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 was supposed to test a boat of a fundamentally new design that had not yet been built with a crew that had not yet been selected and trained 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 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 to allocate for the formation of the crew trained, competent, disciplined, without penalties, etc., the search for 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 leading 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 were allocated a workplace (one for two), and we began 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 professional 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 navigational, radio engineering and mine-torpedo officers to the relevant institutes and design bureaus that created equipment for the boat, and then to the Northern Fleet, to the Polyarny, for training 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 explained to us the principle of operation of a nuclear reactor using demonstration diagrams, walked us through all the premises of the station and showed the work of 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 - heard 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, at which two guards were on duty, looking 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 for reliable protection against 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 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 optimal conditions for submariners to maintain equipment and live 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 lanterns, 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 locations in the city. They were built life-size mainly from plywood and wooden logs. 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 on the 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 meal with a two-shift meal. 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 three powerful refrigerators in the galley would 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 either the ascent of the nuclear-powered ship during the entire autonomous voyage (there was even a zinc coffin on board), 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 the 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 - the Navy, Minsudprom, Minsredmash and other organizations expressed a dissenting opinion on it. 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.

The first nuclear submarines of the Soviet Union and the USA

Shortly after the Christmas holidays of 1959, Admiral Ralph posted the following announcement at the entrance to his office: "I Commander of the US Atlantic Fleet promise a case of Jack Daniels whiskey to the first submarine commander who provided evidence that an enemy submarine was exhausted by pursuit and was forced to surface ". It wasn't a joke. The admiral, as if on a hippodrome, bet on the miracle of American military thought - a nuclear submarine. The modern submarine produced its own oxygen and was able to stay under water for the entire trip. Soviet submariners could only dream of such a ship. During a long voyage, their crews suffocated, submarines were forced to surface, becoming easy prey for the enemy.

The winner was the crew of the USS Grenadier submarine tail number SS-525, which chased the Soviet submarine for about 9 hours, and forced it to surface off the coast of Iceland. The commander of the US submarine, Lieutenant Commander Davis, received the promised case of whiskey from the hands of the admiral. They had no idea that very soon the Soviet Union would present them with a gift.

In 1945, the United States openly demonstrated to the world the destructive power of its new weapons, and now it must have a reliable means of delivering them. By air, as it was with Japan, it is fraught with great risk, which means that the only reasonable way to deliver a nuclear cargo should be a submarine, but one that can covertly never surface, deliver a decisive blow for this, a nuclear submarine was ideal. The creation of such a submarine was the most difficult task at that time, even for the United States. Less than a year later, at the shipyard in New London, Connecticut, the first nuclear-powered ship "USS Nautilus" tail number "SSN-571" was laid down. The project was implemented in an atmosphere of such utmost secrecy that intelligence information about it came to Stalin's desk only two years later. The Soviet Union again found itself in the role of catching up. In 1949, the first Soviet atomic bomb was tested, and in September 1952, Stalin signed a decree on the creation of nuclear submarines in the USSR.

Domestic designers, as happened more than once, were forced to go their own way, so there were difficult circumstances for the Soviet Union as a whole and for Soviet military science in particular. In the USSR, the work of defense significance has always been headed by people unknown to the general public, who were not written about in the newspapers. The creation of the submarine project was entrusted to the designer V.N. Peregudov. The technical design of the first nuclear submarine was approved.

Technical characteristics of the nuclear submarine of project 627 "K-3", code "Kit":

Length - 107.4 m;

Width - 7.9 m; Draft - 5.6 m; Displacement - 3050 tons; Power plant - nuclear, power 35,000 hp; Surface speed - 15 knots; Underwater speed - 30 knots; Immersion depth - 300 m; Autonomy of navigation - 60 days; Crew - 104 people; Armament: Torpedo tubes 533 mm: bow - 8, stern - 2.

