Discovery Channel - Cold War Submarine Adventures K-19 Doomsday Submarine (2002)

The true story of the disastrous first combat patrol of the Hotel Class submarine K-19, the Soviet Union's first atomic-powered nuclear missile submarine. Story was later made into a movie starring Harrison Ford, but this is a real-life documentary on K-19 including rare footage, interviews, and computer simulated footage. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the USSR hastily built the first nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear ballistic missiles – specifically R-13 SLBM rockets. The K-19 sub was the product of a vigorous arms race with the US, that had almost reached boiling point, causing corners to be cut in production. Before it was launched, 10 workers and a sailor died due to accidents and fires, yet Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded the show must go on. In 1961, under the lead of Captain Zateyev, it took part in a covert operation where its job was to imitate a US vessel of the same kind orchestrating an attack. K-19, the lead ship of the Soviet Navy's first line of SSBN's, was then on its first combat-ready patrol as part of a larger Soviet naval exercise in the Norwegian Sea code named Arctic Circle. It was to travel from the Norwegian Sea, into the North Atlantic, around Iceland and head back to Soviet territory. “K-19 - Doomsday Submarine” examines how the events unfolded. Film focuses on a major accident aboard K-19 on 4 July 1961, where its nuclear reactor malfunctions and eight crew die while attempting to rig an emergency cooling device. The crew saved the ship from sinking, but radiation damage was irreparable. K-19 had to be towed back on the surface over the course of several days from the accident site southeast of Jan Mayen Island to its base on the Kola Peninsula. The accident took place during the height of the Berlin Crisis, a situation which had the Cold War superpowers considering options of nuclear war. In total, twenty-two of the 139 men in the submarine's original crew in 1961 died of radiation sickness over the few years following the incident. The K-19 went on to have a mostly jinxed career. In 1991 the Soviet Union decommissioned the K-19. The submarine,nicknamed “Hiroshima” by the sailors of the Northern Fleet, was then tied up in storage for scrapping at the navy base at Polyamy.

Snippet from Wikipedia: Soviet submarine K-19

K-19 (Russian: К-19) was the first submarine of the Project 658 (Russian: проект-658, lit: Projekt-658) class (NATO reporting name Hotel-class submarine), the first generation of Soviet nuclear submarines equipped with nuclear ballistic missiles, specifically the R-13 SLBM. The boat was hastily built by the Soviets in response to United States' developments in nuclear submarines as part of the arms race. Before she was launched, 10 civilian workers and a sailor died due to accidents and fires. After K-19 was commissioned, the boat had multiple breakdowns and accidents, several of which threatened to sink the submarine.

On its initial voyage on 4 July 1961, K-19 suffered a complete loss of coolant to one of its two reactors. A backup system included in the design was not installed, so the captain ordered members of the engineering crew to find a solution to avoid a nuclear meltdown. Sacrificing their own lives, the engineering crew jury-rigged a secondary coolant system and kept the reactor from a meltdown. Twenty-two crew members died during the following two years. The submarine experienced several other accidents, including two fires and a collision. The series of accidents inspired crew members to nickname the submarine "Hiroshima".

History

Background

In the late 1950s, the leaders of the Soviet Union were determined to catch up with the United States and began to build a nuclear submarine fleet.

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