Soviet submarine B-39
B-39, homeported in San Diego, California
|Laid down:||9 February 1962|
|Launched:||15 April 1967|
|Commissioned:||28 December 1967|
|Decommissioned:||1 April 1994|
|Fate:||Museum Ship, Maritime Museum of San Diego, San Diego, California, United States|
|Class and type:||Foxtrot-class submarine|
|Displacement:||1,953 long tons (1,984 t) surfaced
2,475 long tons (2,515 t) submerged
|Length:||89.9 m (294 ft 11 in)|
|Beam:||7.4 m (24 ft 3 in)|
|Draft:||5.9 m (19 ft 4 in)|
|Propulsion:||3 × Kolomna 2D42M 2,000 hp (1,500 kW) diesel engines
3 electric motors; 2 × 1,350 hp (1,007 kW) and 1 × 2,700 hp (2,000 kW)
1 × 180 hp (130 kW) auxiliary motor
3 shafts, each with 6-bladed propellers
|Speed:||16 knots (18 mph; 30 km/h) surfaced
15 knots (17 mph; 28 km/h) submerged
9 knots (10 mph; 17 km/h) snorkeling
|Range:||20,000 nmi (37,000 km) at 8 kn (9.2 mph; 15 km/h) surfaced
11,000 nmi (20,000 km) snorkeling
380 nmi (700 km) at 2 kn (2.3 mph; 3.7 km/h) submerged
|Endurance:||3–5 days submerged|
|Test depth:||246–296 m (807–971 ft)|
|Complement:||12 officers, 10 warrants, 56 seamen|
|Armament:||• 10 torpedo tubes (6 bow, 4 stern)
• Up to 22 torpedoes
B-39 was a Project 641 (Foxtrot-class) diesel-electric attack submarine of the Soviet Navy. The "B" (actually "Б") in her designation stands for большая (bolshaya, "large") — Foxtrots were the Soviet Navy's largest non-nuclear submarines. B-39 is now a museum ship on display at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, California, United States.
Transferred to the 9th Submarine Squadron of the Pacific Fleet, B-39 was homeported in Vladivostok. She conducted patrols and stalked U.S. warships throughout the North Pacific, along the coast of the United States and Canada, and ranging as far as the Indian Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. After the end of the Vietnam War, she often made port visits to Danang. During the early 1970s, B-39 trailed a Canadian frigate through Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island.
B-39 was decommissioned on 1 April 1994 and sold to Finland. She made her way from there through a series of sales to Vancouver Island in 1996 and to Seattle, Washington, in 2002 before arriving in San Diego, California, on 22 April 2005 and becoming an exhibit of the Maritime Museum of San Diego. During her sequence of owners she acquired the names "Black Widow" and "Cobra," neither of which she had during her commissioned career.
When B-39 was made a museum the shroud around her attack periscope was cut away where it passes through her control room. As built, a Foxtrot's periscopes are only accessible from her conning tower, which is off-limits in the museum. With the shroud cut away, tourists can look through the partially raised periscope (which is directed toward the USS Midway museum, some 500 yards (460 m) away). However, the unidentified and unexplained change gives the false impression that one periscope could be used from the control room.
In 2012, B-39 was used as a stage for the movie Phantom.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to B-39 (submarine).|
- Submarine B-39
- B-39 Project 641, serial number 210 (in Russian)
- B-39 at the Maritime Museum of San Diego
- HNSA Web Page: Soviet B-39
- B-427, a Foxtrot on display in Long Beach, California.
- Submarine U-475 Black Widow, a Foxtrot class awaiting restoration on the River Medway