When commanders made such assurances, Kuznetsov says, they knew that the deep-submergence rescue vehicles had never been tested in conjunction with the Kursk. A consortium formed by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International [23] was awarded a contract by Russia to raise the vessel, excluding the bow. They modified the barge Giant 4 which raised Kursk and recovered the remains of the sailors. [24] That is far beyond the reach of British or US rescue submersibles; in fact, only a handful of unmanned Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) can operate at that depth. I had taught students about the Sidon accident for years in a class about torpedos and we always believed it had something to do with the hydrogen peroxide,' Stradling told The Observer, 'but no one really knew how it had happened.' Two minutes and 14 seconds after the first explosion in the torpedo compartment, [15] the fire set off a second explosion of five to seven combat-ready torpedo warheads. Acoustic data from Pyotr Velikiy were later analysed and found to indicate an explosion of about seven torpedo warheads in rapid succession. [5] The Type 65 "Kit" torpedo carries a large 450kg (990lb) warhead. [74]

Maintenance records revealed that the 65-76 "Kit" practice torpedo carried by Kursk came from a batch of 10 manufactured in 1990, six of which were rejected due to faulty welding. An investigation revealed that because the torpedoes were not intended to carry warheads, the welds had not been inspected as carefully as welds on torpedoes carrying warheads. When salvage crews finally recovered the remains of the torpedo and the launch tube, analysis determined that both bore signs of distortion and heat damage that were consistent with an explosion near the middle of the torpedo, very close to an essential welded joint. The official conclusion of the commission was that a faulty weld had led to the explosion. [71] Escape capsule inaccessible [ edit ] 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. [39] All the men had been badly burned. [16] The divers cut additional holes in the hull over the third and fourth compartments. [41] The Russian divers removed secret documents and eventually recovered a total of 12 bodies from the ninth compartment. This contradicted earlier statements made by senior Russian officials that all the submariners had died before the submarine hit the bottom. [31] They also found the boat's log, but had to suspend work because of severe weather. [28] The rescue teams conducted continuous radiation measurements inside and outside the submarine, but none of the readings exceeded normal ranges. [16] Fifteen years after the dramatic sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine with the loss 118 lives in August 2000, lawyer Boris Kuznetsov sees the tragedy as a turning point for modern Russia. Experts feared it would be difficult to overcome the force of the sediment on the sea bottom, but that posed no difficulty.On Sunday 20 August, the Norwegians lowered a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to the submarine. They found that the first 18m (59ft) section of the boat was a mass of twisted metal and debris. [16]

There had been calls not to disturb the 'graveyard' of those who died but the government said the Kursk must be raised to avoid any potential danger to the environment from its nuclear reactors. Rosenberg, Debra, et al. "A Mystery In The Deep." Newsweek 136.9 (2000): 34. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 December 2011. The disoriented Russian navy command waited for many hours before launching a search and rescue and even turned down offers of western assistance. They sent Russian mini-submarines who failed in the task. The incident shook the nation, and President Vladimir Putin was criticised for his inappropriate handling of the rescue effort.In response to the avalanche of criticism, Minister of Defence Sergeyev and senior commanders of the Navy and the Northern Fleet offered Putin their resignations, but he refused to accept them. [6] :160 Their death was quite poignant, for these men often went without a decent salary for their dedicated naval services. To reach the once-attained pedestal of military supremacy and unwanted pride, innocent lives were sacrificed. The submarine was finally salvaged from the seabed, and its remains were raised by the Dutch salvage company a year after the disaster in 2001. Out of the 118 dead, the bodies of 115 members were recovered, providing a much-needed consolation to the crew’s families. The open valve in the ventilation system allowed the huge blast wave and possibly the fire and toxic smoke to enter the second and perhaps the third and fourth compartments, as well. Although the sub was at periscope depth with its radio antennas extended, no one in the command post was able to send a distress signal or press a single button that would initiate an emergency ballast tank blow and bring the submarine to the surface. [73] [14] All 36 men in the command post located in the second compartment were immediately incapacitated by the blast wave and likely killed. [26] Secondary explosion [ edit ]

