Kursk submarine disaster

The Russian nuclear submarine sank in an accident on 12 August 2000 in the Barents Sea, with the death of all 118 personnel on board. The submarine, which was of the Project 949A-class (Oscar II class), was taking part in the first major Russian naval exercise in more than 10 years. The crews of nearby ships felt an initial explosion and a second, much larger explosion, but the Russian Navy did not realise that an accident had occurred and did not initiate a search for the vessel for over six hours. The submarine's emergency rescue buoy had been intentionally disabled during an earlier mission; it took more than 16 hours to locate the submarine, which rested on the ocean floor at a depth of .

Over four days, the Russian Navy repeatedly failed in its attempts to attach four different diving bells and submersibles to the escape hatch of the submarine. Its response was criticised as slow and inept. Officials misled and manipulated the public and news media, and refused help from other countries' ships nearby. President Vladimir Putin initially continued his vacation at a seaside resort in Sochi and authorised the Russian Navy to accept British and Norwegian assistance only after five days had passed. Two days later, British and Norwegian divers finally opened a hatch to the escape trunk in the boat's flooded ninth compartment, but found no survivors.

An official investigation concluded that when the crew loaded a dummy 65-76 "Kit" torpedo, a faulty weld in its casing leaked high-test peroxide (HTP) inside the torpedo tube, initiating a catalytic explosion. The torpedo manufacturer challenged this hypothesis, insisting that its design would prevent the kind of event described. The explosion blew off both the inner and outer tube doors, ignited a fire, destroyed the bulkhead between the first and second compartments, damaged the control room in the second compartment, and incapacitated or killed the torpedo room and control-room crew. Two minutes and fifteen seconds after the first explosion, another five to seven torpedo warheads exploded. They tore a large hole in the hull, collapsed the bulkheads between the first three compartments and all the decks, destroyed compartment four, and killed everyone still alive forward of the sixth compartment. The nuclear reactors shut down safely. Analysts concluded that 23 sailors took refuge in the small ninth compartment and survived for more than six hours. When oxygen ran low, they attempted to replace a potassium superoxide chemical oxygen cartridge, but it fell into the oily seawater and exploded on contact. The resulting fire killed several crew members and triggered a flash fire that consumed the remaining oxygen, asphyxiating the remaining survivors.

The Dutch company Mammoet was awarded a salvage contract in May 2001. Within a three-month period, the company and its subcontractors designed, fabricated, installed, and commissioned over of custom-made equipment. A barge was modified and loaded with the equipment, arriving in the Barents Sea in August. On 3 October 2001, some 14 months after the accident, the hull was raised from the seabed floor and hauled to a dry dock. The salvage team recovered all but the bow, including the remains of 115 sailors, who were later buried in Russia. Although this was an exercise, Kursk loaded a full complement of conventional combat weapons. It was one of the few submarines authorised to carry a combat load at all times. The Oscar II Class submarines are equipped with 24 P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 "Shipwreck") cruise missiles. In addition, since the torpedo tubes can fire both torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, it also carried two dozen other weapons, including the RPK-6 Vodopad/RPK-7 Veter (SS-N-16 "Stallion") missiles.

Kursk had an almost mythical standing. It was reputedly unsinkable and, it was claimed, could withstand a direct hit from a torpedo. The outer hull was constructed using steel plate covered by up to of rubber, which minimised other submarines' or surface

vessels' ability to detect the submarine. The inner pressure hull was made of high-quality steel plate. The two hulls were separated by a gap. The inner hull was divided into nine water-tight compartments. The boat was , about as long as two jumbo jets.

At 08:51 local time, Kursk requested permission to conduct a torpedo training launch and received the response "" ("Good"). The location was fixed at coordinates , north-east of Murmansk, approximately from Norway, and from the Kola Peninsula.

Secondary event

At 11:31:48, and was detected as far away as Alaska.

