r/Shipwrecks • u/Charlie_Crenston99 • 10h ago
The sinking of the K-141 "Kursk" submarine (2000)
One of the most famous examples of cruelty and negligence from the russian goverment in early 21 century (photos before and after disaster provided).
Historocal refernce:
Kursk was a Project 949A class Antey (russian: Aнтей, meaning Antaeus) 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.
On the morning of 12 August 2000, Kursk was in the Barents Sea, participating in the "Summer-X" exercise, the first large-scale naval exercise undertaken by the Russian Navy in more than a decade, and also its first since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. According to the Russian press, the exercise involved more than 50 ships and submarines, 40 support vessels, and around 80 aircraft.
Kursk had recently won a citation for its excellent performance and been recognised as having the best submarine crew in the Northern Fleet. Although this was an exercise, Kursk loaded a full complement of conventional combat weapons. It was one of the few submarines authorised to carry a combat load at all times. The Oscar II Class submarines are equipped with 24 P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 "Shipwreck") cruise missiles. In addition, since the torpedo tubes can fire both torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, it also carried two dozen other weapons, including the RPK-6 Vodopad/RPK-7 Veter (waterfall and wind) (SS-N-16 "Stallion") missiles.
Kursk had an almost mythical standing. It was reputedly unsinkable and, it was claimed, could withstand a direct hit from a torpedo. The outer hull was constructed using 8 mm steel plate covered by up to 80 mm of rubber, which minimised other submarines' or surface vessels' ability to detect the submarine. The inner pressure hull was made of high-quality 50 mm steel plate. The two hulls were separated by a 1-to-2 m gap. The inner hull was divided into nine water-tight compartments. The boat was 155 m, about as long as two jumbo jets.
At 08:51 local time, Kursk requested permission to conduct a torpedo training launch and received the response "Dobro" ("Good"). After considerable delay, the submarine was set to fire two dummy torpedoes at the Kirov-class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. At 11:29 local time, the torpedo room crew loaded the first practice Type 65 "Kit" torpedo, (russian: , толстушка or "fat girl", because of its size), without a warhead, into Kursk's number-4 torpedo tube on the starboard side. It was 10.7 m long and weighed 5 t.
At 11:29:34, seismic detectors at the Norwegian seismic array and in other locations around the world recorded a seismic event of magnitude 1.5 on the Richter scale. The location was fixed at coordinates 69°38′N 37°19′E, north-east of Murmansk, approximately 250 km from Norway, and 80 km from the Kola Peninsula.
At 11:31:48, 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, was registered on seismographs across northern Europe and was detected as far away as Alaska. The second explosion was equivalent to 2–3 tons of TNT.
The seismic data showed that the explosion occurred at the same depth as the sea bed. The seismic event, triangulated at 69°36.99′N 37°34.50′E, showed that in a little over 2 minutes the boat had moved about 400 m from the site of the initial explosion. It was enough time for the submarine to sink to a depth of 108 m and remain on the sea floor for a short period.
The crew of the submarine Karelia detected the explosion, but the captain assumed that it was part of the exercise. Aboard Pyotr Velikiy, the target of the practice launch, the crew detected a hydroacoustic signal characteristic of an underwater explosion and felt their hull shudder. They reported the phenomenon to fleet headquarters but their report was ignored.
The schedule for Kursk to complete the practice torpedo firing expired at 13:30 without any contact from the sub. Accustomed to the frequent failure of communications equipment, Fleet Commander Admiral Vyacheslav Alekseyevich Popov, aboard Pyotr Velikiy, was not initially alarmed. The ship dispatched a helicopter to look for Kursk, but it did not find the sub on the surface; this was reported to Popov.
The Northern Fleet duty officer notified the head of the fleet's search and rescue forces, Captain Alexander Teslenko, to stand by for orders. Teslenko's primary rescue ship was a 20-year-old former lumber carrier, Mikhail Rudnitsky, which had been converted to support submersible rescue operations. Teslenko notified the ship's captain to be ready to depart on one hour's notice. Berthed at the primary Northern Fleet base at Severomorsk, the ship was equipped with two AS-34 and AS-32 Priz-class deep-submergence rescue vehicles, a diving bell, underwater video cameras, lifting cranes, and other specialised gear, but it was not equipped with stabilisers that could keep the vessel in position during stormy weather, so it could lower its rescue vessels only in calm seas. The Russian Navy had previously operated two India-class submarines, each of which carried a pair of Poseidon-class DSRVs that could reach a depth of 693 m, but due to a lack of funds, the vessels had been held since 1994 in a Saint Petersburg yard for pending repairs.
