Soviet submarine B-427

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Career

Ordered:
Laid down:	10 April 1971
Launched:	22 June 1971
Commissioned:	4 December 1971
Decommissioned:	1994
Fate:	sold to Australia
Homeport:	Long Beach, California
Stricken:	1994
General Characteristics
Displacement:	1952 tons surfaced, 2475 tons submerged
Length:	299 feet 6 inches
Beam:	24 feet 7 inches
Draft:	20 feet
Powerplant:	three Kolomna 2D42M 2000 hp diesel engines, three electric motors; two 1350 hp and one 2700 hp, one 180 hp auxiliary motor
Propulsion:	three propeller shafts, each with six bladed propellers
Speed:	16 knots surfaced, 15 knots submerged, 9 knots snorkeling
Range:	20,000 miles surfaced at 8 knots, 11,000 miles snorkeling, 380 miles submerged at 2 knots
Endurance:	three to five days submerged
Depth:	300 meters (985 feet)
Complement:	12 officers, 10 midshipmen, 56 seamen
Armament:	ten 21-inch torpedo tubes, six forward and four stern

B-427 was a project 641—also known by its NATO reporting name as the Foxtrot class—diesel-electric attack submarine of the Soviet Navy. The "B" (actually "Б") in her designation stands for большая (bolshaya, "large")—Foxtrots are among the largest non-nuclear submarines ever built. Her keel was laid down on 10 April 1971 at Sudomekh Shipyard of Leningrad. She was launched on 22 June 1971 and commissioned on 4 December 1971.

For twelve years B-427 patrolled the Atlantic, protecting the ballistic missile submarine bastions of the Northern Fleet. In the mid-1980s she was partially retired to school boat status, training crews from Cuba, India, and Libya.

In 1989, B-427 was returning to Vladivostok from Vietnam when she ran into a typhoon. A mechanical breakdown that could not be fixed in time prevented the sub from diving. The storm battered the boat, destroying the light hull and damaging the ballast tanks and high pressure air bottles. B-427 limped back to Vladivostok where she was repaired and refitted with a new light hull.

B-427 was decommissioned in 1994. On 25 July 1995, she sailed from Vladivostok to spend nearly three years at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. She left Sydney Harbor on 31 May 1998 for Long Beach, California, arriving on 25 June and tying up next to RMS Queen Mary. On 14 July, she opened to the public as an exhibit. During her sequence of owners she acquired the name "Scorpion," which she did not have during her commissioned career. (Note that some Web sites mistakenly state that the name of B-427 in the Russian language was "Podvodnaya Lodka." Podvodnaya lodka, literally "underwater boat," is the translation of "submarine;" "scorpion" would be скорпион or skorpion.)

Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 33.753242° -118.191307°
- Satellite image from WikiMapia, Google Maps or Windows Live Local
- Street map from MapQuest or Google Maps
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image from TerraServer-USA

[edit] See also

B-39, a Foxtrot on display in San Diego, California.

[edit] References

B-427’s Web page: http://www.queenmary.com/QMweb/html/sub.html

Foxtrot-class submarine

Project 641
B-94 | B-95 | B-37† | B-133/B-833 B-135 | B-139 | B-57 | B-116 | B-130 | B-143 | B-85 | B-156 | B-59 | B-4 Chelyabinky Komsomolets | B-153 | B-164 | B-33† | B-7 | B-105 | B-169 | B-38 | B-53 | B-50 | B-8 | B-31 | B-2 | B-55 (B-855) | B-98 | B-101 | B-6 | B-15 | B-103 | B-109 | B-107 | B-112 | B-25 | B-21 | B-9 | B-26 Yaroslavsky Komsomolets B-28 | B-34 | B-40 | B-29 | B-41 | B-46 | B-49 Valdimirsky Komsomolets | B-39 | B-397 | B-400 | B-413 | B-416 | B-205 | B-213 | B-435 | B-440 | B-409 | B-427 | B-807 | B-213