Kursk (submarine)

K-141 ''Kursk'' () was an Oscar II-class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine of the Russian Navy. On 12 August 2000, K-141 ''Kursk'' was lost when it sank in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 personnel on board.

Construction

K-141 ''Kursk'' was a Project 949A class ''Antey'' () submarine of the Oscar class, known as the Oscar II by its NATO reporting name, and was the penultimate submarine of the Oscar II class designed and approved in the Soviet Union. Construction began in 1990 at the Soviet Navy military shipyards in Severodvinsk, near Arkhangelsk, in the northern Russian SFSR. During the construction of K-141, the Soviet Union collapsed; work continued, and she became one of the first naval vessels completed after the collapse. In 1993 K-141 was named ''Kursk'' after the Battle of Kursk on the 50-year anniversary of this battle. K-141 was inherited by Russia and launched in 1994, before being commissioned by the Russian Navy on 30 December, as part of the Russian Northern Fleet.

''Kursk'' was assigned to the home port of Vidyayevo, Murmansk Oblast.

Capabilities

The ''Antey'' design represented the highest achievement of Soviet nuclear submarine technology. They are the second-largest cruise missile submarines ever built, after some s converted to carry cruise missiles in 2007. ''Kursk'' was built to defeat an entire United States aircraft carrier group. A single Type 65 torpedo carried a warhead powerful enough to sink an aircraft carrier. Both missiles and torpedoes could be equipped with nuclear warheads. She was longer than the preceding Oscar I-class submarines. The senior officers had individual cabins and the entire crew had access to a gymnasium.

Her outer hull, made of high-nickel, high-chromium stainless steel thick, had exceptional corrosion resistance and a weak magnetic signature, helping to conceal it from U.S. magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) systems. There was a gap to the -thick steel pressure hull. She was designed to remain submerged for up to 120 days. The sail superstructure was reinforced to allow it to break through Arctic ice.
The submarine was armed with 24 SS-N-19/P-700 Granit cruise missiles, and eight torpedo tubes in the bow: four and four . With a range of , Granit missiles were capable of supersonic flight at altitudes over . They were designed to swarm enemy vessels and intelligently choose individual targets which terminated with a dive onto the target. ''Kursk's'' torpedo tubes could launch either torpedoes or anti-ship missiles with a range of . Her weapons included 18 SS-N-16 "Stallion" anti-submarine missiles.

''Kursk'' was part of Russia's Northern Fleet, which suffered funding cuts throughout the 1990s. Many of its submarines were anchored and rusting in Zapadnaya Litsa Naval Base, from Murmansk. Little work to maintain all but the most essential front-line equipment, including search and rescue equipment, was performed. Northern Fleet sailors had gone unpaid in the mid-1990s.

Deployments

During her five years of service, ''Kursk'' completed only one mission, a six-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea during the summer of 1999 to monitor the United States Sixth Fleet responding to the Kosovo crisis. As a result, many of her crew had spent little time at sea and were inexperienced.

Naval exercise and disaster

''Kursk'' joined the "Summer-X" exercise, the first large-scale naval exercise planned by the Russian Navy in more than a decade, on 10 August 2000. It included 30 ships including the fleet's flagship ''Pyotr Velikiy'', four attack submarines, and a flotilla of smaller ships. The crew had recently won a citation for its excellent performance and had been recognized as the best submarine crew in the Northern Fleet. While on an exercise, ''Kursk'' loaded a full complement of combat weapons. It was one of the few vessels authorized to carry a combat load at all times.

Explosion

On the first day of the exercise, ''Kursk'' successfully launched a Granit missile armed with a dummy warhead. Two days later, on the morning of 12 August, ''Kursk'' prepared to fire dummy torpedoes at the ''Pyotr Velikiy''. These practice torpedoes had no explosive warheads and were manufactured and tested at a much lower quality standard. On 12 August 2000, at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), there was an explosion while preparing to fire. The Russian Navy's final report on the disaster concluded the explosion was due to the failure of one of ''Kursk'' hydrogen peroxide-fueled Type 65 torpedoes. A subsequent investigation concluded that high-test peroxide (HTP), a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide used as propellant, seeped through a faulty weld in the torpedo casing. When HTP comes into contact with a catalyst, it rapidly expands by a factor of 5000, generating vast quantities of steam and oxygen. The pressure produced by the expanding HTP ruptured the kerosene fuel tank in the torpedo and set off an explosion equal to of TNT. The submarine sank in relatively shallow water, bottoming at a depth of about off Severomorsk, at . A second explosion 135 seconds after the initial event was equivalent to 3-7 tons of TNT. The explosions blew a large hole in the hull and caused the first three compartments of the submarine to collapse, killing or incapacitating all but 23 of the 118 personnel on board.

Rescue attempts

The British and Norwegian navies offered assistance, but Russia initially refused all help. All 118 sailors and officers aboard ''Kursk'' died. The Russian Admiralty initially told the public that the majority of the crew died within minutes of the explosion. On 21 August, Norwegian and Russian divers found 24 bodies in the ninth compartment, the turbine room at the stern. Captain-lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov wrote a note listing the names of 23 sailors who were alive in the compartment after the sinking.

''Kursk'' carried a potassium superoxide cartridge of a chemical oxygen generator; these are used to absorb carbon dioxide and chemically release oxygen during an emergency. However, the cartridge became contaminated with sea water and the resulting chemical reaction caused a flash fire, consuming the available oxygen. Investigation showed that some personnel temporarily survived the fire by plunging under water, as fire marks on the bulkheads indicated the water was at waist level at the time. Ultimately, the remaining crew burned to death or suffocated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, though immediately informed of the tragedy, was assured by the Navy that the situation was under control and the crew's rescue was imminent. He waited for five days before ending his holiday at a presidential resort in Sochi on the Black Sea. Only four months into his presidency, he was highly criticized by the media and public alike for choosing to remain at the resort. Hitherto highly popular, his approval rating dropped dramatically. The president's response appeared callous and the government's actions looked incompetent. 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."