The idea for the combat use of a submarine was as follows: a boat armed with a giant torpedo is towed from the base point to the dive point, from where it continues to swim under water to a given area. Upon receiving the order, the nuclear submarine fires a torpedo, attacking the enemy's naval bases. During the entire autonomous voyage, the nuclear-powered ship is not planned to surface; means of protection and countermeasures are not provided. After completing the task, she becomes practically defenseless. An interesting fact is that the first nuclear submarine was designed and built without the participation of the military. The only torpedo with a thermonuclear charge of the submarine had a caliber of 1550 mm and a length of 23 m. It immediately became clear to the submariners what would happen to the submarine when this super-torpedo was launched. At the time of launch, the entire water mass will be fired along with the torpedo, after which an even larger mass of water will fall inside the hull and will inevitably create an emergency trim. To level it, the crew will have to blow through the main ballast systems and an air bubble will be released to the surface, allowing you to immediately detect a nuclear submarine, which means its immediate destruction. In addition, specialists from the main headquarters of the Navy found that not only in the United States, but throughout the world, there are only two military bases that can be destroyed by such a torpedo. In addition, they had no strategic value.

The giant torpedo project was buried. Life-size models of equipment were destroyed. Changing the design of the nuclear submarine took a whole year. Workshop No. 3 became a closed production. His workers were not allowed to tell even their relatives where they worked.

In the early 50s, hundreds of kilometers from Moscow, the GULAG forces built the first nuclear power plant, the purpose of which was not to produce electrical energy for the national economy - it was a prototype of a nuclear installation for a nuclear submarine. The same prisoners built a training center with two stands in a pine forest. Within six months, all the fleets of the Soviet Union recruited the crew of the future nuclear submarine, sailors and officers. Not only health and military training were taken into account, but also a pristine biography. The recruiters had no right to pronounce the word atom. But somehow a rumor spread in a whisper where and what they were invited to. Getting to Obninsk became a dream. Everyone was dressed in civilian clothes, military subordination was canceled - everyone addressed each other only by their first names and patronymics. The rest is strict military order. The personnel was painted as on a ship. The cadet could answer anything to questions from strangers, except that he was a submariner. The word reactor was always forbidden to pronounce. Even at lectures, teachers called him a crystallizer or apparatus. The cadets practiced a lot of actions to leak the release of radioactive gas and aerosols. The most significant problems were fixed by the prisoners, but the cadets also got it. Nobody really knew what radiation was. In addition to alpha, beta and gamma radiation, there were harmful gases in the air, even household dust was activated, no one thought about it. The traditional 150 grams of alcohol were considered the main medicine. The sailors were convinced that they were filming the radiation picked up during the day. Everyone wanted to go sailing and was afraid of being written off even before the submarine was launched.

The inconsistency of departments has always interfered with any project in the USSR. So the crew of the first nuclear submarine and the entire submarine fleet as a whole are hit twice. The Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Zhukov, who, with all due respect to his land services in the fleet, understood little, issued an order halving the salaries of over-conscripts. Practically trained specialists began to file reports for dismissal. Of the six recruited crew of the first nuclear submarine, only one remained who loves his job more than welfare. With the next blow, Marshal Zhukov canceled the second crew of the nuclear submarine. With the advent of the submarine fleet, order was established - two crews. After a months-long campaign, the first went on vacation, and the second took up combat duty. The tasks of submarine commanders have become much more complicated. They had to come up with something to find time for the crew to rest without canceling combat duty.

The first nuclear-powered ship was built by the whole country, although most of the participants in this unprecedented business were unaware of their involvement in a unique project. In Moscow, they developed a new steel that allowed the boat to dive to a depth unthinkable for that time - 300 m; the reactors were made in Gorky, the steam turbine plants were produced by the Leningrad Kirov Plant; the K-3 architecture was worked out at TsAGI. In Obninsk, the crew trained on a special stand. A total of 350 enterprises and organizations "brick by brick" built a miracle ship. Captain 1st rank Leonid Osipenko became its first commander. If not for the secrecy regime, his name would have thundered throughout the Soviet Union. After all, Osipenko tested the first truly first "hydrospace ship", which could go into the ocean for three whole months with only one ascent - at the end of the campaign.

