The Soviet Anomaly

By Richard Hardenburg

British Samoa Times Correspondent – Norport, British Samoa

Polyarny

Twenty-four hours in the frigid Arctic Ocean nearly killed them, but it was a Soviet Navy PBY Catalina that finally hauled all forty surviving sailors of the K-88 from the water. Yet only hours after their arrival in Polyarny, Murmansk, headquarters of the Soviet Union’s Northern Fleet during the Second Great War, every man was arrested.

They stood accused under the ominous Military Article 58, pertaining to Counter-Revolutionary Crimes, Failure to Act, and Sabotage Through Negligence, for the catastrophic failure to execute Operational Order No. 041/op, a directive issued directly by Vice Admiral A. Golovko himself.

The chilling events that follow are the result of a compilation of eyewitness accounts, declassified court-martial documents, and extensive research by Professor Mikhail S. Zhukov, published in his definitive work, The Wreck of the K-88 “Grom”: A Study in Barents Sea Geomagnetic Anomalies (1941–1945) (2001).

The Anomaly

The radio transmission from K-88 to Polyarny, ordered by Political Officer Lt. Semyonov, had been intercepted by German Radio Intelligence (Funkaufklärung), unleashing a force of destroyers. Their orders were simple: capture or destroy the enemy vessel.

The K-Class submarine was technologically advanced for its time, but like all contemporary submarines, it was a boat meant to submerge for short periods. At top speed on the surface, the Grom’s petrol engines could reach 30 knots. However, underwater, its electric engines could only propel the massive boat at 8 knots at best, giving their converging hunters a critical advantage.

Captain Volkov knew they were trapped.

“Prepare evasive maneuvers,” Volkov ordered. “We move under ice now.”

Kuznetsov nodded. “Understood, Captain. Crew is ready.”

The courier, carrying a large package, asked Captain Volkov for a discrete compartment where he could remain out of sight. Volkov offered the visitor his quarters. The courier entered and locked himself inside.

Captain Volkov turned to the crew. “Complete silence.” They knew the German destroyers were equipped with sensitive hydrophone arrays, sophisticated underwater ears that could pick up the faintest whir of machinery.

“We should engage them and sink them!” Lt. Semyonov hissed.

Lt. Kuznetsov grabbed him abruptly by the collar, shaking him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “If you say one more word, Semyonov,” he snarled, his voice a tight knot of frustration and anger, “I will strangle you myself!”

“Silence! Here they are. Stop all engines,” Volkov ordered.

“Captain, we cannot be captured!” said the courier in a panicked voice from behind the door of the captain’s quarters.

Volkov’s reply was a low, dangerous whisper that cut through the sudden stillness. “Remain calm. Silence. They can hear you.”

“I cannot be captured. If I am taken, the world will be lost,” the courier said, his voice tight with urgency.

Captain Volkov ordered all sailors and officers to remain silently at their battle stations, but instructed sailor Sergei Mikhailovich Andropov to guard the door of the captain’s quarters to prevent the increasingly unstable visitor from interfering with operations.

“Lt. Kuznetsov, take her to periscope depth…”

As Volkov delivered the order, a high-pitched hissing sound emerged from the captain’s quarters, followed by an intense light leaking through the door’s seam. A shockwave erupted from within the room, throwing Andropov through the air and slamming him violently against the inner hull. There was no smoke, no fire, yet the metal around the door appeared warped outward, as if the steel itself had been stretched.

“Engineers, report damage!” Volkov ordered.

As engineers moved to inspect the torpedo compartment, they opened the bow hatch—and stared into nothing.

“Seal the hatch tight!” ordered Lt. Kuznetsov. Sailors moved with practiced precision.

“Navigator! Our position!” demanded Captain Volkov.

“Captain, the compass is running in circles!”

“Doctor Bosque! Check on Andropov and report!” Volkov ordered. Doctor Bosque was a Spanish physician, a refugee from the Spanish Civil War who had been enlisted in the Soviet Navy.

“Captain,” Bosque said in a heavy Spanish accent, “he is alive, but unconscious.” He paused, his voice dropping into a clinical monotone of disbelief. “His chest is crushed, though there are no external fractures or bruises. His skull is fractured, and his eyes… Captain, his eyes are missing. There is nothing in his eye sockets.”

“Will he live?”

“No, Captain. He has minutes, perhaps one hour.”

As Bosque spoke, the submarine began to list toward the bow.

“I cannot be captured!” screamed the courier from his enclosure. His voice was distorted now, intermittent, metallic, and the light escaping the room shifted through different intensities and colors. The Grom appeared to twist as the bow vanished and reappeared intermittently.

“Captain,” Lt. Kuznetsov reported, “we are at periscope depth… but nothing makes sense. The horizons are warped, then they appear as a vertical plane.”

“The enemy?”

“No sign of them.”

Captain Volkov took the microphone and addressed the crew.

“Sailors, it has been an honor serving with you. If we do not return, remember—the sea took us, not the enemy. Prepare to abandon ship. Take your survival gear. Follow the training.”

Turning to Kuznetsov, Volkov spoke calmly. “Vasily, take the log and take them home.”

