12/27/2023 0 Comments Russian submarine kursk![]() 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."Ī consortium formed by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International was awarded a contract by Russia to raise the vessel, excluding the bow. The President's response appeared callous and the government's actions looked incompetent.Ī year later he said, " I probably should have returned to Moscow, but nothing would have changed. Only four months into his tenure as President, the public and media were extremely critical of Putin's decision to remain at a seaside resort, and his highly favourable ratings dropped dramatically. He waited five days before he ended his holiday at a presidential resort in subtropical Sochi on the Black Sea. Russia's then President Vladimir Putin, though immediately informed of the tragedy, was told by the navy that they had the situation under control and rescue was imminent. But the fire consumed all remaining oxygen, killing the remaining survivors. The investigation showed that some men temporarily survived this fire by plunging under water, as fire marks on the bulkheads indicated the water was at waist level at the time. The investigation found a cartridge had come in contact with the sea water inside the ninth compartment, causing a chemical reaction and a flash fire. Captain-lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov wrote a note listing the names of 23 sailors who were alive in the compartment after the ship sank.Ī potassium superoxide cartridge of a chemical oxygen generator, used to absorb carbon dioxide and chemically release oxygen to enable survival, appears to have been the cause of the survivors' death. The Russian Admiralty initially told the public that the majority of the crew died within minutes of the explosion, but on August 21 Norwegian and Russian divers found 24 bodies in the ninth compartment, the turbine room at the stern of the boat. Though the Americans, British and Norwegian navies offered assistance, Russia refused all help.Īll 118 sailors and officers aboard Kursk perished. The explosions blew a large hole in the hull and collapsed the first three compartments of the sub, killing or incapacitating all but 23 of the 118 personnel on board.:208 A second explosion 135 seconds after the initial event was equivalent to 3-7 tons of TNT. The submarine sank in relatively shallow water, bottoming at 108 metres (354 ft) about 135 kilometres (84 mi) off Severomorsk, at 69☄0′N 37☃5′E. The pressure produced by the expanding HTP ruptured the kerosene fuel in the torpedo and set off an explosion equal to 100–250 kilograms (220–550 lb) of TNT. When HTP comes in contact with a catalyst, it rapidly expands 5000 times, generating vast quantities of steam and oxygen. ![]() A subsequent investigation concluded that HTP, a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide used as propellant for the torpedo, seeped through a faulty weld in the torpedo casing. The Russian Navy's final report on the disaster concluded the explosion was due to the failure of one of Kursk's hydrogen peroxide-fueled Type 65 torpedoes. On 12 August 2000, at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), there was an explosion while preparing to fire. These practice torpedoes had no explosive warheads and were manufactured and tested at a much lower quality standard. Two days later, on the morning of 12 August, she prepared to fire dummy torpedoes at the Kirov-class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. On the first day of the exercise, Kursk successfully launched a Granit missile armed with a dummy warhead. It was one of the few ships authorized to carry a combat load at all times. While it was an exercise, Kursk loaded a full complement of combat weapons. The crew had recently won a citation for its excellent performance and been recognized as the best submarine crew in the Northern Fleet. It included 30 ships including the fleet's flagship Pyotr Velikiy ("Peter the Great"), four attack submarines, and a flotilla of smaller ships. Kursk joined the "Summer-X" exercise, the first large-scale naval exercise planned by the Russian Navy in more than a decade, on 10 August 2000. One of the first vessels completed after the end of the Soviet Union, it was commissioned into the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet. It was named after the Russian city Kursk, around which the largest tank battle in military history, the Battle of Kursk, took place in 1943. Kursk, full name Атомная подводная лодка «Курск», which, translated, means the nuclear-powered submarine "Kursk" in Russian, was a Project 949A Антей ( Antey, Antaeus, also known by its NATO reporting name of Oscar II). K-141 Kursk was an Oscar-II class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine of the Russian Navy, lost with all hands when it sank in the Barents Sea on 12 August 2000.
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