The Quebec-class submarine was the

NATO reporting name NATO uses a system of code names, called reporting names, to denote military aircraft and other equipment used by post-Soviet states, former Warsaw Pact countries, China, and other countries. The system assists military communications by providi ...

of the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Project 615

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

class, a small

coastal submarine A coastal submarine or littoral submarine is a small, maneuverable submarine with a shallow draft (hull), draft well suited to navigating coastal channels and harbors. Although size is not precisely defined, coastal submarines are larger than mi ...

of the late 1950s.

Background

Prior to World War II, work on closed-cycle diesel engines was carried out by S.A. Basilevskiy, who developed a powerplant codenamed REDO. The exhaust gases from the diesel engine were compressed and the

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

extracted and dumped overboard, before the purified gases were mixed with stored oxygen and fed back into the engine. A prototype of this powerplant was installed in the experimental submarine ''M-401'', laid down at Gorky on 28 November 1939 and launched on 31 May 1941. ''M-401'' made 74 cruises in the

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including 68 dives and of submerged running on its closed-cycle plant. Further work was temporarily suspended due to the war but was resumed after hostilities ended, at Leningrad. The data obtained from trials of ''M-401'' formed a basis for the design of the Project 615 ''Quebec''-class.

Description

Quebec-class submarines were fitted with two regular diesel engines and a third, closed-cycle diesel engine, which used

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen, sometimes abbreviated as LOX or LOXygen, is a clear cyan liquid form of dioxygen . It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which is ongoing. Physical ...

to provide

air-independent propulsion Air-independent propulsion (AIP), or air-independent power, is any marine propulsion technology that allows a non-nuclear submarine to operate without access to atmospheric oxygen (by surfacing or using a snorkel). AIP can augment or replace th ...

while the submarine was submerged. The Quebec class had a streamlined conning tower with a fixed snorkel housing at the rear end. They were armed with four torpedo tubes in the bow, for which no reloads were carried, and earlier boats also had a twin 25 mm anti-aircraft gun faired into the forward end of the tower, making them some of the last submarines to be constructed with deck guns. The Quebec-class was plagued with problems caused by liquid oxygen evaporation. Their endurance was limited to 14 days due to continuous evaporation of the oxygen and lack of a re-liquefaction system, and the propulsion system led to several serious incidents. In 1957 two submarines were lost due to accidents caused by the oxygen system. ''M-256'' suffered a fire off

Tallinn Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...

in the Baltic, which led to the loss of 35 men, while ''M-351'' sank in the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

with no casualties. Other incidents caused oxygen-fueled flames to burst out from the boats, which led to their crews to nickname them ''zazhigalka'' ("lighters") or

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s after the well-known cigarette lighter.

Service

Thirty units were built between 1952 and 1957John Jordan, Soviet Submarines, 1945 to the Present, London, Arms and Armour Press, 1989, pp.26-28 cited in Sean Maloney, 'To Secure Command of the Sea,' University of New Brunswick thesis 1991, p.316 of the 100 planned before the project was abandoned and the Soviet Union developed nuclear-powered boats. The last ones were retired in the 1970s. A unit, ''M-261'' is on display in

Krasnodar Krasnodar, formerly Yekaterinodar (until 1920), is the largest city and the administrative centre of Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The city stands on the Kuban River in southern Russia, with a population of 1,154,885 residents, and up to 1.263 millio ...

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and another, ''M-296'' re-christened as M-305 in

Odesa Odesa, also spelled Odessa, is the third most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

Notes

Citations

External links