The pressure to match enhanced United States military capabilities during the Cold War entailed numerous submarine mishaps for the Soviet Union, whose economy was so much weaker. Of all these mishaps, the Charlie class submarine K-429 often incorrectly referred to as K-329, stands out for its misfortune of sinking twice accruing from the systemic problem within Soviet naval operations and maintenance.
The K-429 was a Project 670 submarine designed in the early 1960s; it came into service in September 1972. Its homeport was Petropavlovsk, and it was operated by the Soviet Navy’s Pacific Fleet. Early in 1983, at what was considered to be a rather sensitive time in US-USSR relations, the K-429 was hurriedly pressed back into service before an extensive refit had been completed. When Captain Nikolai Suvorov could not find his usual crew, he sortied to sea with a makeshift team, most of whom were not familiar with the submarine’s systems.
What happened next was almost expected. During a test dive, some misunderstandings over the ballast tanks began a steep dive and flooding of one compartment, killing fourteen sailors. The submarine bottomed out at about 160 feet below the sea. It had been common practice to weld the escape capsules and emergency buoys to the hull to prevent their loss. After several hours, two sailors swam to the surface to report the plight, triggering a rescue effort that saved most of the remaining crew. Captain Suvorov and a compartment chief were later convicted for violating fleet rules; Suvorov served three years of a ten-year sentence.
Astoundingly, the K-429 was refloated, repaired, and returned to service. The submarine again sank at dockside in September 1985, killing one crew member. It’s still not clear what caused the second sinking, although it doesn’t seem to be related to the first incident. K-429 was raised once more but never put to sea again. She served as a training hulk until being scrapped in the 1990s.
In an almost parallel tale of Cold War submarine intrigue, the CIA launched an audacious operation to raise a sunken Soviet submarine, K-129, from the ocean floor. A brainstormed operation for a 600-foot ship with a giant claw to raise the submarine from over three miles underwater was codenamed Project Azorian. It began in 1968 when K-129 vanished in the Pacific Ocean. Well, the U.S. finally located it and saw the perfect opportunity to collect some vital intel.
With the help of billionaire Howard Hughes, the CIA dreamed up an outlandish cover story, peddling the ship as a deep-sea mining research vessel called the Hughes Glomar Explorer. In 1974, the ship raised part of K-129, including the bodies of a few crewmembers, who received a military burial at sea. As it was, the story leaked, diplomatic tensions flared, and the “Glomar response”, “we can neither confirm nor deny.”