Nuclear submarines. The history of the creation of the first Soviet nuclear submarine

Development Features Soviet culture in the 1960s - the first half of the 1980s Science: 1965, March 18 - Soviet cosmonaut A. Leonov first went into outer space. 1970 - the Soviet apparatus "Lunokhod-1" was delivered to the moon. 1975 - Soviet-American space project

History See also "The Past", "Russian History", "Middle Ages", "Tradition", "Civilization and Progress" Philosophy studies the erroneous views of people, and history studies their erroneous actions. Philip Guedalla* History is the science of what is no longer and will not be. Paul

This section is devoted to the submarine fleet - one of the most important components of the modern naval forces of any country. Submarines are ships that can strike at the enemy directly from the depths of the sea, while remaining practically invulnerable to the enemy. The main weapon of any submarine is its secrecy.

The first combat use of a submarine occurred in the middle of the 19th century. However, submarines became a mass type of weapon only at the beginning of the last century. During the First World War, German submarines turned into a formidable force that caused real devastation on the Allied sea lanes. Submarines were no less effective during the next global conflict - the Second World War.

The power of the submarine fleet increased many times with the beginning of the atomic era. Submarines received nuclear power plants, which turned them into real masters of the deep sea. A nuclear submarine may not appear on the surface for months, develop an unprecedented speed under water, and carry a deadly arsenal on board.

During the Cold War, submarines became submarine launch sites for ballistic missiles capable of destroying entire countries with a single salvo. For many decades, a tense confrontation between the submarine fleets of the United States and the USSR took place in the depths of the sea, which more than once brought the world to the brink of a global nuclear catastrophe.

Submarines are still one of the most promising types of weapons in the navy today. The development of new vessels is carried out in all the leading world powers. The Russian design school of submarine shipbuilding is considered one of the best in the world. This section will tell you a lot of remarkable things about Russian submarines, as well as promising developments of domestic shipbuilders.

No less interesting are foreign works in this area. We will tell you about the submarines of the world that are currently in operation and about the most famous submarines of the past. Of no less interest are the main trends in the development of submarines, and promising projects of submarines from different countries.

A modern combat submarine is a real masterpiece of design thought, which in its complexity is not much inferior to a spaceship.

Submarines, which today are in service with the strongest fleets in the world, can not only destroy enemy warships or transport ships, they are also capable of attacking enemy military or administrative centers located hundreds of kilometers from the sea coast.

To destroy targets, they can use not only ballistic missiles with a nuclear warhead, but also cruise missiles with conventional explosives. Modern submarines are capable of conducting reconnaissance, laying mines, and landing sabotage groups on enemy shores.

Submarines of the latest generations are very difficult to detect, their noise is usually less than the background noise of the ocean. Nuclear reactor allows modern submarines not to surface for a long time and develop significant speed under water. In the future, as expected, combat submarines will become practically uninhabited, the functions of the crew will increasingly be performed by automation, controlled by complex computer systems.

No one knew how the nuclear genie, enclosed in a steel "bottle" of a strong body, squeezed by the pressure of depth, would behave, but if successful, the benefit of such a solution was too great. And the Americans took the risk. In 1955, fifty-five years after the first American submarine sank, the world's first nuclear-powered ship was launched. It was named after the submarine, invented by Jules Verne - "Nautilus".

The beginning of the Soviet nuclear fleet was laid in 1952, when intelligence reported to Stalin that the Americans had begun building a nuclear submarine. And six years later, the Soviet nuclear submarine "K-3" parted with its sides first the White Sea, then the Barents Sea, and then the Atlantic Ocean. Its commander was Captain 1st Rank Leonid Osipenko, and its creator was General Designer Vladimir Nikolaevich Peregudov. In addition to the tactical number, "K-3" also had its own name, not as romantic as the Americans, but in the spirit of the time - "Leninsky Komsomol". “In fact, the Peregudov Design Bureau,” notes the historian of the Soviet submarine fleet, Rear Admiral Nikolai Mormul, “created a fundamentally new ship: from appearance to the product range.

Peregudov managed to create the shape of the nuclear-powered ship, optimal for movement under water, removing everything that interfered with its full streamlining."

True, the K-3 was armed only with torpedoes, and time required the same long-range, long-range, but also fundamentally different missile cruisers. That is why in 1960 - 1980 the main bet was made on submarine missile carriers. And they weren't wrong. First of all, because it was the atomic marines - nomadic underwater rocket launchers - that turned out to be the least vulnerable carriers of nuclear weapons. Whereas underground missile silos were sooner or later spotted from space with an accuracy of up to a meter and immediately became the targets of the first strike. Realizing this, first the American and then the Soviet Navy began to place missile silos in strong submarine hulls.

The six-missile nuclear submarine "K-19", launched in 1961, was the first Soviet atomic missile submarine. At its cradle, or rather stocks, there were great academicians: Alexandrov, Kovalev, Spassky, Korolev. The boat impressed both with unusually high underwater speed, and the duration of stay under water, and comfortable conditions for the crew.

