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By Norman Polmar, Author, Guide to the Soviet Navy
The Mike SSN—Going Down, and Coming Up?
There has been a profusion of Soviet articles about the Soviet submarine Kom- somolets—known in the West by the NATO-U.S. code name “Mike”—since her sinking in April 1989. Yet, many Mysteries remain concerning the Mike and her loss.
Heretofore the West had considered the Mike an “experimental design, with no second unit expected,” and “a test vehi- ele for new design and propulsion features.”1 But the Mike appears to have been much more significant to underwater ship design. To quote one Soviet submarine officer:
“I venture to argue that the loss of the submarine was as great to our country as the loss of the Challenger shuttle to the United States. The Komsomolets was the first submarine of its kind, a sort of orbiting station designed for underwater travel. ... the scientific and oceanological information that each of the submarine’s voyages provided was nearing a new era of merchant and passenger highspeed underwater travel. Just as our passenger airlines have grown out of warplanes, so the Komsomolets could have become the forefather of a new type of marine transport. . . . We have not appreciated fully what a ship and what people we have lost.”2
The Soviets had said earlier that the Komsomolets was designed to test 12 advanced submarine technologies. Those technologies have not been detailed by he Soviets, although some are known. h°r example, the submarine had a titanium hull with piping and fittings sufficient for a 1,000-meter (3,280-foot) opiating depth. The Komsomolets attained mat depth—the greatest by far that a full- SlZe submarine has reached and still re- terned to the surface—during sea trials 0n 6 August 1984.
Western annuals estimated the Kom- somolets's maximum submerged speed at o-38 knots. That would make her faster han any existing Western submarine as We|l as the new U.S. Seawolf (SSN-21), "'hich is credited with a 35-knot speed.3
The Soviet Alfa, Papa, and possibly other Soviet submarines have exceeded those speeds.
The West believed the propulsion plant of the Komsomolets consisted of steam turbines provided with steam by a single pressurized-water reactor (PWR), which generated possibly as much as 60,000 shaft horsepower. Soviet computations, however, indicate that a more likely horsepower for that speed regime would be 41,000 to 45,000 shaft horsepower.[1] If that assessment is correct, it is a remarkable accomplishment for a reactor within a pressure hull diameter of less than 29'/2 feet (i.e., the Komsomolets's outer hull diameter was 36 feet with probably more than 3'A feet between the outer hull and pressure hull). By comparison, U.S. Los Angeles (SSN-688)-class submarines produce some 35,000 horsepower within a 33-foot diameter hull for a speed of just over 30 knots. Initially, Western analysts believed that the Komsomolets, like the earlier Alfa, had two reactors with lead-bismuth as the heat- exchange medium. Thus the Komsomolets design indicates a very high degree of sophistication in PWR technology, or much more efficient layout of the plant to obtain more power per cubic foot.
More mystery surrounds the other features of the sunken submarine. Indications are that the submarine had plastic or fiberglass sections. Films of the sunken Komsomolets taken by the Mir's sub- mersibles show fiberglass-like material that may have been from interior coverings of the submarine.
The Komsomolets was a double-hull craft and, like the Alfa and possibly others, was fitted with an escape capsule for the crew. The commanding officer and several crewmen used the capsule as the submarine plunged to the bottom, although it is not known if the release was activated when the submarine struck the sea bed—4,900 feet—or at a lesser depth. The one surviving man in the capsule (the others perished from the toxic gases) reported internal bulkheads breaking at some 1,970 feet before the capsule broke loose.
The submarine also had anechoic or compliant coating. These coatings absorb acoustic energy, reducing the effectiveness of active sonar employed against the submarine; however, there is considerable evidence in Soviet literature that these coatings also reduce resistance or drag as the submarine travels through the water, thus increasing the submarine’s speed for a given power rating. According to a definitive Soviet study of submarine technologies, “specialists—biologists and hydrodynamics specialists—are proposing methods of increasing submarine speeds by artificial laminarization of the turbulent flow in the boundary layer of submarine hulls.”[2]
Finally, the Komsomolets was highly automated. Her complement was only 68 men (32 officers, 21 warrants, 15 enlisted)—exceptionally small for a submarine her size was such a combat capability (see Table l).[3] Some analysts have suggested that even that number may have been higher than her normal crew size, because it included technicians who were on board for specific research programs on the submarine’s first operational cruise. By comparison, the slightly larger U.S. Los Angeles-class submarines have a crew of some 130 men.
These features—depth, speed, advanced materials, coatings, and automation—will obviously be seen in the next- generation Soviet submarines. Future Soviet submarines are predicted to have enhanced stealth (reductions in acoustic and other signatures); speeds of 50-60 knots in the near term and, in the longer term, speeds as much as 100 knots; and the capability to reach depths of 6,500 feet.[4] In addition to protecting the submarine from weapons and letting it exercise high-speed maneuvers, the increased pressure at depth reduces propulsor cavitation, alleviating that source of submarine noise and making the propulsor more efficient. Again, this contributes to speed.
