Soviet submarine S-363

Career
Ordered:
Laid down:	January 12, 1956 [1]
Launched:	November 16, 1956
Commissioned:	September 17, 1957
Yard:	Ordzhonikidze Yard, Leningrad
Serial no.:	252
Fate:
Homeport:
Stricken:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	1030 t
Length:	76 m
Beam:	6,7 m
Draft:	4,6 m
Propulsion:
Diving depth:	125 meters
Collapse depth:	~400-450 meters [2]
Speed:	~13/18 knots submerged/surfaced
Range:
Complement:	~60
Armament:	6 torpedotubes, capable of carrying 18 torpedoes or 24 mines

U 137 (the Soviet designation was S-363) was a Soviet Whiskey class submarine of the Baltic Fleet that ran aground only 10 km from Karlskrona, which holds one of the larger naval bases of the Swedish fleet, on the East coast of Sweden on October 27 1981. At the time the incident was generally seen as a proof of wide spread Soviet infiltration of the Swedish coastline. However, there is still heated discussions going on in this subject. The common belief in Sweden itself, as well as the Swedish official line, is that the submarine was there to spy on torpedo tests being performed by the Swedish Navy.

In an interview in 2006 Vasily Besedin, the political officer on board, gives a new picture. The vessel had dual and working navigation systems, a well trained crew and the captain, Pyotr Gushchin, was among the best. On board was also staff officer Joseph Avrukevich to ”give advice in dangerous situations”. Besedin claims that the incident was caused by an error in calculations by the navigation officer.[3]

The area where the Soviet submarine got stuck was at the time a military zone, where no foreigners were allowed. The exact location served as one of only two routes that could be used to move bigger ships from the navy base in Karlskrona to open water. Although the submarine did not make it far into the archipelago, it had required at least two exact turns at specific points in order to get where it was.

When the Swedish Defence Research Agency secretly started measuring for radioactive materials through the hull, using a specially configured coast guard boat, they detected something that was almost certainly Uranium-238 inside the submarine. They speculated it originated from a nuclear weapon – a torpedo, in the upper port tube. The yield of this weapon was estimated to approximately the same as the bomb dropped over Nagasaki in 1945. However, no nuclear weapon onboard U 137 was ever officially confirmed by the Soviet authorities.[4]

Vasily Besedin has later confirmed that there were nuclear warheads on some of the torpedoes, and that the crew was ordered to destroy the boat, including these warheads, if Swedish forces tried to take control over the vessel.[5]. Recent interviews and investigations of Russian officers and naval commanders involved in this situation has revealed that the U 137 commander had orders to launch the vessels nuclear torpedoes against Swedish targets if any attempt was made from the Swedish forces to capture the vessel.

The Conservative government running Sweden at the time were very determined to safeguard Sweden's national integrity. During a false alarm that the soviets where coming in to tow the Submarine out to sea, strike aircraft where scrambled to destroy the invading ships. Then as the soviet recovery fleet appeared off the coast on the first day, fixed coastal artillery batteries locked onto the ships in order to prevent them from crossing the 4 mile territorial line.

Links

• http://compunews.com/s139/sp2.htm - a story of the incident with photos