The seismic data showed that the explosion occurred at the same depth as the sea bed. Aboard Pyotr Velikiy, the target of the practice launch, the crew detected a hydroacoustic signal characteristic of an underwater explosion and felt their hull shudder. They reported the phenomenon to fleet headquarters but their report was ignored.

thumb|Russian sailors on the surface aboard the [[deep-submergence rescue vehicle|DSRV AS-28 Priz]]

The Northern Fleet duty officer notified the head of the fleet's search and rescue forces, Captain Alexander Teslenko, to stand by for orders. Teslenko's primary rescue ship was a 20-year-old former lumber carrier, Mikhail Rudnitsky, which had been converted to support submersible rescue operations. The Russian Navy had previously operated two s, each of which carried a pair of Poseidon-class DSRVs that could reach a depth of , but due to a lack of funds, the vessels had been held since 1994 in a Saint Petersburg yard for pending repairs.

At 17:00, an Ilyushin Il-38 aircraft was dispatched. The crew spent three hours searching for Kursk, without success. At 22:30, the Northern Fleet declared an emergency, and the exercise was stopped.

Rumours among family members

Early on Sunday morning, 13 August, at the Vidyaevo Naval Base, rumours began to circulate among family members of Kursks crew that something was wrong. A telephone operator handled an unusual volume of calls and overheard that a submarine was in trouble and the boat's name. As the base was very small, news spread quickly. Wives and family members exchanged news, but information was scarce. The deputy base commander assured the women that the headquarters office was half empty and that the officers present were just "passing the time." Minister of Defence Igor Sergeyev told the American Embassy that the rescue was well under way. The bow had ploughed about deep into the clay seabed, at a depth of . The periscope was raised, indicating that the accident occurred when the submarine was at a depth of less than .

Collision initially blamed

Senior officers in the Russian Navy offered a variety of explanations for the accident.

The Russian government convened a commission, chaired by Vice-Premier Ilya Klebanov, on 14 August, two days after Kursk sank. On Tuesday Mikhail Rudnitsky lowered a diving bell twice, but could not connect to the sub. They also tried and failed to manoeuvre a remotely operated vehicle onto the rescue hatch.

At 20:00 Tuesday, AS-34 was launched again, but was damaged when it struck a boom as it was being lowered into the sea. It was brought back aboard, repaired, and relaunched at 21:10. On Tuesday, 15 August, three days after the sinking, the crane ship PK-7500 arrived with the more manoeuvrable Project 18270 Bester-type DSRV (AC-36). The weather, though, prevented the PK-7500 from launching the DSRV. The rescue team decided to launch the submersible near the coast and tow it to the rescue site with a salvage tug.

On Thursday at 12:00, Popov reported to the general staff of the Navy that no explosion had occurred on the Kursk, that the sub was intact on the seafloor, and that an "external influence" might have caused a leak between the first and second compartments. but failed. However, video evidence seems to suggest otherwise, as it shows Norwegian divers tapping on the aft rescue hatch while the rescue part of the operation was still underway.

Fragments of both the outer and inner hulls were found nearby, including a piece of Kursks nose weighing , indicating a large explosion in the forward torpedo room.

British and Norwegian help

thumb|The British deep submersible rescue vehicle [[LR5]]

Private media and state-owned Russian newspapers criticised the Navy's refusal to accept international assistance. On 19 August at 20:00, the Norwegian ship Normand Pioneer arrived with the British rescue submersible LR5 on board, seven days after the disaster.

The divers tried to use the arms of the ROV to open the hatch, but were unsuccessful until the morning of Monday, 21 August. They found the rescue trunk full of water. using a cutting machine that shoots a high-velocity water-and-cutting-grit mix at a pressure of . The Russian divers entered the wreck and opened a bulkhead hatch to compartment nine.

They found that dust and ash inside compartment nine severely restricted visibility. As they gradually worked their way inside the compartment and down two levels, Warrant Officer Sergei Shmygin found the remains of Captain-lieutenant Dmitry Kolesnikov.

Additional plans were made to continue to remove the bodies, but the Russian Navy could not agree on a contract with a foreign company. The families of those who died on the submarine protested that they did not want additional lives put at risk to bring up the dead. On 22 August, President Putin issued an executive order declaring 23 August a day of mourning. On 26 August, Putin awarded the title of the Hero of Russia posthumously to the submarine's commander, Gennady Lyachin, and the 117 crewmembers and specialists were posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.

