Red Sparrow / Kursk [2DVD] (English audio. English subtitles)

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A Time to Die (2002, ISBN 0609610007), an investigative book on the events, was

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 removed all the fuel from the boat in early 2003. [25] On Sunday 20 August, the Norwegians lowered a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to the submarine. They found that the first 18m (59ft) section of the boat was a mass of twisted metal and debris. [16] Kursk had a mythical standing. It was reputedly unsinkable and, it was claimed, could withstand a direct hit from a torpedo. [9] The outer hull was constructed using 8mm (0.3in) steel plate covered by up to 80mm (3in) of rubber, which minimised other submarines' or surface On Monday 14 August, Fleet Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov stated the accident had been caused by a serious collision with a NATO submarine, [30] although he gave no evidence to support his statement. [20] Senior commanders of the Russian Navy repeated this account for more than two years after the disaster. Many who wished for continued poor relations between Russia and the West supported this scenario. [20] As a result of the disaster, Russia began participating in NATO search-and-rescue exercises in 2011, the first time any Russian submarine had taken part in a NATO-led exercise. [112] The Russian Navy also increased the number of deep-sea divers trained each year from 18–20 to 40–45. [113] Awards to those killed [ edit ]The open valve in the ventilation system allowed the huge blast wave and possibly the fire and toxic smoke to enter the second and perhaps the third and fourth compartments, as well. Although the sub was at periscope depth with its radio antennas extended, no one in the command post was able to send a distress signal or press a single button that would initiate an emergency ballast tank blow and bring the submarine to the surface. [73] [14] All 36 men in the command post located in the second compartment were immediately incapacitated by the blast wave and likely killed. [26] Secondary explosion [ edit ] Submarine Kursk was a nuclear submarine, and from the dwindling Russian military point-of-view, its relevance to asserting Russia’s dominance in terms of nuclear power was enormous. However, what was supposed to be a routine Russian naval exercise turned out to be the worst nightmare for the highly sophisticated Russian submarine members, categorised under the K-141 cadre, which exploded and perished in the deep blue sea, killing everyone on board. Do Bombs Cause Earthquakes?". Archived from the original on 18 October 2006 . Retrieved 20 February 2014. Rogers, J. David; Koper, Keith D. "Some Practical Applications of Forensic Seismology" (PDF). Missouri University of Science and Technology . Retrieved 5 September 2010.

He didn’t know how to deal with it, and therefore he tried to avoid dealing with it,” Belton quotes the former Putin ally as saying. “The Norwegians and others were calling in with offers of help. But he did not want them to uncover that everyone was dead, and so he just refused the help -- which, of course, made everything worse.” Then, Maurice Stradling, a torpedo designer and former lecturer at the Royal Naval Engineering College in Plymouth, began to examine the similarities between the Kursk disaster and the unsolved mystery of an explosion on board a British submarine in June 1955 at Portland. The captain of the Sidon, Commander Hugh Verry, who survived the terrible accident, also made the connection. The Oscar IIs were big because they carried big missiles. Each submarine carried 24 P-700 Granit missiles, which themselves were the size of a small plane—33 feet long and weighing 15,400 pounds each. The missiles had a top speed of Mach 1.6, a range of 388 miles, and used the now-defunct Legenda satellite targeting system to home in on their aircraft carrier targets. A Granit could carry a 1,653-pound conventional high-explosive warhead (enough to damage a carrier) or a 500-kiloton warhead (enough to vaporize an aircraft carrier with a single hit).However, he warned that the trip could be hampered by bad weather which would stop the salvage team from taking the shortest route possible. The Russian government has said that it believes it would be too dangerous to raise the torpedo compartment, which may still contain live warheads. In addition, Kuznetsov says, a sonar operator aboard the battle cruiser Pyotr Veliky identified and reported an explosion at 11:28 a.m. on August 12. He located the explosion at the exact position where the Kursk was known to be. The whole scene was captured by the TV crew, but it was not televised within Russia. Foreign media showed Tylik being removed by officials from the meeting. [20] :36 [65] Tylik later criticised President Putin because he "did not answer direct questions" at the meeting. "Maybe he did not know what to say, but we did not receive concrete answers to concrete questions," she said. [63] [66] Tylik told The St. Petersburg Times that she would go to any lengths to learn the truth about the submarine disaster: "They told us lies the whole time, and even now we are unable to get any information," she said. [63]

