The death of the Kursk. Submarine tragedy investigation

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Sixteen years ago, the nuclear submarine K-141 Kursk crashed in the Barents Sea. Together with the missile-carrying cruiser, all 118 people on board were killed. But even today, after so many years, the tragedy has more questions than answers.

Antey

This is what the Project 949A nuclear-powered missile-carrying submarine cruisers are called. These boats are also proudly called "aircraft carrier killers." Be that as it may, the Project 949A Antey submarines are very powerful ships with deadly weapons on board.

The boat is a double-hulled boat: its design includes an external lightweight and internal strong hull. The distance between them is 3.5 m, and this feature increases the chances of surviving in a collision with another submarine. The submarine hull is divided into ten compartments. The boats of project 949A are very wide and can, if necessary, lay down on the ground.

"Kursk": a hike to nowhere

But back to the lost submarine. Whether it is possible to reconstruct the chronology of events in detail is a moot point. Many aspects are classified, and we will never know about them.

It is known that the submarine set off on its last cruise on August 10, 2000. And two days later, on August 12, the ship did not get in touch. According to the plan of the exercises, the crew was supposed to work out the launch of the P-700 cruise missile, as well as fire at targets with torpedoes near the Kola Bay. The boat carried a full complement of cruise missiles, as well as all possible torpedo ammunition (24 pieces). Meanwhile, combat training torpedo attacks were not detected, and the command post did not receive a corresponding report.

The naval exercises that took place with the participation of the Kursk became the most ambitious since the collapse of the USSR. Of course, the prestige of Russia as a great maritime power was involved here. In part, this explains the confusion in the words of the Navy leadership. Only two days after the tragedy did the first official reports of the disaster appear, and until that moment ordinary people could only guess about it. President Vladimir Putin was then in Sochi. He made no announcements and did not interrupt his vacation.

Presumably, fears crept in on August 12, when at 11:28 am local time on the nuclear cruiser "Peter the Great" recorded a cotton. Then the fate of the submariners and their commander - Captain I rank Gennady Lyachin - did not seem a foregone conclusion, and the strange sound was attributed to the activation of the radar antenna. 2 minutes 15 seconds after the first explosion, a second, more powerful one followed. But even in spite of this, the radiogram to the Kursk was sent only five and a half hours later.

The Kursk crew did not get in touch either at 17:30 or at 23:00 on the same day. The situation was recognized as emergency, and in the morning at 4:51 am the submarine lying at the bottom was discovered by the Peter the Great hydroacoustic complex. The ship was at the bottom of the Barents Sea at a depth of 108 m, 150 km from Severomorsk. After the descent of the diving bell, the boat was visually detected, and the rescuers heard faint knocks “SOS. Water . A long saga of rescuing the boat began, revealing many of the problems of the Russian fleet.

Western countries quickly responded to the tragedy. Great Britain and the USA offered their help. In the West, it was proposed to use their deep-sea vehicles to rescue the surviving sailors. But Russia flatly refused help …

On August 15, it turned out that the bow of the boat was badly damaged, and with the most favorable development of the situation, the air on board would last until August 18. At the same time, the British sent their LR-5 deep-sea vehicle to the Norwegian port - they did not wait for the permission of the Russian Federation. The next day, Russia nevertheless allowed the Europeans to provide assistance, and the Norwegian ships Normand Pioneer and Seaway Eagle went to the rescue. The first of them transported the LR-5 apparatus, and the second - a group of divers.

The official version says that the submarine lying at the bottom had a list of 60 degrees. In combination with poor visibility and roughness of the sea, this led to the fact that the underwater vehicles AS-15, AS-32, AS-36 and AS-34 did not were able to complete their task. However, this is what British rescue squad leader David Russel says about this: “We realized that the information we were being told was a lie. There was good visibility and a calm sea. The position of the Kursk submarine was accessible, and it was possible to help the surviving sailors. " The Norwegian Admiral Einar Skorgen, who participated in the operation, also reported on disinformation: “The divers sank very quickly - the nuclear submarine was there. Its position is completely horizontal, there is no strong current. The Russians told us that the ring of the rescue airlock was damaged, but that turned out to be untrue. " So it was possible to dock to the Kursk, and subsequent events proved this.