Russian claim of collision with NATO submarine

On Monday 14 August, Fleet Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov stated the accident had been caused by a serious collision with a NATO submarine, but provided no evidence.

thumb|Size and mass comparison of Kursk and USS Toledo, which has less than half of Kursks displacement

United States Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen responded to Russian accusations of a collision with a submarine at a press conference in Tokyo on 22 September 2000.

Conspiracy theories

While most experts agreed a torpedo explosion occurred, they disagreed on the cause. Many Russians did not believe that Kursk could be so easily sunk. The tragedy spawned a number of conspiracy theories. Mainstream publications like Der Spiegel, Berliner Zeitung, and the Sunday Times claimed to possess documentation proving the submarine was struck by a torpedo fired by Pyotr Velikiy. Another theory was that USS Memphis had fired a torpedo at Kursk.

Manufacturer disagrees on cause

The director of the that designed the torpedo, Stanislav Proshkin, challenged the conclusion of the government's official report. He argued the weapon could explode only after an external event, such as a fire. He said that routine tests during manufacture include dropping the torpedo from a height of , suggesting drops cannot incur damage that would cause an explosion. He also said Kursk was designed with two autonomous, independent control systems that would have detected a rise in temperature while the torpedo was stored on the racks. The sub was equipped with a special drain system that could rapidly drain HTP-fuel from a torpedo into the sea. If a temperature rise were detected in the torpedo tube, the torpedo would have automatically been ejected into the sea. In addition, any fire in the torpedo compartment would have triggered a powerful fire-extinguishing system that would have dumped "tons of water" on the fire. They contracted with Dutch marine salvage companies Smit International and Mammoet to raise Kursk from the sea floor. It became the largest salvage operation of its type ever accomplished. The salvage operation was extremely dangerous because of the risk of radiation from the reactor. Only seven of the submarine's 24 torpedoes were accounted for. The divers installed two large hydraulic suction anchors into the seabed and attached a high-strength tungsten carbide abrasive cable saw that was pulled back and forth over the bow between the anchors. Ten days were needed to detach the bow.

After the bow was cut free, the salvage crews raised several smaller pieces of wreckage. This included a piece of a torpedo tube weighing about a ton, which was analysed to determine if the explosion occurred inside or outside the tube. They salvaged a high-pressure compressed-air cylinder weighing about half a ton, to learn more about the nature of the explosion. They also raised a part of the cylindrical section of the hard frame and part of the left forward spherical partition, to determine the intensity and temperature of the fire in the forward compartment. Finally, they brought up a fragment of the sonar system dome.

Hull raised

thumb|Giant 4 in background

Mammoet converted the , long, Giant 4 semisubmersible deck barge to carry the sub. The ship was designed to carry huge loads on its deck, but Kursk would ride beneath the ship. Giant 4 had to be completely modified to retrieve and carry the sub underneath. To raise the remainder of the wreck, the salvage team planned an extremely complex operation that required them to design and build custom lifting equipment and employ new technologies. They wrote custom software that would automatically compensate for the effects of wave motion in the rough Barents Sea, which could sever the cables suspending the sub beneath the barge.

Divers cut a large hole in the barge's hull to allow room for the submarine's sail. Workers fitted the hull of Giant 4 with large saddles shaped to fit Kursks outer hull. They cut holes through the barge to allow 26 hoisting cables to pass through. The team manufactured 26 giant cable reels to hold the more than of cable intended to raise the boat. The giant cable reels fed 26 huge hydraulic strand jacks, each mounted on a computer-controlled, pressurised pneumatic heave compensator powered by nitrogen gas that automatically adjusted for sea waves.

The dive support vessel DSND Mayo was equipped with dive chambers to accommodate the dive teams. They worked in six-hour shifts, and when they were not in the water, the divers remained in the saturation chambers for the entire 28 day operation. The divers used hydraulic abrasive water jets to cut 26 holes through the outer and inner hulls. The salvage divers mounted custom guidance rings around the holes in the sub and lowered guide cables to each through the holes in Giant 4. The team then used the four guide cables to lower a custom-made giant gripper similar to a toggle bolt, custom designed to fit each hole, before manoeuvring the cables through the guidance ring.