And at the Severodvinsk Machine-Building Plant, the finished nuclear submarine K-3, laid down on September 24, 1954, was already waiting for its first crew. The interiors looked like works of art. Each room was painted in its own color, the colors of bright shades are pleasing to the eye. One of the bulkheads is made in the form of a huge mirror, and the other is a picture of a summer meadow with birch trees. The furniture was made on special order from precious woods and, in addition to its direct purpose, could turn into an object of assistance in emergency situations. So a large table in the wardroom, in case of need, was transformed into an operating room.

The design of the Soviet submarine was very different from the American submarine. On the USS Nautilus, the usual principles of diesel submarines were repeated, only a nuclear installation was added, and the Soviet submarine K-3 had a completely different architecture.

On July 1, 1958, it was time to launch. Canvas was stretched over the conning tower to hide the forms. As you know, sailors are superstitious people, and if a bottle of champagne does not break on the side of the ship, this will be remembered at critical moments during the voyage. There was a panic among the members of the selection committee. The entire cigar-shaped body of the new ship was covered with a layer of rubber. The only hard place on which the bottle can break is a small fence of horizontal rudders. Nobody wanted to take risks and take responsibility. Then someone remembered that women break champagne well. A young employee of the Design Bureau "Malachite" confidently swung, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Thus was born the firstborn of the Soviet nuclear submarine fleet.

In the evening, when the nuclear submarine entered the open sea, a strong wind arose, which in gusts blew all the carefully installed camouflage from the skin, and the submarine appeared before the eyes of the people who found themselves on the shore in its original form.

On July 3, 1958, the boat, which received the tactical number K-3, entered sea trials, which took place in the White Sea. On July 4, 1958, at 10:30, for the first time in the history of the Russian fleet, atomic energy was used to propel the ship.

The tests ended on December 1, 1958. During them, the capacity of the power plant was limited to 60% of the nominal. At the same time, a speed of 23.3 knots was achieved, which exceeded the calculated value by 3 knots. For the successful development of new technology, for the first time after the end of the Great Patriotic War, the commander of K-3 L.G. Osipenko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. At present, his name has been given to the training center for the training of nuclear submarine crews in Obninsk.

In January 1959, K-3 was handed over to the Navy for trial operation, which ended in 1962, after which the nuclear submarine became a "full-fledged" warship of the Northern Fleet.

During sea trials, the nuclear submarine was often visited by Academician Aleksandrov Anatoly Petrovich, who considered the creation of the "K-3" the main brainchild of his life (the boat was so dear to him that he bequeathed that his coffin be covered with the first Naval flag "K-3") , Navy Commander Admiral of the Fleet S.G. Gorshkov. On December 17, 1965, the guest of the submariners was the first cosmonaut of the Earth, Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel Yu.A. Gagarin. The first nuclear-powered submarine almost immediately began to develop the Arctic region. In 1959, K-3 under the command of Captain 1st Rank L.G. Osipenko passed 260 miles under the Arctic ice. On July 17, 1962, this nuclear submarine completed the transition to the North Pole, but to surface.

An interesting fact is that when the Americans opened the archives of the Cold War era, it was discovered that a very short time after the launch of the first K-3 nuclear submarine, Captain 1st Rank of the US Navy Berins spent his submarine at the mouth of the channel leading to the port of Murmansk. He approached the Soviet port so close that he was able to observe sea trials of a Soviet, but diesel-powered ballistic missile submarine. At that time, the Americans did not learn about the Soviet nuclear submarine.

The nuclear submarine "K-3" turned out to be excellent in all respects. In comparison with the American submarine, she looked more impressive. After passing all the required tests, the nuclear submarine "K-3" of project 627 was given the name "Leninsky Komsomol" and on July 4, 1958, it became part of the USSR Navy. Already in the summer of 1962, the crew of Leninsky Komsomol repeated the feat of the Americans, who in 1958 on the first US nuclear submarine USS Nautilus made a trip to the North Pole, and then repeatedly repeated it on other nuclear submarines.