In an emergency, personnel in the rear compartments were to move forward to the third compartment along with those in the forward compartments and enter a detachable rescue capsule in the sail (or conning tower), which was capable of evacuating the entire crew. [80] Alternatively, there was also an escape trunk in the first compartment, but the explosion and fire rendered use of it impossible. [11] [34] [81] The rescue capsule in the third compartment was inaccessible, even if it was still usable. [14] Shutdown of nuclear reactors [ edit ] At 11:31:48, [15] 2 minutes and 14 seconds after the first, a second event, measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, or 250 times larger than the first, [14] was registered on seismographs across northern Europe [17] and was detected as far away as Alaska. [9] The second explosion was equivalent to 2–3 tons of TNT. [5] Two minutes and 14 seconds after the first explosion in the torpedo compartment, [15] the fire set off a second explosion of five to seven combat-ready torpedo warheads. Acoustic data from Pyotr Velikiy were later analysed and found to indicate an explosion of about seven torpedo warheads in rapid succession. [5] The Type 65 "Kit" torpedo carries a large 450kg (990lb) warhead. [74]Faulconbridge, Guy (3 December 2004). "Nightmare at Sea". Moscow Times . Retrieved 22 February 2014. Larissa van Seumeren, a spokesman for the consortium, said the submarine was less deeply embedded in the seabed than believed. "We started to pull and there was almost no suction," she said. "It was lifted up easily."

But there is no evidence that there were any Shkval torpedos on board, and some experts doubt their very existence. More credible was the theory being pushed until recently by senior officers in the Russian navy that the Kursk had collided with a British or American submarine spying on the manoeuvres in the Barents Sea. Twenty-four men were assigned to compartments six through nine towards the rear of the boat. [97] Of that number, 23 survived the two blasts and gathered in the small ninth compartment, which had an escape hatch. [11] Captain-lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov, head of the turbine unit in the seventh department, and one of three surviving officers of that rank, apparently took charge. [98] Emergency lighting was normally powered by batteries located in the first compartment which had been destroyed in the explosion, but the ninth compartment contained a number of independent emergency lights which apparently worked. Rescue divers did not attempt to tap on the hull to signal potential survivors acoustically. [34] However, video evidence seems to suggest otherwise, as it shows Norwegian divers tapping on the aft rescue hatch while the rescue part of the operation was still underway. [36]

Senior officers in the Russian Navy offered a variety of explanations for the accident. [9] Four days after Kursk sank, Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief and Fleet Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov stated the accident had been caused by a serious collision. Vice-premier Ilya Klebanov said the submarine might have hit an old World War II mine. [30] He also said that almost all of the sailors had died before the vessel hit bottom. [31] They found that dust and ash inside compartment nine severely restricted visibility. As they gradually worked their way inside the compartment and down two levels, Warrant Officer Sergei Shmygin found the remains of Captain-lieutenant Dmitry Kolesnikov. [39] All the men had been badly burned. [16] The divers cut additional holes in the hull over the third and fourth compartments. [41] The Russian divers removed secret documents and eventually recovered a total of 12 bodies from the ninth compartment. This contradicted earlier statements made by senior Russian officials that all the submariners had died before the submarine hit the bottom. [31] They also found the boat's log, but had to suspend work because of severe weather. [28] The rescue teams conducted continuous radiation measurements inside and outside the submarine, but none of the readings exceeded normal ranges. [16] Private media and state-owned Russian newspapers criticised the Navy's refusal to accept international assistance. [7] Five days after the accident on 17 August 2000, President Putin accepted the British and Norwegian governments' offer of assistance. Six teams of British and Norwegian divers arrived on Friday, 18 August. [16] The Russian 328th Expeditionary rescue squad, part of the Navy's Office of Search and Rescue, also provided divers. [39] On 19 August at 20:00, the Norwegian ship Normand Pioneer arrived with the British rescue submarine LR5 on board, seven days after the disaster. [16] [28] On Thursday at 12:00, Popov reported to the general staff of the Navy that no explosion had occurred on the Kursk, that the sub was intact on the seafloor, and that an "external influence" might have caused a leak between the first and second compartments. [19] On Thursday, the Russian DSRV made another attempt to reach the aft area of the submarine, but it was unable to create the vacuum seal necessary to attach to the escape trunk. [24] The Russians' 32-hour response time was widely criticised. [34] At 04:50 on Sunday, 13 August, personnel aboard Pyotr Velikiy detected two anomalies on the seabed that might be the boat. At 09:00, Mikhail Rudnitsky arrived at the location. While setting anchor, its crew interpreted an acoustic sound as an SOS from the submarine, but soon concluded the noise had been produced by the anchor chain striking the anchor hole. At 11:30, Mikhail Rudnitsky prepared to lower the AS-34, which entered the water at 17:30. At 18:30, at a depth of 100m (300ft) and at a speed of 2kn (3.7km/h), the AS-34 reported colliding with an object, and through a porthole, the crew saw the Kursk 's propeller and stern stabiliser. With the AS-34 damaged by the collision and forced to surface, the crew of Mikhail Rudnitsky began preparing the AS-32 for operation. [19]