Almost immediately upon arrival, the Norwegians were successful. At 13:00 on August 20, after docking the rescue vehicle, they opened the 9th compartment of the submarine. Within two hours, the authorities officially announced that there were no survivors on board. The fact that the nuclear submarine was completely flooded became known back on August 19 after the divers tapped the Kursk hull. In the fall of 2001, the boat was raised to the surface and towed to dry dock with the help of pontoons. Before that, the bow of the deceased cruiser was cut off and left at the bottom of the sea, although many experts suggested raising it completely.

Official version

The official report in 2002 was prepared by the then Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov. According to this version, Kursk was killed by the explosion of a 650-mm Kit torpedo in the fourth torpedo tube. This is a rather old torpedo, created in the 1970s, one of the components of its fuel is hydrogen peroxide - it was its leak that provoked the explosion. After that, there was a detonation of other torpedoes located in the bow of the boat. Hydrogen peroxide torpedoes have not been used in many other navies for more than half a century due to their insecurity.

The nature of the damage to the first compartment is such that the version of the explosion of the torpedo seems plausible. Parts of the torpedo tube and sonar station, other equipment were literally torn off from the submarine's hull. An analysis of the deformation of the fragments of the torpedo tube suggests that an explosion actually took place inside it. Another question is why it happened. It is known that the leakage of fuel for the torpedo and its contact with the environment could lead to a tragedy. As for the reason for the leak itself, the question is open here. Some experts point to a marriage, while others believe that the torpedo could be damaged when loaded onto a boat.

Vice-Admiral Valery Ryazantsev also leans towards the "torpedo" version, who outlined his version in the book "In wake formation after death." And although he also talks about the explosion of a torpedo on board, his conclusions do not coincide in many ways with the official interpretation. The design flaws of the boat, according to Ryazantsev, force the shutters of the general ventilation system to be left open during the salvo launch of torpedoes (this prevents a sharp jump in pressure in the first compartment). As a result of this feature, the shock wave hit the second command compartment and incapacitated the entire personnel. Then the unguided boat crashed into the ground and the remaining ammunition detonated.

Submarine collision

One of the versions says that the Kursk could collide with an American submarine. Captain I rank Mikhail Volzhensky adheres to this version. The main culprit is called the submarine "Toledo", belonging to the type of nuclear submarine "Los Angeles". The submarines of the US Navy did indeed follow the progress of the exercises of the Russian navy. All of them have high secrecy, which allows you to get as close as possible to domestic ships.

This version has a number of contradictions. Any western multipurpose submarine is incomparably smaller than the Kursk: the length of the Los Angeles-class submarine is 109 meters versus 154 for the Kursk. The most powerful American multipurpose submarine of the "Seawulf" type has a length of 107 m. Let us add that the boats of Project 949A are incomparably wider and, in general, more massive than overseas. In other words, the collision with the Kursk should have caused the Americans themselves even more harm. But none of the boats of the US Navy was damaged then.

The hypothesis of a collision with a surface ship has similar roughness. To send the Kursk to the bottom, the blow had to be of colossal force, and all the same, the probability of the death of such a large boat would be insignificant.

Torpedo attack

Much more interesting is the version about the torpedoing of the Kursk by a NATO submarine. Of course, the North Atlantic Alliance did not set itself the goal of destroying it, just in a difficult situation, when the ships were nearby, the captain of the American boat could give the order to launch torpedoes. This point of view is shared by the creators of the documentary “Kursk. Submarine in troubled water. " According to her, the attack was carried out by the "Memphis" boat, belonging to the "Los Angeles" class. The submarine "Toledo" was also present, covering the attacking submarine.

A hole in the front right side of the Kursk can serve as evidence of the attack. In some photographs, a circle with edges concave inward is clearly visible. But what could have left such damage? US Navy submarines use Mark-48 torpedoes, but their detailed characteristics are not known for certain. The fact is that these torpedoes have been modernized many times since their introduction into service in 1972.

