil.”23 Unlike her American counterpart, which went to sea three and a half years earlier, these milestones in the development of the Soviet nuclear submarine were highly secret.
Under the command of Captain 1st Rank Leonid G. Osipenko, the K-3’s trials were highly successful. For safety reasons it had been decided to operate the twin reactor plant at only 60 percent power until the completion of test runs with the Obninsk land prototype. At 60 percent power the K-3 reached a speed of 23.3 knots, which was “quite a surprise, since the speed obtained was 3 knots
higher than expected.”24That was also the maxi-mum speed of the USS Nautilus.
Subsequently, when operated at maximum power, the K-3 was able to reach approximately 30 knots, although 28 knots is often listed as the max-imum operating speed for the class. During her tri-als the K-3 reached a depth of 1,017 feet (310 m), a world record for a military submarine.
The senior assistant (executive officer) of the K-3, Captain 2d Rank Lev M. Zhiltsov, recalled of the trials:
When in the tests the reactor drove the sub-marine to standard speed, everyone on the bridge was shaken . . . by the quietness.
For the first time in all my duty on
submarines, I heard the sound of the waves near the bow end. On conventional
submarines, the sound of the exhaust from the diesel engines covers everything else. But here there was no rattling and no vibration.25 The K-3 carried out extensive trials, albeit with some problems. There were leaks in the steam gen-erators, with the crew having to periodically don respirators while they searched for the leaks. The early generators were found to have an extremely short service life; those initially installed in Soviet nuclear submarines began to leak after some 800 hours of operation. “We felt like heroes,” recalled one commanding officer of a Project 627A subma-rine when his engineers were able to extend the operating time to 1,200 hours. (Tests ashore had demonstrated that the operating time before failure should have been 18,000 to 20,000 hours. The long-term solution was to change the material in the steam generators, the design itself having been found sound and providing benefits over the simi-lar U.S. system, such as higher operating tempera-tures and hence greater power.)
Still, the trials of the K-3 were successful trials, and in 1959 Osipenko was honored with the deco-ration Hero of the Soviet Union, and his crew received other decorations. Designer Peregudov was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor, the USSR’s highest award for a designer, and SKB-143 and the Molotovsk shipyard were awarded the cov-eted Order of Lenin for their accomplishments.
The same year that the pioneer K-3 went to sea, the Soviet government made the decision to mass produce nuclear-propelled submarines. Admiral Gorshkov recalled,
the major meeting, also dedicated to the future development of the Navy, which took place in Moscow in 1958 was for me very memorable. The fleet commanders, other leading Navy admirals, representatives of the General Staff, the CinCs of component services, and workers of the Party Central Committee and Council of Ministers took part in it. The correctness of the priority construction of nuclear submarines with missile armaments was supported. N. S.
Khrushchev spoke in favor of creating about 70 nuclear submarines with ballistic
missiles, 60 with antiship cruise missiles, and 50 with torpedoes.26
The mass production of nuclear-propelled sub-marines was approved.
Although the K-3 was referred to as an “experi-mental” ship in some Soviet documents, it was, in fact, the lead ship for series production nuclear
submarines, unlike the one-of-a-kind USS Nautilus. Production was initiated at the Molo-tovsk/Severodvinsk yard. Minor changes were made to the design, especially improvements to the nuclear power plant, controls, and sonars, and the production submarines—Project 627A—were equipped with improved diving planes and rud-ders for better control at high speeds. In these submarines the Arkitka M was fitted in the bow (vice sail) and the Mars-16KP was replaced by the MG-10 passive sonar located in the upper portion of the bow.
The first Project 627A submarine, the K-5, was laid down in hall No. 42 in August 1956 (a year before the K-3 was launched). A total of 12 Project 627A submarines were placed in commission from Decem-ber 1959 through 1964, demonstrating the early and determined support of nuclear-propelled submarines by the Soviet government. On trials—with power limited to 80 percent—the K-5 reached 28 knots.
