The inrushing water made it impossible to close the watertight doors between the sixth, fifth, and fourth compartments. Approximately 40 seconds after the collision, S-178 had taken on about 130 tons of water, and sank. She hit bottom, rolled 28 degrees to starboard, in 31 meters of water. Eighteen men died immediately. The 26 survivors in the forward compartments were unable to stop the flooding of the third compartment, so retreated into the first and second compartments about half an hour after the wreck. Four men were trapped in the seventh compartment, including the Chief of Staff of the submarine brigade Captain Second Rank V.Y. Karavekov. When leakage into the seventh compartment reached 15 tons an hour, Karavekov made the decision to escape from that compartment and make a free ascent to the surface. However, they could not open the escape trunk's top hatch. It transpired later that they had not equalized the pressure across the hatch. Four hours later, communications with the seventh compartment ended. On the surface, RFS-13 rescued seven of the 11 men thrown from the bridge and at 19:57 informed the port authorities of the accident. At 20:15 search and rescue forces were alerted, and steam ships Zhigulis and Mashuk, and the Project 940 Lenok rescue submarine BS-480 Komsomolets Uzbekistan had arrived at the scene of the accident. At 21:00 the crew of RFS-13 located the emergency buoy from S-178. At 21:50 salvage ships arrived at the scene. Vice-Admiral Golosov commanded salvage operations. Beginning at 08:45 on 22 October, Komsomolets Uzbekistan began attempting to rescue the trapped crew, but locating the sunken submarine took about 17 hours. The rescue submarine dived three times, without success. Divers finally reached S-178 on 23 October at 03:03. By this time, the trapped crew had despaired of rescue and had begun attempting free ascents. At 20:30 on 23 October, Captain Lieutenant Kubynin, the senior officer among the survivors, was the last of the crew to leave S-178. Three men who reached the surface later died, and three others who left the boat were never found on the surface; it is possible they came up under maneuvering ships and were killed by their screws. Their loss brought the death toll to 31 men. On 24 October work began to raise the sunken boat. First, pontoons lifted her up to a depth of 15 meters and she was towed into shallow water.