Russian submarine K-141 Kursk - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

K-141 Kursk was an Oscar-II

Oscar class submarine

The Project 949 and Project 949A Soviet Navy/Russian Navy cruise missile submarines ....

class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

of the Russian Navy, lost with all hands

Russian submarine Kursk explosion

On 12 August 2000, the Russian Oscar II class submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea after an explosion. The investigation showed that a leak of hydrogen peroxide in a torpedo led to explosion of its fuel, causing the submarine to hit the bottom which in turn triggered the detonation of further...

when it sank in the Barents Sea

Barents Sea

The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of Norway and Russia. Known in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea, the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barents...

on August 12, 2000. Kursk, full name Атомная подводная лодка «Курск», which translated, means the nuclear powered submarine "Kursk" [АПЛ "Курск"] in Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, was a Project 949A Антей (Antey, Antaeus

Antaeus

Antaeus in Greek and Berber mythology was a half-giant, the son of Poseidon and Gaia, whose wife was Tinjis. Antaeus had a daughter named Alceis or Barce.-Mythology:...

but was also known by its NATO reporting name

NATO reporting name

NATO reporting names are classified code names for military equipment of the Eastern Bloc...

of Oscar II

Oscar class submarine

The Project 949 and Project 949A Soviet Navy/Russian Navy cruise missile submarines ....

). It was named after the Russian city Kursk

Kursk

Kursk is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym Rivers. The area around Kursk was site of a turning point in the Russian-German struggle during World War II and the site of the largest tank battle in history...

, around which the largest tank battle in military history, the Battle of Kursk

Battle of Kursk

The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...

, took place in 1943. One of the first vessels completed after the fall of the Soviet Union

History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)

The history of the Soviet Union from 1982 through 1991, spans the period from Leonid Brezhnev's death and funeral until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, economic growth stagnated...

, it was commissioned

Ship commissioning

Ship commissioning is the act or ceremony of placing a ship in active service, and may be regarded as a particular application of the general concepts and practices of project commissioning. The term is most commonly applied to the placing of a warship in active duty with its country's military...

into the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet.

Background

Work on building the submarine Kursk began in 1990 at Severodvinsk

Severodvinsk

Severodvinsk is a city in the north of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located in the delta of the Northern Dvina River, west of Arkhangelsk. Administratively, it is incorporated as a town of oblast significance . Municipally, it is incorporated as Severodvinsk Urban Okrug. The city was founded as...

, near Arkhangelsk

Arkhangelsk

Arkhangelsk , formerly known as Archangel in English, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea in the north of European Russia. The city spreads for over along the banks of the river...

. 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

Nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...

, high-chrome

Chromium

Chromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...

content stainless steel

Stainless steel

In metallurgy, stainless steel, also known as inox steel or inox from French "inoxydable", is defined as a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5 or 11% chromium content by mass....

8.5 millimetre (0.334645669291339 in) thick, had exceptionally good resistance to corrosion and a weak magnetic signature which helped prevent detection by Magnetic Anomaly Detection

Magnetic anomaly detector

A magnetic anomaly detector is an instrument used to detect minute variations in the Earth's magnetic field. The term refers specifically to magnetometers used by military forces to detect submarines ; the military MAD gear is a descendent of geomagnetic survey instruments used to search for...

(MAD) systems. There was a 2 metres (6.6 ft) gap to the 50.8 millimetres (2 in) thick steel inner hull.

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

Zapadnaya Litsa

Zapadnaya Litsa is the largest and most important Russian naval base built for the Northern Fleet. The base is located far in the north of Russia, on the Litsa Fjord at the westernmost point of the Kola Peninsula...

, 100 kilometres (62.1 mi) from Murmansk

Murmansk

Murmansk is a city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia. It serves as a seaport and is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland...

. 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

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Navy's Sixth Fleet during the Kosovo War

Kosovo War

The term Kosovo War or Kosovo conflict was two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo province, then part of FR Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; from early 1998 to 1999, there was an armed conflict initiated by the ethnic Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" , who sought independence...

. 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.

Explosion

Kursk sailed out to sea to perform an exercise of firing dummy torpedoes at the Pyotr Velikiy, a Kirov-class battlecruiser

Kirov class battlecruiser

The Kirov-class battlecruiser is a class of nuclear-powered military ships of the Russian Navy, the largest and heaviest surface combatant warships currently in active operation in the world. The Russian designation is heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser...

. On August 12, 2000 at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), there was an explosion while preparing to fire the torpedoes. The only credible report to date is that this was due to the failure and explosion of one of the Kursks hydrogen peroxide-fueled torpedoes

Type 65 torpedo

The Type 65 is a torpedo manufactured in the Soviet Union/Russia. It was developed to counter the US Navy's aircraft carrier battle groups as well as to be used against large merchant targets such as supertankers...

. It is believed that HTP, a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide is the simplest peroxide and an oxidizer. Hydrogen peroxide is a clear liquid, slightly more viscous than water. In dilute solution, it appears colorless. With its oxidizing properties, hydrogen peroxide is often used as a bleach or cleaning agent...

used as propellant for the torpedo, seeped through rust

Rust

Rust is a general term for a series of iron oxides. In colloquial usage, the term is applied to red oxides, formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture...

in the torpedo casing. A similar incident was responsible for the loss of HMS Sidon

HMS Sidon (P259)

HMS Sidon was a submarine of the Royal Navy, launched in September 1944, one of the third group of S-class submarines built by Cammell Laird & Co Limited, Birkenhead...

in 1955.

