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Project 617 (NATO Whale)

The intelligence services of the various Allied powers surveyed the surviving German naval equipment and facilities and interrogated key technical personnel at the end of the war. Russia pursued the German work on submarines generally with an apparently low key application of peroxide to a class described pejoratively as "cigarette lighters" [in similar spirit to the British nickname of 'Exploder' for HMS Explorer].

The Malakhit Design Bureau was created in 1948 for developing submarines with energy sources independent of atmospheric oxygen. Such a submarine (Design Project 617) was created and tested. In 1948 a second Submarine Design Bureau – SDB-143 (nowadays SPMBM “Malakhit”) was established for designing submarines with high submerged speed. The body of a new bureau is based on over 100 designers of CDB-18 including designers who were delegated to Germany and worked their in Antipin’s bureau. It was a project, designated Design Project 617 in 1952, of a submarine with a steam-gas turbine plant using as an oxidant the high concentration hydrogen peroxide H2O2 (so called Walter cycle). Work on Project 617 started in CDB-18 and Antipin's Bureau were continued in the new bureau.

In 1945, TsKB-18 returned to Leningrad. Work began on the construction of diesel-electric submarines of medium displacement - project 613 and submarines of large displacement - project 611. When creating these submarines, the latest achievements of German submarine shipbuilding were taken into account, mainly in terms of a significant increase in battery capacity. The Germans embodied this idea most fully in series XXI submarines, which were intensively built by the sectional method by the end of the war. Immediately after the war, the USSR received several captured hulls of series XXI boats. The designers of TsKB-18 had to carry out a project to accommodate domestic equipment in these buildings.

Here Sergei Nikitich came in handy with a really good knowledge of the German language. Project 614 was the first submarine project, in the development of which S.N. Kovalev took an active part in the position of assistant chief designer Pavel Sergeevich Savinov. Work on the construction of boats according to project 614 was entrusted to the plant No. 194 named after A. Marti (now FSUE "Admiralty Shipyards"). Domestic equipment, especially electronic weapons, in the German corps was placed very poorly, having dimensions larger than the corresponding German.

Nevertheless, the project was completed; hull and assembly work began at the plant. However, an order was soon received that, in accordance with accepted international agreements, these buildings should be flooded. At the same time, TsKB-18 was working on project 617 with a steam-gas turbine unit operating according to the cycle of engineer Walter using highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide to achieve high values ??of underwater speed. Designed in Germany, series XXVI submarines with a Walter installation, as follows from German documents, had to move at a speed of over 23 knots for 6 hours.

It was decided to implement such a significant improvement in tactical and technical characteristics. For this purpose, in 1947, in the German town of Blankenburg, located at the foot of the Harz mountain range (Harzgebirge), a design bureau was organized, headed by the former head of the 1st Main Directorate of the Ministry of Heavy and Transport Engineering, Captain I rank Alexei Alexandrovich Antipin. According to the custom of that time, it was called “Antipin's Bureau”.

Among the large group of TsKB-18 employees sent to the Antipin Bureau was Sergei Nikitich Kovalev, who was involved in the collection and analysis of technical documentation there. "A business trip to defeated Germany for most of us Soviet citizens was the first trip abroad. Even defeated Germany amazed with its cleanliness, well-groomed and well-arranged life. On the streets under awnings there were tables selling ersatz beer and ersatz ice cream - not very tasty, but very cheap. (In those days in Moscow in the evening on Gorky Street it was impossible to get a glass of water). In the forest, there are paths with benches, trash baskets and directional arrows of the "Beautiful view of the monastery" type. There were wild boars, deer and all kinds of other animals. The villages with red tile roofs looked very picturesque. Of course, for the modern reader, who enjoyed all the benefits of European civilization, there is nothing surprising here, but for the Soviet people who arrived from the still not very comfortable homeland, the contrast was simply striking." TsKB-18 was tasked with reproducing a steam-gas turbine unit and building an experimental submarine according to its own design, which could be replicated as a combat one. This project was assigned the number 617. Vladimir Konstantinovich Stankevich was appointed the chief designer of the turbine unit. The creation of a fundamentally new power plant, its testing on a specially built stand with its subsequent transfer for installation on a submarine was carried out for the first time in the practice of the ship design bureau. The results of the work of the Antipin Bureau were so successful that already in 1948 the USSR Government issued a decree on the creation in Leningrad of a new (second in the USSR) Special Design Bureau ?143, designed to design high-speed submarines, as well as power plants for them. The head of SKB-143 and the chief designer of the 617 project was A.A. Antipin, chief engineer - an experienced submarine mechanic P.Z. Golosovsky, heads of departments - P.S. Savinov on the mechanical part and V.P. Goryachev on the electrical part. S.N. Kovalev was appointed assistant chief designer.

In design issues A.A. Antipin did not particularly delve into, because. He was mainly engaged in the creation of a stand for testing a turbine unit at the Sudomekh plant. Therefore, the design was entrusted to Kovalev, who at that time did not yet have practical experience in designing submarines, all the more so unique, who developed an underwater speed twice as high as conventional diesel submarines.

The main shipbuilding problem in the design of a submarine was its controllability and stability of movement at high speed underwater. Soviet shipbuilders had neither theoretical foundations nor practical experience. It was required to determine what should be the shape of the hull, horizontal and vertical rudders. There were supporters of the idea to copy the hull shape oval in cross-section, which the Germans gave to the series XXI submarines. In particular, this opinion was shared by the head of the underwater department of the Main Directorate of Shipbuilding M.A. Rudnitskiy, chief designer of the XIV series K-type submarines (on one of which the famous N. A. Lunin attacked the German battleship Tirpitz with torpedoes).

Kovalev managed to convince him that the shape of the hull of German submarines of the XXVI series is not due to controllability, but to the location of 6 onboard torpedo tubes and that the projected more circular cross-section, necessary to ensure a buoyancy reserve and fulfill the requirements for unsinkability, for an underwater course it will not be worse. The construction of the submarine was carried out without high technologies, but very quickly and efficiently. Decisions were made and implemented right on the spot. It took only a year from laying the boat on the slipway to launching it in a state of good readiness - it was laid down on February 5, 1951 and launched on February 5, 1952.

The submarine of project 617 was a significant step forward for the Soviet submarine shipbuilding - it became the first submarine in the USSR to overstep the 18-knot underwater speed. Her submerged speed for 6 hours was just over 20 knots. But the main advantage of the new submarine was its power plant, which was an amazing innovation at that time. It is no coincidence that academicians I.V. Kurchatov and A.P. Aleksandrov, who were preparing at this time for the creation of the first nuclear submarines, personally came to get acquainted with this submarine. In May 1953, the entire team of designers involved in project 617 (and other projects of SKB-143), headed by A.A. Antipin, was again transferred to work at TsKB-18. SKB-143 was transformed into a team that began to develop the project of the first nuclear submarine in the USSR, project 627. Project 627, developed by SKB-143, became the first domestic submarine with nuclear power.

In 1953, a re-orientation of SDB-143 on the design of nuclear submarines the entire portfolio of orders of SDB-243 the main of which was Project 617 was returned to CDB-18 together with the most part of employees working in design departments. All test stands, chemical laboratory, research departments were handed over to CDB-18. Works on creation of experimental submarine S-99 of project 617 were completed with her commissioning to the Navy in 1956. The submerged speed of 20 knots was reached by submarine S-99 for the first time in the USSR.

The Soviets built an experimental Walter Cycle submarine which entered service in 1958. An onboard explosion put an end to the program in 1959. From then on the Soviets also focused on nuclear propulsion.