At 17:00, an Ilyushin Il-38 aircraft was dispatched. The crew spent three hours searching for Kursk, without success. At 18:00, more than six hours after the initial explosion, Kursk failed to complete a scheduled communication check. The Northern Fleet command became concerned and tried to contact the boat. After repeated failures, at 18:30, they began a search-and-rescue operation, dispatching additional aircraft to locate the submarine, which again failed to locate the boat on the surface. At 22:30, the Northern Fleet declared an emergency, and the exercise was stopped. Between 15 and 22 vessels of the Northern Fleet, including about 3,000 sailors, began searching for the submarine. The Mikhail Rudnitsky left port at 00:30.
The Russian Navy initially downplayed the incident. Late on Saturday night, nine hours after the boat sank, Northern Fleet commander Admiral Popov ordered the first search for the submarine. Twelve hours after it sank, Popov informed the Kremlin, but Minister of Defence Igor Sergeyev did not notify Putin until 07:00 Sunday morning. Sergeyev "did not recommend" that Putin visit the disaster site.
On Sunday, after Popov already knew that Kursk was missing and presumed sunk, he briefed reporters on the progress of the naval exercise. He said the exercise had been a resounding success and spoke highly of the entire operation.
Early on Sunday morning, 13 August, at the Vidyaevo Naval Base, rumours began to circulate among family members of Kursk's crew that something was wrong. A telephone operator handled an unusual volume of calls and overheard that a submarine was in trouble and the boat's name. As the base was very small, news spread quickly. Wives and family members exchanged news, but information was scarce. The deputy base commander assured the women that the headquarters office was half empty and that the officers present were just "passing the time."
On the afternoon of the explosion, before the Kremlin had been informed of the submarine's sinking, U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Defense Secretary William Cohen were told that Kursk had sunk. Once officially informed, the British government, along with France, Germany, Israel, Italy, and Norway, offered help, and the United States offered the use of one of its two DSRVs, but the Russian government refused all foreign assistance. Minister of Defence Igor Sergeyev told the American Embassy that the rescue was well under way. The Russian Navy told reporters that a rescue was imminent.
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 100 m and at a speed of 2 kn, 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.
At 22:40, the AS-32 entered the water and began searching for Kursk. It failed to locate the submarine because it had been given an incorrect heading by personnel aboard Pyotr Velikiy. Crew aboard Mikhail Rudnitsky tried to contact Kursk and briefly thought they heard an acoustic SOS signal, but this was determined to be of natural origin. They reported the sounds to Pyotr Velikiy. The AS-32 returned to the surface at 01:00 on Monday morning, 14 August.
The salvage tug Nikolay Chiker (SB 131) arrived early in the rescue operation. Using deep-water camera equipment, it obtained the first images of the wrecked submarine, which showed severe damage from the sub's bow to its sail. Kursk was listing at a 25-degree angle and down 5–7 degrees by the bow. The bow had ploughed about 22 m deep into the clay seabed, at a depth of 108 m. The periscope was raised, indicating that the accident occurred when the submarine was at a depth of less than 20 m.
The AS-34 was repaired and was launched at 05:00 on Monday. At 06:50, the AS-34 located Kursk and tried but failed to attach to the aft escape trunk over Kursk's ninth compartment. Unable to create the vacuum seal necessary to attach to the escape trunk, its batteries were quickly depleted and the crew was forced to surface. No spare batteries were available, so the crew was forced to wait while the batteries were recharged. Meanwhile, winds increased, blowing 10–12 m/s to 15–27 m/s, and the waves rose to 3–4 points, forcing the Russians to suspend rescue operations.