"In NATO, - notes Nikolay Mormul, - there was interstate integration: the United States built only an ocean fleet, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands - anti-submarine ships, the rest specialized in ships for closed theaters of military operations. At this stage of shipbuilding, we were in the lead in many tactical and technical We have commissioned comprehensively automated high-speed and deep-water combat nuclear submarines, the largest amphibious hovercraft, we were the first to introduce large-scale anti-submarine ships on controlled hydrofoils, gas turbine power, cruise supersonic missiles, missile and landing ekranoplanes. However, it should be noted that in the budget of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the share of the Navy did not exceed 15%, in the United States of America and Great Britain it was two to three times more.

Nevertheless, according to the official historiographer of the fleet M. Monakov, by the mid-80s, the combat strength of the Soviet Navy "consisted of 192 nuclear submarines (including 60 strategic missile submarines), 183 diesel submarines, 5 aircraft-carrying cruisers ( including 3 heavy type "Kiev"), 38 cruisers and large anti-submarine ships of the 1st rank, 68 large anti-submarine ships and destroyers, 32 patrol ships of the 2nd rank, more than 1000 ships of the near sea zone and combat boats, more than 1600 combat and transport aircraft. The use of these forces was carried out to ensure the strategic nuclear deterrence and the national-state interests of the country in the World Ocean."

Russia has never had such a huge and powerful fleet.

In peaceful years - this time has a more accurate name: the "cold war" in the oceans - more submariners and submarines died in Russia than in the Russian-Japanese, World War I, civil, Soviet-Finnish wars combined. It was a real war with rams, explosions, fires, with sunken ships and mass graves of dead crews. In its course, we lost 5 nuclear and 6 diesel submarines. US Navy Opposing Us - 2 nuclear submarines.

The active phase of the confrontation between the superpowers began in August 1958, when Soviet submarines entered the Mediterranean for the first time. Four "esks" - submarines of medium displacement type "C" (project 613) - moored by agreement with the Albanian government in the Gulf of Vlora. A year later, there were already 12 of them. Submarine cruisers and fighters circled in the depths of the oceans, tracking each other. But despite the fact that none great country did not have such a submarine fleet as the Soviet Union - it was an unequal war. We did not have a single nuclear aircraft carrier and not a single geographically convenient base.

On the Neva and the Northern Dvina, in Portsmouth and Groton, on the Volga and Amur, in Charleston and Annapolis, new submarines were born, replenishing the NATO Joint Grand Fleet and the USSR Great Submarine Armada. Everything was determined by the excitement of the pursuit of the new mistress of the seas - America, who proclaimed: "Who owns the trident of Neptune, he owns the world." The car of the third world was launched at idle ...

The early 70s was one of the peaks in the oceanic Cold War. The US aggression in Vietnam was in full swing. Submarines of the Pacific Fleet conducted combat tracking of American aircraft carriers cruising in the South China Sea. In the Indian Ocean, there was another explosive region - Bangladesh, where Soviet minesweepers neutralized Pakistani mines exposed during the Indo-Pakistani military conflict. It was hot in the Mediterranean too. In October, another Arab-Israeli war broke out. The Suez Canal was mined. The ships of the 5th operational squadron escorted Soviet, Bulgarian, East German dry cargo ships and liners in accordance with all wartime rules, covering them from terrorist attacks, missiles, torpedoes and mines. Each time has its own military logic. And in the logic of confrontation with world maritime powers, an aggressive nuclear missile fleet was a historical inevitability for the USSR. For many years, we have played nuclear baseball with America, which has taken away the title of mistress of the seas from Britain.

America opened a sad score in this match: on April 10, 1963, the Thresher nuclear submarine, for an unknown reason, sank at a depth of 2,800 meters in Atlantic Ocean. Five years later, the tragedy recurred 450 miles southwest of the Azores: the US Navy's nuclear submarine Scorpion, along with 99 sailors, remained forever at a three-kilometer depth. In 1968, for unknown reasons, the French submarine Minerve, the Israeli submarine Dakar, and also our diesel missile boat K-129 sank in the Mediterranean Sea. There were also nuclear torpedoes on board. Despite the depth of 4 thousand meters, the Americans managed to raise the first two compartments of this broken submarine. But instead of secret documents, they got problems with the burial of the remains of Soviet sailors and nuclear torpedoes that lay in the bow tubes.

We equalized with the Americans the account of the lost atomic ships in early October 1986. Then, 1,000 kilometers northeast of Bermuda, fuel exploded in the missile compartment of the K-219 submarine. There was a fire. 20-year-old sailor Sergei Preminin managed to shut down both reactors, but he himself died. The superboat remained in the depths of the Atlantic.

On April 8, 1970, in the Bay of Biscay, after a fire at great depths, the first Soviet nuclear submarine K-8 sank, taking 52 lives and two nuclear reactors with it.

