The Beginning

"Even a fool can go to sea,
As for returning safe to harbour..."
Victor Konetski -
Yesterday's Cares

I was wakened in my bunk early in the morning by my face being licked tenderly and covered with smacking kisses. In my half-asleep state I thought I was at home in bed with my wife, and my arm automatically reached out to embrace her – and opened my eyes to see a shaggy, brown, impudent, hungry but altogether lovable bear cub, which was licking my ear and whispering erotic things in it. The painful memory of how I had got into this predicament came flooding back…

I remembered that as the Executive Officer of the submarine K-212 in 1982, I was enjoying a summer vacation with the family in the Crimea for the first time in years when I received the inevitable recall. At the time I didn't have the slightest idea where it would all lead. The recall telegram bore the name of the Division Commander, Rear Admiral AS Berzin, and all thought of argument faded from my mind. I packed and left the sunny Crimean shores without delay.

On my arrival in Kamchatka Alfred Berzin told me my task: to take over the duties of ExO of the submarine K-43 and ensure her passage to the Primorskiy Coast to be viewed by an Indian delegation. The awesome secret had already spread in whispers and everybody in the Division was aware that it had been decided to transfer the submarine to India. Little did I imagine then that within a year I would take command of this submarine and that the whole saga would extend for ten long years.

The day following Navy Day, we set course. The eight-day passage to the Primorye Coast to Pavlov Bay along the Pacific Ocean, the Kurile Straits, and the seas of Okhotsk and Japan was completed without undue incident. For a whole month we cleaned and scrubbed and painted the submarine and at the end of it the crew tiptoed around it in their socks so that the gleaming boat shouldn't look shop-soiled! The visiting Indian delegation headed by the Commander of the Indian Submarine Forces, Rear Admiral Shekhawat (1) assessed the material state and combat readiness of the submarine, and she was then sent to the Zvezda submarine repair yard in the naval port of Bolshoi Kamen for modernisation and preparation for the transfer.

We knew that India had wanted a Project 671 submarine (NATO code name Victor), as they were looking for a boat with tube-launched anti-ship and land-attack missiles, but at that time we did not have weapons of this type. Evidently the final choice of the submarine was made after that visit to the K-43 by the Indian delegation in August 1982 (2).

This was hardly surprising, as the appearance of this class of submarine in our Navy was an unpleasant surprise for the carrier and battle-group formations of NATO. Compact, and armed with the unique underwater-launched cruise Amethyst missile, this submarine certainly complicated life for the adversary. Its short time of flight, low trajectory and lethal radius made counter-measures difficult. The submarine needed no external target indication and was capable of attacks based on self-generated target data, which overcame other disadvantages, especially in restricted seas such as the Mediterranean or in confined waterways such as the Malacca or Gibraltar Straits. Even today, having more modern missiles, we experience difficulty in exploiting the advantage of their longer range because of the absence of target data. The Charlie class submarines were thus unique, especially in those years (3).

On return to Kamchatka after completing the passage of the submarine I continued serving in the 10th Division, and in 1983 they appointed me in command of the K-43. (I learnt later that Captain 2nd Rank LZ Lupach was to have been nominated, but he was apparently wiser – evidently he was better informed.) People have often asked me why I was particularly chosen for this assignment. I always reply with the old anecdote about the young lady of easy virtue, who when persistently asked how it was that she, a Philology graduate from the Moscow State University with honours in three foreign languages had become a high-class call- girl, breezily replied: I guess I was just lucky! Of course now I permit myself to laugh it off, after the assigned task has been successfully accomplished and the crew as well the submarine have inscribed a shining page in the history of our country's submarine fleet...

1 Rear Admiral Shekhawat was at the time the Assistant Chief Of the Naval Staff responsible for submarine matters.

2 All submarines of the Charlie Class were designed in the Central Design Bureau Lazurite and built in the Krasnoye Sormovo Yard, in the city of Gorky. The reactor was also built in Gorky in the Afrikantov OKBM.

3 The Missile system Amethyst and all succeeding anti-ship missile systems were manufactured in the town of Reutov, at NPOM.


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