@@bamascubaman Perhaps, given that his sacrifice protected the United States to such a great deal, Sergi Preminin deserves to be immortalized in a monument in the US as well. I consider his sacrifice as having been for a cause beyond merely the Soviet Union.
The final outcome that is targeted “ less people doing more of the work, till nobody does everything “ only makes sense to the most senior R.E.M.F.s...military or business alike.
And now the U.S. Navy is doing the exact same thing... I just hope it doesn't have potentially disastrous results like K-219 here. But... Chances are it will if it continues.
Solid-fueled rocket motors would have come in quite handy. The Damascus, Arkansas Titan II explosion had already shown that hypergolic liquid fueled rockets are dangerous enough in land silos, but on a submarine and around seawater, it's just plain madness.
@@PantherSerpahin Liquid fuels don't suffer from the same manufacturing and quality control problems that solid fuels do (cracks and bubbles, mostly), which is why the USSR didn't use them. They also tend to be more energy dense, and helped make up for the relatively poorer Soviet tech, and allowed them to make delivery vehicles with both the capabilities and range they wanted. Todays Russia doesn't suffer so badly from the lack of tech and QC (although there is still some hangover), but they do have decades of experience in liquid fuelled rocket design and handling, and there are some advantages to liquid fuels. They appear to be willing to accept the tradeoff
@@talltroll7092 I actually attended a summer school of space technology in Russia in high school for being half decent in physics. Though I am Finnish so I have no need to sugarcoat Russian capabilities. Our professors themselves had been involved in these projects during Soviet era. They pointed to the fact that solid fueled missiles are inaccurate and have uneven burn rates, necessitating a lot of manouverability from the orbit stage to place RVs to accurate trajectories. Could be them just making excuses. Though I must say not many things on the planet are more complex than liquid rocket engine pump systems. No sane person chooses them to escape complexity. Western solid fueled missiles seem to be supremely reliable in comparison though...
@I'll figure it out The system was rotten to the core - Gorbachev saw that and tried to counter it with drastic measures from what I have read and seen. if they had gone with "business as usual" the system would have collapsed anyway.
Yes, they would've suffered a major financial and power shortage as it's believed Chernobyl was needed to power their "woodpecker" system of radar arrays. That's how much of an energy hog it was. And the reason the reactor was so unsafe was because safeties that most reactors have were removed so they could remove enriched uranium (plutonium?) from it to use in Nukes.
Some corrections: Preminin's first name was Sergey. There are two doors into reactor compartment: from the bow and from the aft. Reactors are further protected by special airtight enclosure, which has one door. They were entering from the aft, from 8th compartment. The purpose was to lower "compensating grids" on starboard reactor, which should be all the way down and fixed to prevent the meltdown and ensure that reactor will stay inactive. It should be done manually because automation failed due to high temperature. There were four grids and four trips: first went the officer (Nikolay Belikov), then they worked together with some rest, on the last one Preminin was alone 'cause his officer was down from exhaustion. When he failed to open door they actually tried to equalize pressure by opening valves (no faulty air pump involved according to Russian version) but air in reactor compartment was already poisoned and smoke-filled, and last two reserve oxigen-generating cartridges for gas masks were given to Preminin. Permission from the bridge was given to manually open external ventilation valves in reactor compartment but Sergey was so exhausted that he was unable to take out safety pin. He reported it to the bridge and lost consciousness right after . So dunno about other crew but Severodvinsk submarine training center, 7th company, did a good job preparing reactor specialists. PS Second reactor was operational all the time, and was shout down remotely much later.
"In Preminin's native Skornyakovo, a marble plaque commemorates his heroism with an inscription that reads: "To Russian Seaman Sergei Preminin, who has saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe.""
@@knightlife98 when people talk about "Upholding the highest traditions of the navy," never forget that men literally stepped over the portal to hell aboard K-19 and K-219.
Your coverage of this absolutely chaotic situation is so clear and well-worded! Thank you! It just seems that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong 0_0
@@SubBrief Hey Jive loved the video. Very well put together and easy to understand. The number 19 seems to be cursed though. Could you do an overview of the K19 incident. I only saw the movie, but I wonder what your explanation would be like?
In the schoolhouse at NPTU there is a big bold sign that claims "Dollars and guns are no substitute for brains and willpower". Seeing this every day frustrates me to no end, because it is a false dichotomy. If you want to win, you need dollars AND guns AND brains AND willpower. No amount of dollars and guns will make up for a lack of brains and willpower, but no amount of brains and willpower can substitute for a lack of dollars and guns. If you want nice things, you gotta pay for them.
Yep. Look at the Royal Navy now. I served towards the end of the old era of ships that were built with less of a 'budget', and then served into the new era of ships that were built in a different way due to stricter contraints. The tools were at times very poor in the new era, but the brains and willpower were there. We needed the money and guns but never really got it to match the brains and training. We became a world class organisation that couldn't rely on our tools...plus a single conglomerate shipbuilder...whom I was embaressed at times to be connected to, that builds very poor vessels. Case in point. No dollars and the brains can only go so far until the limitations exposed by the lack of dollar input nulifies the brains.
@JiveTurkey VP Navigator/Communicator here. I was stationed at NAS Jacksonville at the time. After work I listened at home on my HF radio to the P-3's monitoring the situation. They abandoned all security and were giving the Bermuda ASW Operations Center (ASWOC) a running narrative in clear voice. At some point (second day?) a Bear F, TU-95 flew over and dropped life rafts in silver cylinders. I had a couple hours of tape of this, but recently lost it in a move. Sorry. b. The Bear F (an ASW version) had the range to fly from Northfleet to Cuba non-stop with time to loiter at altitude for ASW search of an hour or two. We used to chase them (and alert NORAD of their location) with concern to protect our US subs from detection. The Bear has as much power in one engine as all four on the P-3. At full throttle we could barely keep up with them at their cruise speed. The Bear is a gorgeous plane. Often their crewmen would wave at us, however were were strictly forbidden to respond.
@@notmenotme614 Lol that's rich. They should ask themselves why the US never has to falsify excuses for reactor problems. Maybe the US builds and operates its reactors more carefully so they won't have so many "collisions" affecting the reactor ;)
It's more than that: as I recall theres whole sections of the hull cut out, all the missile doors are forced open, and the whole thing kinda looks like an underwater smash and grab.
Its interesting that the missile silos contained the remaining missiles without going kaboom. Even through the fires that were happening.. Considering how many tons of missile fuel were present its a fine example of engineering (even if one of them failed)
Soviets had very good engineering, especially with Submarines. With many redundancies and safety measures. Most failures were like because of Crew being overworked/inexperienced, problems with maintenance and if there were engineering problems (after 60's at least), they were mostly with experimental gear. Heck, while Chernobyl Powerplant wasn't designed in a good way, still the primary reason everything went FUBAR was because of Political pressure to perform exercise if memory serves on the emergency power-up from low power to full power. Which is a dangerous procedure. And since it had to be delayed it led to part of personnel being unaware how long reactor was down or at low power, which led to them being unaware how much it was poisoned (technical term, but it basically makes the reactor less responsive. You have to either wait for the reactor to de-poison (couple of days), bring it up slowly (up to 24 hours), or you can try to rapidly burn through it (which if you do to slowly, reactor will suffocate and too fast it will go of the rails) - take a guess which option was chosen since they had to perform emergency power-up. Truth is that Chernobyl reactor was designed un-safe, but without those exercises it could have run for 50 years and nothing bad would have happened. Of course when something went wrong, the bad reactor design only made problem FAR worse. I did simplify a bit, because Chernobyl disaster is a topic on which you could write a book and still not exhaust every problem and factor in the disaster and in fact every book that is available on it, has skimmed some of the factors and usually revolves around 1 or 2 main theories. I personally like Thunderf00t's theory about what have happened regarding the explosion that happened, that zirconium used in tubing went into violent reaction with water. But that is theory on explosion which is separate from reactor failure - the causes of it while many are mostly known. Or at least they are the most clearly known and least debated of what happened there.
@@SubBrief Yep, and for all of that extra engineering at one point you said that the exec officer found the top of the deck was hot to the touch. That speaks to an incredibly hot fire over a very long period of time, with the thermal conductivity of steel sitting in a basically unlimited heat sink.. with all of the toxic corrosive gasses... with all of the hours that that fire burned... the silos STILL did not fail. It speaks to the safety of these weapon systems. I would expect that USN boats are at least as good as the Soviet boats. After what? 12? 14 hours I would not have been surprised if the missiles booster sections lit off and burned out the center of the sub breaking it in half.. Hats off to the navy engineers to both sides of the cold war...