On April 7, 1989, the nuclear submarine K-278, better known as Komsomolets, sank in the Norwegian Sea. When the bow of the ship was submerged, an explosion occurred, which practically destroyed the hull of the boat and damaged the combat torpedoes with an atomic charge. 42 people died in this tragedy. "K-278" was a unique submarine. It was from her that it was supposed to begin the construction of a deep-sea fleet of the 21st century. The titanium hull allowed her to dive and operate at a depth of a kilometer - that is, three times deeper than all the other submarines in the world ...

The camp of submariners was divided into two camps: some blamed the crew and the high command for the misfortune, others saw the root of evil in the low quality of marine equipment and the monopoly of the Minsudprom. This split caused a furious controversy in the press, and the country finally learned that this was our third sunken nuclear submarine. Newspapers began vying to name the names of the ships and numbers of submarines that died in "peacetime" - the battleship "Novorossiysk", the large anti-submarine ship "Courageous", the submarines "S-80" and "K-129", "S-178" and "B-37" ... And, finally, the last victim - the nuclear-powered ship "Kursk".

... We did not win the Cold War, but we forced the world to reckon with the presence of our submarines and our cruisers in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

In the 60s, nuclear submarines firmly established themselves in the battle formations of the American, Soviet, British and French fleets. Having given the submarines a new type of engine, the designers equipped the submarines with new weapons - missiles. Now nuclear missile submarines (the Americans called them "boomers" or "citykillers", we - strategic submarines) began to threaten not only world shipping, but the whole world as a whole.

The figurative concept of "arms race" took on a literal meaning when it came to such precise parameters as, for example, submerged speed. The underwater speed record (unsurpassed by anyone so far) was set by our submarine K-162 in 1969. as the speed increased, everyone felt that the boat was moving with acceleration. After all, you usually notice movement under water only by the readings of the lag. And here, as in an electric train, everyone was driven back. We heard the noise of water flowing around the boat. It grew along with the speed of the ship, and when we passed over 35 knots (65 km / h), the roar of the aircraft was already in our ears. According to our estimates, the noise level reached up to 100 decibels. Finally, we reached a record - forty-two knots speed! Not a single inhabited "underwater projectile" did not cut the sea thickness so rapidly."

The new record was set by the Soviet submarine "Komsomolets" five years before the sinking. On August 5, 1984, she made an unprecedented dive in the history of world military navigation to 1,000 meters.

In March last year The 30th anniversary of the flotilla of nuclear submarines was celebrated in the northern fleet village of Gadzhiyevo. It was here, in the remote Lapland bays, that the most complex technology in the history of civilization was mastered: nuclear-powered underwater rocket launchers. It was here, in Gadzhiyevo, that the first cosmonaut of the planet came to the pioneers of hydrocosmos. Here, aboard the K-149, Yuri Gagarin honestly admitted: "Your ships are more complicated than space ones!" And the god of rocket technology, Sergei Korolev, who was offered to create a rocket for underwater launch, uttered another significant phrase: "A rocket under water is absurd. But that's why I will undertake to do it."

And he did ... If only Korolev had known that one day, starting from under the water, boat rockets would not only cover intercontinental distances, but also launch artificial satellites of the Earth into space. For the first time, this was carried out by the crew of the Gadzhiev submarine cruiser "K-407" under the command of Captain 1st Rank Alexander Moiseev. On July 7, 1998, a new page was opened in the history of space exploration: from the depths Barents Sea was launched into near-Earth orbit by a standard ship rocket artificial satellite Earth...

And also new type engine - a single, oxygen-free and rarely (once every few years) replenished with fuel - allowed humanity to penetrate into the last hitherto inaccessible area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe planet - under the ice dome of the Arctic. V last years XX century, they started talking about the fact that nuclear submarines are an excellent transarctic vehicle. The shortest route from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern Hemisphere lies under the ice of the northern ocean. But if atomic marines are re-equipped into submarine tankers, bulk carriers and even cruise liners, then global shipping will open new era. In the meantime, the nuclear submarine Gepard has become the very first ship of the Russian fleet in the 21st century. In January 2001, the St. Andrew's flag, covered with centuries of glory, was hoisted on it.

12:07 am - The first Soviet nuclear submarine. Creation history 1

Residents: - You have been appointed senior assistant to the commander of the first experimental nuclear submarine. I also learned that the boat commander had not yet been selected and all the work of selecting, calling, arranging and organizing crew training would have to be headed by me. I confess, I was taken aback. I, a twenty-six-year-old lieutenant commander, had to resolve all issues in the departments, where any officer was older than me both in rank and in age. The documents necessary for the formation of the crew will have to be signed by high-ranking leaders. But I didn't know how to click my heels on the parquet, and my favorite form of clothing was an oiled work tunic.

Seeing my confusion, the new chief hurried to “cheer me up”: after the tests of the new submarine were completed, the best officers would be presented with high state awards. There was, however, an alarming nuance: it is fundamentally necessary to test a boat that has not yet been built. new design with a crew not yet selected and trained, it was supposed to be in six to eight months!