Submarine recovery

A consortium formed by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International was awarded a contract by Russia to raise the vessel, excluding the bow. They modified the barge '' Giant 4'' which raised ''Kursk'' and recovered the remains of her crew.

During salvage operations in 2001, the team first cut the bow off the hull using a tungsten carbide-studded cable. As this tool had the potential to cause sparks which could ignite remaining pockets of reactive gases, such as hydrogen, the operation was executed with care. Most of the bow was abandoned and the rest of the vessel was towed to Severomorsk and placed in a floating dry dock for analysis.

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 drained all the fuel from the wreck in early 2003.

Some torpedo and torpedo tube fragments from the bow were recovered; the rest was destroyed by explosives in 2002.

Official inquiry results

Notwithstanding the Navy's oft-stated position that a collision with a foreign vessel had triggered the event, a report issued by the government attributed the disaster to a torpedo explosion caused when high-test peroxide (HTP), a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide, leaking from a faulty weld in the torpedo's casing. The report found that the initial explosion destroyed the torpedo room compartment, killing everyone within the first compartment. The blast entered the second and perhaps the third and fourth compartments through an air conditioning vent. All of the 36 men in second compartment command post were immediately incapacitated or killed by the blast wave. The first explosion caused a fire that raised the temperature of the compartment above . The heat caused the warheads of between five and seven additional torpedoes to detonate, creating an explosion equivalent to 2–3 tons of TNT measuring 4.2 on the Richter magnitude scale on seismographs across Europe. The explosion was detected as far away as Alaska.

Alternative explanation

Vice-admiral Valery Ryazantsev disagreed with the government's official conclusion. He blamed the disaster on inadequate training, poor maintenance, and incomplete inspections that caused the crew to mishandle the weapon. Examining the wrecked sub, investigators recovered a partially burned copy of the safety instructions for loading HTP torpedoes, but the instructions were for a significantly different type of torpedo and omitted essential steps for testing an air valve. The 7th Division, 1st Submarine Flotilla never inspected the crew's qualifications and readiness to fire HTP torpedoes. ''Kursk''s crew had no experience with such torpedoes and had not been trained in handling or firing them. Ryazantsev believes the lack of training and improper manuals, compounded by incomplete inspections and oversight, set off a chain of events that led to the first explosion when the inexperienced crew loaded the practice torpedo.

Media

Books

* Truscott, Peter (2002), ''Kursk: Russia's Lost Pride''. Simon & Schuster UK.
* Dunmore, Spencer (2002), ''Lost Subs: From the "Hunley" to the "Kursk", the Greatest Submarines Ever Lost – And Found''. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo.
* Moore, Robert (2002), ''A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy''. Crown Publishers NY, NY.
* Weir, Gary E. and Boyne, Walter J. (2003), ''Rising Tide: The Untold Story Of The Russian Submarines That Fought The Cold War''. Basic Books, NY, NY.
* Flynn, Ramsey (2004), ''Cry from the Deep: The Sinking of the Kursk, the Submarine Disaster That Riveted the World and Put the New Russia to the Ultimate Test''. Harper Collins.
* Rear Admiral Mian Zahir Shah (2005) ''Sea Phoenix: A True Submarine Story''.

Songs

*"Travel Is Dangerous", a song from the album ''Mr Beast'' by post-rock band Mogwai.
*Finnish doom metal band Kypck is claimed to have cross-references both to the Battle of Kursk and the submarine named after the city.
*"Капитан Колесников" (Captain Kolesnikov), a song by the Russian rock band DDT
*"The Kursk" is a song by Matt Elliott from his album ''Drinking Songs''
"Angel 141 (Russian: Ангел 141)"
is a song by Amatory from the album ''DOOM'' (2019)
"K-141 Kursk"
is a song by heavy metal band Wolf from their album '' Legions of Bastards''
*"Kursk", a song by the Massachusetts-based melodic hardcore band A Wilhelm Scream on their 2004 album '' Mute Print''

Theatre

* ''Kursk'' – a play by playwright Bryony Lavery from the British point of view.

Movies

* ''Kursk'' (also known as "The Command", and "Kursk: The Last Mission"). - The film from 2018 follows the 2000 K-141 Kursk submarine disaster and the governmental negligence that followed. By Thomas Vinterberg.

See also

* 2008 Russian submarine accident
* List of Russian military accidents
* List of sunken nuclear submarines
* Major submarine incidents since 2000
* Submarines destroyed by hot-running torpedoes: , and possibly and
* Igor Spasskiy – The designer of the Oscar II class

Notes

References

External links

Project 949 Granit / Oscar I Project 949A Antey / Oscar II

BBC: ''Kursk'' mistakes haunt Russia
*

''Kursk'' on the wrecksite, chart and position

''Kursk'' memorial website

Risks and hazards during the recovery of the ''Kursk''

A detailed timeline of the recovery operations

''Raising the Kursk'', 31-minute technical documentary video

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kursk (K-141)

Lost submarines of Russia
Maritime incidents in 2000
Oscar-class submarines
Ships built in Russia
Ships of the Russian Northern Fleet
Shipwrecks in the Barents Sea
Submarine accidents caused by torpedoes
Sunken nuclear submarines
1994 ships
Ships sunk by non-combat internal explosions
Warships lost with all hands
Submarines lost with all hands
Nuclear submarines of the Russian Navy