Authors: Kenneth Sewell
Before modernization of the Soviet navy in the 1960s, the
zampolit
was sometimes called the second commander of Soviet submarines. But even with the shortage of trained submarine officers created by the rapid expansion of the submarine fleet, the political officer played almost no role in routine operations of the submarine. Theoretically, the political officer was put aboard every submarine to educate and make sure the crew maintained proper attitudes toward the state. In reality, it was also the political officer’s job to guarantee that submarine commanders did not take any unauthorized action, particularly with the nuclear weapons.
All aspects of an assignment were preapproved by fleet headquarters or higher up the chain of command. Detailed, sealed orders were delivered simultaneously to the submarine captain and the political officer before each sailing. These orders were not opened until the boat was at sea. Every major decision made by a submarine commander had to conform to either written orders delivered before sailing or coded orders communicated by radio. In either case, it was the
zampolit’
s job to confirm the authenticity of the orders. There were no exceptions. Any disobedience or deviation could be grounds for harsh punishment to include imprisonment, exile to a gulag, or worse.
While political officer Lobas could never aspire to become commander of a submarine, there were other avenues for promotion. Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev had all been political officers or commissars in the Soviet army during their early careers. The political officer’s career path was through the Communist Party structure. The
zampolit
did not answer to the captain or the chain of command, but to the Main Political Directorate, a bureau within the Ministry of Defense and an organ of the Communist Party. He was selected, trained, assigned, promoted, or demoted by the party.
Although the political officer could be expected to spy on the activities of officers and crew, most became well integrated into the crews after being assigned to their boats for long periods of time. One former Soviet submarine captain described his
zampolit
as “the party’s official cheerleader.” As a veteran member of the K-129 crew, Captain Third Rank Lobas was accepted by the other men and liked by many, despite his primary assignment as a party disciplinarian and sometimes spy.
The submarine was ably staffed with officers who had all served on the boat for at least one of the long autonomous patrols. Most had been with the boat on several of these extended missions. In 1967, the K-129 had spent almost six of the twelve months at sea.
At the end of January 1968, there was a full complement of fourteen officers assigned to K-129, all of them regular officers with personal service aboard that boat.
K-129’s doctor, Sergey Cherepanov, was not a navy man but a major in the Soviet medical service. He had a medical assignment onshore, but had asked for, and was granted, special permission from Pacific Fleet headquarters to remain as part of the crew. The doctor routinely monitored the health of the whole crew, which was challenged by the environment of the sub itself. Stale air saturated with diesel and battery fumes and close physical contact created chronic problems. In an emergency, such as an appendicitis attack, Doctor Major Cherepanov performed surgery on a galley table. A submarine committed to an autonomous mission could not turn back for the sudden illness or death of one, or even a few, sailors. To keep the men as healthy as possible, the doctor and a seaman medic passed among the crew each day, dispensing vitamins and damp towels for washing.
A special security officer was assigned to Soviet missile submarines, under the cover of an operational position as deputy to the commander. It was common practice to put an officer from a separate naval branch in charge of the security and control of the nuclear missiles. On K-129 this officer was Captain Third Rank Vladimir Motovolov. Although Motovolov was called the commander’s deputy, Captain Zhuravin actually held the number-two spot on the sub.
Since it was well known that Zhuravin was next in line among young submarine officers in the Pacific Fleet for command of his own boat, on K-129’s last mission of 1967, he served as de facto commander. As first officer, Zhuravin was in day-to-day control of the submarine. He would have immediately returned the boat to Kobzar’s command during difficult operations such as maneuvers to evade a stalking enemy submarine, or entry and departure from home port.
Two of the most important positions on a submarine crew were held by technical officers. The engineer and engineering assistant played vital roles in keeping the boat operating. These highly trained officers were responsible for the diesel engines and battery-powered electric motors, as well as maintenance and repair of all mechanical equipment. They were also responsible for monitoring fuel levels to conserve the diesel oil necessary to complete a mission and return. There were no refueling facilities in the North Pacific.
The men in the engineering section checked the battery charges hourly, to ensure the boat maintained power for running the electric motors used for submerged sailing. The commander was notified well in advance when a snorkeling operation would be required for recharging. Because of these important and multiple tasks, these officers supervised the largest number of regular crewmen on the submarine. The K-129’s chief engineer was Captain Third Rank Nikolai Orechov. The assistant engineering officer was Captain-Lieutenant Alexander Egorov.
The submarine commander had to know his location in the vastness of the ocean at all times, a navigational challenge made all the more difficult since the boat usually traveled for days without surfacing. It was the job of the senior navigator and his assistant to keep precise charts.
To successfully launch a ballistic missile, the commander had to know the exact location of his submarine and the exact location of the target, calculations that were difficult to achieve, since the boat was constantly moving. K-129 had probably not been equipped with a new satellite-based navigational system, which was just coming online at that time. However, the latest radio-navigational system had been installed during the retrofit.
When running on the surface or snorkeling, the navigator would extend an antenna from the conning tower to obtain a radio-navigational signal transmitted from a known geographic location. Under ideal conditions, the submarine’s position could be established within a hundred-foot radius. A sextant was built into the navigational periscope, giving the navigator a secondary method of calculating his position, using celestial bodies. Positions were periodically confirmed to headquarters through coded, microburst radio transmissions. The senior navigator was Captain-Lieutenant Nikolai Pikulik, and the assistant navigator was Lieutenant Anatoly Dykin.
