Soviet submarine K - 219 K - 219 was a Project 667A " Navaga " - class ballistic missile submarine ( NATO reporting name " Yankee I " ) of the Soviet Navy . She carried 16 ( later 15 ) SS - N - 6 liquid - fuel missiles powered by UDMH with IRFNA , equipped with an estimated 34 nuclear warheads . " K - 219 " was involved in what has become one of the most controversial submarine incidents in the Cold War . The incident . Preamble . On Friday 3 October 1986 , while on an otherwise routine , Cold War nuclear deterrence patrol in the North Atlantic northeast of Bermuda , the 15 - year old " K - 219 " suffered an explosion and fire in a missile tube . The seal in a missile hatch cover failed , allowing saltwater to leak into the missile tube and react with residue from the missile ' s liquid fuel . Though there was no official announcement , a published source said the Soviet Union claimed that the leak was caused by a collision with the submarine . " Augusta " was certainly operating in proximity , but both the United States Navy and the commander of " K - 219 " , Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov , deny that a collision took place . " K - 219 " had previously experienced a similar casualty ; one of her missile tubes was already disabled and welded shut , having been permanently sealed after an explosion caused by reaction between seawater leaking into the silo and missile fuel residue . The authors of the book " Hostile Waters " reconstructed the incident from descriptions by the survivors , ships ' logs , the official investigations , and participants both ashore and afloat from the Soviet and the American sides . The result was a novelized version of events . Event . Shortly after 0530 Moscow time , seawater leaking into silo six of K - 219 reacted with missile fuel , producing nitric acid . K - 219 weapons officer Alexander Petrachkov attempted to cope with this by disengaging the hatch cover and venting the missile tube to the sea . Shortly after 0532 , an explosion occurred in silo six . The remains of the RSM - 25 rocket and its two warheads were ejected from silo six into the sea . An article in " Undersea warfare " by Captain First Rank ( Ret . ) Igor Kurdin , Russian Navy - K - 219 ' s XO ( executive officer ) at the time of the incident - and Lieutenant Commander Wayne Grasdock , USN described the explosion occurrence as follows : Three sailors were killed outright in the explosion . The vessel surfaced to permit its twin nuclear reactors to be shut down , which was only accomplished when a 20 - year old enlisted seaman , Sergei Preminin , sacrificed his life to secure one of the onboard reactors . He had secured it and tried to reach his comrades on the other side of a door , but he couldn ' t open it and died in the reactor compartment . Captain Britanov was ordered to have the ship towed by a Soviet freighter back to Gadzhievo , her home port , some away . Although a towline was attached , towing attempts were unsuccessful , and after subsequent poison gas leaks into the final aft compartments and against orders , Britanov ordered the crew to evacuate onto the towing ship . Britanov remained aboard " K - 219 " . Displeased with Britanov ' s inability to repair his submarine and continue his patrol , Moscow ordered Valery Pshenichny , " K - 219 " ’ s security officer , to assume command , transfer the surviving crew back to the submarine , and return to duty . Before those orders could be carried out , however , the flooding reached a point beyond recovery and on 6 October 1986 the " K - 219 " sank to the bottom of the Hatteras Abyssal Plain , more than three miles down . in a depth of about 6 , 000 m ( 18 , 000 ft ) . While the proximate cause of the sinking is unknown , some evidence indicates Britanov may have scuttled her . " K - 219 " ' s full complement of nuclear weapons was lost along with the vessel . In 1988 , the Soviet hydrographic research ship " Keldysh " positioned itself over the wreck of K - 219 , and found the submarine sitting upright on the sandy bottom . It had broken in two aft of the conning tower . Several missile silo hatches had been forced open , and the missiles , along with the nuclear warheads they contained , were gone . Preminin was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Star for his bravery in securing the reactors . Britanov was charged with negligence , sabotage , and treason . He was never imprisoned , but waited for his trial in Sverdlovsk . On 30 May 1987 , Defense Minister Sergey Sokolov was dismissed as a result of the Mathias Rust incident two days earlier , and replaced by Dmitry Yazov ; the charges against Britanov were subsequently dismissed . U . S . Navy reaction . The presence of the Yankee Class SSBN in the so - called Atlantic " Yankee Patrol Box " was already established by the U . S . Navy ' s undersea sound surveillance system prior to 3 October . However , there was no overt reaction by the U . S . Navy ' s East coast - based anti - submarine maritime patrol squadrons on Friday , something which would have been expected had USS Augusta been in active trail of K - 219 that morning . The explosion of the missile inside the missile tube would likely have been detected by the North Atlantic SOSUS system had K - 219 been at normal patrol depth . However , because the submarine came to periscope depth - above the sound layer - prior to detonation , no tell - tale sound " event " was recorded . A P - 3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft was not launched to reconnoitor K - 219 until Saturday morning 4 October , probably " alerted " by the highly unusual communications between the distressed submarine and Soviet Navy Northern Fleet headquarters in Murmansk . " Hostile Waters " film . In 1997 , the British BBC television film " Hostile Waters " , co - produced with HBO and starring Rutger Hauer , Martin Sheen , and Max von Sydow , was released in the United States by Warner Bros . It was based on the book by the same name mentioned above , which claimed to describe the loss of " K - 219 " . In 2001 , Captain Britanov filed suit , claiming Warner Bros . did not seek or get his permission to use his story or his character , and that the film did not portray the events accurately and made him look incompetent . After three years of hearing , the court ruled in Britanov ' s favor . Russian media reported that the filmmaker paid a settlement totaling under a $ 100 , 000 . The former Soviet Union claimed that the damage to " K - 219 " was caused by a collision with " Augusta " . The U . S . Government denied this and the U . S . Navy issued a statement about the book and film : An article on the U . S . Navy ' s website posted by Captain 1st Rank ( Ret . ) Igor Kurdin ( former XO of " K - 219 " ) and Lieutenant Commander Wayne Grasdock denied any collision between " K - 219 " and " Augusta " . Captain Britanov himself also denies a collision . He has stated that he was not asked to be a guest speaker at Russian functions because he refuses to follow the Russian government ' s interpretation of the " K - 219 " incident . In a BBC interview recorded in February 2013 , with the Commander - in - Chief of the Soviet Navy at the time , Vladimir Chernavin , Chernavin says the accident was caused by a malfunction in a missile tube and makes no mention of a collision with an American submarine . The interview was conducted for the BBC2 series " The Silent War " . Casualties . The following casualties were directly attributed to the incident :