The chemical explosion detonated with the force of 100 – of TNT and registered 2.2 on the Richter scale

Richter magnitude scale

The expression Richter magnitude scale refers to a number of ways to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake....

. The submarine sank in relatively shallow water at a depth of 108 metres (354.3 ft), about 135 kilometres (83.9 mi) from Severomorsk

Severomorsk

Severomorsk is a closed town in Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located about north of Murmansk along the Kola Bay. Population: This is the main administrative base of the Russian Northern Fleet. Severomorsk has the largest drydock on the Kola Peninsula....

, at 69°40′N 37°35′E. 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. 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 (150.9 ft).

Rescue attempts

Though rescue attempts were offered by the British

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

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 (328.1 ft) depth it would have been impossible to plug. Others point out that many potassium superoxide

Potassium superoxide

Potassium superoxide is the chemical compound with the formula KO2. This rare salt of the superoxide ion is produced by burning molten potassium in pure oxygen...

chemical cartridges, used to absorb carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

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.

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

Oxygen

Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

in the air, causing death by asphyxiation.

While the tragedy of Kursk played out in the Far North, Russia's then President Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

, though immediately informed of the tragedy, waited for five days before he broke a holiday

Holiday

A Holiday is a day designated as having special significance for which individuals, a government, or a religious group have deemed that observance is warranted. It is generally an official or unofficial observance of religious, national, or cultural significance, often accompanied by celebrations...

at a presidential resort house in subtropical Sochi

Sochi

Sochi is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, situated just north of Russia's border with the de facto independent republic of Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast. Greater Sochi sprawls for along the shores of the Black Sea near the Caucasus Mountains...

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."

Raising

A consortium formed by the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

companies Mammoet

Mammoet

Mammoet is a privately held Dutch company specializing in the hoisting and transporting of heavy objects.- History :Mammoet was founded in 1973, specialised in heavy transport over water and roads. In 2001 it was taken over by Van Seumeren transport. The name Mammoet became the name for the new...

and Smit International

Smit International

Smit Internationale N.V. is a Dutch company operating in the maritime sector. The company was founded in 1842 by Fop Smit as a towage company with only the 140 hp paddle steamer tug 'Kinderdijk'....

using the barge Giant 4 eventually raised Kursk and recovered the dead, 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 warhead

Warhead

The term warhead refers to the explosive material and detonator that is delivered by a missile, rocket, or torpedo.- Etymology :During the early development of naval torpedoes, they could be equipped with an inert payload that was intended for use during training, test firing and exercises. This...

s on 5 to 7 torpedoes causing a series of blasts big enough to be measured on a geological seismometer

Seismometer

Seismometers are instruments that measure motions of the ground, including those of seismic waves generated by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other seismic sources...

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 and/or radioactive release from the two nuclear propulsion reactors on board. The London-based nuclear consultant John Large

John Large

John H. Large is an independent nuclear engineer and analyst primarily known for his work in assessing and reporting upon nuclear safety and nuclear related accidents and incidents...

undertook the risk and hazard assessment, adapting this as further facts came to light throughout the salvage period.

Russian officials strenuously denied claims that the sub's Granit

P-700 Granit

The P-700 Granit is a Soviet and Russian naval anti-ship cruise missile. Its GRAU designation is 3M45, its NATO reporting name SS-N-19 Shipwreck...

cruise missile

Cruise missile

A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards a land-based or sea-based target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy...

s 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

Tungsten carbide

Tungsten carbide is an inorganic chemical compound containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms. Colloquially, tungsten carbide is often simply called carbide. In its most basic form, it is a fine gray powder, but it can be pressed and formed into shapes for use in industrial machinery,...

-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 Kursks reactor compartment were towed to Sayda Bay on Russia's northern Kola Peninsula

Kola Peninsula

The Kola Peninsula is a peninsula in the far northwest of Russia. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely to the north of the Arctic Circle and is washed by the Barents Sea in the north and the White Sea in the east and southeast...

– where more than 50 reactor compartments were afloat at pier points – after a shipyard had defuelled the boat in early 2003. 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.)

Books

Gary Weir and Walter Boyne (2003), Rising Tide: The untold story of the Russian submarines that fought the Cold War, Basic Books, NY, NY.
Ramsey Flynn (2004), Cry from the Deep: The Submarine Disaster That Riveted the World and Put the New Russia to the Ultimate Test, Harper Collins.

Music

Russian band DDT
DDT (band)
DDT is a popular Russian rock band founded by its lead singer, Yuri Shevchuk , in Ufa in 1980...

or ДДТ wrote a song called Kapitan Keleznikov, or Капитан Колесников about the Kursk.
"Barren the Sea" - song about the incident, by Sequoya
Scottish band Mogwai
Mogwai (band)
Mogwai are a Scottish post-rock band, formed in 1995 in Glasgow. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite , John Cummings , Barry Burns , Dominic Aitchison , and Martin Bulloch...

wrote the song Travel Is Dangerous about the tragedy from the viewpoint of the men who perished on board the Kursk.
Swedish heavy metal wolf
Wolf (band)
Wolf is a heavy metal band from Örebro, Sweden. Formed in 1995, the band has since released five albums and toured with Saxon, Tankard and more recently, Trivium.-Members:*Niklas Stålvind - vocals, guitar *Anders G Modd - bass guitar...

wrote a song called K-141 Kursk detailing the events of the disaster

Theatre

"The Kursk" - play about the trapped survivors, By Sasha Janowicz.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.