The crew lowered 26 groups of hoisting cables, each able to lift 900 tons, to the submarine and attached them to the grippers. The strand jacks lifted the 26 hoisting cables and slowly raised Kursk until it was beneath Giant 4. On 8 October 2001, 14 months after the disaster, and only five months after the contract had been awarded to them, the salvage team raised the remainder of the vessel in a 15-hour operation.

Once the sub was raised and joined to the barge, it was carried back under the barge to the Russian Navy's Roslyakovo Shipyard in Murmansk. Once there, two giant, custom-manufactured pontoons were floated under Giant 4 to lift the barge to allow it to enter a floating dry dock with Kursk attached underneath. Once in dry dock, the pontoons were pumped full of more air, lifting Giant 4 and allowing crews to remove the lifting cables and detach Kursk. Some analysts theorised the Russians may also have wanted to prevent foreign countries from accessing the debris, which had been classified as state secrets. Of that number, 23 survived the two blasts and gathered in the small ninth compartment, which had an escape hatch. Emergency lighting was normally powered by batteries located in the first compartment which had been destroyed in the explosion, but the ninth compartment contained a number of independent emergency lights which apparently worked.

Kolesnikov wrote two notes,

Kolesnikov wrote the second note at 15:15. His writing was extremely difficult to read.

The newspaper Izvestia reported on 26 February 2001 that another note, written by Lt. Cmdr. Rashid Aryapov, had been recovered during the initial rescue operation.

Izvestia quoted unidentified naval officers who claimed that Aryapov wrote that the explosion was caused by "faults in the torpedo compartment, namely, the explosion of a torpedo on which the Kursk had to carry out tests". Izvestia also stated that Aryapov wrote that as a result of the explosions, the submarine was tossed violently about, and many crew members were injured by equipment that tore loose as a result.

Escape hatch unused

Analysis of the wreck could not determine whether the escape hatch was workable from the inside. Analysts theorise that the men may have rejected risking the escape hatch even if it were operable, and would have preferred to wait for a submarine rescue ship to attach itself to the hatch. The sub was relatively close to shore and in the middle of a large naval exercise. The sailors had every reason to believe rescuers would arrive quickly. Vice Admiral Vladislav Ilyin, first deputy chief of the Russian Navy's staff and head of the Kursk Naval Incident Cell, concluded that the survivors had lived up to three days.

Forensic examination

While waiting for the boat to be brought to shore, a team of military doctors set up a temporary forensic laboratory at the military hospital in Severomorsk. After Giant 4 was floated out of the drydock, the drydock was drained, exposing Kursk's hull. Salvage teams cut into the compartments to drain the interior. Ordnance teams removed the missiles from outside the hull. On 23 October, two investigators and two navy commanders were the first to enter the hull. The next day, 24 October, eight teams of investigators and operational experts began analysing the debris found inside the boat and recovering and identifying remains of the crew.

Salvage team members found a large number of potassium superoxide chemical cartridges, used to absorb and generate oxygen to enable survival, in the ninth compartment. Kolesnikov's abdomen was burned by acid, exposing the internal organs, and the flesh on his head and neck was removed by the explosion. Forensic examination of two of the reactor control room casualties found in compartment four showed extensive skeletal injuries, which indicated that they had sustained an explosive force over 50 g. These shocks would have immediately incapacitated or killed the operators.

A year later, Putin commented on his response, "I probably should have returned to Moscow, but nothing would have changed. I had the same level of communication both in Sochi and in Moscow, but from a PR point of view, I could have demonstrated some special eagerness to return."

Navy actions

Kursk had been raised from the sea floor in October 2001 by the Dutch-led Mammoet-Smit international consortium, at a cost of $65 million, paid by the Russian Navy. Once at dock, the human remains and missiles were removed. The salvage team and the Russian Navy both assured the public that the reactors had been safely shut down and that no holes were cut in the housing of the submarine's two nuclear reactors.

Finally recognising the hazard of the HTP torpedoes, the Russian Navy ordered all of them removed from service.