Since there was no question of In order to tell someone about my new appointment, I had to urgently come up with an intelligible legend even for those closest to me. The hardest thing was to fool my wife and brother, also a sailor. I told them that I had been assigned to a non-existent "submarine manning department." The wife did not fail to insert a hairpin: “Where is your determination to sail the seas and oceans? Or did you mean the Moscow Sea? My brother gave me a briefcase without a word - in his eyes I was a dead man.

Commentary by NPS Commander L. G. Osipenko: The question is natural: why was Lev Zhiltsov chosen from among the many young, capable, disciplined officers for the key position of the first mate of a nuclear submarine, in the creation of which every step was a step of pioneers? Meanwhile, there were enough reasons for such an appointment.

After the command is given from the center allocate for the formation of the crew trained, competent, disciplined, without penalties, etc., search the right people begins primarily in the Black Sea Fleet. Everyone was eager to serve there: it was warm, and in summer it was just a resort. It cannot be compared, for example, with the Northern Fleet, where nine months of the year are winter and six are polar nights. There were no “thieves” at that time, and the most capable people got to this blessed place. The best graduates of naval schools had the right to choose the fleet in which they would like to serve. Zhiltsov graduated from the Caspian School 39th out of more than 500 cadets, then with honors mine and torpedo classes. Of the 90 people, only three, besides him, became assistant commanders. A year later, Zhiltsov was appointed senior assistant on the S-61.

The boat was considered exemplary in many respects.. This was the first, the lead boat of the largest post-war series, which owes its technical excellence to the engineers of the Third Reich. At that time, all new types of weapons, new radio engineering and navigation equipment were tested on it. And the people on the boat crept up appropriate. It is no coincidence that it was the base for the training of dozens of other crews.

Zhiltsov served without remarks, as well as his subordinates, and the equipment entrusted to him. Although he did not have access to independent control, the commander trusted him with the boat even with such complex maneuvers as re-mooring. Both the chief of staff of the Black Sea Fleet and the brigade commander went to sea when Zhiltsov was in command. Last but not least, the young officer was marked by an inspection from Moscow for exemplary conduct of political studies. Then it was believed that the better you are politically savvy, the more capable you are of leading people. That's how Lev Zhiltsov was chosen from a multitude of young officers.

The next day began with a joyful event: Boris Akulov, appointed to the same crew, appeared on Bolshoi Kozlovsky. We have known each other since 1951, when a division of new submarines came to Balaklava. Akulov then served as the commander of the BCH-5 (power plant on submarines). He was a little older than me - in 1954 he turned thirty. Boris Akulov graduated from the Naval Engineering School. Dzerzhinsky in Leningrad. On the first day, he went through the same procedure of introducing secrecy, only now with my participation. We have been allocated workplace(one for two), and we started to form the crew.

Ironically the department to which we were subordinated was engaged in testing nuclear weapons for the Navy. Naturally, there were not only submariners, but also ship engineers in general. Therefore, with all the desire of the management officers to help us, they were of little use.

We could only rely on our own experience service on a post-war generation submarine. The strictly classified bulletins of the foreign press also helped us. There was practically no one to consult with: in the entire Navy, only a few admirals and officers of the so-called expert group, who looked down on us green lieutenant commanders, were allowed to see our documentation.

In parallel with the work on the staffing Akulov and I studied personal files and called in people whose need was already obvious. Every week, or even more often, we received detailed "exit cases" from the fleets, including official and political characteristics, cards of penalties and incentives. Naturally, nowhere was there a word or a hint about a nuclear submarine. Only by a set of military registration specialties, naval personnel officers could guess about the formation of a crew for an extraordinary ship.

For each vacancy, three candidates were presented who met the strictest requirements for vocational training, political and moral qualities and discipline. We studied their cases in the most captious way, because we knew that we would be controlled by “another authority” and, if it rejected the candidacy, we would have to start all over again. Weeded out according to the most ridiculous, as I understood it then, signs: someone ended up in the occupied territory as a child, someone’s wife’s father was in captivity, and someone, although “Russian” was in the “nationality” column, the mother's patronymic is clearly Jewish.

If most of our future colleagues languished in idleness, Akulov and I did not notice how day after day flew by. In addition to the routine work associated with the arrival of people, interviews, accommodation, we had to solve issues that depended on the operation of the future boat. I will give one example. The staffing table provided for two power plants (main power plant) only three managers with a minimum salary in the fleet of 1,100 rubles per month.

It took several months to prove that only six engineers can provide a full-fledged three-shift shift at the power plant. And how right the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR V. A. Malyshev was, who later proposed to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy S. G. Gorshkov to create a fully officer crew - a forge of qualified personnel for the development of the nuclear fleet. Unfortunately, this turned out to be impossible, including for objective reasons: someone had to do heavy physical and auxiliary work.

By early October 1954 All the officers were in Moscow, and there was a need to plan specifically who and where to train. It was decided to send officers of the navigational, radio engineering and mine-torpedo specialties to the relevant institutes and design bureaus that created equipment for the boat, and then to Northern Fleet, to Polyarny, for an internship on diesel submarines.