@@jannegrey Errr...not sure that's as great an achievement as you think. The Soviet system was really, really good at cutting corners to meet quotas and the only reason RBMK reactors were still being built in the mid-70s was that the lack of steel containment vessel and concrete reactor housing made them cheap. They were known to be "dirty" reactors compared to PWRs but the management of risk was so bad and power-games among apparachiks so cut-throat in Soviet bureaucracy that they often went ahead with potentially deadly projects even when adequate systems and components weren't available (read Grigoriy Medvedev's descriptions of the problems managers had at Chernobyl getting even basic building materials at times, resorting to using *flammable* roofing for the turbine hall which could have led to a massive inferno engulfing ALL of the other reactors at the plant...). They suppressed all evidence of nuclear accidents as "State secrets", the result being there was no way reactor operators could learn from mistakes and get an handle on the quirks of the systems they were expected to work with. The Soviets always had good, innovative engineers...but they were hamstrung by a system that couldn't provide them with anything like the quality and quantity of materials they needed, and political masters who didn't understand the risks involved and were more interested in prestige and power.
When you first said that the Soviets had anticipated an air pressure difference between compartments 8 and 7 that could lead to entrapment of crew in 7, i immediately thought "Oh cool, so they implemented some kind of equalization valve between the compartments". Then you mentioned that this critical failsafe device was a crappy little electric air pump and somehow I immediately knew it was GG for Preminin. If only their design bureaus didn't bootleg such a critical mechanism so hard...
Peter Huchtausen in his book "K-19 The Widowmaker" describes in an afterword about a survivor's account of the loss of a Soviet submarine. As the submarine was hurtling to the abyss, the sailors had to read the instructions on how to operate the escape capsule!
Actually, this is a safety feature. A quick release pressure valve is another point of failure between the compartments. If it was built to automatically equalize pressure, or to be able to be removed with a man's strength, it would fail and let seawater through during catastrophic flooding. If it was built to the same standards as the compartment door, it would be just as impossible to open. The pump wasn't so much "dinky" as failed under the same extreme conditions that would cause a reactors SCRAM system to fail. The Soviet navy didn't use a pump system over a pop off valve like a pressure cooker to save a couple of rubles.
@@FirestormMk3 In the end, any single design problem is a series of compromises based on the weight of each decision variable. For the Soviets, the concept of crew safety mattered very little. Writing off a more mechanical method in place of a dinky electric motor is the last thing you want to do in any safety critical application. Additionally, you making a strawman out of a very general idea doesn't add much to the conversation either. I didn't suggest they should've added a glorified pressure cooker valve (or anything automatic for that matter). My main point was that relying on a pump powered by a tiny electric motor considering the possibility of such a catastrophic scenario is pretty much asking for casualties.
@@koskok2965 "For the Soviets, the concept of crew safety mattered very little." What do you base that statement on? Just the concept that Soviets = bad and hate people and freedom? Not only were the Soviets ahead of the curve on equivalents to America's sub safe program, but Soviet escape pods for many of their submarines in the end of the 60s on exceed even modern NATO standards for capability and capacity. Finally you keep asserting that the electric pump in this sub was "dinky" and imply it was weak and underpowered based only on the evidence that it underperformed in EXTREME temperature conditions and probable exposure to corrosive gas. There is no evidence presented here, or that I've seen elsewhere (though I'm not a professional historian, if you've a good source on this do share) that suggests that that system would have been inadequate even in most disaster situations.
@@FirestormMk3 Do I actually have to state the obvious fact that the use of the word "Soviet" refers to high-ranking Soviet officials (all of them being 100% partisan of course)? And of course they were absolute monsters. I suggest you read a bit about the history of the USSR and its communist party as well as some bios of its leaders to get a better picture of my statement. It doesn't take a professional historian to know how cruel they were. As for escape pods, they seem to be a VERY rare anomaly considering the importance of crew safety amongst design considerations for all kinds of manned weapons systems (AFVs being a prime example). I still ain't sure why they implemented them. But since the Soviets cared so much more about crew safety in submersibles than the US, why did the US suffer exactly ZERO submarine related nuclear accidents during the cold war, while the USSR suffered about NINE? I'm sure you're familiar with the most popular of the bunch - the notorious loss of coolant incident involving K-19, which was attributed to POOR DESIGN due to the Soviets' haste to develop their first SSBN after the US manufactured their first George Washington class SSBN. Do we even need to debate the severity of careless manipulation of nuclear energy for political gains? Also, it seems that you mistake the diminutive presentation of the electric motor in the pump as an attack to the PARTICULAR MOTOR'S reliability. That's not my point. Chiefly electrical implementations of failsafe mechanisms IN GENERAL are DINKY when compared to purely mechanical alternatives. The last thing you want to depend on in a catastrophe is hundreds of meters of coiled copper wire with not so much as a scratch across their whole length (motors are extremely sensitive to even small amounts of damage to their coils). But since you brought it up, why didn't Premenin die faster than the motor under the same conditions? They were in the same exact compartment. If the failsafe device fails before the souls its meant to protect, doesn't that make it useless (assuming the pump was there to aid in emergency situations)? Finally, would I need concrete evidence to make a SUGGESTION? I'm writing my thoughts on a YT comment section, not a technical report to my superiors as a naval analyst. I'm just stating my opinion as an undergraduate mechanical engineering student, based on my current knowledge on motors and mechanisms (limited, but broad enough to allow me to form an opinion).
"There should not have been any water there." Reminds me of the Challenger disaster. The O-rings of the boosters of many previous missions were found partially burned, when they should not have been touched at all ... "Oh, it's only 1/3 the way through, we have 200% safety margin" and nobody really investigated how and why. Why were some more burned than others? Why were some not touched at all? The rubber isolated the pipe-like parts put on top of each other from the outside. During ignition the parts bulge out (mostly in their middle) from the very fast and strong pressure increase. The overlap gap between the parts bulge somewhat inwards as the middle bulges outwards, but the O-rings expand to keep that gap closed so the exhaust must go through the nozzle. Cold weather makes the rubber stiffer, it cannot expand as fast. That caused the partial burn-through O-rings of previous launches, they correlate very nicely with temperatures during the hours before the launch. The Challenger got launched during particularly cold bit ... and the sealing failed fully.
Exactly like the foam strikes. Though I’d say they were even more agregious because foam strikes had caused damage during re-entry that had been recorded by heat sensors in the wing.
I red the story of K219 on an old Reader Digest many many years ago. It was a pity that the hero Sergei Preminin could not survive. It was a painful way to go. USS Augusta was tracking K219 and she witnessed the entire accident (Some alleged that USS Augusta collided with K219, but it should be nonsense)
The allegation was due to the proximity of the 2, the fact that recently after that USS Augusta repported undersea collision and required $2.7 million repairs for which she entered port 3 weeks after K219 sinking. Honestly at first I thought it was bs and the USSR just placed the blame on the US, but in this case it does seem a bit suspicious.
@@thedungeondelver Augusta was closer that 1,000 miles :P She was close enough to detect the explosion and the missile bits to be ejected. he was ready to torpedo the K-219. That's how close. And then, while there was a small boat shuttling between a support ship (a merchant ship?) and the sub, the commander of the Augusta came very close to swamping the small boat. Nothing was openly done to him, but he kept getting passed over for promotion. The guy was a cowboy. Read "Hostile Waters".
I have never done patreon, I never connected enough with the creator, You sir have just gained another patreon . I particularly admire the fact you do not gloat over the United States superiority in military affairs ( let's be honest you have all the Gucci(best) kit. Much love Ex Royal navy stoker.
Do you have information on the fuel/oxidiser being used? I'm guessing it was a hypergolic UDMH-N2O4 since N2O4+H2O -> HNO3+HNO2 and HNO3+HNO2 NO2+H2O so essentially nitric acid with NO2 vapour was being produced which pretty much matches your description of a brownish corrosive gas.
