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A Soviet attack submarine crashed into a US aircraft carrier 40 years
ago during the Cold War. It was a bad day for the sub.
Ella Sherman Mar 21, 2024, 4:20 AM PDT

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Soviet Submarine And US Aircraft Carrier Collide
In this aerial image, a Soviet Union submarine is seen after colliding
with U.S. Kitty Hawk on March 22, 1984 in at sea.
The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images
Forty years ago today, a Soviet submarine collided with the US Navy
aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk.
The collision occurred as the sub was spying on US warships amid Cold
War tensions.
It was the third instance of a Soviet vessel colliding with an American
one in just five months.
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Late at night on March 21, 1984, sailors aboard the US Navy aircraft
carrier USS Kitty Hawk felt a sudden jolt while sailing in the Sea of Japan.

Those aboard the carrier didn't know it yet, but their 80,000-ton ship
had just collided with a 5,200-ton Soviet attack submarine. The surprise
collision came amid heightened Cold War tensions between the US and
Soviet Union.

"I was on the bridge at the time of the incident, monitoring one of the
two radars," Capt. David N. Rogers, the carrier's skipper, told
reporters shortly after the odd incident. "We felt a sudden shudder, a
fairly violent shudder."

Navy helicopters were quickly sortied to check out the situation. The
New York Times reported at the time that the collision — which occurred
40 years ago Thursday— left the Kitty Hawk with a only a minor
superficial dent while the Soviet submarine K-314 appeared to have more
serious problems. The vessel was unresponsive and unable to get moving
under its own power.

A Soviet missile cruiser accompanying the submarine dismissed American
offers of assistance, according to US officials. The aircraft carrier
immediately resumed operations following the tense collision.

The Kitty Hawk, part of Battle Group Bravo, was sailing in the Sea of
Japan for exercise Team Spirit 84-1 when the accidental collision
occurred. This was just one of the military exercises in the series
called Team Spirit that the US had participated in with South Korea over
the course of 19 years.

A Korean Navy tank landing ship approaches the beach during exercise
Team Spirit '82.
A Korean Navy tank landing ship approaches the beach during exercise
Team Spirit '82. HUM Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

During the Cold War, Soviet subs would often follow US vessels closely
to gather intelligence, and USSR submarine K-314 had been following the
carrier for several days prior to the collision.

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US military officials were puzzled as to how the Victor I-class
submarine didn't see the carrier before running into it.

"Quite honestly, I have to question the seamanship of the Soviet captain
involved," a Navy officer told The Washington Post after the collision.

When the maritime accident occurred, submarine K-314, which typically
held around 90 crew members, was following a Soviet guided-missile
cruiser headed north.

"The first thought was that the conning tower had been destroyed and the
submarine's body was cut to pieces," recalled Capt. Vladimir Evseenko,
the submarine's commander, in an excerpt from Nikolay Cherkashin's 2011
book, "Disturbers of the Depths."

Soviet Submarine And US Aircraft Carrier Collide
The Soviet K-314 after colliding with the Kitty Hawk in 1984 on the Sea
of Japan. The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images

Evseenko initially thought that the American carrier that had "rammed"
his submarine that night, saying that the carrier hit the propeller and
bent the stabilizer. Afterwards, the commander and his team found that
the collision was the result of certain miscalculations on their end.

Evseenko was then removed from his post after the incident and
transferred to land operations. "For me this was a blow worse than a
blow to the propellers," he said, according to a translation.

This was third instance of a Soviet warship colliding with a US military
vessel in a period of just five months. Prior to this collision, in
October 1983, a Soviet submarine had to be towed to Cuba after it
interfered with a US frigate's sonar device and was disabled

In 1972, the Soviets signed an accord with the US in which the two
pledged not to interfere with each other's naval operations, in part to
help reduce the number of collisions at sea, a problem during the Cold
War as US and Russian vessels often found themselves in close proximity.

Even after this agreement was signed, accidents continued to happen. A
major collision occurred in November 1974 when American and Soviet
nuclear submarines ran into one another near Scotland, coming extremely
close to sinking one another. That incident was revealed in a CIA memo
declassified in 2017.

And such incidents at sea still happen even now, decades later. The last
time American military vessels collided with a foreign ship or submarine
was in 2017, when US Navy destroyers USS Fitzgerald and USS John S.
McCain collided with the tanker Alnic MC and container ship ACX Crystal.
respectively. The incidents were fatal.

USS Kitty Hawk
The former aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk sits off the coast of Long Beach,
CA, on the way from Bremerton, WA, to a Texas ship-breaking company on
Monday, January 24, 2022. Jeff Gritchen/Orange County Register/SCNG

It's unclear what ultimately happened to submarine K-314, but the Kitty
Hawk continued to serve the Navy for another 25 years before being
decommissioned in 2009.

The Navy made a widely misunderstood one-cent recycling deal with a
shipbreaking company in 2021 to scrap the conventionally powered
aircraft carrier.

The following year, the large warship that served for nearly 50 years
made its final voyage, traveling more than 16,000 miles to a facility in
Brownsville, Texas, where it is currently being scrapped.

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