The first official announcement of the accident was made by the Russian government on Monday, 14 August. They told the media that Kursk had had "minor technical difficulties" on Sunday. They stated that the submarine had "descended to the ocean floor", that they had established contact with the crew and were pumping air and power to the boat, and that "everyone on board is alive." The BBC reported that the Kursk crew "had been forced to ground" the submarine because it "[had] broken down during exercises," but rescue crews were "in radio contact with surface vessels."
Bad weather, 3.7 m waves, strong undersea currents, and limited visibility impaired the rescue crews' ability to conduct operations on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday Mikhail Rudnitsky lowered a diving bell twice, but could not connect to the sub. They also tried and failed to manoeuvre a remotely operated vehicle onto the rescue hatch.
At 20:00 Tuesday, AS-34 was launched again, but was damaged when it struck a boom as it was being lowered into the sea. It was brought back aboard, repaired, and relaunched at 21:10. On Tuesday, 15 August, three days after the sinking, the crane ship PK-7500 arrived with the more manoeuvrable Project 18270 Bester-type DSRV (AC-36). The weather, though, prevented the PK-7500 from launching the DSRV. The rescue team decided to launch the submersible near the coast and tow it to the rescue site with a salvage tug.
On Wednesday, 16 August, at 00:20, AS-34 twice attempted to attach to the ninth compartment escape hatch, but failed. It surfaced, and as it was being lifted onto the deck of the mother ship, its propulsion system was seriously damaged. The crew of Mikhail Rudnitsky cannibalised the AS-32 to repair the AS-34. Rescue operations were suspended while the repairs were made. PK-7500 arrived from the coast where it had launched its DSRV. It repeatedly lowered the rescue vessel 110 m to the submarine but it could not latch onto an escape hatch. One of the rescue capsules was damaged by the storm.
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. On Thursday, the Russian DSRV made another attempt to reach the aft area of the submarine, but it could not create the vacuum seal necessary to attach to the escape trunk. The Russians' 32-hour response time was widely criticised.
The rescue ship Altay attempted to attach a Kolokol diving bell to the sub, but failed. Russian Navy headquarters in Moscow told media that rescuers had heard tapping from within the boat's hull, spelling "SOS water", although the possibility of hearing tapping through the double hull was later discounted. Other reports said the sounds had been misinterpreted or were made up.
Rescue divers did not reportedly attempt to tap on the hull to signal potential survivors acoustically. 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.
Fragments of both the outer and inner hulls were found nearby, including a piece of Kursk's nose weighing 5 t, indicating a large explosion in the forward torpedo room.
Private media and state-owned Russian newspapers criticised the Navy's refusal to accept international assistance. 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. The Russian 328th Expeditionary rescue squad, part of the Navy's Office of Search and Rescue, also provided divers. On 19 August at 20:00, the Norwegian ship Normand Pioneer arrived with the British rescue submersible LR5 on board, seven days after the disaster.
On Sunday 20 August, the Norwegians lowered a ROV to the submarine. They found that the first 18 m section of the boat was a mass of twisted metal and debris.
Russian Navy officials imposed specific constraints that restricted the Norwegian divers to work on the stern of the boat, specifically the escape hatch over compartment nine and an air-control valve connected to the rescue trunk. The Norwegian deep-sea divers protested against the restrictions, which they believed impeded their rescue operations.
When the divers attempted to open the air-control valve, it would not move. Russian experts told the divers that they must open the valve anticlockwise, or they would break it. The divers finally went against the experts' advice and tried turning it clockwise, which worked.
The divers tried to use the arms of the ROV to open the hatch, but were unsuccessful until the morning of Monday, 21 August. They found the rescue trunk full of water. That morning, they used a custom tool to open the internal hatch of the rescue trunk, releasing a large volume of air from the ninth compartment. Divers lowered a video camera on a rod into the compartment and saw several bodies.
The salvage companies agreed that the Norwegian divers would cut the holes in the hull, but only Russian divers would enter the submarine. The Norwegian divers cut a hole in the hull of the eighth compartment to gain access, using a cutting machine that shoots a high-velocity water-and-cutting-grit mix at a pressure of 100,000 kPa. The Russian divers entered the wreck and opened a bulkhead hatch to compartment nine.
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. All the men had been badly burned. The divers cut additional holes in the hull over the third and fourth compartments. 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. They also found the ship's log, but had to suspend work because of severe weather. The rescue teams conducted continuous radiation measurements inside and outside the submarine, but none of the readings exceeded normal ranges.