Thanks for another great video about the "K-219". I am veteran of the Royal Danish Navy. I applied for submarine service myself. I was a combat information specialist and at that time the Danish Navy only had 5 ikd old submarines (HDMS "Tumleren", "Sælen", "Springeren", "Narhvalen" and "Nordkaperen") with only 3 in active service, Thus the submarine squadron had all the combat Information specialists it needed, so there were no open bunks on the subs. So I was put on a large, fast attack craft (HDMS "Skaden" (P561)) at the time, and I still really enjoyed my time in the Navy. However, I still have a soft spot for submarines and I have always loved realistic computer games, Such as the old "Silent Service" games and right now I play "U-BOAT". Anyway, thanks for a great and well narrated true story! You have gained a new subscriber today, skipper! Keep it up. Good day to everyone! /Jon
Привет Брат из Дании! Случайно натолкнулся на канал,и твое интервью! Я хоть не служил во флоте но много историй знаю о том времени С 80,Трэшер,К 129,Скорпион,Комсомолец да устаешь перечислять! Сам родился в СССР сейчас задыхаюсь при кровавом режиме этого карлика людоеда путина как подводник в отсеке без воздуха! Когда я слушаю историю про к 219 и Подвиги парней Спасших весь мир от ядерного холокоста! Я слушаю трек из фильма к 19 reactor,rescue! И плачу!!! Сергей Преминин как и Многие другие отдавшие свою жизнь! За жизнь Всех!!! Будь Проклята холодная,горячая война! Пусть будут Прокляты ВСЕ кто развязывает Братоубийство!!! Это говорю Я как военный и как Человек!!!
As a former MT you just brought back a dozen different drills to mind that we use to combat similar casualties that might occur. Worked out when the real thing did once occur on my watch and was resolved quickly and without injury.
I’ve stumbled upon a stellar UA-cam channel. My second favorite special interest behind the anatomy of plane crashes. My father was a marine vet and we had so many military treasures in the garage. The recon camera was prob my favorite. My father died in Sept. I miss talking to him about history and stuff like this. Thank you for creating this super interesting channel!!!
I was on boomers in the 70’s. The navy increased time on station by shifting from 90 day rotation to 100 days, so it wasn’t a big change for us. It was actually a huge benefit for us because the 10 day shift meant our patrol days shifted by 1 month every year and we could be home for thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years, sometimes all 3.
I just stumbled onto this channel today, and am pleased to be a new subscriber. I love the analysis, the knowledge and the education of course, but more than anything I really appreciate the respect with which you approach people from other nations, even your enemies, rather than gloating over their failures and demeaning them - you obviously work to be fair. My father was a submariner (Pakistan Navy) for most of his career, and among the many lessons I've learned from him, perhaps the most important is that one must honor and respect the enemy - both their capacity and their humanity. I also inherited a love of submarines of course, so I intend to dive into your content.
I served in the DESRON 15 squadron from 2003-2007, I can state at that point we were fairly busy at that point doing normal things. The idea of trying to force more out of a ship trying to chase these force multiplier concepts, I can see how those collisions happened. Really hurts seeing ships you served with getting into those accidents a year or two ago.
Interestingly, the diagram shows a *forward* and a *rear* reactor, not "port" and "starboard". I think, from memory, that the book "Hostile Waters" also says "port & starboard".
"There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all of these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole." - Isaac Asimov in the foreword to _Ignition!_ by John D. Clark
I remember reading that the USN took a brief look at the idea, but saw how many issues there were with the USAFs hypergolic ICBMs and decided against it. Also, from what I've read, the Submariners themselves were *not* impressed with the idea.
Sounds like a nightmare for anybody on that ship, and the people command it. Can't imagine how freaked out the Soviet command was when this whole thing went down. Must have been pissed as well.
Excellent presentation - colour-coding the diagram is a very effective way to get the point/sequence of events across. Thank you for the upload - very interesting (as always). Stay safe everyone - no stupid risks please....
This was an amazing video!!!!! I love these incident analysis videos especially from you Jive. I joined Patreon a few months ago and I am loving the sub briefs. You're a wonderful content creator Jive and I'm really glad to see you happy in your new home.
Excellent video Jive ! If you need ideas, maybe you could do a video on the Russian submarine Losharik AS-31, Project 10831 / 210. It's an unconventional design and, just like the NR-1, definitely NOT a spy-boat ;) . They also had a fire in 2019 and that's where things get really interesting: Apparently the Boat is designed for about 25 people, but of the 14 who died, 12 where Captains - 7 of them Captains first rank. That's a lot of brass for a "Research boat" that isn't even officially Navy. Another mystery is its power-plant: All sources claim it has a Reactor, yet some sources also talk of it having a tether to connect to a mother-ship. P.S.: I totally understand, if you have "never heard of it" ;)
I just found this channel and I find it so fascinating that the ship would perish to something so unexpected. I also appreciate your in-depth analysis! 👍
Good god...what a nightmare. I was a submarine qualified missile technician on one of the 619 class boats. I did 8 patrols out of the Loch in the early 70s. Our birds used solid propellant as fuel (still do) so we did not have to be concerned with a casualty such as the one which crippled K129.
Awesome. I like how you connected the incident to how overstretched the US Navy is today. I hope you do *more of these. Really informative and interesting👌 (*correction)
@@SubBrief late and just finding your content, but I'd like to 2nd this. Too often, especially when looking at a country we don't tend to have a high opinion if, we have a tendency to just attribute it all to the ways they're different from us and fail to fully analyze the situation and see if there's any lessons we need to take from the failure and changes we need to make. It breeds dangerous complacency when we slip into the assumption that is can't happen here because of differences entirely irrelevant to the incident in question.
Hey, haven't seen one of your videos in a while but this popped up in my recommended. Glad to see you're doing well and I really enjoyed this one. If you have any more of these stories under your belt I'd love to hear about them.
The submariners' creed runs deeper than the shorter term governmental allegiances, and I think that's a good thing. I commend you for your dedication to the art of underwater actions, because life is hard enough beneath the waves. Bravo!
Great video! You really explained it well, very easy to follow and understand. You conclusion is on the money, too. Please keep the outstanding videos coming and God bless you, my friend!
Jive you should do this same type of video on K-19, or USS Scorpion. I really do appreciate this videos as well, because it's nice to hear it from a submariner. As I'm at the point I know how much I don't know.
Hello Jives, what are the sources for your video? I´m asking because your version kind of contradicts the book "Hostile Waters" and wikipedia in several points.
Love naval history and tactics, your experience and knowledge shows through in the content, takes under the surface information and history to another level. Keep it up 👍
I was an AW1 assigned to VP-40 in California at the time of this accident. COMPATWINGSLANT made copies of the acoustic recordings made during the event and distributed them to all the Antisubmarine Warfare Operation Centers. I transferred to COMPATWING 10 in Moffett in early 1987 and got to hear the recording and replay it on our acoustic analyzers. It was both awesome and awful to listen to the sub as it sank. You can hear one compartment collapse as it reached crush depth. I assume the rest of the compartments were already flooded. The Soviets may have been our enemy at the time but the crew were also sailors on an unforgiving sea.
From what I understand the Soviets were capable of innovate R&D work but the educational system was incapable of providing people who were capable of constructing and maintaining those systems.
Same exact thing in their aviation industry. The Russians had almost near theoretical parity through the 1980s with us, but always had trouble on physically executing on their designs to the same degree of the West. That being said, they somehow prevented that culture from getting into their space industry for the most part.
It´s not they can´t provide people the issue was that can´t afford them. Having a hand full of top R&D experts that will provide you with cutting edge technologies is always a good investment. Retaining high levels of education and expertise when the tech is translated on multi million man military is very, very expensive. I remember watching an interview with a Russian engineer who worked on design of radar for Su-27 fighter. He said something like this: I was disappointed with the design, we had the knowledge to create a radar system not only superior to anything available in other countries at the time but years ahead of everyone else. I considered the heavily downgraded design a cost saving measure, which i thought was unwise. After Su-27 was fielded we went on the tour to see how our radar was maintained by the ground crews. I was horrified by what i saw. Just horrified. From that day i consider our only failure in the project to be that the radar we created was too complex and not robust enough... I guess if Russia had 50 Kosmodromes with millions people working in the industry the same things would be happening in that sector too...
the Cold War as designed by Churchill and Truman was intended to isolate the Russian economy and thus cripple its defence capabilities. There's only so much you can do on a limited budget. Especially if the dear leadership starts splurging on helping new nations shed colonial shackles for free.
Love your videos. Great content. I have a question for you. What do you think about the opinions, and evidence to support them, from the book "Red Star Rogue". It's about the 1968 incident that resulted in a Soviet Golf II submarine sinking near Hawaii. I thought it was very interesting, and while nobody has confirmed the author was correct, he was told he was, "on to something," by somebody in the know, who couldn't speak freely because it is still heavily classified. Love to hear your answer.
