Salvage teams raise sunken Russian sub

PROVIDENCE -- Military salvage teams used hydraulic pumps and pontoons Friday to raise a Russian submarine that sank in the Providence River last year during a storm.

The 282-foot-long submarine, known as Juliett 484, was once featured in a Hollywood film and had been used as the floating Russian Sub Museum until April 2007, when it was swamped after a powerful nor'easter.

The team raised the front of the submarine around 6 p.m., said Navy Petty Officer First Class Eric Lippmann, a salvage team spokesman. It could take until late Friday night or Saturday morning to elevate the rear of the sub and stabilize it.

Lippmann said it was still too early to assess the overall condition of the vessel.

"It's looks like there's a lot of growth and debris on it," he said.

Crews were using the hydraulic pumps to remove water from the sub, making the vessel lighter, and the pontoons to raise it to the surface. Military officials said it could take up to eight hours to raise the sub back to the surface.

"This is a salvage operation; nothing goes fast," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Morganthaler said.

The salvage effort was complicated by the river's poor visibility and because the sub was buried in 30 feet of water and an additional 15 feet of mud.

"This is the first time that anybody has raised a former Soviet submarine, so there's not a lot of people giving us the ideas of how to do it," Lippmann said.

The effort has been delayed several times since last week, including last Thursday, when last-minute checks raised safety concerns.

The sub, alternately designated as K-77, was launched in 1965 as part of the Soviet Northern Fleet. 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 as a set for the 2002 Harrison Ford movie "K-19: The Widowmaker" before being acquired by the USS Saratoga Museum Foundation, a private, nonprofit group. It opened as a museum in 2002 in an industrial area of Providence and has since drawn tens of thousands of visitors.

Frank Lennon, president of the foundation, said it would take a while to assess the condition of the sub and to determine if it could be used again as a museum.

"We're not being unrealistic," Lennon said. "The sub has been underwater for 15 months. There's been corrosion. There's been deterioration. We just don't know how much."