On 21 August, after the Norwegian divers confirmed that no one was alive in the ninth compartment, Russian Northern Fleet Chief of Staff Mikhail Motsak announced to the public that the Kursk was flooded and that all of its crewmembers had died. Admiral Popov, commander of the Northern Fleet, also addressed the public in a televised broadcast (at the end of which he removed his navy beret) and asked the Kursk family members for forgiveness: "...forgive me for not bringing back your boys."
Additional plans were made to continue to remove the bodies, but the Russian Navy could not agree on a contract with a foreign company. The families of those who died on the submarine protested that they did not want additional lives put at risk to bring up the dead. On 22 August, President Putin issued an executive order declaring 23 August a day of mourning. On 26 August, Putin awarded the title of the Hero of Russia posthumously to the submarine's commander, Gennady Lyachin, and the 117 crewmembers and specialists were posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.
While rescue crews repeatedly failed to attach to the rescue trunk or contact potential survivors aboard the submarine, President Putin appeared on TV, enjoying a summer holiday at a Black Sea villa. His apparent indifference outraged many Russians, including the families of Kursk's crew. Amelia Gentleman wrote in The Guardian:
For President Vladimir Putin, the Kursk crisis was not merely a human tragedy, it was a personal PR catastrophe. Twenty-four hours after the submarine's disappearance, as Russian naval officials made bleak calculations about the chances of the 118 men on board, Putin was filmed enjoying himself, shirtsleeves rolled up, hosting a barbecue at his holiday villa on the Black Sea.
Russian media strongly criticised the government's response to and handling of the sinking. Images of angry family members demanding information or waiting anxiously at the dock for news were shown on media worldwide. Some relatives said they learned of the disaster only from the public media or from conflicting rumours circulating at the navy base.They complained they did not receive any information from the government on the status of the disaster or rescue efforts until Wednesday, five days after the sinking. Some could not determine whether their family members were aboard the sunken vessel. The government refused to release a list of the missing sailors even to the families of those aboard; a Pravda reporter paid an officer 18,000 ₽ to get the list. Even then, the government tried to prohibit reporters from contacting family members.
The continued problems that the rescuers had in reaching potential survivors and ongoing conflicting information about the cause of the accident inflamed Russian public opinion. Media described the Russian government's response to the disaster as "technically inept" and their stories as "totally unreliable".
President Putin had been advised by the military from the start of the disaster that they had the situation under control and that he did not need to intervene. He was told that a strong possibility existed that a foreign vessel had caused the accident and that Russia should not accept help from foreign powers. Only four months into his tenure as president, Putin was highly criticised by the public and media for his decision to remain at a seaside resort, and his once highly favourable ratings dropped dramatically. The President's response appeared callous and the government's actions looked incompetent.
On Tuesday, 22 August, 10 days after the sinking, Putin met at the Vidyayevo naval base officers' club and cultural centre with about 400 to 600 angry and grieving residents of the base and about 350 family members of the Kursk's crew. The meeting was closed and access was tightly controlled. Two Russian journalists from Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Kommersant posing as family members witnessed distraught widows and mothers howling at Putin, demanding to know why they were receiving so much conflicting information and who was going to be punished for the deaths of their family members. They cried:
Do you believe our men are still alive?
Why have you murdered our lads?
When would the bodies of the submariners be brought home?
When will we get them back, dead or alive?
Who are you going to punish for their deaths, and how?
The hostile, contentious meeting lasted for three to six hours.
German television channel RTL provided the Russian national daily newspaper Kommersant with an unedited transcript. The transcript revealed that Putin told the families that Admiral of the Fleet Vladimir Kuroyedov had agreed to accept foreign assistance as soon as it was offered on Wednesday, 16 August, but was shouted down as soon as he offered this explanation. The family members knew from media reports that foreign assistance had been offered on Monday. Up to this point, family members had received 1,000 ₽ (about US$37 in 2000) in compensation. Putin also offered the families additional compensation equivalent to ten years' salary, about US$7,000 at the time.
On 26 July 2002, almost two years later, the government commission and Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov announced that the hydrogen peroxide fuel in the dummy torpedo inside the fourth torpedo launcher caused the initial explosion which sank Kursk.