@@SubBrief The author says the real reason that the sub sank (K-129) was because the KGB had seized control and tried to launch a nuke at Pearl Harbor to frame the Chinese. He challenges the "official" location of the sunk ship as well as the story that it sank because of a torpedo malfunction. Chilling stuff, but everything he puts in the book backs up his version of the story quite well. All sourced from declassified docs that he read through and added all the pieces together. Well worth reading.
It's wonderful to hear that there were minimal human casualties and that most of the crew escaped to safety. The value of human life surpasses the value of anything and everything else.
I love that you don't make it personal and blame the crew. The humans inside a submarine are just another part that makes the entire system work. Just like any simple bearing needs lubrication to work properly, humans need proper equipment and training to do their job effectively.
This is a wonderful history lesson. I do take fault with the excuses you made for the surface collisions! In the Army during the Vietnam War, draftees had to increase their Maximum Effort for their entire tour, and did so! When they became too tired, (or too doped out in some cases) Disciplinary action was used, and we found that their Maximum Effort could be increased with a little more motivation and negative reinforcement! In the Army, I saw both Officers and EM walk around "Half Stepping" and not paying attention to detail, and sleeping when they were on duty. Despite not having the rest and training you think you should have, or are entitled to, there was no excuse for the laxity that was responsible for those surface collisions!
Enjoyed your videos for some time now (subbed on my other account) so thank you for the time you've put into making them. This was an excellent description of the events aboard K219 and the heroism that prevented further tragedy. Sorry if it's been mentioned but a short explanation of some of the *ahem* inaccuracies found in naval films like the recent "Greyhound" would be very interesting. 07
Perhaps you could argue that the loss of the Thresher was a similar phenomenon of overstretched resources in pursuit of combat readiness. Such selfless heroism in the face of insurmountable odds.
As an ex submariner of 32 years, I think that more praise should have been given to Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov. The film 'Hostile Waters' was not an accurate reflection of what happened. To this end - Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov, sued the film maker who had to make a significant payment to Igor. So please remember, everything that you see in films is not necessary the truth and to make the West come out 'squeaky clean' - they had to blame someone. My respect to every submariner on the K129. What Igor and his crew endured was every submariners nightmare. - Ex Warrant Officer (submarines) of 32 years.
I co-wrote Hostile Waters, an account of the K-219 disaster. One of my co-authors was K-219's XO, who was not aboard for this patrol, but who opened doors for interviews with survivors. Some points: 1. The missile tube leak was not sudden, but was discovered on the boat's first dive after leaving its Northern Fleet base. The officer in command of the missile compartment (in the Soviet Navy, a "captain" and one of three captains aboard the boat) was going through a divorce and did not want to RTB to get the small leak fixed. Too embarrassing. Instead, he ordered the tube monitored and pumped out as needed. 2. The leaked seawater mixed with liquid nitrogen tetroxide (the liquid missile fuel) and formed nitric acid. The acid volume grew every day. 3. The nitric acid ate away at more than just seals....it slowly ate into the missile body itself, including the fuel tanks. 4. When the fuel tanks finally failed, the hypergolic (self-igniting) fuels mixed and the explosion took place. 5. Radio communication with Moscow was not interrupted. That said, Moscow's response was chaotic and completely ineffective. When aircraft dispatched with portable breathers appeared overhead to drop spares, no floats were attached. They dropped the EAB's and they immediately sank. 6. Seaman Preminin saved his shipmates, the Gulf Stream and probably the beaches of North Carolina with his bravery by shutting down the reactor by hand, with a wrench. Not sure that he averted WWIII (US forces were present and well-aware of what was happening with K-219...see USS Augusta). But he was a hero of the first order. 6. Finally, after a friendly freighter arrived the captain ordered his crew off the sinking, poisonous boat. Moscow finally responded and ordered them back on board to save K-219, no matter the cost. 7. Captain Britanov bravely countermanded Moscow's order (he knew that putting survivors back on the sinking boat was tantamount to killing them), setting up a standoff that was only resolved when K-219 suddenly flooded and went down with the captain on board.... 8. ....but who was miraculously saved when he was ejected out from the main trunk by pressure and was rescued, only to be charged by Moscow with dereliction of duty, sabotage and delivering his boat into enemy hands (which was the only charge that turned out to be accurate...we did recover and reverse engineer the warheads). But he'd saved his shipmates, and he too was a hero of the very first order.. Hope that adds something to your excellent reporting. Robin White
What’s your source for the US recovering the warheads and “reverse engineering” them…? I’ve read that the Soviet ship Keldysh checked on it a year after sinking and saw that “missile doors had been *forced* open and missiles were missing”, but nothing beyond that - most pass this off as natural and due to impact/implosion/sea pressure.
Watched the Soviet pre boomer fleet via boresight from Kef and Rota in the 60's. Never thought much about the life those sailors lived while on patrol. Boresight was a video game for us, pre PC, called, "The compartmentized Soviet Submarine Problem"
Major respect for the sailor, Sergei Preminin, that completed the manual operation to secure the reactor.
Give it up for Sergei! He protected the East Coast! (world wide) He was a warrior.
Indeed. A very brave man that went above and beyond when duty called.
Hero of the Soviet Union is the very minimum to say thanks for his sacrifice.
@@bamascubaman Perhaps, given that his sacrifice protected the United States to such a great deal, Sergi Preminin deserves to be immortalized in a monument in the US as well. I consider his sacrifice as having been for a cause beyond merely the Soviet Union.
@@larrythorn4715 not the first time the actions of a single Soviet Submariner saved us from potential nuclear conflict.
Who would've thought that when you reduce funding, equipment and manning but not tasking bad things happen.
Pft. Every manager knows that things only need synergy to run properly.
The final outcome that is targeted “ less people doing more of the work, till nobody does everything “ only makes sense to the most senior R.E.M.F.s...military or business alike.
Every teacher knows this
😂😂😂😂😂
And now the U.S. Navy is doing the exact same thing... I just hope it doesn't have potentially disastrous results like K-219 here. But... Chances are it will if it continues.
Solid-fueled rocket motors would have come in quite handy. The Damascus, Arkansas Titan II explosion had already shown that hypergolic liquid fueled rockets are dangerous enough in land silos, but on a submarine and around seawater, it's just plain madness.
The Nedelin Disaster at Baikonur in 1960 also involved a hypergolic R-16 missile, and killed about eighty pad workers.
Yet the russians still use liquid fuel in their latest generation ICBM in the Borei does make you wonder.
@@PantherSerpahin Liquid fuels don't suffer from the same manufacturing and quality control problems that solid fuels do (cracks and bubbles, mostly), which is why the USSR didn't use them. They also tend to be more energy dense, and helped make up for the relatively poorer Soviet tech, and allowed them to make delivery vehicles with both the capabilities and range they wanted.
Todays Russia doesn't suffer so badly from the lack of tech and QC (although there is still some hangover), but they do have decades of experience in liquid fuelled rocket design and handling, and there are some advantages to liquid fuels. They appear to be willing to accept the tradeoff
@@talltroll7092 I actually attended a summer school of space technology in Russia in high school for being half decent in physics. Though I am Finnish so I have no need to sugarcoat Russian capabilities.
Our professors themselves had been involved in these projects during Soviet era. They pointed to the fact that solid fueled missiles are inaccurate and have uneven burn rates, necessitating a lot of manouverability from the orbit stage to place RVs to accurate trajectories. Could be them just making excuses. Though I must say not many things on the planet are more complex than liquid rocket engine pump systems. No sane person chooses them to escape complexity. Western solid fueled missiles seem to be supremely reliable in comparison though...
@@MVHiltunen grain size and mixing thoroughly is critical to ensuring even burning and hence, thrust.
Chernobyl disaster happened April 26th of that same year. Would not have been a good year for the soviets.
Basically the event that started the unraveling of the whole Red fabric.
@I'll figure it out The system was rotten to the core - Gorbachev saw that and tried to counter it with drastic measures from what I have read and seen. if they had gone with "business as usual" the system would have collapsed anyway.
@I'll figure it out ROFL
7.2 roentgen not great, not terrible
Yes, they would've suffered a major financial and power shortage as it's believed Chernobyl was needed to power their "woodpecker" system of radar arrays. That's how much of an energy hog it was. And the reason the reactor was so unsafe was because safeties that most reactors have were removed so they could remove enriched uranium (plutonium?) from it to use in Nukes.
Another UA-cam channel called "The History Guy" did this a little while ago. He did a great job and you expanded on it even further.
