Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 20, 1993 TAG: 9308200049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT BIVENS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MURMANSK, RUSSIA LENGTH: Medium
They saved their sub, and the reactor did not explode. But the radiation made it a nightmare voyage with men dying in agony and begging their shipmates to kill them.
For years Russians knew the story of Zateyev's submarine only through underground songs. Now he is 67, retired, and ready at last to talk about those sad, romantic verses.
Zateyev's ship was the first Soviet atomic submarine armed with nuclear warheads. She was named the K-19 but among sailors became known as "Hiroshima."
Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the K-19's fate was a closely-guarded secret. Western specialists heard rumors but no details until 1991, when Pravda finally confirmed that radiation had killed many of the crew.
Ordinary Russians still know little about the tragedy. Zateyev said Thursday that a TV documentary was filmed two years ago, but officials deemed it "too upsetting" to be shown.
The stocky, dignified captain and other survivors recounted their story in interviews this month in Moscow and the northern port of Murmansk.
The K-19 was a major technological advance for the Soviets, and engineers were so eager to launch the sub that they installed no back-up cooling system.
During the ship's construction, a welder allowed solder to drip onto a pipe carrying coolant to the reactor. The pipe cracked microscopically, like a hot glass dropped into cold water.
On June 4, 1961, the K-19 was hiding in the North Atlantic from Soviet diesel subs during a training exercise. The cracked pipe burst.
In the reactor room, the temperature soared to at least 140 degrees. The gauge went no higher. Radiation also was rising, but the crew could only guess how much.
The reactor had to be cooled.
"It would have been Chernobyl. Only 30 years earlier," said crew member Alexander Fateyev, now 56, an official with the Russian Ministry of Energy and himself a retired captain. He said the ship was carrying three nuclear warheads and would have poisoned the sea with radiation if the reactor had burst.
Zateyev organized three-man brigades of volunteers to work five to 10 minutes each. Protected only by raincoats and gas masks, they were ordered to weld a new cooling system.
Among the first volunteers was Lt. Boris Korchilov, 20, a blue-eyed ladies' man.
"I accompanied him to the reactor room door - to his death," Zateyev recalled. "And I said: `Well, Boris, do you know where you're going?'
"And he said: `I know, Comrade Captain.'
" `Well, go with God,' I said."
Five minutes later, Korchilov stumbled out of the reactor room, tore off his gas mask and vomited.
"That was the first time I felt: `Yes, this is radiation,' " Zateyev said.
Of the 139-man crew, 22 died of radiation poisoning - eight within days, the rest within two years.
"Right on the spot their appearances began changing. Skin not protected by their clothes began to redden, face and hands began to swell. Dots of blood began to appear on their foreheads, under their hair. Within two hours we couldn't recognize them," Zateyev said.
"People died fully conscious, in terrible pain. They couldn't speak, but they could whisper. They begged us to kill them."
But the work brigades succeeded, and the reactor did not explode. A Soviet diesel sub answered Zateyev's SOS.
The K-19 was towed to Russia's northern Kola Peninsula. Korchilov and five other sailors were rushed to Moscow. Seven days later, Korchilov was the first of them to die; within 10 days, all six were dead. Doctors told Zateyev they had received three times the lethal dose of radiation.
Others survived grueling hospital treatments. Zateyev lay in bed for 18 months; doctors replaced both his bone marrow and blood.
Because the corpses were radioactive, the six were buried secretly in a Moscow cemetery. The location of the fraternal grave was unknown to families and friends until a K-19 crew member came across it at his brother-in-law's funeral.
A government commission declared Zateyev a hero and decorated his crew. They have received no financial support, only "valuable gifts," Zateyev said, adding without irony: "You know, watches."
They were ordered not to discuss what had happened, and their medical histories were falsified. Doctors wrote that they had "damage to the peripheral nervous system."
"Only a year or so ago did our doctors give us papers saying we suffered from radiation exposure," Zateyev said. "That was the system: hide everything. People suffered, died, and there was no reaction."
by CNB