The submarine’s radio room was one of the most secure posts in the boat—only specifically cleared personnel could enter the room. It was the submarine’s lifeline to headquarters and the critical nerve center for receiving changes in orders, war alerts, and actual clearances from fleet headquarters to activate and fire missiles. The Soviets knew the Americans were listening to every radio transmission, even though they were sent out over the airways in undecipherable microbursts. The job of radio man was one of the submarine’s most important, and Senior Lieutenant Alexander Zarnakov held the post of radio electronic officer.
The K-129 had another assigned officer whose job went beyond the functions of the boat itself. A radio intelligence officer was stationed on the submarine to collect information on enemy shipping, antisubmarine warfare activities, and land-based military facilities. This officer eavesdropped on maritime, aviation, and shore radio traffic wherever the boat sailed. Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Mosyachkin was the radio intelligence officer. He assisted the radio operator in transmitting and receiving signals involved in the boat’s regular operations.
When the Soviets and Americans began deploying strategic nuclear missiles, a new type of high-tech submarine officer had to be trained. These specialists—submarine missile officers—were required to become expert in nuclear weaponry, ballistics, and the emerging new launch technology. K-129’s weapons officer was Captain Third Rank Gennady Panarin. The assistant weapons officer was Captain-Lieutenant Victor Zuev.
In addition to its three Serb ballistic missiles, K-129 carried two other strategic weapons. Two of the submarine’s sixteen torpedoes were equipped with nuclear warheads, to be used in an attack on a U.S. carrier task force or fired into an enemy’s harbor, shoreline city, or military installation for maximum strategic damage. The remaining, regular torpedoes were intended for use against Allied submarines or surface warships. The torpedo/mine officer was Captain Third Rank Eugeny Kovalev.
While these operational officers had to display a high degree of technical initiative to keep their substandard boats working, there was no room for innovation when it came to carrying out the mission. The strict controls of missile submarine operations extended all the way up the chain of command to Moscow.
No other arm of the Soviet military establishment was more rigidly controlled than the ballistic missile submarine force. Even fleet commanders, such as Admiral Ivan Amelko of the Pacific Fleet, had little discretion in assigning missions to the missile boats. The K-129’s division commander, Admiral Dygalo, and squadron commander, Admiral Rudolf A. Golosov, had no authority to dispatch or alter a mission for any of the missile submarines under their commands. These frontline admirals were primarily conveyors of the orders to the boat captains.
Authority for the strategic deployment of K-129 and other missile submarines in the fleets was vested in supreme naval headquarters in Moscow. Admiral of the Soviet navy Sergey Gorshkov was the real commander of the Soviet missile submarine fleets. He took his orders exclusively from General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and that dictator’s small circle of top Politburo defense officials. There were others in the Kremlin who were envious of this tight structure, and who endlessly tried to circumvent the system to gain more power in the Communist empire. Most of these schemers were in some way or another in a camp that believed the control of the system should be exercised through the parallel hierarchy of the KGB.
The Soviet naval system had built-in checks and balances throughout the officer structure, to ensure that official orders involving missile submarines originated at the top, and that these orders were strictly followed down the chain. Admiral Gorshkov, an ironfisted commander with direct lines to the politicians in the Kremlin, was a ruthless disciplinarian. A respected naval hero of the Great Patriotic War, Gorshkov became an admiral at the age of thirty-two, the youngest any Soviet officer had attained that respected rank.
Some deployment of missile submarines—such as the assignment of boats to squadrons, divisions, and flotillas—was invested in superiors at fleet headquarters in Vladivostok. But when it came to the strategic missions for these boats, the authority was executed by Supreme Soviet navy command headquarters in Moscow.
The fourteen command and operations officers of K-129, all regulars, were the final link in the chain of command. Their job was to obediently carry out the orders, and they had practically no authority otherwise.
The next tier of K-129 crewmen was even more rigidly indoctrinated to follow orders without question. These were the senior enlisted men, including three with the rank of
michman
(warrant officer) and six chief petty officers. Most warrant officers and senior petty officers in the Soviet navy were also career professionals. They were highly trained in the technical skills required to operate the submarine and specialized in their fields of expertise, such as electronics, engine mechanics, communications, and weaponry. Unlike enlisted submariners in the American Navy, their Soviet counterparts were not cross-trained, and stayed in their specific jobs for the duration of their service.
The regular K-129 crew also included two dozen petty officers. All the men in these senior enlisted ranks were better trained than the common seamen, and all were volunteers. The typical tour of service of these ranking crewmen was six years. However, since the privileges of housing, clothing, and food for the trained submariner so exceeded what was available to civilians or enlisted personnel in other service branches, many of these petty officers chose to remain in service.
It had been years since many of the K-129 senior enlisted personnel had been granted leave to take the long trips home to western Russia. A handful of eager young Soviet submariners, returning in January from the latest extended mission, were lucky enough to be granted furloughs. These men quickly vanished into the vast Russian winter, hitching rides on whatever military transport they could find, or cramming onto the cheap Aeroflot commercial flights that shuttled between the military outposts of Asia and western Russia.
Normally, Soviet regulations required any active submarine to retain a sufficient number of officers and men needed to sail and fight the ship at a moment’s notice. Captain Kobzar had been allowed to bend rules and permitted eight senior enlisted men to take leave. In addition, the duty tours of seven first-class and regular seamen had expired and they were permitted to leave the service. Furloughing so many crew members was a risk the captain thought worth taking. He did not expect to be ordered back to sea for an extended patrol until early summer.
The majority of the K-129 crew members, approximately four dozen, were lower-ranking enlisted men. These seamen received no leave for the duration of their conscription. They were drafted for three- to four-year stints and remained on duty until their service obligation was fulfilled.