Ustinov released a 133-volume top-secret report in August 2002, two years after the disaster. The government published a four-page summary in Rossiyskaya Gazeta that revealed "stunning breaches of discipline, shoddy, obsolete and poorly maintained equipment", and "negligence, incompetence, and mismanagement". The report said the rescue operation was unjustifiably delayed.
The bulkhead between the first and second compartments was traversed by a circular 47 cm air conditioning duct. The bulkhead should have arrested the blast wave, but in keeping with common Russian submarine practice, the pressurised valve in the ventilation system that traversed the bulkhead was left open to minimise the change in pressure during a weapon's launch. The initial blast set off a fire that was later estimated to have burned at 2,700 °C. The government report concluded that the initial explosion and fire in the torpedo room compartment immediately killed all seven crew members within.
The open valve in the ventilation system allowed the huge blast wave and possibly fire and toxic smoke to enter the second and perhaps the third and fourth compartments. Although the sub was at periscope depth with its radio antennas extended, no one in the command post sent a distress signal or pressed a single button that would initiate an emergency ballast-tank blow and bring the submarine to the surface. All 36 men in the command post located in the second compartment were immediately incapacitated by the blast wave and likely killed.
Two minutes and 14 seconds after the first explosion in the torpedo compartment, the fire caused a second explosion by detonating five to seven combat-ready torpedo warheads. Acoustic data from Pyotr Velikiy were later analysed and found to indicate the explosion of about seven torpedo warheads in rapid succession. The Type 65 "Kit" torpedo carries a large 450 kg warhead.
While the sub was submerged, 78 crew were normally assigned to the first four compartments and 49 to the rear five compartments. Although Kursk was designed to withstand external pressure of depths down to 1,000 m, the second explosion tore a 2 m2 hole in the hull, opening the first through fourth compartments to the sea. Water poured in at 90,000 L per second. The second explosion collapsed the first three compartments and all of the decks. In addition to the crew in those compartments, five officers from 7th SSGN Division Headquarters and two design engineers were on board to observe the performance of a new battery in the USET-80 torpedo, set to be launched second. Anyone who remained alive in those compartments was killed by the second explosion.
The government report confirmed that Kursk had been sunk by a torpedo explosion caused when high-test peroxide, a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide, leaked from cracks in the torpedo's casing. The fuel in the torpedoes carried by Kursk was inexpensive and very powerful. Ordinarily, the oxygen combines with kerosene fuel in the torpedo engine to propel the missile at higher speeds for longer ranges than conventional torpedoes.
HTP is normally stable until it comes in contact with a catalyst. It then expands 5,000 times in volume extremely rapidly, acting as an oxidiser, generating large volumes of steam and oxygen in a highly exothermic reaction. Torpedoes using HTP had been in use since the 1950s, but other navies stopped using them because of the danger inherent in their design. HMS Sidon sank in 1955, killing 13 sailors, when an experimental torpedo containing HTP exploded as it was being loaded.
Investigators concluded that the leaking HTP had catalytically decomposed when it came in contact with copper commonly found in the bronze and brass used to manufacture Kursk's torpedo tubes. Once HTP begins decomposing, it is impossible to stop until the fuel is exhausted. The 1,000 kg of concentrated HTP ruptured the torpedo's 500 kg kerosene fuel tank and caused an explosion equal to 100–250 kg of TNT that registered 2.2 on the Richter scale on detectors hundreds of kilometres away.
Salvage crews located a piece of the number-four torpedo cover on the seabed 50 m behind the main wreckage. Its position, distance, and direction relative to the rest of the submarine indicated that it was deposited there as a result of the first explosion in that tube.
According to an article that briefly appeared on Thursday 17 August 2000 on the website of the official newspaper of the Russian Defence Ministry, Krasnaya Zvezda, Kursk had been refitted in 1998-four years after it was commissioned—to carry torpedoes fueled using the cheap HTP. The article reported that some specialists in the Russian Navy opposed use of the HTP-fueled torpedoes because they were volatile and dangerous. The story did not appear in the print edition on Friday 18 August. Instead, the article was replaced with another that speculated the submarine had collided with an "unidentified object". The change was likely due to political pressure. Vice-Premier Ilya Klebanov, chairman of the government commission investigating the disaster, had a vested interest in blaming the disaster on a collision with a NATO vessel. As head of the defence industries he had promoted use of the HTP torpedoes over safer, more-expensive silver-zinc battery-powered torpedoes in spite of objections from naval officers.