Another, larger group, which included commanders, officers of the electromechanical combat unit and heads of the medical service, was supposed to undergo a course of study and practical training in managing a nuclear power plant. By that time, such training could only be carried out at the world's first nuclear power plant (NPP), launched in the summer of 1954 in the village of Obninskoye, 105 km from Moscow. Then the location of the nuclear power plant was considered a state secret, and the village - later the city of Obninsk - was partially closed to entry, and only those working with special passes were allowed into certain zones.

Department of the Navy agreed on our trip to Obninskoye to agree on specific plans and dates for October 2, 1954. The dress code is civilian. The head of the facility, which was called "Laboratory" B "of the Ministry of Internal Affairs", and later became the Institute for Nuclear Research, was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR Dmitry Ivanovich Blokhintsev. He introduced us to the affairs and life in Obninsk, listened attentively to our story about the tasks and desirable terms of officer training. We agreed on the time of classes and internships, and then went to see the nuclear power plant.

Its director Nikolai Andreevich Nikolaev was skeptical about our plans to master the control of a nuclear reactor in two or three months. In his opinion, this should take at least a year. And while he was explaining to us, using demonstration diagrams, the principle of operation nuclear reactor, walked through all the premises of the station and showed the work of the operators on the console, his words acquired more and more weight. But we continued to bend our own and discussed with him the principle of distributing officers by shifts during the internship period, the deadlines for passing exams for admission to independent management, etc. Nikolai Andreevich no longer objected, and in the end he remarked, as if in jest: - Well, then , our people have not been on vacation for several years. So all hope is on your engineers.

Looking ahead, I'll say: he ironically in vain. Our internship began at the end of January 1955, and already in March the first officers passed the exam for admission to the reactor control. In April, they sat down at his console on their own, and the station operators went on vacation. In fairness, I note that the workers of the nuclear power plant and Nikolaev himself did everything in their power to help us.

But for now, our task was to change all the officers into civilian clothes., since the appearance in Obninsk of a group of naval sailors would immediately betray the intention of the Soviet Union to create a ship with a nuclear power plant. Since the choice of clothes in the warehouses of the Navy was not so hot, and the officers tried, in spite of everything, to follow the requirements of the then modest fashion, we were dressed in the same hats, coats, suits, ties, not to mention the sparkling navy boots. When leaving for Obninskoye in November 1954, on the station platform, our group resembled Chinese students studying in Moscow. This was immediately noticed by the workers of the regime of Laboratory "B", and even at the pass office we were asked to immediately "protect ourselves" and, above all, not to walk in a crowd.

First acquaintance with the nuclear ship. In parallel with the formation of the crew, the creation of the boat itself was in full swing. The time was approaching for the convening of the mock-up commission and the defense of the technical project. And then the chief designer - Vladimir Nikolaevich Peregudov - got the news about the internship of future officers in Obninsk and the already appointed first mate and chief mechanic. The chief designer asked to urgently send both officers to him in Leningrad for ten days.

Even if we were not assigned to the first nuclear-powered ship, interest in us was already explained by the fact that we served on boats of the latest generation. Our 613th project, unlike the ships of the war years, was equipped with location, hydraulics, and many other technical innovations. It is no coincidence that so many boats were built according to this project, which were actively sold abroad - to Poland, to Indonesia. And we, in addition to sailing on this boat, also had experience in testing and training crews.

Top secret design bureau located on one of the most famous squares of Leningrad on the Petrograd side. We were escorted to him by an employee who met at the agreed place with pre-prepared passes. Opposite the cozy square between the two shops was an inconspicuous door without identification marks. Opening it, we found ourselves in front of a turnstile, which was guarded by two guards, who looked more like orderlies, with the only difference being that their white coats were bristling on the right side. And having passed the turnstile, we suddenly found ourselves in the realm of the most advanced technologies for those times, where the first-born of the country's nuclear fleet was born.

The main difficulty was to create a boat that would surpass the American nuclear-powered ships in all respects. Already in those years, there was an attitude that became widely known during the Khrushchev era: “Catch up and overtake America!” Our boat was supposed to give a hundred points ahead of the American, which by that time was already sailing - and sailing well. They have one reactor, we will make two with the expectation of the highest parameters. In the steam generator, the nominal water pressure will be 200 atm., the temperature will be more than 300 °C.

Responsible leaders did not give much thought to the that under such conditions, at the slightest cavern in the metal, the slightest fistula or corrosion, a micro-leak should immediately form. (Subsequently, in the instructions, all these parameters were reduced as unjustified.) This means that tons of lead will have to be driven under water to reliable protection from radiation. At the same time, the advantages of such harsh operating conditions seemed very doubtful.

Yes, high operating parameters of the reactor allowed to develop under water speed not about 20 knots, like the Americans, but at least 25, that is, about 48 km / h. However, at this speed, the acoustics stopped working, and the boat rushed forward blindly. In the surface state, it is generally not worth accelerating more than 16 knots, since the nuclear-powered ship can dive, burrow under water with an open hatch. Since surface ships try not to travel faster than 20 knots, there was no point in increasing the power of the reactor.