THG is great, love his channel.
Some corrections: Preminin's first name was Sergey. There are two doors into reactor compartment: from the bow and from the aft. Reactors are further protected by special airtight enclosure, which has one door. They were entering from the aft, from 8th compartment. The purpose was to lower "compensating grids" on starboard reactor, which should be all the way down and fixed to prevent the meltdown and ensure that reactor will stay inactive. It should be done manually because automation failed due to high temperature. There were four grids and four trips: first went the officer (Nikolay Belikov), then they worked together with some rest, on the last one Preminin was alone 'cause his officer was down from exhaustion.
When he failed to open door they actually tried to equalize pressure by opening valves (no faulty air pump involved according to Russian version) but air in reactor compartment was already poisoned and smoke-filled, and last two reserve oxigen-generating cartridges for gas masks were given to Preminin. Permission from the bridge was given to manually open external ventilation valves in reactor compartment but Sergey was so exhausted that he was unable to take out safety pin. He reported it to the bridge and lost consciousness right after .
So dunno about other crew but Severodvinsk submarine training center, 7th company, did a good job preparing reactor specialists.
PS Second reactor was operational all the time, and was shout down remotely much later.
"In Preminin's native Skornyakovo, a marble plaque commemorates his heroism with an inscription that reads:
"To Russian Seaman Sergei Preminin, who has saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe.""
could you imagine literally saving the world?
I say goodbye Lenin, replaced with tributes to Komarov and Preminin. RIP Warriors!!!
Oh and we cannot forget Arkhipov, RIP Warrior.
@@knightlife98 when people talk about "Upholding the highest traditions of the navy," never forget that men literally stepped over the portal to hell aboard K-19 and K-219.
@@sawyerawr5783 No doubt. Many Countries, many men. I hold them all in High Regard.
Your coverage of this absolutely chaotic situation is so clear and well-worded! Thank you!
It just seems that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong 0_0
Well said! Thank you.
@@SubBrief Hey Jive loved the video. Very well put together and easy to understand.
The number 19 seems to be cursed though. Could you do an overview of the K19 incident.
I only saw the movie, but I wonder what your explanation would be like?
I mean it's the Russian Navy: this is crass as all get out, but let's be real, the phrase, "And then it Got worse," is basially their national motto.
They saved most of the crew unharmed. It could have easily been a complete loss of al men on board.
I totally agree. His outline was amazing!
In the schoolhouse at NPTU there is a big bold sign that claims "Dollars and guns are no substitute for brains and willpower". Seeing this every day frustrates me to no end, because it is a false dichotomy. If you want to win, you need dollars AND guns AND brains AND willpower. No amount of dollars and guns will make up for a lack of brains and willpower, but no amount of brains and willpower can substitute for a lack of dollars and guns. If you want nice things, you gotta pay for them.
Yep. Look at the Royal Navy now. I served towards the end of the old era of ships that were built with less of a 'budget', and then served into the new era of ships that were built in a different way due to stricter contraints. The tools were at times very poor in the new era, but the brains and willpower were there. We needed the money and guns but never really got it to match the brains and training. We became a world class organisation that couldn't rely on our tools...plus a single conglomerate shipbuilder...whom I was embaressed at times to be connected to, that builds very poor vessels. Case in point. No dollars and the brains can only go so far until the limitations exposed by the lack of dollar input nulifies the brains.
Amen to that.
@JiveTurkey VP Navigator/Communicator here. I was stationed at NAS Jacksonville at the time. After work I listened at home on my HF radio to the P-3's monitoring the situation. They abandoned all security and were giving the Bermuda ASW Operations Center (ASWOC) a running narrative in clear voice. At some point (second day?) a Bear F, TU-95 flew over and dropped life rafts in silver cylinders. I had a couple hours of tape of this, but recently lost it in a move. Sorry. b.
The Bear F (an ASW version) had the range to fly from Northfleet to Cuba non-stop with time to loiter at altitude for ASW search of an hour or two. We used to chase them (and alert NORAD of their location) with concern to protect our US subs from detection. The Bear has as much power in one engine as all four on the P-3. At full throttle we could barely keep up with them at their cruise speed. The Bear is a gorgeous plane. Often their crewmen would wave at us, however were were strictly forbidden to respond.
funfact: russians did checkup with the wreck and all the missiles where missing.
bet he knows more about that but isnt allowed to talk about it
Was it before or after it was lifted by Glomar Explorer?
Paul Serdiuk Different sub.
The Soviets also claimed the water leak was caused by a collision with a US Navy submarine that was known to be in the same area
@@notmenotme614 Lol that's rich. They should ask themselves why the US never has to falsify excuses for reactor problems. Maybe the US builds and operates its reactors more carefully so they won't have so many "collisions" affecting the reactor ;)
It's more than that: as I recall theres whole sections of the hull cut out, all the missile doors are forced open, and the whole thing kinda looks like an underwater smash and grab.
I was in the Navy then, stationed on the east coast. I was never aware of it at the time, but learned of it weeks later.
Me too.
Its interesting that the missile silos contained the remaining missiles without going kaboom. Even through the fires that were happening.. Considering how many tons of missile fuel were present its a fine example of engineering (even if one of them failed)
each missile tube is like it's own submarine. they have individual systems and protections.
Soviets had very good engineering, especially with Submarines. With many redundancies and safety measures. Most failures were like because of Crew being overworked/inexperienced, problems with maintenance and if there were engineering problems (after 60's at least), they were mostly with experimental gear. Heck, while Chernobyl Powerplant wasn't designed in a good way, still the primary reason everything went FUBAR was because of Political pressure to perform exercise if memory serves on the emergency power-up from low power to full power. Which is a dangerous procedure. And since it had to be delayed it led to part of personnel being unaware how long reactor was down or at low power, which led to them being unaware how much it was poisoned (technical term, but it basically makes the reactor less responsive. You have to either wait for the reactor to de-poison (couple of days), bring it up slowly (up to 24 hours), or you can try to rapidly burn through it (which if you do to slowly, reactor will suffocate and too fast it will go of the rails) - take a guess which option was chosen since they had to perform emergency power-up. Truth is that Chernobyl reactor was designed un-safe, but without those exercises it could have run for 50 years and nothing bad would have happened. Of course when something went wrong, the bad reactor design only made problem FAR worse. I did simplify a bit, because Chernobyl disaster is a topic on which you could write a book and still not exhaust every problem and factor in the disaster and in fact every book that is available on it, has skimmed some of the factors and usually revolves around 1 or 2 main theories. I personally like Thunderf00t's theory about what have happened regarding the explosion that happened, that zirconium used in tubing went into violent reaction with water. But that is theory on explosion which is separate from reactor failure - the causes of it while many are mostly known. Or at least they are the most clearly known and least debated of what happened there.
@@SubBrief Yep, and for all of that extra engineering at one point you said that the exec officer found the top of the deck was hot to the touch. That speaks to an incredibly hot fire over a very long period of time, with the thermal conductivity of steel sitting in a basically unlimited heat sink.. with all of the toxic corrosive gasses... with all of the hours that that fire burned... the silos STILL did not fail. It speaks to the safety of these weapon systems. I would expect that USN boats are at least as good as the Soviet boats. After what? 12? 14 hours I would not have been surprised if the missiles booster sections lit off and burned out the center of the sub breaking it in half.. Hats off to the navy engineers to both sides of the cold war...
@@jannegrey Errr...not sure that's as great an achievement as you think. The Soviet system was really, really good at cutting corners to meet quotas and the only reason RBMK reactors were still being built in the mid-70s was that the lack of steel containment vessel and concrete reactor housing made them cheap. They were known to be "dirty" reactors compared to PWRs but the management of risk was so bad and power-games among apparachiks so cut-throat in Soviet bureaucracy that they often went ahead with potentially deadly projects even when adequate systems and components weren't available (read Grigoriy Medvedev's descriptions of the problems managers had at Chernobyl getting even basic building materials at times, resorting to using *flammable* roofing for the turbine hall which could have led to a massive inferno engulfing ALL of the other reactors at the plant...). They suppressed all evidence of nuclear accidents as "State secrets", the result being there was no way reactor operators could learn from mistakes and get an handle on the quirks of the systems they were expected to work with.
The Soviets always had good, innovative engineers...but they were hamstrung by a system that couldn't provide them with anything like the quality and quantity of materials they needed, and political masters who didn't understand the risks involved and were more interested in prestige and power.
