The Day a Soviet Nuclear Attack Submarine Rammed an American Aircraft Carrier

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1984, during a period of Cold War tension, a Soviet submarine collided with a United States aircraft carrier. Here’s The History Guy with the story of the USS Kitty Hawk collision.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is our American Stories, and our next one comes
from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.
His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people
of all ages on YouTube. The History Guys also heard
here on Our American Stories. In nineteen eighty four, during
a period of Cold War tension, a Soviet submarine collided

(00:32):
with the United States aircraft carrier. Here's the History Guy
with the story of the USS Kitte Hawk collision. It
was March twenty first, nineteen eighty four, and the supercarrier
USS Kittie Hawk was in the Sea of Japan. Commissioned
in April nineteen sixty one, Kittie Hawk was the first
of a class of three so called supercarriers, upgraded versions

(00:52):
of the previous Forestall class, capable of carrying eighty five
aircraft with a crew complement of five thousand, six twenty
four office and men. The Kittyhawk hat served without the
Vietnam War and continued serving in the Western Pacific. She
had been sent to the Sea of Japan in March
to participate in Team Spirit exercises. Team Spirit was a
joint exercise of the United States and the Republic of

(01:14):
Korea held annually from nineteen seventy six to nineteen ninety three.
The exercise was designed to evaluate and improve the interoperability
of the r OK and US forces. The operation so
close to the Soviet Far East attracted the attention of
the Soviet military. Kittyhawk reported that over the course of
the exercise, the carrier and its escorts came in contact
with forty three Soviet aircraft, six Soviet surface elements, and

(01:39):
one Soviet submarine. The submarine was the Victor class submarine
K three fourteen, designated Project six seventy one or Scorpion
Fish by the Soviet Navy and given the NATO designation
Victor Juan. The Victor class was a series of nuclear
powered attack submarines designed to counter enemy vessels, especially American
nuclear attacks submarine. Although its exact armament at the time

(02:02):
is still classified, the submarine was likely armed with both
torpedoes and missiles, including ss IN fifteen Starfish nuclear armed
anti submarine missiles. The Kitty Hawk was aware there's being
shadowed by the submarine since it had left the South
Korean port of Poussaar on March nineteenth. Such behavior was
not uncommon, as an officer board Kitty Hawk explained to

(02:23):
The New York Times, they played catamouse with us all
the time. As part of their tracking, the US had
simulated destroying the submarine that has had units in a
position where they could have destroyed the submarine in a
combat situation fifteen times. A former aviator who piloted a
P three B O'Rion anti submarine and surveillance aircraft explained,
chasing Ivan was great fun, serious business, but nevertheless great fun.

(02:47):
The only problem was that when you caught Ivan, you
had to let him go. On the night of March
twenty first, the Kitty Hawk was leaving the Sea of Japan,
heading south to the Yellow Sea. As they deployed, the
Kitty Hawk's escorts moved away point five miles distant. This,
in essence, left the Kitty Hawk blind to the location
the K three fourteen. The carrier did not have its

(03:07):
own sonar equipment, but instead relied on its escort vessels
and aircraft to track the submarine. If it were a
wartime situation, the submarine would never have gotten within the
Battle Group Pentagon. Spoken Michael Birch explained in a UPI report.
In peacetime, it's not required that the Navy keep twenty
four hour watchings of its submarines. Birch continued, these were
peacetime conditions, it's not unusual to lose contact. Still, the

(03:32):
pilot of the P three b Orion explained that he
and his crew knew that the Submary was in the
area of the carrier, and in fact speculated that the
Submary was attempting a maneuver where it tries to hide
underneath the carrier to mask the submarine sound techniques, which
the pilot said generally doesn't work. But the K three
fourteen wasn't trying to hide. Instead, the submarine under the
command of Captain Vladimir If Sinko had lost track of

(03:55):
the Kittie Hawk, the most likely reason was simply the
rough seas. Next, quoted in The Washington Post, commented that
it is very confusing world beneath the surface. Observed that
the Sea of Japan, which is relatively shallow and is
teeming with commercial and military ships, is one of the
noisiest in the world, confusing the sonar that submarine used
to track other ships. There's an additional problem as well

(04:16):
as sonar, which tracks sound, leaves a notorious blind spot
in the baffles behind a submarine, where the noise of
its own screws makes it impossible to detect other ships
across him approximately sixty degree arc. Some sailors suggests that
either the Kittie Hawk it made an abrupt course change
or was engaging in a deceptive lighting exercise, so the
ship would change its running lighting configuration to appear like

(04:38):
the guided missile cruiser USS Long Beach. While such operations
would have been intended to confuse surface ships, it may
also have confused the K three fourteen. In any case,
Having lost his target, Captain Ifsinko decided to bring the
K three fourteen to periscope depth. When he looked through
the periscope, he was stunned to see that he and
the Kittie Hawk were on a collision course. Immediately ordered