In our first conversation Vladimir Nikolayevich, of course, did not express all his doubts. Only later did I have to think about it myself and understand the uselessness of this race for superiority. By the way, when testing our boat, we developed a design speed of 25 knots somewhere using 70–75% of the reactor power; at full power, we would reach speeds of the order of 30 knots.

On all technical issues, there was, of course, little help from us for the design bureau. However, Peregudov wanted to create submariners optimal conditions for maintenance of equipment and life on board on long trips. It was assumed that the boat should be able to not float to the surface for months, so living conditions came to the fore. The purpose of our trip was stated as follows:

- Climb all the compartments on the layouts, all residential and household premises and consider how to improve them. See how compartments in railway cars, cabins on passenger ships, aircraft cabins are equipped, down to the smallest detail - where are the flashlights, ashtrays. (Although there was no smoking on our boat.) Take everything that is most convenient, we will transfer it to the nuclear-powered ship.

In a conversation with the chief designer, we first heard the anxieties and fears associated with the fact that the boat was created in an emergency order. Responsible for the order was the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, many of whose employees did not see the sea at all. The design bureau was formed from employees of various bureaus, among whom there were many inexperienced young people, and the novelty of the tasks being solved was beyond the capacity of even many veterans of the design bureau. Finally - and it seems incredible! - in the Peregudov Design Bureau there was not a single observation officer who sailed on submarines of post-war projects or participated in their construction.

Layouts were located at five different places cities. They were built in life size mainly from plywood and wooden blocks. Pipelines and power cable routes were marked with hemp ropes with appropriate markings. At one of the factories, three end compartments were mocked up at once, and both bow compartments were hidden in the basement in the very center of Leningrad, not far from the Astoria Hotel.

Not every submariner I had to see my boat in the bud. As a rule, formation commanders, their deputies, occasionally flagship specialists, that is, people who will have to sail on these boats from case to case, participate in the work of the mock-up commission from the seafarers. And to be able to manage and equip the premises as conveniently as possible is the dream of every submariner.

For a week Boris and I climbed all the accessible and hard-to-reach corners of the future nuclear-powered ship, since our slender figures allowed this. Sometimes we sawed off one “device” in the form of a wooden block right on the layout with a hacksaw and transferred it to a more convenient place. It was clear that they placed the equipment without really delving into its purpose and requirements related to operation. Everything bore the imprint of the hellish haste in which the nuclear-powered ship was created. Now any ship is being created for a good ten years - it manages to become obsolete before they start building it. And Stalin gave two years for everything. And although he was no longer alive then, like Beria, their spirit still hovered over the country, especially at the top. Malyshev was a Stalinist sourdough: they asked him without discounts, so he asked accordingly.

Despite the cruelty of this system and the mistakes it generated, which we encountered so many times in the process of creating a nuclear-powered ship, it had two undoubted advantages: the leader was really endowed with great rights, and there was always a specific person from whom one could ask.

Our proposed changes concerned not only household amenities. For example, in a number of compartments, purely for layout reasons, many specialists turned out to be sitting with their backs along the boat. Even in the central post, the control panel looked to the stern, therefore, the commander of the ship and the navigator also looked there. For them, the left side automatically turned out to be right hand, and vice versa. That is, they will have to constantly engage in the transformation of the left into the right, as soon as they sit down at their workplace, and do the reverse operation, as soon as they get up. It is clear that such an arrangement could become a source of constant confusion, and in an emergency, lead to disaster. Of course, first of all, Akulov and I tried to correct such nonsense.

Cabins have also undergone significant alteration., as well as an officer's wardroom. It was already clear to us then that, in addition to the main crew, nuclear specialists, engineers involved in testing new devices, and command representatives on missions of special importance, would constantly be on the experimental and lead boats. And there were only eight places in the wardroom. We converted one cabin, thus adding four more beds and replacing the otherwise unavoidable three-shift meals with two-shift meals. But even this was not enough. During the tests, we had so many engineers, specialists and command representatives with us that we ate in five shifts.

It also happened that the alterations we required ran into resistance from the designers of the compartment. For example, it was not easy for us to convince them that the three powerful cold rooms in the galley will not replace the refrigerator in the wardroom. It is quite hot on board, and the snack is prepared immediately for everyone, which means that the second shift will have to take butter with a spoon.

Besides, in order to smooth out the monotony in nutrition, and most importantly in drinks, the officers chip off and form a "black box office". In swimming, one hundred grams of dry wine per day per person is required. For a strong man - a little, especially since alcohol is considered a good remedy against radiation. Therefore, the wardroom allocates a responsible person who buys Aligot for this norm, and on Sunday at least a bottle of vodka for four. Where to put all this? Of course, in the refrigerator.

Of course, we kept silent about the "black box office"(although it was not a secret for the people who were sailing), and our question was formulated before the designers as follows: “What if there is a holiday or guests on the boat? Where to put champagne or Stolichnaya? In my opinion, it was the last argument that worked, although the designers did not want to change anything - the compartment was already closed. “Okay,” we were told, “try to find a refrigerator that can fit through a removable sheet to load the battery.”

