TIME EUROPE
August 28, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 9
Death Watch
A collision or explosion sank the Kursk, but the real cause of the tragedy was the rapid deterioration of Russia's rusting and underfunded armed forces
By JAMES O. JACKSON
For Captain Gennadi Lyachin and nearly a score of others crowded into the control room of the nuclear submarine Kursk, Saturday, Aug. 12, was to be a day of pride and triumph. The vessel, one of the Russian navy's newest and most powerful cruise missile submarines, was at periscope depth during the second day of a 30-ship exercise in the Barents Sea some 150 km northeast of Murmansk. They were the biggest Russian naval maneuvers in several years, and it was a rare opportunity for Lyachin to put his boat through its paces with a full-scale task force — so rare that five high-ranking Northern Fleet staff officers were aboard to observe the exercise. By noon, the Kursk had successfully completed a torpedo firing run and was preparing for another. Lyachin, 45, one of Russia's most experienced submarine officers, radioed the task force commander for permission to fire. The transmission was monitored by the American surveillance ship U.S.N.S. Loyal, lurking about 300 km west-northwest of the Kursk, as was the commander's "Permission granted." But instead of the sounds of torpedoes blown from launch tubes, sonar operators aboard U.S. submarines working with the Loyal heard two explosions, one short and sharp, the second an enormous, thundering boom. A Norwegian seismic institute also recorded the explosions, and said the second carried the force of two tons of tnt, registering 3.5 on the Richter Scale.
Evidence later obtained from underwater cameras show that the blast tore open the entire, double-hulled forward section of the 154-m vessel, an area the size of a school gymnasium. Seawater would have slammed into the torpedo and cruise missile compartments, instantly killing the men on duty there. In the control room just aft of the shattered weapons compartments, Lyachin, the five staff officers and the dozen or so officers and petty officers manning the ship's controls would have had no time to react before the combined power of the blast and seawater tore through, destroying the gleaming arrays of switches, computers and video screens that constitute the "brain" of a submarine. All would have been killed outright or quickly drowned. From there, the water is likely to have cascaded through passageways and doors into the "sail," the conning tower above the control room, and into communications spaces and living quarters just aft of the sail. At that point the floodwaters were probably thwarted by thick, watertight bulkheads guarding the twin VM-5 pressurized water reactors powering the submarine.
Even so, there would be no salvation for the men whose duties placed them in the reactor control rooms and the turbine and machinery spaces behind the reactors. The flash flooding in the forward part of the Kursk would have caused the bow to drop, putting the 14,000-ton boat into a steep dive with steam turbines still delivering power to its twin screws. In seconds, it would have pounded into the seabed some 108 m beneath the storm-driven surface of the Barents Sea with a shock that would have hurled survivors against equipment and bulkheads. Finally, as the boat settled onto the ocean floor, openings along the keel would probably no longer have been able to draw in seawater needed to cool the reactors. Automatic systems would instantly "scram" the reactors, pushing control rods into the core and shutting them down. The Kursk, its shattered bow shoved into a furrow of sand and heeling to port, lay silent, without power or heat or light or hope, all 118 souls on board dead or doomed.
"The majority of the crew were in the part of the boat that was hit by the catastrophe that developed at lightning speed," said Ilya Klebanov, Deputy Prime Minister and head of a commission investigating the sinking. It was all over, he said on Thursday, "in the space of two minutes, more or less." The tapping out of sos signals in Morse code indicated that some crew members survived for a time in the stern sections of the boat, but Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, commander of the Northern Fleet, admitted on Friday evening that no tapping had been heard from the sub after Aug. 14, two days after the accident.
Those who did survive the initial flooding would have come to envy their dead comrades. Dying always seems more gruesome when it is in slow motion, and slow-motion submarine deaths are perversely compelling because they happen in shallow water within reach of rescuers. Men who have been trapped in stricken submarines say the crew of the Kursk would have suffered from cold as temperatures fell to 5°C and severe headaches as levels of carbon dioxide rose in the smothering atmosphere. They would suffer, too, from fear and hopelessness as rescuers repeatedly tried, and failed, to save them. "Those guys can hear the minisubs," said a U.S. Navy officer. "Listening to that for any length of time as you're slowly suffocating would drive anyone nuts."
Rescue efforts were at first hampered by high winds and waves of 4 m, but even after the weather improved on Tuesday rescue teams proved unable to attach either a Kolokol diving bell or an AS-34 submersible rescue craft to an escape hatch on the stern section. Crewmen on the rescue vessels said powerful currents and near-zero visibility hampered attempts to approach the submarine, and even when they reached it, the port list made docking difficult.
By the end of the week, any men still alive would have been steadily sliding toward death. As the CO2 level rose, their brains would slowly turn off, as if on a dimmer switch; consciousness would ebb to coma, and reality fade to black. MORE>>
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August 28, 2000
COVER STORY
Death Watch
A collision or explosion sank the Kursk, but the real cause of the tragedy was the rapid deterioration of Russia's rusting and underfunded armed forces
Failed Ambitions
Putin's dream falls short of reality
Why Did Our Boys Have to Die
At the Kursk's home port, and across Russia, grieving families ask some awkward questions
Death in the Silent Service
Some major accidents aboard nuclear-powered submarines
Divided They Fall
The U.S. and Russia must learn to communicate
MIDDLE EAST
Reform Overruled
Iran's Supreme Leader quashes efforts to lift press constraints, angering those working for progress
AFRICA
Law in Search of Order
Northern Nigeria's Christian community is nervous as a strict Islamic judicial system is reintroduced
The Legacy That Won't Die
Racism remains a thorny issue in South Africa, and bitter exchanges between politicians are adding to the problem
BUSINESS
Architect of Reform
Hans Eichel's success in rewriting the tax code will have far-reaching impact on the German economy
Super Hans Speaks
TIME talks with German Finance Minister Hans Eichel
Theme Park Debacle
World-class exhibitions are failing this year on a world-class scale. What do the folks at VW know?
SOCIETY
Face Lift in a Jar?
More effective than makeup but not as powerful as drugs, cosmeceuticals promise to turn back the clock on aging skin
More Bark Than Bite
Moscow's Night Wolves say they have turned from biker rebels into civic-minded employers
ARTS
The Great Divide
Shocked by the radical changes in her homeland after the 1979 revolution, Iranian-born Shirin Neshat tries to understand and explain Islam through her art
Going to Hell? Tickets, Please
An exhibition in Scotland looks at the various ways people celebrate death and the afterlife
The Battle for Truth
A new history of the Battle of Britain sets out to dispel some enduring myths about an epic struggle
DEPARTMENTS
World Watch
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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