(05:00):
the submaring to dive, but by then it was already
too late. At approximately ten pm, fifty miles off the
coast of Korea in rough seas in pitch black night,
the nuclear powered and armed Soviet submarine KATE three fourteen
collided with the nuclear armed carrier USS Kittie Hawk. Captain
Rogers was on the bridge at the time. Bombering one

(05:21):
of the ship's radars. He said, we felt a sudden shutter,
a very violent shutter. The radar was designed to detect
surface contacts and would not have seen the still submerged submarine.
There was no indication that anyone on the Kittie Hawks
saw the submarine in the moments before the collision, and
they're likely wouldn't have been time to make a response
if they had. A sailor on the flight deck felt

(05:42):
the shutter too, explaining that is something you normally don't
feel on a carrier. A sailor in the messroom said
his trade jumped up four inches. Others, however, seemed to
barely notice, writing the shutter off as rough seas. One
sailor described acting shipmates in a TV lounge if they
felt something, and they insisted that he was crazy. On
the P three O'Rion, they could hear a great scraping

(06:03):
noise through their hydrophones. Sailors on the Kitty Hawks had
the scraping noise lasted five to eight minutes as the
submarine dragged along the keel if Sinko was quoted on
the website Russia Beyond recalling that the first thought was
that the conning tower had been destroyed and the submarine's
body was cut to pieces. They confirmed that the periscope
and antennas were still working when they felt a second
strike on the starboard side. The collision could have been

(06:26):
much worse. It was a glancing blow off the right
side of Kitty Hawk's bow. The second strike that of
Sinko felt, was when the submarine's propellers struck the hull
of the Kittie Hawk, breaking off a piece that was
left in the Kitty Hawk's bow. The submarine was forced
to surface. The Kitty Hawk immediately launched a pair of
SH three C King helicopters to render assistance. The submarine

(06:49):
appeared to have a dent or crease between its stern
and sails, reported moving at a slow five knots towards
the Soviet naval base at lad of Astok, while a
guided missile cruiser Pentrol Pavlosk steamed apparently to the submarines assistance.
The submarine did not answer the Kitty Hawk's offers of
assistance in order, did it request any, and the Soviet
government refused to comment. News reports at the time said

(07:10):
that the Kitty Hawk detected no nuclear leak from the submarine,
and that President Reagan was apprized of the situation. The
Kitty Hawk remained for approximately two hours in order to
be available in case it needed to render assistance, but
then continued on its course. All the US Navy ships
remained in the area. While the initial reports were that
the Kitty Hawk had taken only superficial damage, within a

(07:30):
day of the Navy reported that the carrier was taking
on water. The collision had ruptured a fuel tanks during
aircraft fuel which was then becoming contaminated with seawater. The
crew had to pump the fuel from the tank. The
Kitty Hawk had a hole in the bow and a
gash from the submarines propeller below the waterline. Divers the
next day brought up a piece of the propeller that
had been lodged in the hole, and the crew had
it mounted in a hangar. The Navy described the damage

(07:53):
as minor, saying that could be repaired at sea. It
was not significant enough to affect normal operations, although members
aboard Kitty Hawk speculated that there was a significant risk
for the crew of the submarine after being rolled over
in a collision The Russian Navy has never provided information
on the extent of the damage to the K three fourteen.
Several members of the Kittie Hawk and other US ships

(08:14):
crews noted seeing welding sparks as members of the K
three fourteen crew engaged in apparent repairs. The K three
fourteen was not able to return to base under its
own power, and was eventually met by a seagoing tug.
The report in Russia Beyond quotes Captain Evsinko saying that
there was no loss of life aboard the submarine. The
general feeling aboard the Kittie Hawk was that the submarine

(08:36):
had taken more damage than the carrier, prompting jokes about
the Kitty Hawk being the first anti submarine carrier weapon.
The crew painted a red submarine on the ship's island
near the bridge to mark their victory, but the Navy
later made them remove it. The Kittie Hawk underwent repairs
at Subig Bay Naval Base and the Philippines, which crew
members described as filling the damaged voids with concrete. During

(08:57):
the repairs, it was discovered that some of the submarines
specialized her coding had scraped off onto Kittie Hawk could
be analyzed along the USA Minor Intelligence Coup. The USS
Kittie Hawk continue to serve clear until the next century
and wasn't decommissioned until two thousand and nine after an
impressive nearly forty nine years service in the United States Navy.
She was the last oil fired US carrier to serve

(09:20):
Sometimes the story about what did not happen is as
interesting as a story that what did. The fact that
an event was well far less catastrophic than it might
have been is history that deserves to be remembered. Indeed,
and you're listening to the History Guy. If you want
more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his YouTube channel,

(09:41):
The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered. A great story,
The History Guy's story the day a Soviet nuclear attack
submarine rammed an American aircraft carrier. Here on our American
Stories