After work, Akulov and I went to an electrical store, since refrigerators were not in short supply at that time, we measured everything and found that Saratov would have entered if the door had been removed from it. Responsible for the compartment had no choice but to agree, and "Saratov" was solemnly installed in the layout of the wardroom without dismantling the bulkhead.

Looking ahead, I'll say that on the layout commission we had to endure one more battle for the refrigerator. The old submariners who were part of it, who sailed during the war on “babies” deprived of the most basic amenities, did not want to come to terms with the idea that for someone a many-month voyage could be combined with a minimum of comfort. For them, our requests to provide an electric meat grinder or a press for flattening cans were an unnecessary "nobility" that only discouraged the sailors. The victory remained with us, but when the chairman of the commission, who read out the act, reached the place where it was said about the refrigerator, he broke away from the text and added from himself to the grins and laughter of those present: “So that Stolichnaya is always cold.”

Why, you ask to talk about such a trifle? The fact is that after a few years in the most difficult campaigns, many times we had to celebrate with joy how necessary our perseverance was, and to regret the things that we were not able to defend. Moreover, we fought not only for our own boat, but for dozens of others that should be built in this series. But the main result of our work turned out to be different. During this trip, the whole concept of the first nuclear-powered submarine was called into question, which, in our opinion, was the purest adventure.

Kamikaze boat. The plan for the combat use of the boat, laid down by the designers, was as follows. The submarine is secretly withdrawn in tugs from the base point (hence, it does not need an anchor). She is exported to the dive point, from where she continues to swim underwater, already on her own.

While rockets as carriers of atomic weapons did not yet exist, and only traditional means of delivery were conceived: aerial bombs and torpedoes. So, it was planned to equip our boat with a huge torpedo 28 m long and one and a half meters in diameter. On the model, which we first saw in the basement of one of the residential buildings near Nevsky Prospekt, this torpedo occupied the entire first and second compartments and rested against the bulkhead of the third. Another compartment was assigned to the equipment that controls its launch and movement. There were no electronic devices then, and it all consisted of motors, rods, wires - the design is cumbersome and, by our current standards, extremely antediluvian.

So, a boat equipped with a giant torpedo with a hydrogen head, was supposed to secretly go to the starting area and, upon receiving the order to fire, entering the program of movement along the approach fairways and the moment of detonation into the torpedo control devices. Large naval bases of the enemy were seen as targets - this was the height of the Cold War.

Just in case, two more torpedoes with smaller nuclear charges remained on board the boat in two torpedo tubes. But no spare torpedoes on the racks, no torpedoes for self-defense, no countermeasures! Our boat was clearly not intended as an object of persecution and destruction, as if it were floating alone in the endless oceans of the World.

After completing the task, the boat was supposed to go to the area where the meeting with the escort was scheduled, from where it was supposed to be towed with honor to the native pier. It was not planned that the nuclear-powered ship would surface during the entire autonomous voyage (I even stocked up on board zinc coffin), nor an anchorage. But the most important thing was not even the absence of an anchor and means of protecting the boat itself. Akulov and I, as submariners, it immediately became obvious what would happen to the boat when a torpedo of this size was fired. Only the mass of water filling the annular gap in the apparatus (whose diameter is 1.7 m) will be several tons.

At the time of launch, all this water mass should be fired along with the torpedo, after which an even larger mass, given the vacant place of the torpedo, had to re-flow into the hull of the boat. In other words, when fired, an emergency trim will inevitably be created. First, the boat will stand on the butt. To level it, divers will have to blow through the bow tanks of the main ballast. An air bubble will be released to the surface, allowing you to immediately detect the boat. And with the slightest mistake or hitch of the crew, she could surface off the coast of the enemy, which meant her inevitable destruction.

But, as already mentioned, the submarine project was financed and created by the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, and neither the Main Headquarters of the Navy, nor research institutes made calculations for the use of its weapons. Although meetings of the layout commission were to take place before the approval of the technical design, the torpedo bays were already built in metal. And the giant torpedo itself was tested on one of the most beautiful lakes in our vast country

after with boat concept the first specialists-operators got acquainted, tasks were given to study how realistic the proposed project is. The calculations of the section of shipbuilders fully confirmed our fears with Akulov regarding the behavior of the boat after the shot. Moreover, the operators of the General Staff of the Navy established how many bases and ports were not only in the United States, but throughout the world, which, in the event of the outbreak of hostilities, could be destroyed with sufficient accuracy by a giant torpedo.

It turned out that there are two such bases! In addition, they had no strategic significance in the future conflict. Thus, it was necessary to immediately develop another version of the armament of the boat. The project of using a giant torpedo was buried, the life-sized equipment was thrown away, and the reconstruction of the bow of the boat, already made in metal, took a whole year. In the final version, the boat was equipped with normal-sized torpedoes with both nuclear and conventional warheads.

