Army, Navy divers might raise Providence’s sunken sub.

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Army, Navy divers might raise Providence’s sunken Russian sub

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, August 23, 2007

By Daniel Barbarisi

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — To the staff of the Russian Sub Museum, the sinking of their Soviet-era submarine in Providence Harbor following an April northeaster was a crushing catastrophe.

To the divers of the Army and Navy, it was a dream come true.

The military has announced that it intends to raise the sunken Juliett 484, the Cold War ballistic missile submarine that has been converted to a museum in the Providence River, in order to train its salvage and dive teams in how to get a submarine afloat.

“It’s an invaluable training scenario for us. It’s something that doesn’t happen very often,” said Navy Warrant Officer Peter Sharpe, who heads the contingent of Navy divers in Providence.

But the military’s help extends only to raising the submarine — the sub is filled with water, and the internal damage may be extensive. There’s no guarantee that it can be restored as a museum.

The Russian submarine, designated Juliett 484 by NATO, sank in 30 feet of water two days after an April 17 storm. As museum officials have tried to scrape together support to raise the boat, the strange tale of the sunken submarine has drawn international attention — including a special by a Russian television network — and become the darling of the salvage community, luring the Army and Navy divers and soon, a British dive team as well.

An Army Reserve landing craft, the New Orleans, pulled up to the docks at Collier Point Park last Thursday. Until Sept. 4, 30 Army and Navy divers will be circling, studying, and eventually entering the submarine as part of salvage training operations. They plan to attach cables to steady the sub, so that it isn’t swept away in another storm this winter.

If all goes well, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ruth Rayburn, the expectation is that the military will return to raise the sub next year.

“It’s with an eye toward raising it next spring,” Rayburn said.

The opportunity to raise an undamaged missile submarine in such perfect conditions — next to a dock, in shallow water, in a protected bay — has excited the entire salvage community. In addition to the Americans already on-scene, the British are also considering sending their naval salvage team to Providence to work with Juliett 484, Sharpe said.

Sharpe said that this stage of the operation will cost more than $1 million. While the military plans to raise the submarine, budgetary approval is still needed for the next phase of the project, to actually raise the submarine.

The project would part of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Innovative Readiness Training Program, which seeks real-world scenarios to provide training for military personnel.

For the group of mostly retired veterans who manage the submarine museum, the military is seen as a savior. The submarine had insurance, but the salvage policy could only be used if the submarine was declared a total loss and turned over to the insurance company.

“We knew that we did not have the capacity to raise it on our own,” said Frank Lennon, president of the Russian Sub Museum. “We’re extremely grateful to [the Department of Defense] for helping us. They’ll determine the best way to raise it. They want to take a look at it, and they’re going to do some further things to stabilize it. The eventual goal is that we work together to raise it.”

The submarine is sitting on the harbor bottom, with its conning tower at a 48-degree angle pointing toward East Providence. The submarine is filled with water, and may be rusting badly. Until it can be raised and drained, there is no way to tell how much a full restoration would cost.

“We do not expect structural damage, but we expect serious deterioration,” Lennon said. “Where it goes from there is anybody’s guess.”

The bottom of Providence Harbor is only the latest stop for Juliett 484. Commissioned in 1965, it served in the Soviet Baltic and Northern fleets until its decommissioning in 1994. Then it was sold and moved to Helsinki, Finland, to become a restaurant. When that venture failed, it was sold to a group in St. Petersburg, Fla., where it became a museum. In 2001, the submarine was used in the filming of the Cold War thriller K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford. It opened as a museum in August 2002.

The salvage efforts have been hampered by a lack of information about the submarine itself. The submarine’s design schematics are classified, and despite pleas from the Providence museum and from former Juliett 484 crew members now in Russia, the Russian government has not opted to declassify them.

“Classified documents take on a life of their own,” Lennon said. “It’s very easy to classify something and very difficult to declassify it. We’ve probably still got stuff from the Spanish-American War that’s classified.”

Some help has come from reverse-engineering data developed when the sub was drydocked in preparation for K-19: The Widowmaker. But for more exact specifications, they sought out the only surviving sister ship of Juliett 484, now on display in Germany.

