Kursk Sinks: Russian Submarine Disaster Claims 118

Two explosions ripped through the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk on August 12, 2000, as it conducted torpedo exercises in the Barents Sea. The first blast, caused by a faulty torpedo propellant leak, registered 1.5 on the Richter scale. The second, 135 seconds later, hit 4.2 as the remaining torpedo warheads detonated simultaneously. The Oscar-II class submarine plunged 350 feet to the seabed. All 118 crew members died. The Kursk was one of the Russian Navy's most formidable vessels, a 505-foot cruise missile submarine designed during the Cold War to destroy American aircraft carrier groups. It had been the pride of the Northern Fleet. On the morning of August 12, its crew was preparing to fire a practice torpedo when hydrogen peroxide fuel from a corroded weld inside a torpedo tube began to leak. The resulting chemical reaction triggered the first explosion, which killed everyone in the forward compartments. Twenty-three sailors in the rear compartments survived the initial blasts. Captain-Lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov wrote a note in the darkness listing the names of those still alive and adding: "None of us can get to the surface." The survivors are believed to have lasted several hours before their emergency oxygen-generating cartridges malfunctioned, likely causing a flash fire that consumed the remaining breathable air. The Russian government's response became a defining scandal of Vladimir Putin's early presidency. Moscow initially denied anything was wrong, then refused offers of foreign assistance for days while its own rescue submersibles failed repeatedly. Norwegian and British divers eventually opened the escape hatch on August 21, nine days after the sinking, confirming there were no survivors. Putin, who had remained on vacation during the first days of the crisis, faced furious confrontation from victims' families on national television. The disaster exposed the decay of Russia's military infrastructure and the reflexive secrecy of its political culture.