As for the anchor, then its necessity was recognized, and it was installed on all subsequent boats. However, it turned out to be so technically difficult to equip an already developed nuclear-powered ship with it that our boat received it only after the first repair. So we sailed for the first time without an anchor. When we had to surface, the boat turned to the wave with a lag, and all the time while we were on the surface, we were rocking sideways. At anchor, the boat would turn with its bow into the wind, and we would not rock.

It was worse when near the shore the boat began to be carried by the wind onto the stones - the anchor in this case is simply irreplaceable. Finally, at the base, when we didn’t get close to the pier, we had to moor behind a barrel - a huge floating cylinder with a butt, to which a mooring cable is hooked. One of the sailors had to jump on it, and in winter it gets icy. The poor fellow had to cling to it almost with his teeth until the cable was secured.

Leaving Leningrad, Akulov and I set work for everyone, including ourselves. It became clear to us that the combat organization of the service and the staff of the submarine should proceed from the basic mode of work of the crew: underwater position and long-term three-shift watch. Consequently, we had to immediately redo the Table of command posts and combat posts, as well as the staffing table.

Model Commission, which simultaneously considered technical project, began work after the October holidays, on November 17, 1954. Representatives of all interested organizations of the Navy and industry gathered in Leningrad. The commission was headed by Rear Admiral A. Orel, Deputy Head of the Diving Directorate. The heads of the sections were experienced employees of departments and institutes of the Navy - V. Teplov, I. Dorofeev, A. Zharov.

At the head of our command section was Captain 1st Rank N. Belorukov, who himself commanded a submarine during the war. And yet there were certain things he resolutely refused to understand. - Here's another, give them potato peelers, refrigerators, smoking rooms! How did we swim during the war without all this and not die? At the section, he was often supported by front-line soldiers like him. There were heated skirmishes, from which we did not always emerge victorious. Sometimes, seeing how several seniors piled on me at once, Akulov disappeared, and I knew: he went to Orel for support.

The commission worked for two weeks. In addition to our comments, which she basically confirmed, more than a thousand suggestions were made to improve the design of the boat. For example, despite the rather good technical parameters of the turbines, they did not meet the requirements for stealth navigation. The misconception about the purpose of the boat was finally dispelled: to shoot a giant torpedo, swim only under water and enter the base only in tow.

Model Commission gave an opinion on the need to make changes to the draft design. In its current form, the technical project could not be adopted - it was expressed special opinion Navy, Minsudprom, Minsredmash and other organizations. Their objections were reported at the very top, in any case not lower than the level of Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers V. A. Malyshev.

Not only the boat was created by organizations that were not previously connected by industrial relations or had never been engaged in the implementation of such projects at all. For a long time they did not know who to subordinate her future crew to.

As already mentioned, at first we belonged to the Navy Personnel Administration. When we returned from the mock-up commission to Moscow, we learned that our military units were transferred to the control of the Shipbuilding Administration. Now engineer-rear admiral M. A. Rudnitsky commanded us. Time will pass until we are reassigned to our intended purpose - the Submarine Division in Leningrad. But we were already interested in the Diving Directorate, which was then commanded by Rear Admiral Boltunov. After working in the layout commission, A. Orel reported to him about us.

Contract set attempt. V. Zertsalov and I (senior assistant of the second crew) were summoned to the Main Headquarters of the Navy. We arrived from Obninsk in civilian clothes, and at the checkpoint we were detained as suspicious by the commandant. I had to make a note in the identity card: "It is allowed to wear civilian clothes while on duty." (For many years, this record helped our officers in the most incredible circumstances. In those years, it was enough, for example, to show this note with a mysterious air to the administrator of a hotel in which there were no free rooms, for you to be immediately accommodated.)

Boltunov listened attentively to all our considerations regarding the training of personnel. We had the greatest doubts about the possibility of operating nuclear submarines by conscripts. A sailor, an eighteen-year-old boy who has barely finished school, needs at least two or three years to master a truly new specialty. They served in the Navy for four years, which means that in a year this sailor will leave and give way to a newcomer.

We considered that jobs should have been recruited overtime or signed contracts with the most promising sailors of the first or second year of military service. These people would have connected, if not all their lives, then at least for many years with a new profession. Then there would be professional competence, a desire to improve skills, actions brought to automatism in an emergency situation.

Boltunov instructed me and Zertsalov develop as soon as possible a special provision on the contractual employment of conscripts for nuclear submarines. We dealt with this quickly, but the provision was introduced ... a few years later and lasted for ten years. The highest army, including the navy, apparatus with all its might resisted the introduction of the contract system at the most critical military facilities. The result of this perseverance was, in particular, the high accident rate on nuclear submarines. Only in May 1991 was it allowed, as an experiment, to recruit sailors under a contract for a period of 2.5 years who had served at least six months in the Navy.

Our preparation schedule moved in the direction of advance: instead of two months, a little more than a month was enough for the theory. Already in the January holidays of 1955, we were transferred to an internship directly at the reactor, having signed three or four people for each of the four shifts of the NPP personnel.

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