 K-19:
The Widowmaker:
The Secret Story of the Soviet Nuclear Submarine
by Peter A. Huchthausen
The Soviet nuclear submarine K-19 was the pride of the Soviet Navy,
but on July 4, 1961, during its maiden voyage to the North Atlantic
for war games, it suddenly and unexpectedly developed a serious leak
in one of the reactors. In a race against time, the officers and crew
worked desperately and brilliantly, under intense exposure to radiation,
to improvise a coolant system, averting a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster.
The toll for their efforts was certain and devastating: Eight men
died painful deaths from acute radiation poisoning within days of
the accident, and the surviving crew returned home to await their
unknowable fate.
Featuring
a complete history of the actual events, with passages from the
submarine captain’s memoir, and rarely published historic images,
K-19 places readers at the apex of the Cold War’s brinkmanship
between the USSR and the United States. It is the companion book
to the upcoming National Geographic feature film about this gripping
tragedy, K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.
Including information on the making of the film, with production
stills, and cutaway drawings of the submarine, this powerful volume
combines authoritative history and the magic of moviemaking to give
the reader the real backstory to K-19.
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 Harrison
Ford and Liam Neeson star in a thrilling drama about what many believe
to be the most dangerous time in global history. Not unlike today,
it was a time when the only mechanism for peace was mutually assured
destruction, and people around the world felt tension on a daily
basis. The story is inspired by a chilling event that happened in
1961 during the Cold War when the Soviet Union had enough nuclear
weapons to destroy the world two times over and the United States
had the nuclear power to destroy the world ten times over. As schoolchildren
were taught to “duck and cover” under their desks and
parents built bomb shelters in their backyards, each nation continued
to add to its nuclear stockpile…waiting for who would strike
first.
 “K-19:
The Widowmaker” is not a film about war but about the courage
it takes not to go to war. It is about military muscle, mind and
heart. It is also about a world in which technology is king and
sacrifice in the name of national security is common. It exemplifies
the duty a soldier feels toward his nation and his countrymen, and
lays bare the burden of responsibility a leader feels for those
under his command. And finally, it is about how easily tragedies
can occur in wartime or anytime by accident, by machine malfunction…or
by human error.
 Inspired
by a true story, the film follows the heroism of Captain Alexei
Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) who, at the height of the Cold War, is
ordered to take command of the nuclear missile submarine K-19 away
from its original commander Captain Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson).
Vostrikov’s mission is to quickly ready the ill-prepared sub
for her maiden voyage -- no matter what the cost.
But
Vostrikov, Polenin and K-19’s loyal crew can never imagine
all that is expected of them. Neither can they fathom what the price
of failure might be for them and for the world when a nuclear reactor
malfunctions, threatening a core meltdown and an explosion that
will certainly kill all aboard. As they glide beneath the Arctic
seas, it is the crew’s collective bravery and Vostrikov’s
daring embrace of his duty toward his country and his men which
will ultimately save K-19. . . and stave off what surely would have
been a nuclear disaster.
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THE
REAL K:19 DISASTER
 In
1961 the Cold War was at its zenith. Both superpowers, the United
States and the Soviet Union, were trapped together in a hall of
mirrors, each captivated by images of the other's nuclear strength
and willingness to use it. In November of 1960, the United States
sent the USS George Washington, its first Polaris missile submarine,
on patrol. The sophisticated vessel, able to lurk undetected off
Russian coasts for months at a time, was capable of launching 16
nuclear missiles on a moment's notice. In response, the Soviet leadership
rushed to place its own first nuclear ballistic missile submarine
into service, though it meant risking the crew in an untried and
unready vessel.
Often
referred to as the “Silent Service,” submarines have always
been dangerous boats (submariners traditionally call their vessels
boats), and the K-19 -- at more than 4000 tons and nearly 400 feet
long -- was no exception. During the Cold War, the United States
Navy lost two nuclear submarines, the USS Thresher in 1963 and the
USS Scorpion in 1968, both with all hands on board. The Soviets
also lost two nuclear submarines during that trying period of history,
and later, in 2000, the democratic Russia suffered the Kursk disaster
even as “K-19: The Widowmaker” was beginning pre-production.
 The
K-19 was an exceptionally risky submarine to be aboard. The three
ballistic missiles she carried used liquid fuel -- toxic, corrosive
and explosive -- exceedingly tricky to handle. Even worse, her nuclear
reactor sacrificed safety margins for power and compactness. On
July 4, 1961, while under way on exercises, K-19 developed a leak
in her reactor cooling system. Left unchecked, the leak could have
led to a core meltdown of the reactor. Although it could not explode
like a nuclear bomb, a reactor core meltdown had the potential to
produce dangerous radiation and an intense radioactive explosion.
Amid the tensions at the peak of the Cold War, such an explosion
so close to a NATO facility might well have spiraled into a catastrophic
military confrontation between the Super Powers.
 Faced
with this unthinkable eventuality -- and the equally unthinkable
alternative of accepting American help -- the crew of K-19 had to
do what they could to repair the leak. And so they did, at a terrible
cost: 7 men died of exposure to radioactivity almost immediately,
and 14 died shortly thereafter.
 Amazingly,
after that terrible incident, K-19 was repaired and returned to
service, but it continued to be a jinxed boat. In 1969, it collided
underwater with the U.S. submarine Gato and was badly damaged. Still,
K-19 managed to return to port, and in 1972, it suffered a disastrous
fire while submerged, losing 28 crewmembers. In fact, Soviet submariners
eventually dubbed the ill-fated vessel “Hiroshima.”
 The
1961 accident that forms the story of “K-19: The Widowmaker”
was covered up during the Soviet era, leaving the heroism and sacrifice
of K-19’s crew unrecognized for 30 years. According to producer
Joni Sighvatsson, it’s “a real human drama about people
with enormous commitment to their country, and even more commitment
to their profession, their peers and their fellow human beings”
that has to be told.
WHY
THE FILM
“We were always intrigued by the mystery, the secrecy surrounding
K-19, but we brought the project to Kathryn Bigelow because we knew
she’d explore the humanity behind the story, not just the suspense,”
adds producer Christine Whitaker. “She’d give audiences
a way to relate to the Russians.”
“Understandably,
the Communist regime did not consider it a shining moment in history,”
observes director/producer Kathryn Bigelow. “So, because it
did not happen in wartime, they assigned no heroism to it. They
classified it as merely an accident. I hope ‘K-19: The Widowmaker’
will change all that.”
 GOD
IS BEHIND THE SCENES
The center piece in the film is the transformation of the Harrison
Ford character from a heartless institutional man to a caring individual.
Somehow
God is in the backdrop of history working things out. This film
illustrates in graphic detail just how close we came to blowingup
planet earth. In every crisis event God is there, truly. Otherwise
humanity would simply no longer exist.
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K-19:
THE WIDOWMAKER
