K-219 was a Project 667A Navaga-class ballistic missile submarine (NATO reporting name Yankee I) of the Soviet Navy. It carried 16 R-27U liquid-fuel missiles powered by UDMH with nitrogen tetroxide (NTO). K-219 was involved in what has become one of the most controversial submarine incidents during the Cold War on 3 October 1986. The 15-year-old vessel, which was on an otherwise routine Cold War nuclear deterrence patrol in the North Atlantic 1,090 kilometres (680 mi) northeast of Bermuda, suffered an explosion and fire in a missile tube. While underway, a submerged seal in a missile hatch cover failed, allowing high-pressure seawater to enter the missile tube and owing to the pressure differential ruptured the missile fuel tanks, allowing the missile's liquid fuel to mix and ultimately combust. Though there was no official announcement, the Soviet Union claimed the leak was caused by a collision with the submarine USS Augusta. Although Augusta was operating within the area, both the United States Navy and the commander of K-219, Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov, deny that a collision took place. The incident was novelized in the book Hostile Waters, which reconstructed the incident from descriptions by the survivors, ships' logs, the official investigations, and participants both ashore and afloat from the Soviet and the American sides.
Explosion
Shortly after 0530 Moscow time, seawater leaking into silo six of K-219 reacted with missile fuel, producing chlorine and nitrogen dioxide gases and sufficient heat to explosively decompose additional fuming nitric acid to produce more nitrogen dioxide gas. K-219 weapons officer Alexander Petrachkov attempted to deal with this by disengaging the hatch cover and venting the missile tube to the sea. Shortly after 0532, an explosion occurred in the silo. K-219 had previously experienced a similar event; one of her missile tubes was already disabled and welded shut, having been permanently sealed after an explosion caused by reaction between seawater leaking into the silo and missile fuel residue. An article in Undersea Warfare by Captain First Rank, Igor Kurdin, Russian Navy – K-219's previous XO (executive officer) – and Lieutenant Commander Wayne Grasdock, USN described the explosion occurrence as follows:
At 0514, the BCh-2 officer and the hold machinist/engineer in compartment IV (the forward missile compartment) discovered water dripping from under the plug of missile tube No. 6 (the third tube from the bow on the port side). During precompression of the plug, the drips turned into a stream. The BCh-2 officer reported water in missile tube No. 6, and at 0525, the captain ordered an ascent to a safe depth (46 meters, 151 ft) while a pump was started in an attempt to dry out missile tube No. 6. At 0532, brown clouds of oxidant began issuing from under the missile-tube plug, and the BCh-2 officer declared an accident alert in the compartment and reported the situation to the GKP (main control post). Although personnel assigned to other compartments left the space, nine people remained in compartment IV. The captain declared an accident alert. It took the crew no more than one minute to carry out initial damage control measures, which included hermetically sealing all compartments. Five minutes later, at 0538, an explosion occurred in missile tube No. 6. Two sailors were killed outright in the explosion, and a third died soon afterward from toxic gas poisoning. Through a breach in the hull, the vessel immediately started taking on seawater, quickly sinking from its original depth of 40 meters (130 ft) to eventually reaching a depth of over 300 meters (980 ft). Sealing all of the compartments and full engagement of the seawater pumps in the stricken compartments enabled the depth to be stabilized. Up to 25 sailors were trapped in a sealed section, and it was only after a conference with his incident specialists that the captain allowed the chief engineer to open the hatch and save the 25 lives. It could be seen from instruments that although the nuclear reactor should have automatically been shut down, it was not. Lt. Nikolai Belikov, one of the reactor control officers, entered the reactor compartment but ran out of oxygen after turning just one of the four rod assemblies on the first reactor, forcing him to evacuate. Belikov then reentered with twenty-year-old enlisted seaman Sergei Preminin as support, shutting down the remaining three rod assemblies. However, they were forced to evacuate again due to heat and exhaustion, leaving the four assembly rods from the second reactor still active. Despite his exhaustion, Preminin then volunteered to single-handedly shut down the second reactor by following the instructions of the chief engineer. Working with a full-face gas mask, he succeeded, averting any potential meltdown. However, when Preminin tried to exit the reactor compartment, he found that the door would not open. A large fire had developed within the compartment, raising the pressure inside compared to that outside. The resulting pressure difference trapped Preminin inside the reactor compartment, where he eventually died of asphyxiation. For his actions, Sergei Preminin was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation. In a nuclear safe condition, and with sufficient stability to allow it to surface, Captain Britanov surfaced K-219 on battery power alone. He was then ordered to have the ship towed by a Soviet freighter back to her home port of Gadzhiyevo, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) away. Although a towline was attached, towing attempts were unsuccessful, and after subsequent poison gas leaks into the final aft compartments and against orders, Britanov ordered the crew to evacuate onto the towing ship, but remained aboard K-219 himself. Displeased with Britanov's inability to repair his submarine and continue his patrol, Moscow ordered Valery Pshenichny, K-219's security officer, to assume command, transfer the surviving crew back to the submarine, and return to duty. Before those orders could be carried out the flooding reached a point beyond recovery and on 6 October 1986 K-219 sank to the bottom of the Hatteras Abyssal Plain at a depth of about 6,000 m (20,000 ft). Britanov abandoned ship shortly before the sinking. K-219's full complement of nuclear weapons was lost along with the vessel.
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