But the Komsomolets was more than a prototype for a new combat submarine. “She had to carry torpedoes as long as there is rivalry for the high seas,” according to one report.[5] Armed with six bow torpedo tubes, the Komsomolets,
i»
Table | 1 Komsomolets Characteristics |
Project No. 845 Pennant No. K-278 Builder: Shipyard 402 | |
(Serverodvinsk) Launched: June 1983 Completed: 1985-1986 | |
Displacement: | 5,000 tons surfaced |
Length: | 6,500-7,500 tons submerged 393 ft 7 in (120 m) overall |
Beam: | 36 ft 1 in (11 m) |
Draft: | 29 ft 6 in (9 m) |
Propulsion: | 2 steam turbines; 1 shaft (7 bladed propeller) |
Reactors: | 1 pressurized-water |
Speed: | approx. 36-38 knots submerged |
Depth: | 3,280 ft (1,000 m) |
Complement: | 68 |
Missiles: | probably SS-N-15 antisubmarine |
Torpedo tubes: | probably SS-N-16 antisubmarine 6 21-in (533-mm) and/or 25.5-in (650-mm) bow |
Torpedoes/missiles: | 14 |
Radar: | Snoop Head* surface search |
Sonar: | Shark Gill* low-frequency active passive array |
Electronic warfare: | Bald Eagle* |
* NATO code name | |
Source: N. Polmar and J. Noot, Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718-1990 | |
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990). |
returning from an operational patrol when she was lost, was carrying ten torpedoes, two of them with nuclear warheads. That was a small loadout—i.e., only four reloads—for a combat submarine, a further indication of the special configuration of the submarine. The reason was that the Soviets needed to use reload space for research equipment.
But primarily, the submarine may well have been the prototype for a “new type of marine transport”—the long-touted concept of underwater commercial navigation, immune to surface ice and weather.
While many mysteries of the Komsom- olets remain, at least to the West, the Soviets have concluded that the cause of her loss began with an electrical fire in the aftermost (seventh) compartment. Remote control activated the freon fireextinguishing system. Freon has long been used in Soviet diesel-electric and nuclear submarines for blanketing fires. It would have done so in the Komsomo- lets, but an electric arc burned through the side of the high-pressure main ballast blow system. A high-pressure jet of compressed air overwhelmed the freon blanket and fueled the flames; “the compartment was now like a blast furnace.”[6] 4 * 6 7 * [7] A series of other failures followed on board the Komsomolets until, flooding and with holes blown in her hull (possibly by some of the seven surfacing charges), she went down.
There are two views of the underlying cause of her loss: “The positions of the parties have become quite clearly polarized. The shipbuilders: The ship was good, but the crew was poorly trained. The Navy: The ship was defective, and the crew was adequately trained."[8]
The crew who sailed the Komsomolets on her fateful voyage was her “second crew.” The “first crew” had taken the submarine through her trials and extensive evaluations. The second crew had taken her to sea on the submarine’s first operational cruise (which had lasted 39 days when she was lost). The first crew, under Captain 1st Rank Yu. Zelenskiy, was considerably more experienced than the second: those men had been with the ship during her construction and trials, and had been to sea more than their successors. This does not, however, mean that the second crew under Captain 1st Rank Yevgeniy A. Vanin, was not competent.[9] Both crews had trained on the same simulators and mock ups, and at the institutes and plants where the submarine’s machinery was developed. The second crew had gone to sea on local operations and, reportedly, some men were held over from the first crew.
The Komsomolets’s demise appears to have been caused by material failures, which have plagued Soviet submarines, the Soviet Navy, and the Soviet society. For example, plastic gaskets melted in the Komsomolets, which allowed high- pressure air into the compartments already in flames. Previously those gaskets were manufactured from copper, which resists heat better than plastic does. Apparently, the manufacturers did not consider fire and replaced the metal gaskets with polyamide gaskets to save money-
The technical and material failures on the Komsomolets included carbon monoxide being sucked into the ship’s emergency breathing system from the seventh compartment; the gears that opened the hatches to release the submarine’s two life rafts rusting together; a shortage of pin connectors for the emergency radio buoy; and the emergency breathing apparatus (EBA) or “lungs,” which includes an immersion suit used for escape and survival, being obsolete, cumbersome, and too heavy to be practical. Also, according to Soviet sources, there were not enough suits for the 69 men in the Komsomolets. The list continued.
The Soviets may soon learn more answers to their questions about the Kotn- somolets’s sinking, although the survivors have provided detailed accounts of her loss. The hull of the submarine has been closely examined by the two Soviet Mir submersibles, which can operate at depths as great as 20,000 feet. Subsequently, a consortium of five Dutch companies has been selected by the Soviet government to salvage the Komsomolets. A spokesman for the Dutch group said that he hopes to raise the submarine in the summer of 1992.
[1]Capt. 1st Rank V. Parkhomenko, et al, “Low Noise Above All,” Morskoy Sbornik (No. 11, 1988), p. 67. "Adm. of the Fleet of the Soviet Union S. G. Gorsh
kov, et al. The Navy: Its Rote, Prospects for Development, and Employment (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1988); U.S. Navy translation, p. 82
[3]In addition to her crew, the Komsomolets had a senior political officer on board as a staff “rider"; of the 69 men, 42 were lost when she sank.
[4]Gorshkov. pp. 77, 81.
"Cherkashin, “The Boat. . . ," p. 25.
'Jean Labaylc Couhat, et al, Combat Fleets of the World 1988189 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), p. 589; Capt. Richard Sharpe, RN (Ret.), Jane's Fighting Ships 1988-89 (London: Janes’s Yearbooks, 1988), p. 554.
-Capt. 2nd Rank (Res.) Nikolai Cherkashin, “The Boat That Never Came Back," Soviet Soldier (April 1990), p. 25. Cherkashin is an award-winning writer and former submarine deputy commanding officer for political affairs.
"Bernard Prezelin, et al. Combat Fleets of the World 1990/1991 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990) p. 776.
“Ibid., p. 14.
[8]Capt. 2nd Rank (Res.) Nidolia Cherkashin. “Underwater Fire: Let Us Return to the Tragic Fate of the Submarine Komsomolets and its Crew,” Svetskaya Rossiya (29 April 1990), p. 4.
"Vanin reentered the sinking submarine to save a crewman; he and a few others entered the escape capsule, but he died during the escape effort.