@@SubBrief I would hope so, imagine all the missiles that would have gone boom throughout history if that was not the case.
When you first said that the Soviets had anticipated an air pressure difference between compartments 8 and 7 that could lead to entrapment of crew in 7, i immediately thought "Oh cool, so they implemented some kind of equalization valve between the compartments". Then you mentioned that this critical failsafe device was a crappy little electric air pump and somehow I immediately knew it was GG for Preminin. If only their design bureaus didn't bootleg such a critical mechanism so hard...
Peter Huchtausen in his book "K-19 The Widowmaker" describes in an afterword about a survivor's account of the loss of a Soviet submarine. As the submarine was hurtling to the abyss, the sailors had to read the instructions on how to operate the escape capsule!
Actually, this is a safety feature. A quick release pressure valve is another point of failure between the compartments. If it was built to automatically equalize pressure, or to be able to be removed with a man's strength, it would fail and let seawater through during catastrophic flooding. If it was built to the same standards as the compartment door, it would be just as impossible to open. The pump wasn't so much "dinky" as failed under the same extreme conditions that would cause a reactors SCRAM system to fail. The Soviet navy didn't use a pump system over a pop off valve like a pressure cooker to save a couple of rubles.
@@FirestormMk3 In the end, any single design problem is a series of compromises based on the weight of each decision variable. For the Soviets, the concept of crew safety mattered very little. Writing off a more mechanical method in place of a dinky electric motor is the last thing you want to do in any safety critical application. Additionally, you making a strawman out of a very general idea doesn't add much to the conversation either. I didn't suggest they should've added a glorified pressure cooker valve (or anything automatic for that matter). My main point was that relying on a pump powered by a tiny electric motor considering the possibility of such a catastrophic scenario is pretty much asking for casualties.
@@koskok2965 "For the Soviets, the concept of crew safety mattered very little." What do you base that statement on? Just the concept that Soviets = bad and hate people and freedom? Not only were the Soviets ahead of the curve on equivalents to America's sub safe program, but Soviet escape pods for many of their submarines in the end of the 60s on exceed even modern NATO standards for capability and capacity. Finally you keep asserting that the electric pump in this sub was "dinky" and imply it was weak and underpowered based only on the evidence that it underperformed in EXTREME temperature conditions and probable exposure to corrosive gas. There is no evidence presented here, or that I've seen elsewhere (though I'm not a professional historian, if you've a good source on this do share) that suggests that that system would have been inadequate even in most disaster situations.
@@FirestormMk3 Do I actually have to state the obvious fact that the use of the word "Soviet" refers to high-ranking Soviet officials (all of them being 100% partisan of course)? And of course they were absolute monsters. I suggest you read a bit about the history of the USSR and its communist party as well as some bios of its leaders to get a better picture of my statement. It doesn't take a professional historian to know how cruel they were. As for escape pods, they seem to be a VERY rare anomaly considering the importance of crew safety amongst design considerations for all kinds of manned weapons systems (AFVs being a prime example). I still ain't sure why they implemented them. But since the Soviets cared so much more about crew safety in submersibles than the US, why did the US suffer exactly ZERO submarine related nuclear accidents during the cold war, while the USSR suffered about NINE? I'm sure you're familiar with the most popular of the bunch - the notorious loss of coolant incident involving K-19, which was attributed to POOR DESIGN due to the Soviets' haste to develop their first SSBN after the US manufactured their first George Washington class SSBN. Do we even need to debate the severity of careless manipulation of nuclear energy for political gains? Also, it seems that you mistake the diminutive presentation of the electric motor in the pump as an attack to the PARTICULAR MOTOR'S reliability. That's not my point. Chiefly electrical implementations of failsafe mechanisms IN GENERAL are DINKY when compared to purely mechanical alternatives. The last thing you want to depend on in a catastrophe is hundreds of meters of coiled copper wire with not so much as a scratch across their whole length (motors are extremely sensitive to even small amounts of damage to their coils). But since you brought it up, why didn't Premenin die faster than the motor under the same conditions? They were in the same exact compartment. If the failsafe device fails before the souls its meant to protect, doesn't that make it useless (assuming the pump was there to aid in emergency situations)? Finally, would I need concrete evidence to make a SUGGESTION? I'm writing my thoughts on a YT comment section, not a technical report to my superiors as a naval analyst. I'm just stating my opinion as an undergraduate mechanical engineering student, based on my current knowledge on motors and mechanisms (limited, but broad enough to allow me to form an opinion).
the fact that they got through this is crazy. they deserve some more respect
Every time you think they've got to the worst of the situation it just seemed to escalate further. This is what I'd call a clusterfuck of a situation.
"There should not have been any water there." Reminds me of the Challenger disaster. The O-rings of the boosters of many previous missions were found partially burned, when they should not have been touched at all ...
"Oh, it's only 1/3 the way through, we have 200% safety margin" and nobody really investigated how and why. Why were some more burned than others? Why were some not touched at all?
The rubber isolated the pipe-like parts put on top of each other from the outside. During ignition the parts bulge out (mostly in their middle) from the very fast and strong pressure increase. The overlap gap between the parts bulge somewhat inwards as the middle bulges outwards, but the O-rings expand to keep that gap closed so the exhaust must go through the nozzle.
Cold weather makes the rubber stiffer, it cannot expand as fast. That caused the partial burn-through O-rings of previous launches, they correlate very nicely with temperatures during the hours before the launch.
The Challenger got launched during particularly cold bit ... and the sealing failed fully.
Is it really OK, or do you just want it to be OK?
Most disasters have in common, that this question was unfortunately never asked.
Exactly like the foam strikes. Though I’d say they were even more agregious because foam strikes had caused damage during re-entry that had been recorded by heat sensors in the wing.
@@johnross6314 the impacts and the foam were issues before clinton. stop believing republican bs
I red the story of K219 on an old Reader Digest many many years ago. It was a pity that the hero Sergei Preminin could not survive. It was a painful way to go. USS Augusta was tracking K219 and she witnessed the entire accident (Some alleged that USS Augusta collided with K219, but it should be nonsense)
The allegation was due to the proximity of the 2, the fact that recently after that USS Augusta repported undersea collision and required $2.7 million repairs for which she entered port 3 weeks after K219 sinking. Honestly at first I thought it was bs and the USSR just placed the blame on the US, but in this case it does seem a bit suspicious.
If there's a US ship within 1000 miles of a Soviet/Russian sub disaster (and God knows they had lots and lots of them) then they blame it on the USN.
@@thedungeondelver Augusta was closer that 1,000 miles :P She was close enough to detect the explosion and the missile bits to be ejected. he was ready to torpedo the K-219. That's how close. And then, while there was a small boat shuttling between a support ship (a merchant ship?) and the sub, the commander of the Augusta came very close to swamping the small boat. Nothing was openly done to him, but he kept getting passed over for promotion. The guy was a cowboy. Read "Hostile Waters".
There were some very heroic men on that ship, especially that guy who gave up his life to manually shut down the reactor
I have never done patreon, I never connected enough with the creator,
You sir have just gained another patreon .
I particularly admire the fact you do not gloat over the United States superiority in military affairs ( let's be honest you have all the Gucci(best) kit.
Much love Ex Royal navy stoker.
Thank you, Carl.
I watch documentaries on the 219 before but never did I get such a complete story as you have just given, thank you sir. Well done
Do you have information on the fuel/oxidiser being used? I'm guessing it was a hypergolic UDMH-N2O4 since N2O4+H2O -> HNO3+HNO2 and HNO3+HNO2 NO2+H2O so essentially nitric acid with NO2 vapour was being produced which pretty much matches your description of a brownish corrosive gas.
You're right. UDMH-N2O4 is pretty much a standard for soviet liquid propelled missiles, 4K10 in this case.
According to wikipedia the propellands were UDMH (wonderful stuff, really!) and nitrogen tetroxide.
I was researching this event yesterday and I thought that Jive Turkey would have a video on it, and then this video shows up today. Great timing.
Really enjoying your War Zone articles!
K-19, K-129, K-219 is it me or is there a pattern here?
If your subs number ends in 9. Kiss your posterior good bye.
yes its the K.
Yah, they're all Russian!