“What are you doing, Volk?”

“I am staying behind. I am the captain. The only way to save the crew is if I remain. It must be clear that you and the crew were following my orders. There is no time, she is going down. There is no chance to extract the courier.”

“I cannot be captured!” screamed the courier, his voice no longer entirely human.

“Volk! Save yourself! Come with us!” Kuznetsov begged.

“Follow my order, Lieutenant. Abandon ship!”

As sailors deployed their flotation devices, the waves and wind intensified. Just in time, as the K-88 slipped beneath the frigid surface, all surviving sailors clung to rubber rafts and wooden dinghies.

“Row count!” Kuznetsov yelled.

Before the count could begin, sailors cried out, “Smotrite, smotrite!, Look!” One pointed toward a blue light illuminating the submerged silhouette of the K-88. Within it, the shadow of a man—appearing to be Captain Volkov, moved slowly through the vessel. The sight transfixed them.

“Komandir Volkov! Volk! Take my hand, save yourself!” they screamed, leaning dangerously from their craft, arms plunged into the freezing sea.

As the blue light faded, neither Captain Volkov nor the K-88 could be seen again.

Then the ocean began to reverberate softly, like water brought to a boil. Something rose from the depths. Sailors recoiled, pulling their hands back as if from fire.

“Lieutenant Kuznetsov!”

A voice carried over the wind and the six- to ten-foot waves. As Kuznetsov looked on, millions of lily flowers spread across the surface, encircling the survivors. Silence followed, absolute and unnatural.

Morning arrived under pale October sunlight. The sea had calmed.

“Semyonov! Semyonov!” the sailors called. There was no answer. Lt. Semyonov, and nearly thirty sailors, were gone.

“The ocean took them,” Kuznetsov said quietly, as the distant drone of aircraft engines grew louder.

“Germans!” someone cried.

“No,” Kuznetsov replied. “It’s ours. A Catalina. We are going home, boys.”

Soviet Intelligence

The Soviets had eyes and ears deep within the German Navy Headquarters. Through these sources, they learned that during the punitive operation against the intruding Soviet submarine in Valkarian waters, German destroyers had experienced inexplicable failures in their navigational instruments.

German officers recorded in their ship logs that bearings contradicted one another, navigation became nearly impossible, and compasses “turned in circles.” They noted that the ocean appeared flat as glass.

With worsening weather and these anomalous conditions, German command ordered the task force to return to base, fearing they were being drawn into a Soviet trap near territorial waters.

The final entry in the report noted that just before their withdrawal, a shockwave passed through the ocean, followed by an intense blue light. Officers speculated that the Soviet submarine may have suffered a catastrophic accident. They recorded the location as accurately as equipment failure allowed and returned home.

The Judge’s Remorse

Colonel Andrei Gerasimovich Rostov presided over the Northern Fleet Military Tribunal. He was known simply as The Judge.

The political stakes of the Grom case were immense. Moscow demanded a brutal demonstration of authority, recommending execution of the entire surviving crew under Article 58, accompanied by the chilling directive: “Not even heroes are exempt from Soviet Law.”

In his 1959 memoirs, Motherland Call, Rostov reflected:

“During my career overseeing military law in the Soviet Union, I have tried thieves, murderers, cowards, and men guilty of criminal negligence. Applying the maximum penalty allowed by law, after attenuating circumstances, always gave me a sense of duty to the Motherland. However, the Court Martial of the sailors of K-88 Grom left me with a deep remorse I have never been able to shake.”

Defying political pressure, Rostov imposed the harshest sentence legally permissible without execution. The sailors and Doctor Bosque were assigned to a punishment battalion (Shtrafbat), subject to the rule of “first blood drawn.” In an unprecedented judicial maneuver, Rostov ordered that Senior Lieutenant Vasily A. Kuznetsov, the Grom’s executive officer, command the unit, preserving their cohesion.

The unit, known as the “Grom Sailors,” was given near-impossible missions. Despite the opportunity for redemption, loyalty outweighed survival. Kuznetsov was gravely wounded during the Battle for the Volga and ordered back to the Northern Fleet, but he chose to remain with his men. When others were wounded and offered reassignment, every one requested to stay with his brothers.

All but one died in action during the Second Great War. Lieutenant Kuznetsov fell during the final assault on Berlin. The sole survivor was Sergeant First Class Yuri Ivanovich Komarov, the radio operator of K-88 Grom.

Motherland Call became a bestseller in the Soviet Union during the 1960s and later inspired a popular military justice television series. The one case omitted, absent from both book and screen, and deliberately buried, was The Court Martial of the K-88 Sailors.

Editor’s Note

The editors note that no official Soviet naval record acknowledges the existence of a phenomenon corresponding to the destruction of K‑88 Grom. Where discrepancies occur between survivor testimony, foreign intelligence logs, and postwar memoirs, the Times has elected to present the material as recorded, without conjecture or reconciliation.

Certain names, locations, and operational details remain contested or deliberately obscured in surviving documents. Readers are advised to regard omissions not as absence of evidence, but as evidence of omission.