The Kursk Submarine Disaster 2000
Vladimir Putin Would Like This Forgotten…
Cold War competition with the United States drained the Soviet Union’s defense resources. Their navy had many accidents, but in 2000 post-Soviet Russia was more open than before, or since, so we know more about this one.
The Submarine
Named after a famous Soviet World War II victory, K-141 Kursk was a Project 949A Antey-class nuclear-powered submarine. (NATO called this “Oscar II.”) Launched in 1994, she was huge; 154 meters long (length of two Jumbo jets),18.2 meters wide, and five stories high.
Kursk was double-hulled, with two 190 megawatt nuclear reactors and two 49,000 horsepower steam turbines. She could remain under water for 120 days. Her top speed submerged was 32 knots.
With 8 torpedo tubes, she usually carried P-700 Granit cruise missiles, and type-65 torpedoes. Kursk could sink an aircraft carrier. Her crew were cited as best in the Northern Fleet. Her home port was Vidyayevo.
Left to right: Compartment 9 (Noodruimte) — Emergency Room; 7 & 8 — Turbines; 6 — Nuclear Reactor; 5 — Control Systems; 4 — Living Space; 3 — Not named; 2 — Wheelhouse; 1 — Torpedoes
The Barents Sea
The Barents Sea, in the Arctic Circle, is warmed by the Gulf Stream. Russia discovered this at the end of the 19th century. In 1922 they established the “Fleet of the Northern Seas,” which Stalin renamed the “Northern Fleet” in 1930.
A Russian naval base is administered from Severomorsk, Kola Bay, giving access to the Atlantic Ocean. After the fall of the Soviet Union, financial cutbacks left this seriously underfunded, with maintenance ignored and some sailors unpaid for months.
By mid-1990s, the Northern Fleet had only 40 active submarines, and outdated rescue services. In January 1999, Admiral Vyatcheslav Popov was appointed Commander.
An Naval Exercise Becomes a Nightmare
On 10 August 2000, NATO ships observed the start of the first Russian naval exercise for a decade, with 30 ships, four submarines, and many smaller boats.
On 12 August at 8.41, Kursk’s Captain, Gennady Liachin, requested permission to start the day’s exercise, by firing a dummy torpedo at the target cruiser Pyotr Velezhy.
At 11.20, a Norwegian seismic monitoring station recorded an explosion, which was also heard by 2 US submarines and a US intelligence vessel. Two minutes later, there was a second explosion, measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, heard at a seismic station in Alaska.
The Russian target ship’s hydroacoustics registered these, along with sounds of flooding. Yet the exercise continued for two more hours.
Nobody heard any more from Kursk. She was now at 108 meters in depth, her shattered bow buried in the Barents Sea floor, most of her crew dead.
Secrecy, Lies, and Offers of Help
At 13.30, Admiral Popov sent a helicopter to search for the submarine. At 18.00, when the Kursk failed to make a routine communication, Russia denied there was a problem. Search and rescue was started at 18.30, but an emergency was not declared until 22.30.
The explosions obviously came from the Kursk. That afternoon, Britain offered a state-of-the-art rescue submarine with specially-trained crew. This was rejected, along with offers of help from the US and nine other countries. Russia’s Cold War suspicion of NATO remained strong.
Russian equipment was inadequate, taking time to find the Kursk. Her emergency rescue buoy was deliberately disabled the previous year, to escape detection during the Kosovo conflict. Salvage tug Nikolai Chikov, using a submersible camera, found the wreck but could not connect with an escape hatch.
Families of crew members in Vidyayevo heard rumors and were worried, but believed Kursk was unsinkable. On 14 August, Admiral Popov dismissed their concerns, saying the exercise was successful, but Kursk remained submerged due to “minor technical difficulties.”
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was Vladimir Putin. Elected President in May 2000, he saw no reason to interrupt his holiday by the Black Sea, and was shown on TV, hosting a barbecue. The Russian media, less scared of him then than now, wrote angry editorials.
By 15 August, the crew were all dead but Russia was still claiming they had enough oxygen and could be heard knocking on the hull.
On 17 August, the Russians accepted Norwegian and British help, on condition that only Russian divers entered the Kursk.