The overall success of the K-3 demonstrated the achievements of Soviet scientists and engineers in the depths as well as in space. In mid-1962 the K-3 was modified, with her sail structure reinforced, and a special, upward-looking sonar, underwater television cameras, and high-latitude navigation equipment were installed. On 11 July the K-3, now A detailed view of a Project 627A/November SSN. The ship has a streamlined sail typical of Malachite-designed nuclear submarines. This is the K-8 in trouble off the coast of Spain in April 1970; she sank soon after this photo was taken. Her forward diving planes are extended.(U.S. Navy)
under the command of Zhiltsov, departed her base at Gremikha on the eastern Kola Peninsula and steamed north.27 The submarine surfaced on 15 July at 84oNorth latitude, some 360 n.miles (666 km) from the geographic top of the world. Rear Admiral Aleksandr I. Petelin, the submarine flotilla commander, and Zhiltsov went onto the ice and raised the flag of the USSR. The K-3 reached the North Pole on 17 July but was unable to surface because of the thickness of the ice, estimated at 39 feet (12 m). She did surface several additional times through ice before making a 24-knot run back to Gremikha, arriving on 21 July 1962.
At Gremikha the K-3 was met by Nikita Khru-shchev and other government leaders. They were on a visit to the Northern Fleet, which included view-ing extensive displays of the newest naval weapons as well as submarines, and witnessed the underwa-ter launch of a ballistic missile. Khrushchev personal-ly decorated Zhiltsov, his engineer officer Engineer-Captain 2d Rank R. A. Timofeyev, and Rear Admiral Petelin with the nation’s highest decoration—Hero of the Soviet Union. (Timofeyev apparently did not receive notice of the award presentation. While at work, wearing dungarees, he was told to report
immediately to the meeting hall. Upon his arrival Khrushchev complimented him as a “hero in blue dungarees.”) The submarine was honored on 21 July by being given the name Leninsky Komsomol, named for the youth group honoring V. I. Lenin. On 29 Sep-tember 1963 the Project 627A submarine K-181, commanded by Captain 2d Rank Yu. A. Sysoyev, surfaced precisely at the North Pole. Those men not on watch went out onto the ice, and the Soviet flag and naval ensign were raised. The crew then engaged in sports on the ice. (Sysoyev also was named a Hero of the Soviet Union for the subma-rine’s polar exploit, while for this and other opera-tions, the K-181 in 1968 became the first warship since World War II to be awarded the Red Banner Order.) Arctic operations by nuclear submarines became a regular activity.28Another submarine of this type, the K-133, took part in the February-March 1966, around-the-world Arctic cruise in company with two nuclear-propelled ballistic mis-sile submarines, traveling submerged some 20,000 n.miles (37,000 km) in 54 days.
During their careers the K-3, K-5, and K-11 had the more advanced and reliable VM-AM reactor plants installed. When the submarines were over-Project 627A/November SSN. Inset shows K-3 with bow-mounted sonar. LOA 352 ft 3 in (107.4 m) (©A.D. Baker, III)
K-27 Project 645/Modified November SSN. LOA 360 ft 3 in (109.8 m) (©A.D. Baker, III)
hauled at the Zvezdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk during the 1960s, their reactor compartments were cut out and the VM-AM plants (built at the Severodvinsk shipyard) were installed.
In 1958, as the K-3 was being completed, the U.S.
Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, observed that “the Russians will soon have nuclear submarines. . . .” In August 1959, shortly after vis-iting the unfinished nuclear icebreaker Lenin at the Admiralty shipyard in Leningrad, Vice Admiral H.
G. Rickover, stated,
I think unquestionably we are ahead of them. I dislike saying this because I am responsible for naval atomic propulsion, but as far as we know, the only marine propul-sion plant they have is in the Lenin, and it has not yet operated at sea. We have had naval [nuclear] plants operating since 1953.
