In 'K-19,' The Chilling Truth of the Soviet Subs

July 4, 1961, Captain's Log:
Fire has broken out in Compartment Six, home to the nuclear reactor inside the K-19. Exposing themselves to fatal amounts of radiation, a handful of sailors are working frantically to repair the reactor's cooling system and prevent a nuclear meltdown; radiation levels are rising throughout the submarine. The nearest Soviet port is a six-day journey away, a trip that would prove to be fatal for the rest of the crew.
What do you do, captain?

Such is the dramatic opening of Peter Huchthausen's "K-19: The Widowmaker" -- a charged page and a half that signals readers to strap themselves in for a chilling 243-page ride.

But forget for a moment all the elements that promise a suspenseful, page-turning read -- among them the fact that the K-19, the Soviet Navy's first nuclear-powered submarine, narrowly avoided being blown to bits on its maiden voyage and that the story of the sub and its crew has been adapted into a major motion picture starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson ("K-19: The Widowmaker" opens in Moscow theaters on Thursday).

In fact, shortly after the first page and a half it becomes clear that this book is not going to be a thrill ride. Rather, it is an examination of the Soviet Union's efforts to become a naval power to be reckoned with in the nuclear age. This is not the story of one sub, but of the tragic events of a whole fleet, from the K-19 to the Kursk, that exploded and sank in August 2000. The tales of these two ill-fated subs, with nearly 40 years between them, have a great deal in common. The tragedy, Huchthausen points out, is that these events could have been avoided had the top brass been more concerned with safety and testing procedures than with cranking out a Potemkin fleet to flaunt before the encroaching "capitalist threat."

Between 1958 and 1968, the Soviet Navy lost seven vessels and 200 sailors, and more than 400 crewmen were gravely irradiated -- the results of a sloppy, speedy start to the Soviet submarine program. And although there were officers like Captain Nikolai Zateyev -- the commander of the K-19 who is played by Ford and called Captain Alexei Vostrikov in the film -- who repeatedly pointed out the ship's design flaws, the military chose to ignore and suppress these alarmists. It was easier to lose lives than to learn from their mistakes.

Many of the Soviet naval accidents that occurred in peacetime -- and Huchthausen counts at least 1,460 casualties between 1952 and 2000 -- were caused by recurring problems. For example, the instability of the liquid fuel used to launch missiles was responsible for at least two accidents before it sank the Kursk in August 2000. In January 1962, a torpedo exploded aboard the Northern Fleet's B-37 submarine while it was in port, killing 132. And, in October 1986, leaking fuel exploded aboard the K-219; the ship sank in 5,500 meters of water along with 44 nuclear warheads and two reactors.

Huchthausen, a retired U.S. Navy captain who served as senior U.S. naval attache to Moscow in the late 1980s, may be the author of "K-19," but Captain Zateyev is the book's backbone: The memoirs of the commander of the K-19 are peppered throughout the text and provide the most compelling reading.

In his (unpublished) memoirs, Zateyev is extremely critical of the rush to become a naval power. Referring to the first generation of nuclear-powered attack submarines -- the K-5, K-8 and K-14 -- Zateyev wrote:

"These ships were being completed in a hurry. The shipyard and government sea trial programs had been combined, telescoped and abbreviated, taking no more than six or seven days at sea. Then without mechanical inspections, the ships were sent up north. Not one of these submarines was put through its complete program of trials. ... All three submarines left the shipyard with defects and incomplete assemblies and had to undergo repairs and final construction at their bases."

At the same time, the K-3, later known as the Leninsky Komsomol, was berthed for "experimental operation." "To put it plainly," Zateyev wrote, "she was unseaworthy."

Zateyev did not keep his critical words to himself. He was among a minority of officers who tried to alert the naval authorities to the deplorable safety conditions aboard nuclear subs.

"The rational criticism of the wiser heads in the leadership were going unheeded; these people were ignored and soon came to be persecuted," Zateyev wrote, citing in particular former Northern Fleet Commander Andrei Chabanenko. Chabanenko tried to slow down the frantic pace of submarine production in favor of a safer, more reliable fleet. He was, as a result, dismissed from his post and all of his supporters soon thereafter lost their jobs.

"Our leaders at every level crowed to the world about what a mighty power we were, what sophisticated technology and what superior weapons systems we possessed.

"Against the backdrop of this euphoria, medals, stars and prizes of all sorts were awarded indiscriminately. Meanwhile, the fact that our ships were languishing at their piers because of technical malfunctions or for lack of armaments somehow didn't seem to register on anyone," Zateyev wrote.

The ships, Zateyev pointed out, were not only not seaworthy, but not battle-worthy. The entire first and second generation of nuclear subs were doomed to be destroyed in any naval battle, Zateyev wrote, because they were so noisy they could easily be tracked by U.S. subs.

"Perhaps our country's top leadership did not know, and did not want to know, that we were building ships that would be of no use in a war. After all, the leadership's general incompetence made them easy enough to fool," Zateyev wrote, citing an incident when Nikita Khrushchev was invited to observe a demonstration of a cruise missile launch. Seconds after liftoff, the missile dropped into the sea after its starter engines failed, but the commander-in-chief, Admiral Gorshkov, informed Khrushchev that the missile was continuing on its course underwater. Khrushchev, Zateyev wrote, declared, 'These are good weapons we are building, comrades!"

Huchthausen's prose is sometimes extremely technical, especially for readers who are not particularly interested, or are not well versed, in the intricate workings of a nuclear reactor. After struggling through a section describing the parts of a pressurized land-based water reactor, I was tempted to close "K-19" the book and head for "K-19" the movie. But even for those who do not know their quench baffles from their pins of uranium oxide, there are advantages to reading the book before catching the movie. Not least of these is that Hollywood has a way of taking liberties with historical fact, and the movie version of the K-19 story is no exception. In fact, at last Sunday's St. Petersburg premiere of the film, an audience of K-19 sailors had a mixed reaction to the film, criticizing it for being untrue to history, but ultimately applauding its dramatic ending.

But if "K-19: The Widowmaker" is often heavy on technology, it is light on the environmental consequences of five decades of nuclear accidents at sea. Gutted reactors, irradiated equipment, spent fuel and nuclear warheads are scattered about the ocean floor, most notably in the waters near Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. This may be the world's largest atomic graveyard, but there are still eight Russian submarines resting at the bottom of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Barents Sea along with 18 reactors and more than 46 nuclear warheads.

The lives of hundreds of Russian sailors who perished during the numerous and avoidable accidents at sea may never be turned into a Hollywood blockbuster, but Huchthausen is quick to portray their efforts to save their ships and fellow crewmates as courageous and selfless. These men were the real victims of the Cold War and of the Kremlin's dangerous drive for a nuclear fleet. "Men were dying in this grand experiment," Huchthausen writes. "The Americans didn't have to fire a shot. The Russians were willing to kill their own."

"K-19: The Widowmaker." By Peter Huchthausen. National Geographic Society. 243 pages. $16.00 (paperback).