On the twelfth of August 2000, the Russian navy held its most massive naval exercise
since the fall of the Soviet Union. Due to a technical error the “unsinkable” Russian
submarine, the Kursk, well, sank. It amounted to a disaster, in which the submarine was
subject to two enormous explosions, killing all 118 crew on board. In the chaos of the
aftermath of the blast, Vladimir Putin, who had recently become president of Russia, faced
one of his largest political crises as of yet.
-intro-
The Kursk
In 1992 the construction of the submarine that would become the Kursk started. Two years
later, in 1994, the submarine was completed and officially launched in the Barents Sea.
In the true spirit of Russian tradition, it was baptized by an Orthodox Priest. As for
the technical details of the submarine, it was the last of the Oscar-II class submarines
of which the design stemmed from the era of the Soviet Union. The submarine was 150 metres
long and stood 18 metres in width, making it one of the largest attack-submarines ever
built (the only submarines that were larger were the Typhoon class submarines). Due to
the submarine having double-plated hulls, it was deemed unsinkable. The outer-hull was
an 8.5-millimetre steel plate, resistant to oxidation and corrosion. Due to the weak magnetic
field of high-alloy steel, the Magnetic Anomaly Detection systems from the United States would
have difficulty detecting the submarine. The inner-hull was fifty millimetres thick, with
a space of two metres between the outer and inner hull. Furthermore, there were two nuclear
reactors on board and 4 torpedo tubes. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, the Russian Northern Fleet lost a lot of financing, which meant the fleet was reduced
in size quite a bit. Furthermore, sailors often went months without salary, and food
was only occasionally present. This too was the case for Russian submarines, that were
poorly maintained and were rusting away in ports for the most part. So in a sense as
soon as the Kursk had been built, it started to decay slowly due to neglect. By the end
of the nineties, there was a tiny revival in finances allocated to the Russian Northern
Fleet and the Kursk even embarked on a reconnaissance mission to the Mediterranean, spying on an
American fleet during the Kosovo war. But the real action for the Kursk in years would
be on the 12th of August 2000. That was the date the so-called Summer-X exercise commenced.
It was supposed to be the largest naval exercise in over a decade of the Russian navy and the
first large-scale naval exercise after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thirty ships
and three submarines participated, including the battlecruiser Pyotr Velijij, Russian for
Peter the Great. During the exercise, the Kursk submarine was tasked with ‘attacking’
this ship. Thing is, the entire fleet was in an abysmal condition due to the decade
of neglect. Obviously a lot was at stake after such a
long hiatus of the Russian navy. But the exercise wouldn’t just end up a failure, but a catastrophic
disaster, one of the largest in Russian maritime history.
The Kursk Disaster
On the 12th of Augustus at 11:25 am the Kursk descended and kicked off its mission. Onboard
were 112 men, 44 officers and 68 sailors. As the submarine descended, a test alarm alerted
the sailors to fire a dummy-torpedo at the flagship Peter the Great. And from the launch
of this torpedo things rapidly went south. Now, during the exercise, the Kursk submarine
used dummy torpedoes that were by this time controversial. Actually, that is an understatement.
The torpedoes the Kursk used contained ingredients that had been considered fundamentally flawed
since the 1950s after the British navy had several explosive accidents with them. The
official reading of the disaster states that problems were caused by a fuel component that
was part of a mixture necessary for a dummy torpedo that was going to be launched.
See. The torpedo tube of the Kursk is made of copper. And, well, hydrogen peroxide, one
of the controversial elements of the torpedoes, has an explosive reaction when it comes into
contact with oxidising metal. In theory, if the launch of the torpedo went well, the contents
of the torpedo would not get into contact with the tube. However, one of the torpedoes
leaked due to a welding fault which, ironically, wasn’t noticed because it was a dummy-torpedo.
And, a bit ironic as well, the fuel required for the launching of the torpedo consisted
of more energy than the replaced warhead. As the torpedo was launched, through the welding
fault, the hydrogen-peroxide came into contact with rust and corrosion. It sparked a rapid
exothermic process, the heat increased which led to an explosion. Exactly the reason why
NATO countries had not used these type of torpedoes for nearly half a century.
So the inside of the hatch had an electrical connector, which would check the torpedo before
it was launched. This electrical connector had to be cleaned every so often and, convinced
that they had to clean it again, the crew did not fasten the clamps as they closed the
hatch. This literally resulted in the explosion blast, which was roughly equal to one-hundred
kilograms TNT, directed completely inwards with full force. The explosion was powerful
to the degree that it reached the adjacent area where the captain and 36 officers together
with several sailors were. The blast caught them entirely by surprise. The first explosion
left many dead and critically injured, with vital systems defunct, removing any chance
of external communication. In Norway a seismographic station, a station that measures earthquakes,
is surprised at the rumble of 1.5 on the Richter scale.
