Soviet Navy Says It Will Try to Raise Sub

The Soviet navy said Tuesday that it will try to recover the nuclear-powered experimental submarine that caught fire and sank in the Norwegian Sea last week with the loss of 42 lives.

Vice Adm. Sergei P. Vargin, head of the Soviet northern fleet’s political department, said that, although a governmental commission is now investigating the accident, the navy wants, in the interest of safety, to know what caused the fire and a series of subsequent explosions and to see how much of the submarine remains intact.

“We believe we must raise the submarine to determine the reasons for what has happened,” Vargin told Soviet television in Murmansk, the northern fleet’s headquarters. The fire has been tentatively blamed on an electrical short-circuit.

Soviet salvage specialists have been assigned to the operation, he said, and an initial survey will be made shortly.

They believe, he continued, that the submarine’s hull was not crushed as it sank to a depth of at least 4,500 and perhaps 6,000 feet because the boat was already full of water.

Western military analysts suggested earlier this week that the Soviet Union might attempt to retrieve the submarine because it contains some of the country’s most advanced technology--and because leaving it on the seabed in international waters might be taken as an open invitation to the United States to attempt to bring it up.

Vargin repeated Soviet assurances that there would be no radiation leaks because the submarine’s nuclear reactor had been shut down before it sank and the warheads on the two nuclear torpedoes aboard had not been armed.

“The man who shut down the nuclear reactor is in hospital here,” Vargin said, “and he has been interviewed by the government commission.

Torpedoes ‘No Danger’

“The torpedoes represent no threat. They were not ready for military use, not in a state of readiness. I repeat, there can be no danger.”

Soviet warships and research vessels are continuing to patrol the area, monitoring radiation levels, Vargin said, but so far no radiation leakage has been detected.

Several of the 27 survivors were shown on television greeting their families and praising the courage of their shipmates in fighting the fierce blaze for more than five hours before the order was given to abandon the submarine.

“No one thought of how to save himself,” said one crew member, who was not identified. “Everyone was thinking about how to rescue others.”

More sailors might have been saved, a Soviet newspaper suggested Tuesday, had authorities reported the fire earlier and asked for international assistance.

In a dispatch from Copenhagen, the Communist Youth League newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said that many Scandinavians felt that help could have reached the ship much sooner if an appeal for help had been made. The first Soviet ship, a fishing vessel, arrived three hours after the submarine sank and eight hours after the fire broke out.

The water temperature was just three or four degrees above freezing and the air temperature was even colder, several of the rescued sailors commented, and many of their shipmates died from the exposure.

The sailors also described how the commander of the submarine, Capt. Yevgeny Vanin, died after saving a sailor who had collapsed as he emerged from the submarine.

The last to leave the vessel, Vanin saw the seaman caught in the submarine’s smoke-filled exit hatch. “The commander helped him to get out, and only after that he dove into the icy water, swimming toward the inflatable life rafts.

“But too much energy had been (expended) on the struggle (to save) the submarine and on helping his comrades,” Tass said. “The commander died before the very eyes of his fellow seamen.”