The K-278 ''Komsomolets'' was the ''Project-685 Plavnik'' (Russian: проект-685 плавник, meaning "

fin A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. F ...

", also known by her

NATO reporting name NATO uses a system of code names, called reporting names, to denote military aircraft and other equipment used by post-Soviet states, former Warsaw Pact countries, China, and other countries. The system assists military communications by providi ...

of "Mike"-class),

nuclear-powered Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...

attack submarine An attack submarine or hunter-killer submarine is a submarine specifically designed for the purpose of attacking and sinking other submarines, surface combatants, and merchant vessels. In the Soviet Navy, Soviet and Russian Navy, Russian navies ...

of the

Soviet Navy The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...

; the only submarine of her design class. In the inventory of the Soviet military, ''K-278'' was unique for her submarine depth rating, having reached a depth of in the

Norwegian Sea The Norwegian Sea (; ; ) is a marginal sea, grouped with either the Atlantic Ocean or the Arctic Ocean, northwest of Norway between the North Sea and the Greenland Sea, adjoining the Barents Sea to the northeast. In the southwest, it is separate ...

on 4 August 1984. Although ''K-278'' was commissioned in the

to evaluate the technology for the fourth-generation of Russian

nuclear submarine A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor, but not necessarily nuclear-armed. Nuclear submarines have considerable performance advantages over "conventional" (typically diesel-electric) submarines. Nuclear propulsion ...

s, she was capable of combat maneuvering and deployment. During her third operational patrol in the Arctic Ocean in 1989, a serious fire in the aft compartments led to her sinking in the

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; , ; ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.World Wildlife Fund, 2008. It was known earlier among Russi ...

off the coast of Norway. Despite the fire in the engineering compartment, ''K-278'' was able to surface and remained afloat for approximately five hours before sinking. Many of the crew perished before rescue, leading to 42 total dead (and 27 survivors). The wrecked submarine is on the floor of the

, about 1.7 km (1 mile) deep, with her nuclear reactor and two nuclear warhead-armed torpedoes still on board.

Design

The Project 685 was designed by the

Rubin Design Bureau Rubin Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering (), abbreviated as TsKB "Rubin" (), located in Saint-Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, is the largest of Russia's three main centers of submarine design, the other two being Malakhit Marine Engineerin ...

in response to a challenge to develop an advanced submarine that could carry a mix of torpedoes and cruise missiles with conventional or nuclear warheads. The order to design the submarine was issued in 1966 and design was completed in 1974. The keel was laid down on 22 April 1978 at

Severodvinsk Severodvinsk (; ) is a city in the north of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located in the delta of the Northern Dvina, west of Arkhangelsk, the administrative center of the oblast. As of the 2021 Census, the population was 157,213. Due to the p ...

. ''K-278'' was launched on 3 June 1983 and commissioned on 28 December 1983. ''K-278'' had a double hull, the inner one being composed of

titanium Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

, which gave her an operating depth far greater than that of the best American submarines.George Montgomery
''The Komsomolets Disaster.''
1994, posted as

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

Report 14 April 2007. The pressure hull was composed of seven compartments with the second and third protected by stronger forward and aft bulkheads creating a "safety zone" in case of an emergency. An escape capsule was fitted in the

above these compartments to enable the crew to abandon ship in the event of an underwater emergency. Initial Western intelligence estimates of ''K-278s speed were based on the assumption that the boat was powered by a pair of

liquid metal cooled reactor A liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor (LMR) is a type of nuclear reactor where the primary coolant is a liquid metal. Liquid metal cooled reactors were first adapted for breeder reactor power generation. They have also been used to power nuclear ...

s. When the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

revealed that the submarine used a single OK-650b-3 conventional pressurized-water reactor, these speed estimates were lowered.

Crew

According to Norman Polmar and Kenneth J. Moore, two Western experts on Soviet submarine design and operations, the Project 685's advanced design included many automated systems which allowed for fewer crew members than usual for a submarine of her size. The manning table approved by the

Soviet Ministry of Defense The Ministry of Defense (Minoboron; ) was a government ministry in the Soviet Union, which supervised the Soviet Armed Forces. The first Minister of Defense was Nikolai Bulganin, starting 1953. History The Ministry of Defence was renamed a num ...

in 1982 called for a crew of 57 men. This was later increased to 64: 30 officers, 22 warrant officers, and 12 petty officers and seamen. At the time of the boat's sinking, 69 were aboard.

Name

In October 1988, ''K-278'' became one of the few Soviet submarines to be given a name: ''Komsomolets'' (''Комсомолец'', meaning "a member of the

Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it w ...

"), and her commanding officer,

Captain 1st rank Captain 1st rank () is a rank used by the Russian Navy and a number of List of communist states#Former communist states, former communist states. The rank is the most senior rank in the staff officers' career group. The rank is equivalent to Colone ...

Yuriy Zelenskiy was honoured for diving to .

Sinking

On 7 April 1989, while under the command of Captain 1st Rank Evgeny Vanin and running submerged at a depth of about southwest of

Bear Island (Norway) Bear Island (, ) is the southernmost island of the Norway, Norwegian Svalbard, Svalbard archipelago. The island is located at the limits of the Norwegian Sea, Norwegian and Barents Sea, Barents seas, approximately halfway between Spitsbergen an ...

