1. Near misses
1.1. During a voyage in January 1960 confusion between two watch crews led to a reactor control rod being bent, which meaning the reactor had to be taken apart and repaired.
1.2. During a test voyage in 1960 the crew discovered that the rubber coating on the hull had completely detached, meaning the entire surface of the ship had to be re-coated.
1.3. Flooding
1.3.1. During a test run to full depth (300m) flooding was reported in the reactor, forcing the ship to resurface immediately where it keeled over because engineers had forgotten to replace a gasket
1.3.2. In October 1960 crew members disposed of wood through the waste system, blocking it and causing a compartment to flood to 1/3 full.
1.4. In December 1960 a loss of coolant caused the main circuit pump to fail, which took engineers 1 week to fix at sea.
2. Other facts
2.1. A film based on the disaster,called 'K-19: The Widowmaker' was released in 2002.
2.2. The Submarine was nicknamed Hiroshima
2.3. A poet called Vasily Aksyonov wrote a play about the nuclear disaster in 1969
3. Images Of The Submarine/Crew
3.1. http://sunnycv.com/steve/filmnotes/images3/k19d.jpg
3.2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/K-19.jpg/300px-K-19.jpg
3.3. http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y262/russian-navy01/K19asshewas.jpg
3.4. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/NVZateyev.jpg
4. Fatal Disasters
4.1. During construction the submarine caused 10 deaths. 2 workers were killed in a fire, 6 women died from fumes whilst applying the rubber lining, an electrician was crushed to death by a missile cover and an engineer died when he fell between two compartments.
4.2. On 4th July 1961 there was a leak in the coolant system causing water pressure to drop. A separate incident had disable the long range radio meaning they couldn't contact Moscow. This lead to the reactor overheating, eventually reaching a temperature of 800°C. Because the reactor was overheating the captain ordered the engineers to fabricate a new cooling system from and air vent valve and a water pipe. This meant that the men were exposed to high amounts of radiation for long periods of time and the accident caused radioactive steam to spread through the ventilation system into other parts of the ship. This caused all seven of the engineering crew and their manager to die within the next month and fifteen more crew members to die within the next two years from after effects of radiation exposure.
4.2.1. How Could It Have Been Prevented?
4.2.1.1. The disaster could have been prevented by maintenance staff and engineers carry out more thorough checks to ensure that all the systems were working correctly and repair should have been carried out as soon as a part was damaged or broke down.
4.2.2. Who Was Responsible?
4.2.2.1. The person responsible for the accidents is technically the welder who failed to place the protective cloth down in the first place however no-one has ever been charged with causing the accident as engineers and maintenance staff should have found the crack before the accident happened.
4.2.3. What Was The Cause?
4.2.3.1. The official cause of the accident is that a welder forgot to cover a pipe in the coolant system with a protective cloth to prevent damage from sparks. A drop from a welding electrode then fell on the pipe, creating an invisible crack that slowly caused the pipe to fail. However some of the sailor and engineers that worked on the submarine believe that the cause of the accidents was a faulty pressure gauge on the cooling system