Officers moved

Putin accepted the resignation of Igor Sergeyev from his position as minister of defence on 28 March 2001 and made him his assistant on strategic stability. He replaced him with Sergei Ivanov, who had previously been secretary of the Security Council of Russia. The position of minister of defence had always been filled by a professional member of the military. Ivanov had retired from the military in 2000, so his appointment as minister of defence while a civilian shocked the Russian military.

On 1 December 2001, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov presented a preliminary report to Putin. Ustinov wrote that the entire exercise had been "poorly organized" and that the probe had revealed "serious violations by both Northern Fleet chiefs and the Kursk crew." Popov and Motsak had championed the story that the accident had been caused by a collision with a NATO submarine. When Putin dismissed them, he made a point of repudiating the collision theory. The Russian Navy also increased the number of deep-sea divers trained each year from 18–20 to 40–45.

Awards to those killed

President Putin signed a decree awarding the Order of Courage to the entire crew, and the title Hero of the Russian Federation to the submarine's captain, Gennady Lyachin.

Memorials

thumb|upright|The sail of Kursk was rescued from a scrap yard and turned into a memorial at the Church of the Saviour on Waters in Murmansk. It is dedicated to the men who died aboard the sub: "To the submariners, who died in peacetime".

Outside the port city of Severodvinsk where the submarine was built, a large granite slab was erected on the sand dunes. It is engraved, "This sorrowful stone is set in memory of the crew of the nuclear submarine Kursk, who tragically died on 12 August 2000, while on military duty." Other memorials were built in Moscow, Sevastopol, Nizhny Novgorod, Severomorsk, The city of Kursk, after which the vessel was named, erected a memorial made from fragments of its hull.

On 17 March 2009, journalist Tatyana Abramova from the newspaper Murmanskiy Vestnik found Kursks sail in the yard of a scrap metal dealer. It had been left there after several years of negotiations failed to raise the estimated €22,000 needed for a memorial. The discovery sparked an outcry among citizens in Murmansk and they demanded the sail be turned into a memorial to the men who died. After considerable difficulty, the memorial was finally completed and dedicated 26 July 2009, Russia's Navy Day. It was placed on the observation deck of the Church of the Saviour on Water in Murmansk, the submarine's home port and location of the Vidyayevo naval base. It is among a memorial to sailors who perished during peacetime and lists the names of the crew.

In popular culture

A Time to Die (2002, ), an investigative book on the events, was written by journalist Robert Moore.
Kursk: Putin's First Crisis and the Russian Navy's Darkest Hour (2018, ), retitled reprint of Robert Moore's A Time to Die.
Cry From the Deep: The Sinking of the Kursk, the Submarine Disaster That Riveted the World and Put the New Russia to the Ultimate Test (2004, ), an investigative book on the events, written by journalist Ramsey Flynn.
The incident served as partial inspiration for the song "Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean" by Explosions in the Sky, on their 2003 album, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place.
The track "The Kursk" found on the album Drinking Songs by singer-songwriter Matt Elliott is based upon the incident.
The folk song "Barren the Sea", by Sequoya on their 2007 album "Sleep and Dream of Fire" was inspired by the incident.
The song "Captain Kolesnikov" on the album Прекрасная любовь by Yuri Shevchuk and DDT is about the disaster and the letter recovered from Kolesnikov.
Kursk: A Submarine in Troubled Waters, in French: Koursk, un sous-marin en eaux troubles is a 2005 French documentary film directed by Jean-Michel Carré and produced by France 2.
The incident was the subject of an episode of the documentary series Seconds From Disaster.
Kursk, a 2009 play by the British playwright Bryony Lavery, was inspired by the disaster.
Kursk, a 2018 film directed by Thomas Vinterberg and starring Colin Firth and Matthias Schoenaerts, was based on Robert Moore's book A Time to Die. It included the meeting where Tylik was sedated and removed. (The film was re-released in 2019 as The Command).
An Ordinary Execution (2007, ), a book by French writer Marc Dugain revolves partly around the Kursk events.

References

External links

List of personnel by compartment (Russian)
List and pictures of crew members (Russian)
News about the Kursk sinking (Russian)
In-depth coverage by the BBC
English Russia – The Remains of the Kursk Submarine, photographs of the recovered wreck

hu:Kurszk (elsüllyedt orosz atom-tengeralattjáró)