Mr. [F. P.] Kozlov [Soviet First Deputy Pre-mier], when he was in the United States in July, told me that they are building atomic-powered submarines.29
Four months after the Lenin went to sea, and with the first few Soviet nuclear submarines already completed, in January 1960, Admiral Burke told the U.S. Congress that “there are indications that the Soviet Union is engaged in a nuclear submarine building program” and that “it must be expected that the Soviets will have nuclear-powered sub-marines in operation in the near future.” Accurate U.S. intelligence on the Soviet nuclear submarine program was lacking in the pre-satellite era, with some Western officials questioning at that time whether the Soviets could in fact construct a nuclear submarine with their existing technology base.
Indeed, Project 627 (given the NATO code name November) was the first of several Soviet nuclear-propelled submarines that Western intelligence “got wrong.” It was inconceivable to U.S. intelligence and engineering analysts that the Soviets had installed two reactors in the submarine, generating 35,000 horsepower. Thus, in January 1968, when the U.S. nuclear-propelled aircraft carrier Enterprise departed San Francisco for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, there was little concern when intelligence sources
(primarily the seafloor Sound Surveillance System [SOSUS]) revealed a November-class SSN closing with the carrier and her escorts.
As the submarine approached the carrier force, the U.S. warships accelerated. The November was believed to have a maximum speed of 23 to 25 knots. The Enterprise force accelerated, the carrier being accompanied by a nuclear-propelled and an oil-burning escort ship. Available reports differ as to the speed reached by the task force—some sources say as high as 31 knots. The November kept pace with the carrier. This incident would have a profound effect on the U.S. nuclear submarine pro-gram. (See Chapter 17.)
However, propulsion plant reliability problems would plague Project 627/November submarines and cause several major casualties. Soviet nuclear submarines did not deploy to the Western hemi-sphere during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 because of continuing problems with their unreliable steam generators. Only Soviet diesel-electric submarines participated in that superpow-er confrontation.30
On 8 September 1967 the K-3 was in the Nor-wegian Sea, returning to her base on the Kola Peninsula, after 56 days at sea. Early that morning a fire flared up in the torpedo compartment, proba-bly from the ignition of hydraulic fluid. The sailors there had no time to use fire extinguishers and fled to the second compartment, which was closed off from the rest of the submarine.
At the time the submarine was steaming at a depth of 165 feet (50 m). Despite the use of respira-tors, many crewmen suffered carbon-monoxide poisoning and 39 crewmen died. The survivors were able to sail the K-3 back to port.
Late on the night of 8 April 1970, as Soviet naval forces were conducting a multi-ocean exer-cise known as Okean (Ocean), the submarine K-8 suffered an engineering casualty while she was operating submerged at a depth of 395 feet (120 m) in the Atlantic, off Cape Finisterre, Spain.31A spark ignited a fire in the flammable chemicals of the air regeneration system. The submarine was able to reach the surface, but smoke and carbon dioxide forced most of the crew onto deck. Soon the ship was drifting without power, because the reactors had been shut down and the auxiliary
diesel generators ran for only one hour when they suffered a problem with their cooling system.
After three days on the surface, while the crew attempted to save the K-8 in the face of strong gales, the submarine sank into the depths on 12 April.
Half of her crew of 104 was saved by Bulgarian and Soviet merchant ships; 52 men were lost, among them her commanding officer.32This first Soviet nuclear submarine loss occurred after the sink-ing—with all hands—of the USS Thresher (SSN 593) in 1963 and USS Scorpion (SSN 589) in 1968.
The casualties in Soviet submarines led U.S.
Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman to declare,
“We know there have been some catastrophic health-impairment incidents.”33One U.S. subma-rine analyst observed, “. . . if Western submasubma-rines had one-tenth of the nuclear reactor casualties and engineering breakdowns that the Soviets have, there would probably be no Western nuclear sub-marines.”34
Still, Project 627/November submarines served in the Soviet Navy until the early 1990s. The lead ship, the K-3, was decommissioned in January 1988 after almost 30 years of service. She is moored at Gremikha on the Kola Peninsula. (There are plans to preserve the ship as a museum/memorial should funds become available.)