In early August, the submarine museum’s general manager, William E. Sheridan, accompanied a group of Navy salvage and dive experts to the German town of Peenemunde to visit Juliett 484’s sister ship, a Soviet submarine designated U-461.

“They were aware of what happened to us and they offered to take us around and be our guides,” Sheridan said.

They spent three days going over every inch of the submarine.

“When the divers are in there they have to know — what’s this, what’s that, how do I get around it,” Sheridan said. “The only way we could get them accurate measurements so they could get their engineering data was to physically measure the interior parts of the boat.”

There has been a keen interest in the boat in Russia, and e-mails and letters from the former Soviet Union have been coming in. In June, Sheridan led a Russian television crew around the submarine site, and they did a five-minute segment on the sinking of Juliett 484 on a Russian newscast.

It’s been particularly gut-wrenching for the ship’s old crew, Lennon said, to hear that their longtime home might forever sit on the bottom of the harbor of an American city few Russians have even heard of.

“That was one of the most difficult things for us, was having to tell these guys that their submarine sank,” Lennon said.

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Divers to survey Providence Sub

Divers to survey Providence Sub Museum

Aug 27, 2007 04:28 AM EDT

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Military divers this morning start surveying a floating submarine museum that sunk in a recent storm. The old Soviet submarine was submerged in the Providence River after being battered by a nor'easter in April.

All that could be seen of the Russian Sub Museum was about two feet of its periscope. Army and Navy divers are planning to conduct underwater surveys to decide how to recover it. About 30 Department of Defense divers and the crew of an Army Landing Craft Unit will participate in the survey as part of a training program.

The sub was used in the 1990s as a restaurant and vodka bar in Helsinki, Finland, and later as a set for the Harrison Ford movie "K-19: The Widowmaker."

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Military divers work to salvage

Military divers work to salvage sunken Russian Sub Museum
By Michelle R. Smith, Associated Press Writer | August 27, 2007

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Two dozen Army and Navy divers have been sent as part of a Department of Defense training project to help raise a sunken Russian sub that had been used as a floating museum.

Military salvage teams began work a week ago at the Russian Sub Museum, which had drawn tens of thousands of tourists since it opened in 2002. It was moored in an industrial area of Providence and sank and rolled onto its side in April when it was swamped after a powerful nor'easter.
The crews are scheduled to work through Sept. 4 to stabilize and right the sub, said Warrant Officer Peter Sharpe of the U.S. Navy's Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit. Then, they'll come back in the spring and try to pump out the water, patch the sub and raise it from the bottom of the Providence River, he said.

It's still not clear whether the sub will ever open as a museum again, said Frank Lennon, president of the foundation that runs the museum.

"Until the sub is actually raised, we won't know the extent of the damage. All options are open," Lennon said. "If it's not salvageable or economically feasible, we could sell it."

The 282-foot-long sub, first launched in 1965 as part of the Soviet Northern Fleet and alternately designated as K-77 or Juliett 484, is the only submarine of its kind in the United States. The Juliett class was initially planned as a nuclear missile platform for strikes against the United States and later tracked U.S. aircraft carriers.

The sub was used in the 1990s as a restaurant and vodka bar in Helsinki, Finland, and later as a set for the Harrison Ford movie "K-19: The Widowmaker" before being acquired by the USS Saratoga Foundation, a private, nonprofit group.

The salvage crews are working courtesy of a defense department training program, called Innovative Readiness Training, that gives units from different branches of the military the opportunity to train together on projects that benefit communities.

During the first part of the project, divers are staying outside the sub, surveying and monitoring, while crews at the surface attach four massive anchors to the ground, Sharpe said. They'll try to stabilize the sub then gradually turn it upright.

The second phase of the project is scheduled to start in May. During Phase Two, divers will go inside the sub, which has eight compartments on three decks. They plan to go first into the deepest part of the sub to pump it out, then work their way out.

Phase One cost the Department of Defense about $1 million, Sharp said, and he guessed Phase Two will cost about the same. But he said it was worth every penny for the training the crews will get. Experience like this comes in handy on more serious projects, he said, like the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, which the Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit responded to.

