KOMSOMOLETS (K-278) submarine

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Built as a nuclear-powered attack submarine under yard no 510 by Severodvinsk Ship-yard (Sevmash), Severodvinsk for the Soviet Union Navy.
22 April 1978 laid down.
03 June 1983 launched as the K-278.
Displacement: 5,750 tons surface, 7,810 ton submerged. Dim. 117.5 x 10.7 x 9m. (draught)
Powered by one 190 MW OK-650 b-3 pressured water reactor, two 45,000 shp steam turbines, one shaft, speed 14 knots, surface, 30 knots, submerged.
Test depth 1,000m.
Armament: SS-N-15 Starfish anti-submarine missiles, 6 533 mm torpedo tubes for 53-65 torpedo and VA-111 Shkval torpedoes.
Crew 64.
28 December 1983 commissioned. Homeport Bolshaya Lopatka at Zapadnaya Litsa.

K-278 KOMSOMOLETS was the only Project 685 Plavnik (Плавник, meaning "fin", also known by its NATO reporting name of "Mike"-class) nuclear-powered attack submarine of the Soviet Navy. On 4 August 1984 K-278 reached a record depth of 1,020 metres (3,350 feet) in the Norwegian Sea. Although it was developed mostly to test technology for fourth-generation nuclear submarines, it was fully combat-capable. It sank on its first operational patrol, in 1989, after a fire broke out in the aft engineering compartment.
The KOMSOMOLETS was able to surface after the fire started and remained afloat for approximately 5 hours before sinking. Of the 42 crew members who died, only 4 were killed by the fire and smoke, while 34 died of hypothermia, drowning in the frigid waters while awaiting a rescue that did not arrive in time. Because of the loss of life, a public inquiry was conducted and, as a result, many formerly classified details were revealed by the Soviet news media.
The wrecked submarine is on the floor of the Barents Sea, about 1.7 km (1 mile) deep, with its nuclear reactor and two nuclear warheads still on board.

Design
The Project 685 was designed by the Rubin Design Bureau 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. 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, which gave her an operating depth far greater than that of the best American submarines. 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 sail above these compartments to enable the crew to abandon ship in the event of an underwater emergency. Initial Western intelligence estimates of K-278’s speed were based on the assumption that it was powered by a pair of liquid-metal lead-bismuth reactors. When the Soviet Union 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, Project 685's advanced design included many automated systems which, in turn, allowed for fewer crew members than would be expected for a submarine of its size. The manning table approved by the Soviet Ministry of Defense in 1982 called for a crew of just 57 men. This was later increased to 64: 30 officers, 22 warrant officers, and 12 petty officers and seamen.

Name
In October 1988, K-278 was honored by becoming one of the few Soviet submarines to be given an actual name: KOMSOMOLETS (Комсомолец, meaning "a member of the Komsomol"), and her commanding officer, Captain 1st rank Yuriy Zelenskiy was honored for diving to a depth of 1,020 meters (3,350 feet).

Sinking
On 7 April 1989, while under the command of Captain 1st Rank Evgeny Vanin and running submerged at a depth of 335 metres (1,099 ft) about 180 kilometres (100 nmi) southwest of Bear Island (Norway), fire broke out in the engine room due to a short-circuit, and even though watertight doors were shut, the resulting fire spread through bulkhead cable penetrations. The reactor scrammed and propulsion was lost. Electrical problems spread as cables burned through, and control of the boat was threatened. An emergency ballast tank blow was performed 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 system. At 15:15, several hours after the boat surfaced, it sank in 1,680 metres (5,510 ft) of water, about 250 kilometers (135 nmi) 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 again in the rough seas.
Rescue aircraft arrived quickly and dropped small rafts, but most of the men had already died from hypothermia in the 2 °C (36 °F) water of the Barents Sea. The floating fish factory B-64/10 ALEKSEY KHLOBYSTOV arrived 81 minutes after K-278 sank, and took aboard 25 survivors and 5 fatalities. In total, 42 of the 69 crewmen died in the accident, including the commanding officer.

Aftermath
In addition to her 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 (ret.) 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. 7 April has become a day of commemoration for all submariners lost at sea.
An expedition in mid-1994 revealed some plutonium leakage from one of the two nuclear torpedoes. On 24 June 1995, KELDYSH set out again from St. Petersburg to the Mike datum 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. The jelly sealant was projected to be safe for 20 to 30 years that is, until 2015 or 2025.
Norwegian authorities from the Marine Environmental Agency and Radiation Agency are taking water and ground samples from the vicinity of the wreck on a yearly basis.

In July 2019, a joint Norwegian-Russian expedition took water samples out of a ventilation pipe and from several meters above and analyzed them for caesium-137. That pipe had been identified as a leak in several Mir missions up to 1998 and 2007. The activity levels in the six samples out of the pipe ranged between less than (the on-board detection limit of) 10 Bq/l to 100 Bq/l (on July 8) and 800 Bq/l (July 9). 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 are underway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_su ... OMSOMOLETS
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