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. In practice, this meant that speed was prioritized over safety in the construction of vessels, which were then rushed through
sea trials so they could be put into service.
K-19 suffered from poor workmanship and was accident-prone from the beginning. Her
keel was
laid on 17 October 1958 at the naval yard in
Severodvinsk. Several workers died building the submarine: two workers were killed when a fire broke out, and later six women gluing rubber lining to a water cistern were fatally poisoned by inhaling fumes. Breaking with tradition, a man (Captain 3rd Rank V. V. Panov of the 5th Urgent Unit) instead of a woman was chosen to smash the ceremonial champagne bottle across the ship's stern. The bottle failed to break, instead sliding along the screws (propellers) and bouncing off the rubber-coated hull. This is traditionally viewed among sea crews as a sign that the ship is unlucky. Captain 1st Rank
Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev was the first commander of the submarine. Instead of continuing on the mission's planned route, the captain decided to head south to meet
diesel-powered submarines expected to be there. Worries about a potential crew
mutiny prompted Zateyev to have all small arms thrown overboard except for five pistols distributed to his most trusted officers. A diesel submarine, , picked up
K-19s low-power distress transmissions and joined up with it. American warships nearby had also heard the transmission and offered to help, but Zateyev, afraid of giving away Soviet military secrets to the West, refused and sailed to meet
S-270. He evacuated the crew and had the boat towed to its home base. Over the next two years, repair crews removed and replaced the damaged reactors. The repair process contaminated the nearby environment, in a zone within , and the repair crew. The Soviet Navy dumped the original radioactive compartment into the
Kara Sea.
K-19 returned to the fleet with the nickname "
Hiroshima". Others disputed this conclusion. Retired Rear-Admiral Nikolai Mormul asserted that when the reactor was first started ashore, the construction crew had not attached a pressure gauge to the primary cooling circuit. Before anyone realized there was a problem, the cooling pipes were subjected to a pressure of 400 atmospheres, double the acceptable limit. On 1 February 2006, former
President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev proposed in a letter to the
Norwegian Nobel Committee that the crew of '''' be nominated for a
Nobel Peace Prize for their actions on 4 July 1961.
Deceased crew members Several crew members received fatal doses of radiation during repairs on the reserve coolant system of Reactor #8. Eight died between one and three weeks after the accident from severe
radiation sickness. A person who receives a dose of 4 to 5
Sv (about 400–500
rem) over a short period has a 50% chance of dying within 30 days. Fourteen other crew members died within two years. Many other crew members also received radiation doses exceeding permissible levels.
Crew members decorated On 6 August 1961, 26 members of the crew were decorated for courage and valor shown during the accident.
Later operational history On 14 December 1961, the boat was fully upgraded to the
Hotel II (
658м) variant, which included upgrading to
R-21 missiles, which had twice the effective range of the earlier missiles.
Collision At 07:13 on 15 November 1969,
K-19 collided with the attack submarine in the
Barents Sea at a depth of . She was able to surface using an emergency
main ballast tank blow. The impact completely destroyed the bow
sonar systems and mangled the covers of the forward torpedo tubes.
K-19 was able to return to port where the boat was repaired and returned to the fleet.
Gato was relatively undamaged and continued her patrol.
Fires On 24 February 1972, a fire broke out while the submarine was at a depth of , some from
Newfoundland, Canada. The boat surfaced and the crew was evacuated to surface warships except for 12 men trapped in the aft torpedo room. Towing was delayed by a
gale, and rescuers could not reach the aft torpedo room because of conditions in the engine room. The fire killed 28 sailors aboard
K-19 and two others who died after they were transferred to rescue ships. Investigators determined that the fire was caused by a
hydraulic fluid leak onto a hot filter. The rescue operation lasted more than 40 days and involved over 30 ships. From 15 June through 5 November 1972,
K-19 was repaired and put back into service. On 15 November 1972, another fire broke out in compartment 6, but it was put out by the chemical fire-extinguisher system and there were no casualties.
Reclassification On 25 July 1977,
K-19 was reclassified in the large submarine class, and on 26 July 1979, she was reclassified as a communications submarine and given the symbol KS-19 (КС-19). On 15 August 1982, an electrical short circuit resulted in severe burns to two sailors; one, V. A. Kravchuk, died five days later. On 28 November 1985, the ship was upgraded to the 658s (658с) variant.
Decommissioning and fate On 19 April 1990 the submarine was
decommissioned, and was transferred in 1994 to the naval repair yard at
Polyarny. In March 2002, she was towed to the
Nerpa Shipyard,
Snezhnogorsk,
Murmansk, to be
scrapped. In 2006, a section of
K-19 was purchased by
Vladimir Romanov, who once served on the submarine as a conscript, with the intention of "Turning it into a Moscow-based meeting place to build links between submarine veterans from Russia and other countries." In 2023,
The Athletic reported that Romanov had refurbished the submarine to serve as his place of residence in
Nikul'skaya, described as a village in northwestern Russia. == Theatre and film ==