A rchive Date
[ 20-08-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Russia ]
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[Russian navy has been dogged by disaster
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
August 20, 2000
NICE, France - The sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk last Saturday was a horrifying reminder of the dangers faced by submariners. After two powerful explosions, the Oscar-II-class nuclear-powered attack sub, with a crew of 118, flooded and sank to a depth of 150 metres at the bottom of the icy Barents Sea.
Kursk, commissioned in 1995, was one of Russia's newest subs. A huge boat, displacing 13,500 tons submerged, this double-hulled monster could travel at 28 knots underwater and carried 24 SS-N-19 supersonic anti-ship missiles with a range of 500-km designed to attack U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups with high-explosive or nuclear warheads.
Oscar-class subs also have short-range, SSN-15 nuclear-armed anti-ship missiles and deadly wake-homing torpedoes. Only those boats in Russia's 26,500-ton Typhoon-class of "boomers," or strategic missile subs, are larger.
Sailing on a nuclear sub is a remarkable experience. Five years ago, I put to sea aboard SSN-708, USS Minneapolis-St. Paul, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine. Older, conventional-powered subs are crammed, malodorous and claustrophobic. Nuclear boats are relatively spacious, their air is clean and fresh, and they run almost silently. Standing atop the conning tower, watching the sub cleave a great vee through the water, your whole body feels the enormous, throbbing power coursing from the nuclear reactors below.
When SSN-708 dove to 400 metres, or twisted and turned like a porpoise, it felt like being in a jet fighter, rather than a ship. But as we went ever deeper, I couldn't escape the uneasy knowledge that if a pipe or valve burst under the rising pressure, we could plunge down into the black depths until the sub hit "crush depth," where water pressure would implode even its high-tensile steel sides and reduce us to pulp. Submariners, a very special and courageous breed of men, have learned to live with this ever-present danger.
At this point, the best guess is that one of Kursk's Type 53 or Type 65 heavy torpedoes exploded either in its storage position, or while being loaded into a bow tube. These torpedoes are powered by a highly explosive and corrosive hydrogen tetra-peroxide, a fuel abandoned by other navies decades ago as too unstable and dangerous. (A Royal Navy submarine was sunk at its moorings by the explosion of an HTP torpedo.)
The explosions, detected by two U.S. subs shadowing the Russian naval exercises in the Barents Sea off the Kola Peninsula northeast of Murmansk, flooded Kursk's forward and probably centre compartments, including part of the conning tower, almost certainly killing the sailors in the damaged section. The sub's efforts to blow its tanks and surface failed. The Kursk, by now bow-heavy from hundreds of tons of seawater, sank nose-first to the bottom. Her reactors, which produce power, fresh air and heat, either failed, or were shut down.
The survivors were trapped in a steel coffin. As electric batteries drained, and air-scrubbers failed, a toxic miasma of carbon dioxide and chlorine filled the sub, which was likely blacked out to save dwindling electrical power. The frigid Barents Sea lies within the Arctic Circle: inside the boat, the temperature dropped to near freezing.
Probably because of internal damage from the explosion, the crew was unable to use an escape pod built into the Kursk's large sail. Numerous attempts to attach a diving bell to the sub's hatches failed due to stormy seas above, and the steep angle at which the sub had settled. The suffering of the Kursk's crew must have been frightful. All Russia wept and prayed for her lost sons aboard Kursk, but as of this writing hope was fading fast.
This was Russia's fourth admitted loss of a nuclear-powered submarine since 1970, and the first since the Komsomolets went down off Norway in 1988. At least five more boats were lost during the Soviet era, but never reported missing. Critics call Russia's subs "underwater Chernobyls."
Russia has long had bad luck at sea. Russia's access to the high seas is restricted by narrow exits from the Baltic and Black Seas, and by heavy pack ice on the White and Barents Seas, and around her remote Pacific ports.
Russia's navy has always been dogged by poor maintenance, rotten food, and inept commanders. Yet Russian sailors have always shown the greatest courage and gallantry under fire and in the face of disasters. In 1961, for example, nine heroic seamen aboard the sinking Soviet nuclear sub, K-19, volunteered to stay aboard to shut down the boat's runaway reactors, though they were slowly burned alive by radiation.
Instead of reacting with typical Cold War secretiveness and obfuscation, Moscow should have swallowed its pride and called on foreign help much sooner. NATO might have gotten a close look at Kursk's stealthy anechoic coating, acoustic sensors and counter-measures, but any remaining crewmen might have been saved.
President Vladimir Putin deserves the storm of national criticism he is receiving for vacationing during this disaster. Russia, which used its soldiers to clear mine fields in World War II, still remains disgracefully reckless with the lives of its fighting men.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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