Golf class submarine

The Soviet Navy's Project 629, also known by the NATO reporting name of Golf class, were diesel electric ballistic missile submarines. They were designed after six Zulu class submarines were successfully modified to carry and launch Scud missiles. All Golf boats had left Soviet service by 1990.

Design was started in the mid-1950s at the OKB-16 design bureau along with the D-2 missile system which it was to carry, and was based on the Foxtrot. The submarine was originally designed to carry three R-11 FM ballistic missiles with a range of around 150 km. These were carried in three silos fitted in the rear of the large sail behind the bridge. They could only be fired on the surface but the submarine could be underway at the time. Only the first three boats were equipped with these—the remaining ones were equipped with the longer range R-13 missiles.

The first boats were commissioned in 1958 and the last in 1962.

The boats were built at two shipyards—16 in Severodvinsk and 7 in Komsomol na Amur. Fourteen were extensively modified in 1966–1972 and became known as 629A's by the Soviet Navy and Golf IIs by NATO (the original version now being designated Golf I). The major change was the upgrade of the missile system to carry R-21 missiles and increased speed. A few others had different conversions, for example one boat was converted to a minelayer (629E).

All boats had left Soviet service by 1990. In 1993, ten were sold to North Korea for scrapping. These boats have never been used operationally by North Korea, although their ballistic missile launch systems may have been studied by the North Korean military in order to improve other missile technology.

The plans were also sold to China which built a single modified example in 1966 which is apparently still in service.

Project Jennifer

On August 3, 1968 1390 km northwest of Oahu in the Pacific Ocean the Golf II class submarine K-129 exceeded its crush depth for unknown reasons and imploded, the accident being registered by the SOSUS network. The entire crew of 98 was lost and the vessel sank with three ballistic nuclear missiles as well as two nuclear torpedoes. The United States recovered parts of the submarine in July 1974 from a depth of around 5 km, in an operation named Project Jennifer.

Two nuclear submarines that had been facing retirement, USS Halibut and USS Seawolf, were rebuilt and pressed into service as deep sea search vehicles. After Halibut discovered a sunken Soviet submarine containing at least one intact ballistic missile complete with nuclear warhead, Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense under President Nixon, approved Jennifer. Six years later, convert|350|nmi|km|0 north of the Hawaiian Leeward Islands, a mighty mechanical claw descended convert|17000|ft|m|-2 to the bottom of the Pacific and, guided by computers on board the Glomar Explorer, clamped onto 5,000 tons of twisted, rusting steel and began slowly raising it to the surface. It is unknown for sure how successful the effort was, but the United States has admitted to recovering at least a portion of K-129, which purportedly included the bodies of numerous Russian sailors. Some sources say there were only six bodies, while others say the whole crew was recovered.

In 2005 the controversial book "Red Star Rogue", by Kenneth Sewell, claimed that K-129 sank 500 km northwest of Oahu on March 7, 1968 while launching one of her three ballistic missiles. In Red Star Rogue Kenneth Sewell claims that the submarine had surfaced and was in the process of launching a one megaton SERB nuclear missile from the #1 missile tube that would have vaporized Honolulu and rendered Oahu uninhabitable when a miscalculation triggered a fail-safe device that destroyed the missile and sank the submarine. He also claims Project Jennifer recovered virtually all of K-129 from the ocean floor.

External links

* [http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/slbm/629.htm Golf submarine details on FAS website]