The captain of a Soviet nuclear submarine that nearly went into meltdown off the coast of Bermuda in 1986 has won a huge cash settlement after a US court found that the 1997 Hollywood version was grossly unfair.

Russian Captain Igor Britanov sued Warner Brothers for making him look incompetent in ?Hostile Waters? starring Rutger Hauer as Britanov, Martin Sheen as a US submarine captain and Max von Sydow as a Soviet Admiral.

Britanov also claimed that the film makers never got his permission to use his character.

His story begins at the end of the Cold War, 680 miles off Bermuda when an explosion rocked through his submarine, K-219.

A fire broke out in the missile tube, very close to the submarine?s nuclear reactor.

As if things could not get worse, the seal in a missile-hatch cover failed and seawater began to leak into a missile tube reacting with residue from the missile?s liquid fuel.

Parts of the sub then began to fill with a poisonous gas.

Three sailors were killed immediately by the explosion but sailor, Sergei Preminin, was killed after being given the job of shutting down the nuclear reactor, manually. He never left the seventh reactor compartment.

It is not known how the fire started.

The Soviet Union alleged that the leak in the missile tube was caused by a collision with US submarine , but these claims were denied by the US.

A Soviet freighter, the , was ordered to tow K-219 back to Russia and the crew were to remain onboard.

However, Britanov disobeyed his orders and evacuated his crew on to the freighter, moments before K-219 sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.

When he got back to Russia, he was kicked out of both the Communist party and the Navy.

He was charged with negligence, sabotage and treason, but the charges were quietly dropped as the Soviet Union began to dissolve, and the Cold War come to an end, a few months later.

He eventually regained his reputation, even though mystery still surrounds the causes behind the accident.

?I am sick of explaining to my submariner colleagues ... that I was not a consultant on the film,? Britanov told the Russian press.