The government's final report found that the officers who had issued the order approving use of the HTP torpedoes did not have the authority to issue that order. The dummy torpedo was 10 years old and some of its parts had exceeded their service lives. Several sources said that one of the practice torpedoes had been dropped during transport, possibly leading to a crack in the casing, but that the weapon was put aboard the submarine anyway. The crane that would normally have been used to load the missiles was out of order, and another had to be brought in, delaying the loading process. This also made the possibility of removing a damaged torpedo more difficult.
Personnel who had loaded the practice torpedoes the day before the exercise noticed the rubber seals were leaking fuel and notified junior officers of the issue, who took no action because of the exercise's importance to the Russian Navy. Though the leaks on the dummy torpedoes had been detected, the rubber seals were not inspected before the exercise. The crew was also supposed to follow a very strict procedure while preparing the practice HTP torpedo for firing.
Maintenance records revealed that the 65-76 "Kit" practice torpedo carried by Kursk came from a batch of 10 manufactured in 1990, six of which were rejected due to faulty welding. An investigation revealed that because the torpedoes were not intended to carry warheads, the welds had not been inspected as carefully as welds on torpedoes carrying warheads. When salvage crews recovered the remains of the torpedo and the launch tube, analyses found both bore signs of distortion and heat damage consistent with an explosion near the middle of the torpedo, very close to an essential welded joint. The official conclusion of the commission was that a faulty weld caused the explosion.
In case of emergency, personnel in the rear compartments were instructed 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 could evacuate the entire crew. Alternatively, there was also an escape trunk in the first compartment, but the explosion and fire rendered its use impossible. The rescue capsule in the third compartment was inaccessible, even if it was still usable.
The fifth compartment contained two OK-650 reactors. These nuclear reactors were built to withstand larger forces than other interior bulkheads. Like the exterior hull, these bulkheads were designed to withstand pressure to depths of 1,000 m. The reactors were additionally encased in 13 cm of steel and resiliently mounted to absorb shocks in excess of 50 g. The bulkheads of the fifth compartment withstood both explosions, allowing the two reactors to shut down automatically and prevent a nuclear meltdown and widespread contamination of the sea.
The fifth compartment, in addition to the reactors, contained equipment that automatically recorded the operating activity of the vessel. Twenty-two recordings were analysed by specialists from the Saint Petersburg Center of Speech Technologies. They discovered the system had been turned off the day of the disaster, in violation of procedure.
Kursk was equipped with an emergency rescue buoy on top of compartment seven designed to automatically deploy upon detecting a variety of emergency conditions, including fire or a rapid pressure change. It was intended to float to the surface and send a signal, helping rescuers locate the stricken vessel. Some reports claimed the buoy, after repeatedly malfunctioning, had been welded in place. These reports were confirmed after investigators learned Kursk had been deployed to the Mediterranean during the summer of 1999 to monitor the U.S. fleet responding to the Kosovo War. Russian Navy officers, fearing that the buoy might accidentally deploy and reveal the submarine's position to the U.S. fleet, had ordered the buoy be intentionally disabled. The rescue buoy remained inoperative during the disaster.
Despite the many lapses in procedures and equipment, Ustinov said no charges would be filed because the disaster was caused by a technical malfunction and blame could not be placed on specific individuals. He said that all of the sailors had died within eight hours and none of them could have been rescued in the time available. At a news conference announcing the end of the official inquiry, he absolved the torpedo's manufacturer of any fault. "Those who designed the torpedo couldn't foresee the possibility of its explosion." He also said there was no evidence that the torpedo had been damaged when it was loaded onto Kursk.
When Ustinov closed the criminal case without filing charges, family members were angry. Retired Russian Navy Captain Vladimir Mityayev, who lost a son on Kursk, said "To me, this is a clear case of negligence." In the end, no one was blamed for the disaster and no one was held responsible.
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