I was thinking the same thing for years.
bobby ray of the family smith Well, guess I’ll go commit die now
Thanks for another great video about the "K-219". I am veteran of the Royal Danish Navy. I applied for submarine service myself. I was a combat information specialist and at that time the Danish Navy only had 5 ikd old submarines (HDMS "Tumleren", "Sælen", "Springeren", "Narhvalen" and "Nordkaperen") with only 3 in active service, Thus the submarine squadron had all the combat Information specialists it needed, so there were no open bunks on the subs. So I was put on a large, fast attack craft (HDMS "Skaden" (P561)) at the time, and I still really enjoyed my time in the Navy. However, I still have a soft spot for submarines and I have always loved realistic computer games, Such as the old "Silent Service" games and right now I play "U-BOAT".
Anyway, thanks for a great and well narrated true story! You have gained a new subscriber today, skipper! Keep it up. Good day to everyone! /Jon
Привет Брат из Дании! Случайно натолкнулся на канал,и твое интервью! Я хоть не служил во флоте но много историй знаю о том времени С 80,Трэшер,К 129,Скорпион,Комсомолец да устаешь перечислять! Сам родился в СССР сейчас задыхаюсь при кровавом режиме этого карлика людоеда путина как подводник в отсеке без воздуха! Когда я слушаю историю про к 219 и Подвиги парней Спасших весь мир от ядерного холокоста! Я слушаю трек из фильма к 19 reactor,rescue! И плачу!!! Сергей Преминин как и Многие другие отдавшие свою жизнь! За жизнь Всех!!! Будь Проклята холодная,горячая война! Пусть будут Прокляты ВСЕ кто развязывает Братоубийство!!! Это говорю Я как военный и как Человек!!!
As a former MT you just brought back a dozen different drills to mind that we use to combat similar casualties that might occur. Worked out when the real thing did once occur on my watch and was resolved quickly and without injury.
I’ve stumbled upon a stellar UA-cam channel. My second favorite special interest behind the anatomy of plane crashes. My father was a marine vet and we had so many military treasures in the garage. The recon camera was prob my favorite. My father died in Sept. I miss talking to him about history and stuff like this. Thank you for creating this super interesting channel!!!
I was on boomers in the 70’s.
The navy increased time on station by shifting from 90 day rotation to 100 days, so it wasn’t a big change for us.
It was actually a huge benefit for us because the 10 day shift meant our patrol days shifted by 1 month every year and we could be home for thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years, sometimes all 3.
New favourite channel. Ive always respected my chums of the silent service, and this channel is giving some off the best insights out there. Thanks!
I just stumbled onto this channel today, and am pleased to be a new subscriber. I love the analysis, the knowledge and the education of course, but more than anything I really appreciate the respect with which you approach people from other nations, even your enemies, rather than gloating over their failures and demeaning them - you obviously work to be fair.
My father was a submariner (Pakistan Navy) for most of his career, and among the many lessons I've learned from him, perhaps the most important is that one must honor and respect the enemy - both their capacity and their humanity. I also inherited a love of submarines of course, so I intend to dive into your content.
Great vid! Would love to see video on K-19 and other incidents in the future. Thanks for your work :-)
I served in the DESRON 15 squadron from 2003-2007, I can state at that point we were fairly busy at that point doing normal things. The idea of trying to force more out of a ship trying to chase these force multiplier concepts, I can see how those collisions happened. Really hurts seeing ships you served with getting into those accidents a year or two ago.
Keep up the good work jive!
They made a movie somewhat based off what happened called "Hostile Waters". The story is not exactly as it happened but it was a good movie.
Wow, a great analysis of a terrible accident! Well Done!
Found your channel randomly but it's one of the best if not the best about Sub life etc...on top your drawing skills are ...very relaxing :)
Welcome aboard! My mouse drawing is the best on UA-cam! lol
no music at all loved it i can hear every word you said without music by far the best one
Its been a few months now and you're my fav channel, love your content! thank you for what you do
Interestingly, the diagram shows a *forward* and a *rear* reactor, not "port" and "starboard". I think, from memory, that the book "Hostile Waters" also says "port & starboard".
This is one of the reasons why the USSR is the only country to use hypergolic liquid fuelled SLBMs.
"There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all of these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole." - Isaac Asimov in the foreword to _Ignition!_ by John D. Clark
@@LeCharles07 I love his commentary about fluorine based oxidizers. Basically his attitude is "nope nope nope nope."
I remember reading that the USN took a brief look at the idea, but saw how many issues there were with the USAFs hypergolic ICBMs and decided against it. Also, from what I've read, the Submariners themselves were *not* impressed with the idea.
Congrats on The Drive gig, Jive!👍
🎉
Sounds like a nightmare for anybody on that ship, and the people command it. Can't imagine how freaked out the Soviet command was when this whole thing went down. Must have been pissed as well.
Excellent presentation - colour-coding the diagram is a very effective way to get the point/sequence of events across. Thank you for the upload - very interesting (as always). Stay safe everyone - no stupid risks please....
This was an amazing video!!!!! I love these incident analysis videos especially from you Jive. I joined Patreon a few months ago and I am loving the sub briefs. You're a wonderful content creator Jive and I'm really glad to see you happy in your new home.
I hope someone makes a movie of this
First to say I love your content!
Hey, thanks!
How was the photo depicting the damage to the tubes obtained, please? And what was the composition of the toxic gas, do you know? Many thanks.
Greatly enjoyed that Jive, thanks much!
Glad you enjoyed it
How did I miss your channel? You've earned another subscriber! Fantastic content!!!
Love these history vids
Excellent video Jive ! If you need ideas, maybe you could do a video on the Russian submarine Losharik AS-31, Project 10831 / 210. It's an unconventional design and, just like the NR-1, definitely NOT a spy-boat ;) . They also had a fire in 2019 and that's where things get really interesting: Apparently the Boat is designed for about 25 people, but of the 14 who died, 12 where Captains - 7 of them Captains first rank. That's a lot of brass for a "Research boat" that isn't even officially Navy. Another mystery is its power-plant: All sources claim it has a Reactor, yet some sources also talk of it having a tether to connect to a mother-ship. P.S.: I totally understand, if you have "never heard of it" ;)
Nice video and analysis! 👍
My favorite video of yours so far, please do more like this!
yes! a new upload!
Great breakdown, glad this came up on my feed, keep up the good work man, this is top notch
Glad you enjoyed it!
I just found this channel and I find it so fascinating that the ship would perish to something so unexpected. I also appreciate your in-depth analysis! 👍
Good god...what a nightmare. I was a submarine qualified missile technician on one of the 619 class boats. I did 8 patrols out of the Loch in the early 70s. Our birds used solid propellant as fuel (still do) so we did not have to be concerned with a casualty such as the one which crippled K129.
Awesome. I like how you connected the incident to how overstretched the US Navy is today. I hope you do *more of these. Really informative and interesting👌 (*correction)
Thank you.
@@SubBrief late and just finding your content, but I'd like to 2nd this. Too often, especially when looking at a country we don't tend to have a high opinion if, we have a tendency to just attribute it all to the ways they're different from us and fail to fully analyze the situation and see if there's any lessons we need to take from the failure and changes we need to make. It breeds dangerous complacency when we slip into the assumption that is can't happen here because of differences entirely irrelevant to the incident in question.
Hey, haven't seen one of your videos in a while but this popped up in my recommended. Glad to see you're doing well and I really enjoyed this one. If you have any more of these stories under your belt I'd love to hear about them.
Hey, thanks!
The submariners' creed runs deeper than the shorter term governmental allegiances, and I think that's a good thing. I commend you for your dedication to the art of underwater actions, because life is hard enough beneath the waves. Bravo!
New favorite channel
Thank you for the clear explanation
Great video! You really explained it well, very easy to follow and understand. You conclusion is on the money, too. Please keep the outstanding videos coming and God bless you, my friend!
Jive you should do this same type of video on K-19, or USS Scorpion. I really do appreciate this videos as well, because it's nice to hear it from a submariner. As I'm at the point I know how much I don't know.
Hello Jives, what are the sources for your video? I´m asking because your version kind of contradicts the book "Hostile Waters" and wikipedia in several points.
Thank you for great content again !
Dam..the level of detail of your videos..WOW!!
Glad you like them!
I hate when I exasperate a situation.
Very well done. Keep up the good work and much love from this Army vet!
Love naval history and tactics, your experience and knowledge shows through in the content, takes under the surface information and history to another level. Keep it up 👍
Such a great channel. Extremely well presented. Keep the videos coming :)
Thank you! Will do!
Such an amazing video, thank you for posting this!
