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#15 - RW 266
pravda.ru
July 23, 2003
Nuclear Submarines Project Launched in USSR 50 Years
Ago
The competition between the USA and the USSR was immense
One may argue about the date of 50 years. At the end of 1952, Stalin signed a
governmental decree about the start of the nuclear submarines project. In the
summer of 1953, a group of nuclear scientists started working at the secret
enterprise (currently called Sevmash Enterprise) in the northern city of
Severodvinsk, the Arkhangelsk region. Probably, the project was launched because
of the information obtained with the help of secret agents. The Soviet
intelligence managed to find out at that time, Americans were testing a nuclear
engine, completing the construction of the first nuclear submarine.
The Soviets always tried to overcome the Americans. Why did Stalin decide to
build nuclear submarines? It deems that it is impossible to find an answer to
this question nowadays. Stalin's post-war program for the development of the
Soviet Navy was in full swing at the end of 1952. A competent "primary
source" called "Dead Water" published the following information:
"The first post-war program stipulated the construction of nine 75,000
tonnage battleships, 15 aircraft carriers, 12 heavy cruisers, 60 light cruisers,
and more than 500 submarines." Russia did not have its aircraft carriers,
but Russian submarines are known worldwide. Those battleships were cut into
metal scrap right in the building berths. Below is an excerpt from another
"primary source," an American one. After the USSR's victory in WWII,
Directive 20/1 of the US National Security Council ran (dated 08.18.1948):
"To secure the nation by means of making the USSR leadership build
expensive, but useless arms in peaceful times. Any hotspot will not be
perspective after powerful nuclear weapons appear. It is not our business to
think of internal consequences that might occur as a result of such a concept in
another country. In addition to it, we are not supposed to think that we are
responsible for these events. If Soviet leaders decide that the growing
significance of more educated international relations concepts is incompatible
with their power in Russia, it is their business, but not ours. Our business is
to work and make internal events happen there."
"Mediators" around Soviet and Russian leaders have always been
interested in ruining the country with useless arms. Probably, that was the
reason why they destroyed heavy cruisers that would have been capable of
neutralizing the threat of American aircraft carriers at any period - peaceful
or not.
The Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) newspaper published the following information:
"Unlike in the USA, the initiative was set forth by academicians, not
military men - scientists I. Kurchatov, A. Alexandrov, A. Leipunsky. Academician
Alexandrov, who subsequently become the President of the USSR Academy of
Sciences, was the organizer and the scientific administrator in the field for 40
years, until he deceased. The construction of the first Soviet submarine was
conducted at enterprise N402 - currently Sevmash Enterprise in Severodvinsk. The
competition between the two superpowers was immense. There were several
directions in the struggle: the number of nuclear cruisers in the navy, the
nuclear capacity, their target and range precision, as well as the quality of
nuclear energy installations - the capacity, weight, size, reliability,
resource, noise and vibrating characteristics and so on and so forth. One shall
acknowledge, the USA was ahead of the Soviet Navy for long from the point of
view of nuclear submarines' number and their exploitation. Soviet subs were not
as good as American ones from the point of view of noise and vibration
peculiarities. On the other hand, Soviet submarines were superior in their
available power, depth of submergence, they had better speed and larger reserve
buoyancy. Russian submarines still hold the speed and submergence record v 1.000
meters and over 40 knots."
I had a chance to talk to several Soviet and Russian scientists, who had
projected nuclear submarines, particularly at the famous company Rubin. No one
of them could answer my question about the reason why so many various nuclear
submarine projects were developed in the USSR. Americans had only a few projects
that they modernize from time to time, adding new equipment and arms to them.
What was the reason for the USSR to invent the fastest submarine (Plavnik,
Komsomolets) or the largest submarine (Tayfun), if the most important operating
characteristics of a sub is secrecy and low noise level.
Owing to the USSR's disadvantage in submarines' secrecy, nuclear cruisers
were developed in the Soviet Union without any obstacles during the latest 50
years. One shall assume that they wanted to exhaust the national economy
building the arms that were good for parades, albeit they were also dangerous
for crewmembers. By the beginning of the 1990s, it became known that the nuclear
submarines race of the two countries was extremely burdensome and hopeless.
However, the scale and the intensity of the competition between the navies of
the two superpowers in the World Ocean became absolutely different at the end of
the 20th century. About a 100 American and 200 Russian nuclear submarines have
been removed from the naval arsenal. Both the USA and Russia are currently
building just a few submarines.
It goes without saying that these polemic notes do not mean that nuclear
submarines are not important when it comes to a national security. It is neither
a hypothesis, nor even a version. It is just a question of a specialist.
Andrey Mikhailov
CDI Russia Weekly #266 ~ Contents • Next
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