Following the explosion, the Kursk rapidly sank to 108 metres under the sea level and
stranded there on a sandbank. But even worse: because of the blast, hydrogen peroxide started
flowing from the hatch into the submarine. Meanwhile, the heat of the first explosion
raised the temperature to nearly 400 degrees in the area. This was the critical temperature
for spontaneous combustion of the torpedoes. And that is exactly what happened. It is estimated
5 to 8 torpedoes spontaneously combusted, which resulted in an explosion that was 250
times larger than the first one. The seismographs in Norway measure an earthquake that’s 3.5
on the Richter’s scale, a very unusual number. Even though the Kursk suffered two incredibly
powerful explosions, there were still some survivors.
The last explosion blew a large hole in the hull, and the first three compartments of
the submarine collapsed. It killed everyone in these compartments, including the technician,
but not before he managed to close the reactor room and switch off two nuclear reactors in
time. This blast killed 89 other men on board. Men imploded were burned or were killed by
the water pressure. The explosion destroyed the panels between the compartments by the
water that seeps in with immense strength. Somehow the panels that protect the nuclear
reactors didn’t succumb to the water pressure. All the way in the emergency rear compartment,
23 men were at this point still alive. It is unknown what happened in that compartment,
but the investigation concluded that around 8 hours after the first explosion the final
survivors probably suffocated due to lack of oxygen and carbon monoxide poisoning. In
total all 118 crew of the submarine died in the incredibly tragic disaster. But what’s
perhaps even more curious than the disaster itself is its aftermath and the way it was
managed by the Russian navy and president Putin himself.
Now, many other ships participated in the exercise. However, the other submarines did
not realise the Kursk had crashed until 11 o’clock in the evening, nearly 12 hours
after the facts. Kursk’s commander, Gennady Lyachin had failed to get in touch at the
agreed-upon time of 5:30 pm, and the next 5.5 hours of trying to establish contact with
the submarine yielded no results. Half an hour later, at 11:30 pm, an emergency situation
was declared. A convoy of ships headed by the Northern Fleet commander Vyacheslav Popov
sailed out the next morning to search for the missing submarine, and just before 5 AM
the next day the Peter the Great cruiser detected the Kursk at a depth of 108 metres, stranded
on a sandbank at the bottom of the sea.
Foreign Aid
The rescue mission was filled with human errors and neglect. Eventually, it took fourteen
months to retrieve the remains of the Kursk. Initially the Russian government tried everything
to downplay the seriousness and cause of the disaster. Although other countries proposed
they would send aid, the Russians firmly rejected this. Vladimir Putin, who had been president
for under a year by this point, was faced with his first serious disaster. So what did
he do? Well, he resided in his summer home in Sochi during the incident and did not actually
go to Murmansk until a week later, when the gravity of the situation became clear. It
led to a lot of criticism, both domestic and in other countries, and Putin ended up publicly
apologizing twice for his handling of the situation.
Due to built-in stealth measures, the wreckage of the Kursk was difficult to detect and it
took several days for divers to locate the wreckage properly. Russia didn’t have the
naval expertise to retrieve the wreck because of the stormy Barentzsea and the lack of adequate
naval power. They ended up requiring foreign aid to do so.
Eventually the Russians approached two Dutch companies: Smit and Mammoet. But even for
them the job was incredibly challenging due to the weather and tumultuous sea. In april
2001 the contract between the Russian government and the Dutch companies was signed, and after
October the sea would be too stormy to complete the mission. So there were only 5 months in
order to salvage the wreckage. So in October the plan commenced: the front
part of the Kursk would be sawed off since it was too heavy to lift up. Holes were bored
in the hull in order to connect plugs that would, once they were inside the submarine,
spring open and become somewhat of hoisting ropes. Disregarding the stormy weather, in
an operation that took 15 hours, the retrieving of the Kursk wreckage became a success - 14
months after the initial disaster. The commanding officer of the Kursk, Gennady
Lyachin, received the title Hero of the Russian Federation posthumously and all crew members
received the Order for Bravery. This rather recent event is still printed in the collective
memory of many Russians, and it certainly was one of the things that could have tripped
Putin up before he properly established his power base in Russia.
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