In June 1967, the submarine tested the ascent in ice and ice breaking from 10 to 80 cm. There were minor damage to the cabin hull and antennas. Subsequently, from July 11 to July 21, 1962, the boat completed a special Task - an Arctic trip with the crossing of the North Pole at 00 hours 59 minutes 10 seconds Moscow time on July 17, 1962. During the historical campaign, the submarine surfaced three times in polynyas and ruins.

During its glorious combat path, the submarine "Leninsky Komsomol" performed 7 combat services, took part in the exercises of the Warsaw Pact countries "North", participated in the exercises "Okean-85", "Atlantika-85", "North-85", six once declared by order of the KSF "Excellent Submarine". 228 crew members were awarded government orders and medals, and four of them received the honorary title Hero of the Soviet Union. Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev personally presented submariners with awards for the Arctic campaign. The captain of the nuclear submarine Lev Zhiltsov became a Hero of the Soviet Union. The entire crew, without exception, received orders. Their names became known throughout the country.

After a feat in the ice, the Leninsky Komsomol nuclear submarine became the modern Aurora and was the subject of numerous delegations visiting. Propaganda window dressing has almost completely replaced military service. The captain of the submarine was sent to study at the General Staff Academy, experienced officers were dismantled by headquarters and ministries, and instead of servicing complex military equipment, sailors took part in various congresses and conferences. It soon paid off in full.

According to Soviet intelligence, it became known that an American submarine was secretly patrolling the neutral waters of the Mediterranean. The leadership of the USSR Navy hastily began to discuss who to send there and it turned out that there were no free warships nearby. They remembered the K-3 nuclear submarine. The submarine was hastily staffed with a combined crew. A new commander has been appointed. On the third day of the trip on the submarine, the stern horizontal rudders were de-energized, and the air regeneration system failed. The temperature in the compartments rose to 40 degrees. A fire started in one of the combat units, and the fire quickly spread through the compartments. Despite stubborn rescue efforts, 39 submariners died. According to the results of the investigation conducted by the command of the Navy, the actions of the crew were recognized as correct. And the crew was presented for state awards.

But soon a commission from Moscow arrived on the Leninsky Komsomol submarine, and one of the staff officers found a lighter in the torpedo compartment. It was suggested that one of the sailors climbed in there to smoke, which caused the catastrophe of the nuclear submarine. Award lists were torn to shreds, instead of them penalties were announced.

That tragedy of "Lenin Komsomol" did not become the property of our common memory either in 1967 or in the "epoch of glasnost", they do not really know about it today. A modest unnamed monument was erected to the sailors who burned to death on K-3, far from crowded places: "To the submariners who died in the ocean on 08.09.67." And a small anchor at the foot of the slab. The boat itself lives out its life at the pier of the shipyard in Polyarny.

Superpower rivalry in submarine fleets was intense. The struggle was in terms of power, dimensions and reliability. Multi-purpose nuclear submarines have appeared carrying powerful nuclear missiles, for which there are no flight range limits. Summing up the confrontation, we can say that in some ways the US naval forces were superior to the Soviet navy, but in some ways they were inferior.

So, Soviet nuclear submarines were faster and with more buoyancy. Records of immersion and underwater speed still remain with the USSR. About 2000 enterprises of the former Soviet Union were involved in the production of nuclear submarines with ballistic missiles on board. During the years of the Cold War, the USSR and the USA threw 10 trillion dollars into the furnace of the arms race. No country could endure such extravagance.

The Cold War has sunk into oblivion, but the concept of defense capability has not disappeared. For 50 years after the first-born "Leninsky Komsomol" 338 nuclear submarines were built, 310 of which are still in service. The operation of the nuclear submarine "Leninsky Komsomol" continued until 1991, while the submarine served on a par with other nuclear-powered ships. After the decommissioning of the K-3, the submarine is planned to be converted into a museum ship, the corresponding project has already been developed at the Malachite Design Bureau, but for unknown reasons, the ship remains inactive, gradually becoming unusable.