"I've been in the military 26 years and never had the opportunity to salvage a submarine. The training value is priceless," Sharpe said.

Before the salvage operation began, the museum used a combination of donations and insurance money to pay for civilian divers and other expenses, Lennon said.

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Raising expectations

01:00 AM EDT on

Raising expectations

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 28, 2007

By Daniel Barbarisi

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Navy diver Maximilian Yeager straps on his yellow helmet, shouts that he knows the location of his knife and his “pneum” — pneumatic control — and waddles down the ramp of the Army landing craft toward the sunken Russian submarine.

Once in the water, Yeager and another diver, tied by several cables and hoses to the Army Reserve ship New Orleans, swim out farther into Providence Harbor. Then they submerge, diving to where the submarine rests in 30 feet of water by Collier Point Park, as the dive officer shouts “Divers leaving surface” to the crew monitoring their dive.

They are part of an unprecedented operation to pull a sunken Russian submarine, NATO designation Juliett 484, off the bottom of Providence Harbor. The submarine, which has been on display as a museum ship since 2002, sank in April following a storm.

The military is raising the submarine at a cost of more than $1 million as part of a Department of Defense program that seeks out real-world training opportunities for the military.

To the 30 Army and Navy divers, it’s an opportunity to train in the kind of situation few will ever see: a Russian missile submarine sunk next to a dock in the middle of an American capital. For the museum’s operators, desperate to find a way to get their submarine off the harbor floor, the dive teams were the cavalry to the rescue.

“If it hadn’t been for these guys, there would have been no chance,” said Frank Lennon, president of the Russian Sub Museum.

The submarine is resting on the harbor bottom, tilted 48 degrees to port. At low tide the periscope peeks out of the water and points at East Providence. Raising the submarine is a slow process. Divers will be on hand until Sept. 4 securing the submarine for the winter, and then will return next spring to finish the job.

Yesterday morning, Yeager and a fellow diver inspected several points where earlier dive teams have attached wires to the submarine. Tomorrow, huge hydraulic motors will use those wires to pull the sub slightly up out of the mud it rests in, taking some of the pressure off the hull.

The submarine does not appear to have sustained structural damage, but it is totally flooded, and after four months submerged, the divers have found that the submarine has become home to plants and marine life.

“She’s got a lot of growth on her. You brush it off pretty easily. Your visibility down there is six to eight feet, but you start stirring all the stuff up down there and it gets worse,” Yeager said.

On some of their dives, the divers have slipped through hatches, and descended into the sub itself. Inside, it’s dark and cramped, said Army diver Kyle Nicholas. Crabs and fish move throughout.

“It’s pretty dark, it’s fairly muddy, and it smells pretty bad,” Nicholas said.

Most of the divers have been on salvage missions before, but nothing like this, Nicholas said. It’s particularly exciting to enter the sub; divers on salvage missions don’t normally enter the craft.

“It’s nice to be able to say you penetrated a submarine,” he said.

Juliett 484 was commissioned in the Soviet Union in 1965, and served in the Soviet Baltic and Northern fleets until its decommissioning in 1994. It was then sold and moved to Helsinki, Finland, to become a restaurant. When that venture failed, it was sold to a group in St. Petersburg, Fla., where it became a museum. In 2001, the submarine was used in the filming of the Cold War thriller K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford. It opened as a museum in August 2002.

Raising a sunken submarine is a fairly simple process, provided you’ve got a team of trained divers and thousands of pounds of expensive salvage equipment at your disposal.

All the military needs to do is secure the submarine via several wires so that it is stationary through the winter, and seal the door openings so it is watertight.

Then, in the spring, they will pump the water out of the sub, and it should float to the surface.

To secure the submarine for the winter, the divers have attached wires at four points. Wednesday, hydraulic motors will pull the submarine slightly, creating tension on the wires, pulling the sub slightly more upright, and taking the pressure of resting on the bottom off the submarine’s hull.

The wires will then be attached to four 7,200-pound anchors — called “dead men” — that the military is sinking into the ground near the pier. Those anchors will hold the sub in place through the winter, said Warrant Officer Peter Sharpe, who commands the Navy divers working at the site.