On 20 August, Norwegian divers confirmed all compartments were flooded, there were no survivors, and the submarine´s bow was almost totally destroyed. Russian divers removed 12 bodies and some documents.
What Really Happened to Kursk
One initial theory was that Kursk collided with a NATO submarine. USS Memphis and USS Toledo, and Britain´s HMS Splendid, were named. All these were much smaller than Kursk, yet none was damaged. Other rumors suggested a NATO torpedo sank her, which makes no sense either.
The full story is one of a country trying to appear stronger, and more competent, than it is, and a President who did not care.
From the official Russian investigation report, July 2002, supported by findings from salvage:
Quality standards were low for dummy torpedoes. This one was an old design, fueled with kerosene and the oxidizer hydrogen peroxide, which becomes unstable in contact with catalysts such as copper or bronze.
Kursk’s crew were not trained in handling this type of torpedo.
A faulty weld on the torpedo allowed hydrogen peroxide to leak into the copper casing. It burst into flames. (Sailors had reported this leak, but junior officers, busy preparing for the exercise, ignored them.)
The fire in the torpedo section caused 5–7 combat-ready torpedoes, with 450 kg warheads, to explode. Because a valve was left open, this fire spread to compartments 2, 3 and 4.
Everyone in the first two compartments died in the first explosion; the second killed all remaining except 23. Sailors in the nuclear reactor compartment (6) sealed themselves in to prevent possible leaks. They died there. Of 118 crew, salvage found 115 bodies; the other three were vaporized.
Those who died quickly were luckiest. The 23 survivors of the explosions died in a horrific way. They reached Compartment 9, with Third-Rank Captain Dmitri Kolesnikov in charge. It was an emergency refuge; 8 x 3 meters, with freezing, waist-deep water, and limited oxygen. They probably survived until 20.00.
Evidence from salvage shows they were running out of oxygen and tried to repair an oxygen-regenerating unit, which absorbs CO2. The cartridges were volatile, catching fire on contact with liquid.
Three sailors had thermal and chemical burns on their upper bodies, probably from protecting the others. The fire absorbed all remaining oxygen in the compartment; the rest died of hypoxia and hypothermia.
Notes left by these men show they were alive over six hours after the Kursk sank. Captain Kolesnikov listed the 23 names, and ended a note to his wife with: “Hello to everybody, don´t despair. Kolesnikov.” It was wrapped in plastic in his breast pocket and legible, though he was badly burned.
Salvage, but Few Consequences
In 2001, two salvage companies, Mammoet and Smit International, based in Rotterdam, led an international team which raised the Kursk. It cost $65 million. This video gives details of this remarkable work.
The families still wanted the truth. There were public meetings, including one where Nadezhda Tylik, mother of one submariner, was seen on TV being injected with tranquillizers when she shouted at Putin.
Russian Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov published a summary of the investigation report, referring to “stunning breaches of discipline, obsolete, poorly-maintained equipment,” and “negligence, incompetence, and mismanagement.” It describes the rescue attempt as: “unjustifiably delayed.”
Nobody was charged in relation to the disaster.
Vladimir Putin moved twelve officers, including Admiral Popov and his Chief of Staff Admiral Mikhail Motsak, to jobs in other sectors. He blamed lack of information for his own inaction. After losing the Presidency to Medvedev in 2008, he regained it in 2012.
After the investigation, Kursk was taken to Sayda Bay, where her nuclear reactors, which shut down automatically when she sank, were defueled. The ship was cut up for scrap. A sad end for a once-magnificent vessel.
*Kursk´s sail (tower) was found in Murmansk, rusting with some scrap. Oblast governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko took responsibility for this, and raised the monument above to victims of the sinking.
On 14 December 2009, Trude Petterson, of the Norwegian-based Barents Observer reported vandals had stolen letters from the words: “To the submariners who died in peace-time.”
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_(K-141)
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a23494010/kursk-submarine-disaster/
Video: “Raising the Kursk” by SMIT Salvage (2002) https://youtu.be/uQJ6IMREvz8
“Trapped Inside” is a well-researched video from Dark History: https://youtu.be/884i-6lQR-c
“Shipwreck: A History of Disasters at Sea,” by Sam Willis, Quercus (2008)