In addition, Kuznetsov says, a sonar operator aboard the battle cruiser Pyotr Veliky identified and reported an explosion at 11:28 a.m. on August 12. He located the explosion at the exact position where the Kursk was known to be. But despite its role as a defining moment for Russia’s political trajectory under Putin, the episode that marked the first major challenge of his presidency has in some ways faded from collective memory amid its continued exclusion from state TV reports and official statements. Ryazantsev, Valery. "The death of the "Kursk" " (in Russian). Archived from the original on 20 November 2011 . Retrieved 12 February 2014. By the time Western divers opened the hatch, the submarine was fully flooded and no one was left alive.What really happened to Russia's 'unsinkable' sub". The Guardian. 4 August 2001 . Retrieved 1 February 2014. On the morning of 12 August 2000, Kursk was in the Barents Sea, participating in the "Summer-X" exercise, the first large-scale naval exercise planned by the Russian Navy in more than a decade, and also its first since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. [7] It consisted of 30 ships and three submarines. [8] The lies began with the sinking of the Kursk," Kuznetsov says. "When the Kursk sank, the government began interfering with the legal and law-enforcement systems. The government began gathering all the mass media under its control. The entire process of undermining democracy in Russia, in many regards, began with this." At 11:31:48, [15] 2 minutes and 14 seconds after the first, a second event, measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, or 250 times larger than the first, [14] was registered on seismographs across northern Europe [17] and was detected as far away as Alaska. [9] The second explosion was equivalent to 2–3 tons of TNT. [5] K-141 Kursk was a Project 949A class Antey ( Russian: Aнтей, meaning Antaeus) submarine of the Oscar class, known as the Oscar II by its NATO reporting name, and was the penultimate submarine of the Oscar II class designed and approved in the Soviet Union. Construction began in 1990 at the Soviet Navy military shipyards in Severodvinsk, near Arkhangelsk, in the northern Russian SFSR. During the construction of K-141, the Soviet Union collapsed; work continued, and she became one of the first naval vessels completed after the collapse. In 1993 K-141 was named Kursk after the Battle of Kursk [2] in the 50-year anniversary of this battle. K-141 was inherited by Russia and launched in 1994, before being commissioned by the Russian Navy on December 30, as part of the Russian Northern Fleet. [3]

The story of the Kursk is not finished. We have only raised the very first questions and conclusions. The main conclusion is that the government does not respect any of us -- and so it is lying. And the main thing is that the government treats us this way only because we allow it to." The whole scene was captured by the TV crew, but it was not televised within Russia. Foreign media showed Tylik being removed by officials from the meeting. [20] :36 [65] Tylik later criticised President Putin because he "did not answer direct questions" at the meeting. "Maybe he did not know what to say, but we did not receive concrete answers to concrete questions," she said. [63] [66] Tylik told The St. Petersburg Times that she would go to any lengths to learn the truth about the submarine disaster: "They told us lies the whole time, and even now we are unable to get any information," she said. [63] Indeed, Russia was a different country when the Kursk sank on August 12, 2000, during a massive naval exercise in the Barents Sea. It was just a few months after Putin began his first term as president. National television was controlled by oligarchs and had feisty relations with the government. It's dark here to write, but I'll try by feel. It seems like there are no chances, 10–20%. Let's hope that at least someone will read this. Here's the list of personnel from the other sections, who are now in the ninth and will attempt to get out. Regards to everybody, no need to despair. Kolesnikov. [101]The bulkhead between the first and second compartments was traversed by a circular 47cm (19in) air conditioning duct. The bulkhead should have arrested the blast wave, [71] but in keeping with common Russian submarine practice, the pressurised valve in the ventilation system that traversed the bulkhead was left open to minimise the change in pressure during a weapon's launch. [14] The initial blast set off a fire that was later estimated to have burned at 2,700°C (4,890°F). [72] The government report concluded that the initial explosion and fire in the torpedo room compartment immediately killed all seven crew members within. [13] [73] Journalist Andrey Kolesnikov, who had been present at Putin's meeting with the families, described his experience in a 2015 documentary titled President. He said that when he watched Putin talk to the families, "I honestly thought they would tear him apart. There was such a heavy atmosphere there, such a clot of hatred, and despair, and pain. I never felt anything like it anywhere in my entire life. All the questions were aimed at this single man." [68] Putin blames media [ edit ]