Films draw on Hiram historian’s work of Soviet navy

HIRAM – Peter Huchthausen had planned to write a comprehensive history of the Soviet navy during the Cold War, but Hollywood kept interrupting with requests to tap his wealth of knowledge about Soviet submarines.

The retired Navy captain and former U.S. naval attache in Moscow has no complaints.

Instead of writing a tome that might appeal to a limited audience of naval history buffs, Huchthausen now has two books that recount deadly nuclear submarine accidents and benefit from movie tie-ins. The latest: “K-19: The Widowmaker.”

His third book about Soviet submarines, a little-known drama that played out during the Cuban missile crisis 40 years ago and in which he was personally involved, will be published next month.

“I’m just fortunate,” Huchthausen said of the movie deals that propelled his writing career forward. “Every dog has his day and I’m riding high right now.”

“K-19,” a companion to the hit summer film of the same name, features on its cover a scowling Harrison Ford, who portrays the Soviet submarine commander whose memoirs are woven into Huchthausen’s text.

The book and movie focus on a near-meltdown in a reactor aboard a submarine that was hastily deployed in the North Atlantic in 1961, despite concerns about shoddy construction. It was the first Soviet sub built to carry ballistic missiles.

Without flinching, crew members entered the reactor compartment and rigged a makeshift cooling system, knowing full well that deadly radiation exposure awaited them.

The author first rubbed shoulders with the movie industry five years ago when HBO Films approached him for help with “Hostile Waters,” which recounts the 1986 explosion and sinking of a Soviet ballistic missile sub off Bermuda. It, too, is a tale of personal heroism.

Huchthausen’s book about the accident coincided with the release of the film, which starred Rutger Hauer and Martin Sheen.

“K-19” and “Hostile Waters” focus on just two examples of what Huchthausen describes as a decades-long string of naval disasters that were kept under wraps until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The veil of secrecy was lifted while Huchthausen was stationed in Moscow. He developed friendships with Russians who came to him with heart-rending stories detailing their nuclear navy’s hidden history of environmental degradation and flagrant disregard for crew safety.

“K-19” and “Hostile Waters” were originally envisioned as chapters in the Cold War history that Huchthausen decided to write after he retired from the Navy in 1990. But after National Geographic hired him as a consultant on the “K-19” movie and as author of its companion book, Huchthausen recognized the opportunity to present the history to a wider audience.

“They wanted me to talk about the history of the Soviet navy and what went wrong in the Cold War. So there it was – a chance to publish the big thing and wrap it around the memoir,” he said.

“And so, frankly, this is it. I’m not going to pursue that history any more because this tells it all.”

But before Huchthausen abandons submarines as a book topic, he has one more torpedo in his arsenal.

“October Fury” tells the little-known story of four diesel submarines that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dispatched to Cuba in 1962 to scope out a potential base for seven nuclear-powered subs armed with medium-range ballistic missiles.

By the time the four submarines approached the Caribbean, the discovery that the Soviets were placing land-based missiles in Cuba triggered an international crisis and a U.S. blockade of the island.

Huchthausen was stationed on the destroyer USS Blandy, putting him in an ideal position to watch the submarine drama unfold.

“I was a boot ensign right out of the Naval Academy and didn’t know what was going on,” he recalled. “I just happened to be on the anti-submarine warfare team, repeating commands between sonar communications and the captain. So I had to be next to the captain throughout this whole thing and that’s how I saw it all happen.”

“October Fury” details how the Blandy, along with other destroyers and aircraft, located the four Soviet submarines and forced them to surface.

The submarine encounters were kept secret until a meeting of U.S. and Russian leaders in 1994. Noting that the subs were armed with nuclear-tipped torpedos, Huchthausen said that even today few people realize that those incidents could have triggered nuclear war.

The History Channel plans a documentary based on the new book, and Huchthausen hopes it will inspire yet another submarine movie.

Huchthausen, 62, has become a prolific author since his retirement from the Navy after 28 years of service. In addition to the submarine books, he has written “Echoes of the Mekong,” which draws upon his command of river patrol boats on the Mekong River during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and a history of Frye Island, where he and his wife have a summer home.

Awaiting publication is a history of U.S. military operations after Vietnam. The book, which could be Huchthausen’s third to come out this year, begins with the Mayaguez rescue and covers Grenada, Lebanon, the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The author shows no signs of letting up. Among the diverse projects he is exploring is a Kenneth Roberts-type historical novel based on the life of 18th century militia leader Joseph Frye, founder of Fryeburg and the figure for whom Frye Island was named.