I was an AW1 assigned to VP-40 in California at the time of this accident. COMPATWINGSLANT made copies of the acoustic recordings made during the event and distributed them to all the Antisubmarine Warfare Operation Centers. I transferred to COMPATWING 10 in Moffett in early 1987 and got to hear the recording and replay it on our acoustic analyzers. It was both awesome and awful to listen to the sub as it sank. You can hear one compartment collapse as it reached crush depth. I assume the rest of the compartments were already flooded. The Soviets may have been our enemy at the time but the crew were also sailors on an unforgiving sea.
From what I understand the Soviets were capable of innovate R&D work but the educational system was incapable of providing people who were capable of constructing and maintaining those systems.
Same exact thing in their aviation industry. The Russians had almost near theoretical parity through the 1980s with us, but always had trouble on physically executing on their designs to the same degree of the West. That being said, they somehow prevented that culture from getting into their space industry for the most part.
It´s not they can´t provide people the issue was that can´t afford them. Having a hand full of top R&D experts that will provide you with cutting edge technologies is always a good investment. Retaining high levels of education and expertise when the tech is translated on multi million man military is very, very expensive.
I remember watching an interview with a Russian engineer who worked on design of radar for Su-27 fighter. He said something like this:
I was disappointed with the design, we had the knowledge to create a radar system not only superior to anything available in other countries at the time but years ahead of everyone else. I considered the heavily downgraded design a cost saving measure, which i thought was unwise. After Su-27 was fielded we went on the tour to see how our radar was maintained by the ground crews. I was horrified by what i saw. Just horrified. From that day i consider our only failure in the project to be that the radar we created was too complex and not robust enough...
I guess if Russia had 50 Kosmodromes with millions people working in the industry the same things would be happening in that sector too...
@@uegvdczuVF Very good point.
the Cold War as designed by Churchill and Truman was intended to isolate the Russian economy and thus cripple its defence capabilities. There's only so much you can do on a limited budget. Especially if the dear leadership starts splurging on helping new nations shed colonial shackles for free.
very nice analysis
The famous widow maker. Fantastic video and comments ,deserve 1000 likes !
Thanks for covering this. Its the first time I have heard of it.
Hope you enjoyed it!
@@SubBrief I did enjoy it. I stumbled on to your ASW sonar video this morning. I didn't know that I would enjoy it and I did. Have a great evening.
Really enjoyed this. Good job!
Thank you!
Some heroic men doing heroic things. Great info story. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it
Great video and very well explained. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Love your videos. Great content. I have a question for you. What do you think about the opinions, and evidence to support them, from the book "Red Star Rogue". It's about the 1968 incident that resulted in a Soviet Golf II submarine sinking near Hawaii. I thought it was very interesting, and while nobody has confirmed the author was correct, he was told he was, "on to something," by somebody in the know, who couldn't speak freely because it is still heavily classified. Love to hear your answer.
I need to re-Read that book. I forget the incident details in that book. Can you help clarify?
@@SubBrief The author says the real reason that the sub sank (K-129) was because the KGB had seized control and tried to launch a nuke at Pearl Harbor to frame the Chinese. He challenges the "official" location of the sunk ship as well as the story that it sank because of a torpedo malfunction.
Chilling stuff, but everything he puts in the book backs up his version of the story quite well. All sourced from declassified docs that he read through and added all the pieces together. Well worth reading.
@@SubBrief Don't bother. The book was filled with conspiracy theories. You should read Project Azorian.
Excellent description.
It's wonderful to hear that there were minimal human casualties and that most of the crew escaped to safety. The value of human life surpasses the value of anything and everything else.
I love that you don't make it personal and blame the crew. The humans inside a submarine are just another part that makes the entire system work. Just like any simple bearing needs lubrication to work properly, humans need proper equipment and training to do their job effectively.
Fantastic video. I had never heard of this before today.
Glad you liked it!
This is a wonderful history lesson. I do take fault with the excuses you made for the surface collisions! In the Army during the Vietnam War, draftees had to increase their Maximum Effort for their entire tour, and did so! When they became too tired, (or too doped out in some cases) Disciplinary action was used, and we found that their Maximum Effort could be increased with a little more motivation and negative reinforcement! In the Army, I saw both Officers and EM walk around "Half Stepping" and not paying attention to detail, and sleeping when they were on duty. Despite not having the rest and training you think you should have, or are entitled to, there was no excuse for the laxity that was responsible for those surface collisions!
I didn't understand that you had stopped streaming entirely, why did you stop streaming Cold Waters, and others?
Okay, this is news to me as well.
Ahh, engineering disasters. One of my favorite past times.
Enjoyed your videos for some time now (subbed on my other account) so thank you for the time you've put into making them. This was an excellent description of the events aboard K219 and the heroism that prevented further tragedy.
Sorry if it's been mentioned but a short explanation of some of the *ahem* inaccuracies found in naval films like the recent "Greyhound" would be very interesting. 07
Perhaps you could argue that the loss of the Thresher was a similar phenomenon of overstretched resources in pursuit of combat readiness. Such selfless heroism in the face of insurmountable odds.
Wow that was great - amazing incident - thanks, from the UK
As an ex submariner of 32 years, I think that more praise should have been given to Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov. The film 'Hostile Waters' was not an accurate reflection of what happened. To this end - Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov, sued the film maker who had to make a significant payment to Igor. So please remember, everything that you see in films is not necessary the truth and to make the West come out 'squeaky clean' - they had to blame someone. My respect to every submariner on the K129. What Igor and his crew endured was every submariners nightmare. - Ex Warrant Officer (submarines) of 32 years.
I remember reading about this disaster sometime back...i think they made a movie about it...
I co-wrote Hostile Waters, an account of the K-219 disaster. One of my co-authors was K-219's XO, who was not aboard for this patrol, but who opened doors for interviews with survivors. Some points:
1. The missile tube leak was not sudden, but was discovered on the boat's first dive after leaving its Northern Fleet base. The officer in command of the missile compartment (in the Soviet Navy, a "captain" and one of three captains aboard the boat) was going through a divorce and did not want to RTB to get the small leak fixed. Too embarrassing. Instead, he ordered the tube monitored and pumped out as needed.
2. The leaked seawater mixed with liquid nitrogen tetroxide (the liquid missile fuel) and formed nitric acid. The acid volume grew every day.
3. The nitric acid ate away at more than just seals....it slowly ate into the missile body itself, including the fuel tanks.
4. When the fuel tanks finally failed, the hypergolic (self-igniting) fuels mixed and the explosion took place.
5. Radio communication with Moscow was not interrupted. That said, Moscow's response was chaotic and completely ineffective. When aircraft dispatched with portable breathers appeared overhead to drop spares, no floats were attached. They dropped the EAB's and they immediately sank.
6. Seaman Preminin saved his shipmates, the Gulf Stream and probably the beaches of North Carolina with his bravery by shutting down the reactor by hand, with a wrench. Not sure that he averted WWIII (US forces were present and well-aware of what was happening with K-219...see USS Augusta). But he was a hero of the first order.
6. Finally, after a friendly freighter arrived the captain ordered his crew off the sinking, poisonous boat. Moscow finally responded and ordered them back on board to save K-219, no matter the cost.
7. Captain Britanov bravely countermanded Moscow's order (he knew that putting survivors back on the sinking boat was tantamount to killing them), setting up a standoff that was only resolved when K-219 suddenly flooded and went down with the captain on board....
8. ....but who was miraculously saved when he was ejected out from the main trunk by pressure and was rescued, only to be charged by Moscow with dereliction of duty, sabotage and delivering his boat into enemy hands (which was the only charge that turned out to be accurate...we did recover and reverse engineer the warheads). But he'd saved his shipmates, and he too was a hero of the very first order..
Hope that adds something to your excellent reporting.
Robin White
What’s your source for the US recovering the warheads and “reverse engineering” them…? I’ve read that the Soviet ship Keldysh checked on it a year after sinking and saw that “missile doors had been *forced* open and missiles were missing”, but nothing beyond that - most pass this off as natural and due to impact/implosion/sea pressure.
WOOHOO!!! Happy Early Fourth Everyone "Especially you Jive", and thanks for the amazing story!
Same to you!
Watched the Soviet pre boomer fleet via boresight from Kef and Rota in the 60's. Never thought much about the life those sailors lived while on patrol. Boresight was a video game for us, pre PC, called, "The compartmentized Soviet Submarine Problem"
Love every one of your videos I watch!
I'm not a big submarine guy but man do these videos make me want to go and buy some general knowledge books on the subject!
Good documentary ,I like ur channel allot ,keep up and have a nice day 😊