On Her Majesty's Nuclear Service by Eric Thompson

Author:Eric Thompson [Thompson, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: non-fiction
ISBN: 9781612005713
Publisher: Casemate UK
Published: 2018-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

****

Fire is one of the worst things that can happen in a submarine. It very rapidly burns up the limited amount of oxygen on board and turns it into deadly carbon monoxide and suffocating carbon dioxide whilst also filling the boat with toxic smoke. The crew must plug immediately into Emergency Breathing System connections to survive and that tethers them to the nearest breathing nipple. The fire has then to be fought by men in breathing apparatus and cannot be fought simply by pouring tons of water on to it through fireman’s hoses like in a building fire. That could sink the boat, cause major electrical failures, scram the reactor, and leave the boat without the propulsion required to reach the surface.

Had Warspite’s fire happened at sea, the boat would have surfaced for fresh air and safety, but there would have been limited chance of escape. A nuclear submarine has no upper deck, no lifeboats, and scarcely enough room for the crew on the casing. If the sea were to be anything other than calm, they would have been washed overboard. Fire is a submariner’s nightmare.

Warspite survived, but the Soviet nuclear-powered, nuclear-missile-carrying submarine, K278 Komsomolets, did not. On 7th April 1989, she suffered a major fire on patrol. Like the ill-fated K19 Widowmaker before her, she had deployed on her first operational patrol and was running submerged at a depth of 1,099 feet (335 m), one hundred miles South West of Bear Island in the Barents Sea. The fire broke out in her engine room due to an electrical short-circuit and was so intense that it melted bulkhead glands. When rubber seals melted on high-pressure air systems, the fire was then fanned up by this fresh supply of oxygen and further fuelled by leaking diesel and hydraulic oil, which created the perfect inferno. The heat was so intense that it melted the cable penetration glands in the pressure hull, thus creating holes through the hull that sealed her fate. Holes in the hull cannot be shut off with valves. She was condemned to sink.

A mere eleven minutes after the fire had begun, with all power lost, her ballast tanks were blown in emergency and she shot to the surface out of control. Her crew were then faced with the choice of death by burning, drowning or freezing. Most abandoned ship but the Captain and some other brave souls remained on board until she sank five hours later, long before any rescue craft arrived. Five of the latter managed to escape in a small survival capsule but when that too sank in rough seas, only one survived. Out of her crew of sixty-nine, forty-two lost their lives, most dying from hypothermia or drowning in the ice cold water. A nearby fish factory ship saved the remainder.

Komsomolets was a fully manned, well-designed, modern, operational submarine that had recently achieved the submergence record of 3,350 feet (1,020 m), far deeper than any British or American boat could dive. But fire respects nothing. It took only eleven minutes to destroy her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.