Rare incident: Russian nuclear submarine damaged US ship
The following incident happened right after the Cold War ended, although the Soviet Union no longer existed, serious incidents still occurred between the two superpowers.
National Interest magazine reported that on February 11, 1992, the nuclear attack submarine USS Baton Rouge (SSN 689), Los Angeles class of the US was hiding at a depth of about 20 m in shallow water off the Kildin Islands, only 64 km from the port of Murmansk.
Although the Soviet Union was no longer there, the US Navy continued its reconnaissance activities to guard against unforeseen situations. Experts believe that US submarines were trying to collect hydroacoustic data from Russian submarines.
But suddenly at 8:12 a.m., the USS Baton Rouge submarine was hit from below by an unidentified object, causing a hole in the hull and water to flood into the compartment. This situation was extremely urgent.
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| The conning tower of the submarine B-276 Kostroma was damaged after the collision. |
The strange object was later identified as the Russian Navy's Sierra-class nuclear attack submarine B-276 Kostroma, which was surfaced when it collided with the US nuclear submarine.
As a result of the collision, the B-276 Kostroma's conning tower was damaged, and it had to stay in port for 5 years for expensive repairs, only returning to the fleet in 1997.
But the damage was still too light when placed next to the USS Baton Rouge (SSN 689), an American warship that was decommissioned after only 17 years of service due to repair costs being estimated to be too high.
After this event, the new command tower of the submarine B-276 Kostroma was painted with a star with the number 1 inside, implying that the Russian Navy wanted to say that it had destroyed an American nuclear submarine without firing a single torpedo.
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| The five-pointed star with the number 1 on the conning tower of the submarine B-276 Kostroma when it returned to fleet service. |
Explaining the cause of the rare incident, naval analyst Eugene Miasnikov said that the two submarines were operating in shallow water, and the noise from waves on the sea surface created a lot of noise, making it impossible for the sonar operator to distinguish it from the sound from the submarine's propeller.
In the noisy environment of shallow seas, the detection range of Sierra-class submarines is only about 102 meters or even shorter. The US submarines cannot even detect them if the Russian submarines approach the 60-degree blind angle behind them, which is an area without fixed sonar antenna arrays mounted on the hull.
In contrast, the Russian submarine could not detect the quieter American submarine. Mr. Miasnikov said that the B-276 was operating its sonar in passive mode, so neither of them detected the other's presence in the area.
