An Oscar II class submarine drawing |
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| Career (Russia) | |
|---|---|
| Name: | K-141 Kursk |
| Namesake: | Named after the Russian city Kursk |
| Laid down: | 1992 |
| Launched: | 1994 |
| Commissioned: | December 1994 |
| Struck: | August 2000 |
| Fate: | Sank 12 August 2000 with 118 hands in 100 m (330 ft) of water in Barents Sea |
| Status: | Raised from the seafloor, towed to shipyard, and dismantled |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Oscar II class Submarine |
| Displacement: | 13.400 to 16.400 tonnes (13.188 to 16.141 long tons; 14.771 to 18.078 short tons) |
| Length: | 154.0 m (505.2 ft) |
| Beam: | 18.2 m (60 ft) |
| Draft: | 9.0 m (29.5 ft) |
| Propulsion: | 2 nuclear reactors OK-650b, 2 steam turbines, two 7-bladed propellers |
| Speed: | 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph) submerged, 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph) surfaced |
| Test depth: | 300 to 500 metres (980 to 1,600 ft)(by various estimates) |
| Complement: | 44 officers, 68 enlisted |
| Armament: | 24 x SS-N-19/P-700 Granit, 4 x 533 mm and 2 x 650 mm bow torpedo tubes |
| Notes: | Home port: Vidyaevo, Russia |
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 August 12, 2000. Kursk, full name Атомная подводная лодка «Курск», which translated, means the nuclear powered submarine "Kursk" [АПЛ "Курск"] in Russian, was a Project 949A Антей (Antey, Antaeus but was also known by its NATO reporting name of Oscar II). 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. One of the first vessels completed after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was commissioned into the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet.
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Work on building the submarine Kursk began in 1990 at Severodvinsk, near Arkhangelsk. Launched in 1994, it was commissioned in December of that year. It was the penultimate of the large Oscar-II class submarines to be designed and approved in the Soviet era. At 154m long and four stories high it was the largest attack submarine ever built. The outer hull, made of high-nickel, high-chrome content stainless steel 8.5 millimetres (0.33 in) thick, had exceptionally good resistance to corrosion and a weak magnetic signature which helped prevent detection by magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) systems. There was a 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) gap to the 50.8 millimetres (2.00 in) thick steel inner hull.[1]
Kursk was part of Russia's Northern Fleet, which had suffered funding cutbacks throughout the 1990s. Many of its submarines were anchored and rusting in Andreyeva Bay, 100 kilometres (62 mi) from Murmansk.[2] Little work to maintain all but the most essential front-line equipment, including search and rescue equipment, had occurred. Northern Fleet sailors had gone unpaid in the mid-1990s. The end of the decade saw something of a renaissance for the fleet; in 1999, Kursk carried out a successful reconnaissance mission in the Mediterranean, tracking the US Navy's Sixth Fleet during the Kosovo War. August 2000's training exercise was to have been the largest summer drill — nine years after the Soviet Union's collapse — involving four attack submarines, the fleet's flagship Pyotr Velikiy ("Peter the Great") and a flotilla of smaller ships.
Kursk sailed out to sea to perform an exercise of firing dummy torpedoes at the Pyotr Velikiy, a Kirov-class battlecruiser.[3] On August 12, 2000 at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), there was an explosion while preparing to fire the torpedoes.[4] The only credible report to date is that this was due to the failure and explosion of one of the Kursk's hydrogen peroxide-fueled torpedoes.[5] It is believed that HTP, a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide used as propellant for the torpedo, seeped through rust in the torpedo casing. A similar explosion caused by an HTP-fuelled torpedo was responsible for the loss of HMS Sidon in 1955.[6]
The chemical explosion detonated with the force of 100–250 kilograms (220–550 lb) of TNT and registered 2.2 on the Richter scale. The submarine sank in relatively shallow water at a depth of 108 metres (354 ft), about 135 kilometres (84 mi) from Severomorsk, at . A second explosion 135 seconds after the initial event measured between 3.5 and 4.4 on the Richter scale, equivalent to 3-7 tons of TNT.[7] One of those explosions blew large pieces of debris back through the submarine.
