K-19 THE WIDOW MAKER

April 8, 1959 : K-19 is hull completed, is ready for christening.Breaking with tradition,a Man instead of a woman is chosen to break the champagne bottle across the back of the sub as it is being launched. Instead of shattering ,the bottle bounces off and lands intact.The superstitious in attendance are convinced it is a BAD OMEN....



K-19 was dubbed the widowmaker long before it put to sea. Dogged by problems of supply, poor workmanship, tight budgets, an unyielding and ill-advised adherence to schedules and other joys of communism, K-19 was Russia’s first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. A big boat.


July-November 1960- K-19's first sea trials are plagued by breakdowns and malfunctions.



Day 18 - DISASTER STRIKES

Water pressure in starboard nuclear reactor's cooling system has dropped to zero.
Without Coolant the temperature in reactor core will rise unchecked.
A Thermal explosion would however, seriously damage or even sink K-19 & scatter a significant amount of Radioactive contamination to the surrounding sea & air.



About 8 men enter compartment6 to jury rig a system for getting water to the reactor. After about an hour, the men finally manage to weld a pipe supplying H2O onto the stub of former air vent value.
Cooling H2O flows into the stricken reactor. As the crew struggles to cool the reactor, deadly radiation is spreading through the sub.



RESCUE -
K-19 - The crew is overjoyed when they spot S-270 on the horizon.The 8 men from compartment 6 , theit faces grotesquely swollen & deformed are evacuated to S-270.
The non-essential crew members climb aboard for total of 79 men evacuated, leaving 60 men aboard K-19.



K-19 IS HEAVILY CONTAMINATED THROUGHOUT.

10 hrs later remaining 60 men are evacuated.
Within days - 8 veterans of K-19's inaugral mission died of radiation poisoning. 14 more died within 2 yrs. Remaining 117 suffered varying degrees of radiation related illness.


K-19 WAS DECOMMISSIONED IN 1991.
It spent it's final years moored to a pier near Murmank before it was finally scrapped in spring 2002.



I've seen the movie made on this sub, starring Harrison Ford.. .it just moves you to tears,how terrifying it must be for the crew at that moment and more so for their family members... To top it all the russian Admiral, stated "that every year many people die in car accidents"..The heroes were'nt given recognition ,they were kept in isolation because of the radiation...