In March 1984, the American aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk led a group of eight escort ships in the northwestern Pacific. The US fleet, aligned with Korean partners, planned to enter the Sea of Japan off Vladivostok to participate in the Team Spirit-84 exercise.
During 1983–1984, Cold War tensions were at their peak since the days of Khrushchev and Kennedy, and the USSR could not ignore major exercises off its coast. The nuclear torpedo submarine K-314 was tasked with surveillance for training and to observe American tactics and procedures, even though there was no direct threat implied. This assignment was described in an excerpt from the book Disturbers of the Depths: Covert Operations of Soviet Submarines during the Cold War.
“We were preparing for a long voyage to the Indian Ocean, stopping at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam and then to Somalia. At the combat training ground, I picked up the radio: ‘Prepare the submarine for long-term monitoring of the US AUG.’ I hoped the commander would reconsider, and the 627th project’s boisterous submarine would continue its surveillance. But the commander of our 26th division, Rear Admiral Belousov, insisted: ‘Go!’ — as recounted by Vladimir Evseenko, the ship’s commander.
“Roaring Cow” was an ironic nickname for noisy Soviet submarines. K-314 was not quiet either, and it began monitoring the exercises with sonar on March 14. American sailors detected the activity and began to counter. Over the following days, the AUG sometimes evaded the submarine, but K-314 caught up again. On March 21, the aircraft carrier vanished behind islands, and only in the evening did the sub’s sonar pick up the propeller sounds from roughly 20 kilometers away.
“An aircraft carrier passed over us”
At 22:10 the boat surfaced to periscope depth to raise antennas for the next communication session with the base. The commander scanned the horizon through the periscope and suddenly spotted a bright array of lights 4–6 kilometers away. It looked like a full assault group approaching head-on. Evseenko ordered an emergency dive.
The boat seemed to be struck by a heavy blow, tilting about 20 degrees before returning to its position. A drop in hydraulic pressure followed, and the commander feared the wheelhouse might be breached. A second hit came, yet the sub did not sink. Evseenko suspected that an aircraft carrier was bearing down on them, and the second strike likely hit the propeller.
Kitty Hawk’s commander, David Rogers, watched from the radar station on the bridge as the massive ship lurched. The Americans quickly realized what had happened: the submarine had been tracked, but sonar contact had been lost two hours earlier when the carrier changed course toward the Yellow Sea. Two search helicopters launched immediately because the law obliges the United States to assist distressed sailors regardless of citizenship or mission.
As the Americans assessed K-314’s damage, periscopes and antennas rose in sequence, signaling that the control tower was operational again. Yet speed dropped sharply. The drive shaft from the aft turbine to the propeller had cracked, and attempts to use auxiliary shafts generated excessive heat. It became clear that the submarine would need to surface and send a distress call.
“We collided with an unknown object. We lost speed,” the commander reported. “Mashuk” was dispatched to the base to pull the submarine in. The deputy commander of the Pacific Fleet was aboard to supervise.
The first rescue effort did not come from a tug but from a Soviet anti-submarine ship. Its crew examined the damage from the outside and found that the collision bent the propeller shaft and detached it from its mounting. Evseenko later remarked that the crucial thing was that the boat remained afloat and did not sink. He also noted that the loss of non-ferrous metal would not be a disaster for the Motherland. The official account reflects mixed feelings about the incident.
When Mashuk arrived, the boat was towed to the Pavlovsky Bay base near Vladivostok for repairs. American planes tracked the situation from above, and a Knox-class frigate accompanied the convoy to the USSR’s borders. A helicopter flew overhead, dropping sonar buoys that picked up the noise of the sub’s turb Generators. Evseenko recalled that the crew did not activate the buoys. He suggested that the Americans had recently deployed their own divers near the area and did not want to risk the gear.
A hole opened in Kitty Hawk’s bottom near the jet fuel tanks, causing a fuel spill. Repairs at the dock followed, but the ship reached port without major threat.
Who is guilty?
“You terrible tankers. They pulled their helmets to their ears and heard nothing. Commander, get ready!” One of Evseenko’s early messages from the deputy squadron commander captured the mood. The admiral grew furious, likely convinced that the sonar operator would have heard a monster of a ship with more than 82,000 tons of displacement if only the crew had proper lighting.
Pentagon investigators were more lenient toward the K-314 commander. They argued that the aircraft carrier approached from the stern where a sonar blind spot existed due to propeller noise. That defect could explain why Evseenko did not detect the carrier, though he was still deemed responsible for the collision because the submarine did not expose navigation lights, violating international rules.
However, the American assessment of the cause did not fully align with the evidence. A later inquiry suggested the crew misread the region’s hydrography and believed audible signals would be clearer at about 30 meters. With a safe depth target of 50 meters and the available equipment, hearing the carrier would have been unlikely. After surfacing, the commander could not make out Kitty Hawk’s lights at such a close range and tall structure height.
As a consequence, Evseenko was relieved of duty and sent ashore. “Friends later joked that he should write to the carrier’s commander for an invitation to visit America. He replied that such a thing would not happen.” Evseenko later confided.
Questions also circled the Kitty Hawk’s commander. The Pentagon stated there were no complaints against him: in peacetime, continuous surveillance of submarines was not necessary, especially when no wartime threat existed. The Soviet side accepted that the incident resulted from Evseenko’s negligence, while a former American sailor, David Hornbuckle, offered another take: Soviet captains might have been more reckless. He imagined a scenario where a captain surfaced in the middle of an AUG as a dramatic display of Soviet prowess.
Hornbuckle’s view remains speculative, lacking documentary proof. Regardless of fault, Evseenko did not return to the sea. He declined a role on another ship, remarking that a damaged project submarine was too risky a platform for command duties. He preferred to stay on shore rather than march into a fragile vessel.
The Kitty Hawk underwent repairs and remained in service until 2009. K-314 did return to service but suffered a far more severe accident in 1986 when its reactor core melted, exposing the crew to radiation. The submarine was later decommissioned and stored, finally being destroyed in 2011. The episode remains a notable example of Cold War submarine operations and the delicate balance between peacetime patrols and real-world danger, with each side weighing the implications of a close encounter at sea.