The length of Kursk exceeded the depth at which it sank by 46 metres (151 ft).
Though rescue attempts were offered by the British and Norwegian teams, Russia declined initial rescue offers, and all 118 sailors and officers aboard Kursk perished. The Russian admiralty at first suggested most of the crew died within minutes of the explosion; however, the motivations for making the claim are considered by outside observers as political since some of the sailors had time to write notes.
Captain Lieutenant Dmitriy Kolesnikov, one of the survivors of the first explosion, survived in Compartment 9 at the very stern of the boat after blasts destroyed the front of the submarine. Recovery workers found notes on his body. They showed that 23 sailors (out of 118 aboard) had waited in the dark with him.
There has been much debate over how long the sailors might have survived. Some, particularly on the Russian side, say that they would have died very quickly; water is known to leak into a stationary Oscar-II craft through the propeller shafts and at 100 metres (330 ft) depth it would have been impossible to plug. Others point out that many potassium superoxide chemical cartridges, used to absorb carbon dioxide and chemically release oxygen to enable survival, were found used when the craft was recovered, suggesting some of the crew survived for several days. Kolesnikov's last note has a time of 15:15, indicating that he and the others in the aft compartment lived at least four hours after the explosion.[8]
These cartridges appear to have been the cause of death; a sailor appears to have accidentally brought a cartridge in contact with the sea water, causing a chemical reaction and a flash fire. The official investigation into the disaster showed some men appeared to have survived the fire by plunging under the water. (Fire marks on the walls indicate the water was at waist level in the lower area at this time.) However, the fire rapidly used up the remaining oxygen in the air, causing death by asphyxiation.[9]
While the tragedy of Kursk played out in the Far North, Russia's then President Vladimir Putin, though immediately informed of the tragedy, waited for five days before he broke a holiday at a presidential resort house in subtropical Sochi on the Black Sea before commenting publicly on the loss of the pride of the Northern Fleet. A year later he said: "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."[10]
A consortium formed by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International using the barge Giant 4 eventually raised Kursk and recovered the dead,[11] who were buried in Russia – although three of the bodies were too badly burned to be identified. The heat generated by the first blast detonated the warheads on 5 to 7 torpedoes[12] causing a series of blasts big enough to be measured on a geological seismometer in the area – and those secondary explosions fatally damaged the vessel.
Major concerns existed throughout the salvage operations relating to the armed cruise missiles remaining in the silo compartments, the risk of detonation of unaccounted-for torpedo and torpedo charge fragments, and recriticality or radioactive release from the two nuclear propulsion reactors on board. The London-based nuclear consultant John Large undertook the risk and hazard assessment, adapting this as further facts came to light throughout the salvage period.[13]
Russian officials strenuously denied claims that the sub's Granit cruise missiles[14] were carrying nuclear warheads, and no evidence has been provided to the contrary. When the salvage operation raised the boat in 2001, there were considerable fears that preparing to move the wreck could trigger explosions, because the bow was cut off in the process, using a tungsten carbide-studded cable. This tool had the potential to cause sparks which would ignite remaining pockets of volatile gases, such as hydrogen. The successfully recovered portion of Kursk was towed to Severomorsk and placed in a floating dry dock where extensive forensic analysis was accomplished.
The remains of Kursk's reactor compartment were towed to Sayda Bay on Russia's northern Kola Peninsula – where more than 50 reactor compartments were afloat at pier points – after a shipyard had defuelled the boat in early 2003.[15] The rest of the boat was then dismantled.
In the end the bow was not recovered and was destroyed by explosives in 2002. Only small pieces of the bow were recovered (some torpedo and torpedo tube fragments etc.)
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