Soviet Submarine Sinks Off Norway : Nuclear-Driven Craft Goes Down After Fire; ‘Major Loss of Life’ Reported

An advanced Soviet attack submarine caught fire and sank in the Norwegian Sea on Friday, U.S. and Norwegian government sources reported. A Soviet official in Oslo confirmed that it had sunk.

The nuclear-powered Mike-class submarine, which can carry a crew of 95, suffered a catastrophic accident involving “major loss of life,” one U.S. government official said. An American monitoring reports on the incident said the vessel surfaced briefly, then sank.

At the Soviet Embassy in Oslo, a spokesman early today said the submarine sank but gave no other information, Reuters news agency reported, quoting the Norwegian news agency NTB.

U.S. officials said they did not know what weapons the craft was carrying, but that it is capable of launching SS-N-21 cruise missiles with either nuclear or conventional warheads.

Believed One of a Kind

The accident involving the submarine, believed to be the only one of its kind, may provide an intelligence bonanza for the United States and its allies if reconnaissance ships, aircraft or satellites were able to take detailed, close-up photographs of the rare craft as it surfaced.

The Norwegian Defense Ministry said that Soviet ships and aircraft were in the area where the sub was lost, in international waters off Spitsbergen Island near the Arctic Circle.

The statement said Norwegian military aircraft had flown over the area, about 300 miles from North Cape on the Norwegian mainland, and had seen the submarine ablaze. Officials said the fire appeared to be concentrated in the stern, or rear, of the vessel, where water distillation equipment and propulsion machinery are housed.

“We have observed bodies,” Norwegian Defense Minister Johan Jorgen Holst told NTB. “We do not yet have an exact figure.”

In an interview broadcast on Britain’s Independent Television News, Norwegian Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Gullow Gjeseth said that in a flight over the submarine, “I saw at the time two dinghies, with the personnel in one dinghy. We saw also a Soviet merchant ship in the area and we know also Soviet aircraft have been over the area.”

The Soviets have built only one submarine of this type, according to “Jane’s Fighting Ships,” the authoritative British reference book on the world’s navies. U.S. naval intelligence analysts said it was built as a platform for experiments in submarine design, and may have special coatings and a unique propulsion system. The sub’s design reduces both the turbulence and noise that the boat creates when it is moving, making it harder to locate in the cat-and-mouse game that U.S. and Soviet submarines play undersea.

The 361-foot-long vessel was launched at Severodvinsk in May, 1983. It was powered by twin, liquid-metal-cooled nuclear reactors and had an estimated top speed of 38 knots.

The double-hulled ship was probably made of titanium for weight and noise reduction, according to Jane’s. Norman Polmar, an independent American naval analyst, said the submarine could have been carrying as many as six nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

Little Information Available

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said U.S. officials had little information on the incident Friday night.

“There are indications there was a major fire aboard, but we have no details. We understand there has been a loss of life but we can’t confirm how many,” Fitzwater said. “We express the sympathy of the United States government to the Soviet government for any loss of life involved.” President Bush had been notified of the accident, Fitzwater said.

The area of the sinking in the Norwegian Sea is the site of many naval exercises by both Eastern and Western forces and is considered a potential battleground in the event of a large-scale conflict. Western forces practice keeping Soviet submarines away from Atlantic shipping lanes, while Soviet vessels patrol there to keep track of Western ships.

One analyst said that before sinking, the submarine could have released its ballast, causing the ship to pop up high on the surface of the ocean, exposing some of the sub’s underside.

“This really could be an intelligence coup,” said one American naval analyst. When a disabled Soviet Victor-class submarine surfaced off Newport, R.I., in the mid-1980s, analysts reaped a harvest of valuable intelligence.

But the accident poses potentially severe environmental hazards as well. Previous submarine accidents have resulted in release of radiation, and in 1961 members of a Soviet submarine crew died of radiation poisoning after an accident in the Baltic, according to recently declassified CIA documents.

John Holdren, professor of energy and resources at UC Berkeley and an expert on nuclear issues who has served as an adviser to the Department of Energy, said that if radiation leaked from the vessel’s reactors from the sea bottom, not much would reach the surface.

The ocean and the chemicals naturally occurring in it have a diluting effect on radiation, he said. The submarine would probably come to rest so far down that little radiation is likely to reach the surface or contaminate edible fish, which generally inhabit waters less deep.

” . . . One could imagine an effect on fisheries,” Holdren said, “but in previous nuclear submarine accidents there has not been enough damage to the reactor to produce a big effect.”

The latest incident is the fifth known sinking of a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine. A Soviet Yankee-class ballistic missile sub sank 600 miles east of Bermuda in 1986. A Charlie-class cruise-missile submarines went down off Kamchatka Peninsula in 1983. And in 1970, a November-class torpedo-attack submarine sank off the Atlantic coast of Spain.

In perhaps the best-known incident, the forward section of a Soviet Golf-class submarine that had sunk northwest of Hawaii in 1968 was recovered from the seabed in 1974 by the American salvage vessel Glomar Explorer.

Two U.S. nuclear submarines have been lost at sea--the Thresher off the U.S. East Coast in 1963 with the loss of 129 lives, and the Scorpion off the Azores Islands in 1968, with 99 men killed.

In 1982, then-Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. told reporters, “We do have firm evidence that their (Soviet) standards of safety--and crew safety--are far lower than ours in nuclear power plants.”

Times staff writer Maura Dolan, in Los Angeles, contributed to this story.

MIKE SUBMARINE: ONE OF A KIND

Soviet submarine that sank off Norway was only one commissioned in Mike class. It may have been test vehicle. Some specifications :

Displacement: 6,400 tons.

Length: 361 feet.

Propulsion: 2 nuclear reactors (probably liquid metal cooled); single propeller.

Speed: 38 knots

Crew: About 95

Missiles: Inertial and terrain-following cruise type, with 100-kiloton nuclear warhead and range up to 1,100 miles; also two types of inertial-flight missiles with ranges of 50 miles and 20 miles, nuclear and conventional warheads.

Torpedoes: Six torpedo tubes, 21-inch and 25.6-inch diameters.

Mines: Can lay up to 64 mines in lieu of torpedoes.

Service: First launched May, 1983; in service late 1984.

Source: Jane’s Fighting Ships 1988-89