The submarine must also be sealed before it can be raised. On their dives, the divers have removed the so-called “tourist hatches,” which are not watertight and served as doors when the submarine was on display. They will be replaced with specially fabricated patches that will be used to seal the submarine.

When the military returns in the spring, it will pump the water out. With the water gone, the submarine’s natural buoyancy should return it to the surface.

But that’s the end of the good news. Even if the sub can be raised, the interior deterioration could be severe.

“I don’t think there’s going to be much value for it as a museum down the road,” Sharpe said.

Lennon said he’s well aware that the inside of the 5,000-ton submarine might be ruined.

They are hoping for the best — restoration as a museum, either in water or on land — but realize that the submarine may have to be turned into a permanent underwater reef, or sold for scrap.

“If it’s really bad, we’ll figure it out then. We need to be realistic, to not have unrealistic expectations,” Lennon said.

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projo.com

Divers complete first phase of

projo.com

Divers complete first phase of work to raise submarine


01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, September 5, 2007

By Daniel Barbarisi

Journal Staff Writer


PROVIDENCE — The military salvage teams that have been working to raise the sunken Russian missile submarine in Providence Harbor have departed, declaring this stage of their mission a success and vowing to return in the spring to finally raise the boat.

The submarine, known by its NATO designation of Juliett 484, has been resting on the harbor bottom, tilted on its side in 30 feet of water, after it sank in an April storm. The submarine had been a museum at Providence’s Collier Point Park since 2002, but the cash-strapped museum owners had no way to get the sub back above water.

The military decided to raise the submarine to provide training to its salvage dive teams, and 30 Army and Navy divers and an Army Reserve landing craft spent the past three weeks in Providence laying the groundwork to raise the submarine.

Last week, divers attached cables to the submarine at four points, and then used large motors to pull it slightly more upright and take pressure off the vessel’s hull.

The submarine didn’t move much, and is still resting at an angle underwater, but the cables are now bearing much of the load, and the submarine won’t be swept down the Bay if there is a bad winter storm.

“It came up maybe a foot. It did move a little bit,” said Navy Warrant Officer Peter Sharpe, who supervised the salvage divers on the operation.

The military crews will definitely return in the late spring to complete the project and bring the submarine above water, Sharpe said.

The first step will be to attach specially fabricated metal patches to the submarine to seal off areas where water could enter.

With the submarine sealed, the water will be pumped out of the vessel, allowing it to regain its buoyancy.

This should help it to rise to the surface, and just in case, a huge barge crane will also assist in lifting it off the harbor floor.

Sharpe said that the reason the sub can’t be raised this fall is twofold.

First, the patches must be specially made and attached — a time-consuming process.

Second, the military must actually approve the additional expenditure in the budget for the next fiscal year. This three-week project already cost more than $1 million, and the next phase could last from 30 to 90 days, Sharpe said.

The military’s involvement has brought renewed attention to Juliett 484. Last night, Fox News Channel aired a national segment on the submarine’s predicament.

Unfortunately for the museum’s owners, that attention has not translated into cash, and the chances that it could be restored as a museum are uncertain. The submarine is filled with water, and the divers found marine life growing throughout.

“We don’t know what condition it’s going to be when it comes up,” said Frank Lennon, president of the Russian Sub Museum.

“When it does come up, we will be able to join with experts to determine just what our options are,” he said.

A full restoration could be prohibitively expensive. But a partial restoration might be possible, and some additional help from the military might even be in the cards — if the museum operators can manage to frame the restoration work as a viable military training exercise.

“They indicated that they would be receptive to other suggestions as long as we can demonstrate a training benefit,” Lennon said.

Juliett 484 was commissioned in 1965, and served in the Soviet Baltic and Northern fleets until its decommissioning in 1994. Then it was sold and moved to Helsinki, Finland, to become a restaurant. When that venture failed, it was sold to a group in St. Petersburg, Fla., where it became a museum. In 2001, the submarine was used in the filming of the Cold War thriller K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford. It opened as a museum in Providence in August 2002.