Some experts say that the Mark-48 hits the boat with a directional explosion and, accordingly, cannot leave such damage on board (we are talking about a smooth, almost round hole). But in the already mentioned film by Jean-Michel Carré, it is argued that Mark-48 has a penetrating effect and such a hole is her calling card. The film itself is replete with a mass of technical flaws, and it is very difficult to separate truth from fiction in this case. In other words, the question of a torpedo attack is still open.

Mine

In general, the version of the collision of the Kursk with a mine was never on the agenda. Writers and journalists did not see anything "mysterious" in her: this version certainly did not resemble a conspiracy. The technical side of the issue also raises doubts, because the Kursk was one of the world's largest nuclear submarines, and its destruction with an old mine from the Second World War is hardly possible.

However, there is a much more plausible hypothesis. Mines, as you know, are different, and not all of them were created during the Second World War. There is, for example, the American Mark-60 Captor naval mine, which is an anchor container with a Mk.46 torpedo. Special equipment recognizes the noises of enemy submarines, and a torpedo with a cumulative warhead is aimed at the front, most vulnerable part of the boat. A number of experts believe that this can explain the presence of a round hole in the front of the Kursk.

Alternative version

One of the versions was the hypothesis of the captain of the 1st rank Alexander Leskov. In 1967, he survived a fire on the nuclear submarine K-3, and in addition was the commander of the nuclear submarine K-147. The officer criticized the official version, according to which the Kursk was under water during the first explosion. With a length of 154 m, such a boat, according to Leskov, should not have dived at such a shallow sea depth (recall that it was found at a depth of 108 m). According to safety requirements, diving requires a depth of three lengths of the submarine itself.

The former submariner claims that the boat was found at the bottom with retractable devices that are raised only when the ship is on the surface. He calls the version of the explosion of a torpedo erroneous, since torpedoes have four levels of protection and the detonation of one of them does not entail the explosions of others.

A reasonable question arises: what then destroyed the boat? Leskov unequivocally states that it was a Russian missile launched during the exercise. It could be a surface-to-ground missile for coastal complexes. The officer believes that not one, but two missiles hit the Kursk, which caused both explosions. Note that Leskov's hypothesis, like all the others, also suffers from a lack of evidence.

Instead of an epilogue

We will probably never know the truth about the tragedy on the Kursk nuclear submarine. This is the case when only a thin line separates the official version and the conspiracy, and on whose side the truth is unknown.

The refusal of the Russian Federation from international assistance and the confusion in the words of high-ranking officials can be attributed to self-defense. Indeed, neither the commander of the Northern Fleet, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, nor another active participant in those events, Vice Admiral Mikhail Motsak, were held accountable. They really didn’t want to let foreigners to the boat, because they were afraid to violate the notorious "secrecy" inherited from the USSR. And here one involuntarily recalls the words of Bulgakov's professor Preobrazhensky about chaos in their heads.

But what about the details of the disaster? The version of a collision with an underwater or surface object seems implausible. At the time of the first explosion, the Norwegian seismic station ARCES recorded an impact with a force of 90-200 kg in TNT equivalent. Thus, the first torpedo explosion could actually have occurred. Two minutes later, seismologists recorded another explosion, many times stronger - this could detonate the remaining ammunition of the boat. But which torpedo killed the Kursk? The warhead of the "Kit" is 450 kg, the American Mark-48 - 295, and the Mark-46 - 44 kg. Theoretically, the explosion of each of them could be the first recorded blow.

There was no point in torpedoing the Kursk for the Americans, except in extreme conditions of self-defense. And the chances of hitting the nuclear submarine from the ground with a surface-to-surface missile were no greater than the likelihood that a meteorite would hit the Kursk. As for the explosion of a torpedo on board, it could have happened only under the confluence of circumstances and in conditions of total negligence at all levels. This is completely unacceptable in the submarine fleet, but for that time it did not seem like something incredible.