, a short circuit caused a fire in an engineering compartment. Even though watertight doors were shut, the resulting fire spread through bulkhead cable penetrations. The reactor

scram A scram or SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor effected by immediately terminating the fission reaction. It is also the name that is given to the manually operated kill switch that initiates the shutdown. In commercial reactor ...

med and propulsion was lost. Electrical problems spread as cables burned through, and control of the boat was threatened as temperatures reached An emergency

ballast tank A ballast tank is a Compartment (ship), compartment within a boat, ship or other floating structure that holds water, which is used as ballast to provide hydrostatic stability for a vessel, to reduce or control buoyancy, as in a submarine, to co ...

blow was performed at 11:13 and the submarine surfaced eleven minutes after the fire began. Distress calls were made, and most of the crew abandoned ship. The fire continued to burn, fed by the

compressed air Compressed air is air kept under a pressure that is greater than atmospheric pressure. Compressed air in vehicle tires and shock absorbers are commonly used for improved traction and reduced vibration. Compressed air is an important medium for t ...

system. At 15:15, several hours after surfacing, the boat sank in of water, about SSW off Bear Island. The commanding officer and four others who were still on board entered the escape capsule and ejected it. Only one of the five to reach the surface was able to leave the capsule and survive before it sank in the rough seas. Captain Vanin was among the dead. Rescue aircraft arrived quickly and dropped small rafts, but winds and sea conditions precluded their use. Many men had already died from

hypothermia Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe ...

in the water of the

. The floating fish factory B-64/10 ''Aleksey Khlobystov'' (''Алексей Хлобыстов'') arrived 81 minutes after ''K-278'' sank, and took aboard survivors.Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
''In Memory of Komsomolets.''
Pravda.ru, 7 April 2013. Of the 69 crewmen, 27 survived the incident and 42 died: 9 during the accident and the subsequent sinking, 30 in the water of hypothermia or injuries, and 3 aboard the rescue boat. The crew were awarded the

Order of the Red Banner The Order of the Red Banner () was the first Soviet military decoration. The Order was established on 16 September 1918, during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. It was the highest award of S ...

after the incident.Sergey Petrovich Bukan
''On the Trail of Submarine Disasters.''
pp 130-163

translation, 15 September 1992.

Aftermath

As well as eight standard torpedoes, ''K-278'' was carrying two torpedoes armed with nuclear warheads. Under pressure from Norway, the Soviet Union used deep sea submersibles operated from the oceanographic research ship '' Keldysh'' to search for ''K-278''. In June 1989, two months after the sinking, the wreck was located. Soviet officials stated that any possible leaks were insignificant and posed no threat to the environment. In 1993, Vice Admiral Chernov, commander of the submarine group of which the ''Komsomolets'' was part, founded the ''Komsomolets'' Nuclear Submarine Memorial Society, a charity to support the widows and orphans of his former command. Since then, the Society's charter has expanded to provide assistance to the families of all Soviet and Russian submariners lost at sea, and 7 April has become a day of commemoration for all submariners lost at sea. An expedition in mid-1994 revealed some

plutonium Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four ...

leakage from one of the two nuclear-armed torpedoes. On 24 June 1995, ''Keldysh'' set out again from

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

to the ''Komsomolets'' to seal the hull fractures in Compartment 1 and cover the nuclear warheads, and declared success at the end of a subsequent expedition in July 1996. A jelly-like sealant was projected to make the wreck radiation safe for 20 to 30 years. Norwegian authorities from the Marine Environmental Agency and Radiation Agency take water and ground samples from the vicinity of the wreck on a yearly basis. In July 2019, a joint Norwegian-Russian expedition found "clouds" emitted from a ventilation pipe and a nearby grille. They took water samples from the pipe and from several metres above, and analysed them for

caesium-137 Caesium-137 (), cesium-137 (US), or radiocaesium, is a radioactive isotope of caesium that is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nucle ...

. That pipe had been identified as a leak in several

Mir ''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...

missions up to 1998 and 2007. The activity levels in the six samples out of the pipe were up to 800 Bq/L (9 July). No activity could be detected in the free-water samples. Due to dilution, there is no threat to the environment. The Norwegian limit on caesium-137 in food products is 600 Bq/kg. The background activity of caesium-137 in the water body is as low as 0.001 Bq/L. More sensitive measurements of the samples were reported to be in progress.Hilde Elise Heldal, Stine Hommedal
''Researchers discovered leak from Komsomolets.''
Institute of Marine Research, 10 July 2019, updates 11 July and 29 August 2019, and personal communication 29 August 2019.

Notes

References

Bibliography

The Sunken Nuclear Submarine Komsomolets and its effects on the Environment (by Steinar Høibråten, Per E. Thoresen and Are Haugan. Published by Elsevier Science. 1997)
* Wallace, Wendy,

, CIS Environmental Watch, Spring 1992. * Montgomery, George,

, ''

Studies in Intelligence ''Studies in Intelligence'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on intelligence that is published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, a group within the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It contains both classified and u ...

'', Vol. 38, No. 5 (1995) * Romanov, D. A., ''Fire at Sea: The Tragedy of the Soviet Submarine'' Komsomolets. Edited by K. J. Moore. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006. (Note: Romanov was the Soviet submarine's deputy designer at the Rubin Design Bureau and he defends his agency's design against the Soviet Navy's initial claims that "numerous technical imperfections" caused the accident.) * Gary Weir and Walter Boyne, ''Rising Tide: The untold story of the Russian submarines that fought the Cold War'', New York: Basic Books,(2003) *

External links

Project 685 (Plavnik) – Mike Class

Энциклопедия кораблей

* Mizokami, Kyle, "Russia Has Destroyed..

TED Case Studies: Komsomolets Submarine and Radiation Leakage
* * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:K-278 Komsomolets Nuclear submarines of the Soviet Navy Ships built in the Soviet Union 1983 ships Maritime incidents in 1989 Shipwrecks in the Barents Sea Lost submarines of the Soviet Union Sunken nuclear submarines Komsomolets, K-278 Soviet submarine Norway–Soviet Union relations Ships built by Sevmash Soviet submarine accidents