At least that’s what’s suggested by seismic readings of the event. The explosion that ultimately destroyed the Kursk must have been massive. The Explosion Registered on Seismographs in Alaska There have actually been 11 such collisions recorded in the area since 1967. The Russians supported their assertion by pointing to satellite imagery of a US submarine that was docked in a Norwegian port on August 19, a few days after the accident and a collision wouldn’t have been unprecedented. While there is no direct evidence that this occurred, the theory can’t be completely dismissed. According to this claim, the USS Memphis collided with the Kursk and then went to a Norwegian port for emergency repairs. Initially, some high-level Russian officials claimed that the accident was caused by a collision with a NATO submarine that was spying on the maneuvers. Unfortunately, rescue crews did not arrive in time for them. It was written several hours after the explosions, and there were 23 survivors. Saddest of all, when they found the body of Lieutenant Captain Dmitri Kolesnikov, they noticed a note in his pocket. ![]() Instead they found that the cabin had been flooded and concluded that all 118 crewmen had been tragically killed. When Norwegian divers finally managed to open the Kursk’s airlocks on October 21, they did not find the survivors they were hoping for. The delay in asking for international help may have been a major mistake. Even he admitted that in retrospect, it would have been better to return to Moscow, at least for public relations sake. While Putin claims that it wouldn’t have made a difference in the handling of the incident, since he is connected to the military everywhere he goes. Instead of cutting his vacation short, Putin stayed on holiday for four more days. You would think losing a nuclear submarine would send the new president leaping into action but Putin, not so much. Putin Didn’t Return from his Vacation in Response to the DisasterĪs all this was going down the newly elected President Putin was vacationing in a resort on the Black Sea. Four days after the initial disaster, the Russians changed their minds and agreed to accept international help. The United Kingdom, the United States, and Norway all offered to assist with rescue operations, but the Russians refused the assistance, at least they did it first. All of the initial rescue attempts failed however, due to a combination of factors, including poor weather, the angle of the Kursk, and perhaps most significantly, a lack of appropriate rescue equipment. ![]() At that point, the Russians sent out rescue ships, which located the accident area the next morning, on August 13. The first indication that something was amiss came when the Kursk failed to check in that evening. However, it would be several long agonizing hours before anyone even knew if anything was wrong. What was supposed to be an exercise wherein the Kursk fired two dummy torpedoes at the Russian battle cruiser, the Pyotr Velikiy, had turned into a real life drama that had the world watching in disbelief to see if any members of the 118 member crew would survive. Just a little more than 2 minutes after the initial explosion, a second more massive one took place inside the Kursk. The vessel quickly sank to the seabed, 354 feet below the surface, and came to a rest at the bottom of the freezing cold watery depths. It was at 11:28 AM on Augwhile doing training exercises in the Barents Sea, that an explosion rocked the Kursk. So when the Kursk went down on a training exercise, it really caught the Russians off guard. These big boys were considered pretty much unsinkable. 11 of these subs were made 19, and several of those are actually still in service today. The sail had a reinforced double cover, which was designed to give the sub the ability to break through the arctic ice cap.Īt a length of about 154 meters, it was 10 meters longer than the previous Oscars. From an engineering perspective, the Oscar IIs were built with a double hull separated by 3.5 millimeters and were divided into 10 different compartments. Specifically, the Kursk was what was known as an Oscar II Project 949A/Antey, which is to say, a nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine designed and built to go after NATO aircraft carrier groups. The Kursk submarine was a big, burly piece of Russian engineering. ![]() Today, we’re going to take a look at what happened to the Russian submarine that exploded and killed 118 sailors. But it’s hard not to wonder, what happened out there that day? It would be years before the fate of the Kursk was fully understood, and even now there is still some controversy surrounding it. On Augthe nuclear powered Russian submarine, ‘Kursk’ sank in the Barents Sea, for reasons unknown.
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