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Historic Sub Disasters Left Little Room for Rescue |
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Zoltan Istvan National Geographic Channel |
| March 10, 2004 |
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Modern day submarine disasters are rare. But few other events offer such limited opportunities for help. Sailors can do little but hope for rescue, or a quick death. Oftentimes neither comes. One of the most horrifying submarine disasters in recent history occurred just a few years ago. In August 2000 the Russian Oscar II class nuclear submarine Kursk docked at the Zapadnaya Litsa Arctic Naval Yard on the Kola Peninsula, 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the town of Murmansk in northern Russia. She was the billion-dollar pride of the Russian fleet—at 490 feet (150 meters) Kursk was twice the length of a jumbo jet and her double steel hull was designed to withstand a direct hit from a conventional torpedo. The Kursk was originally intended to attack U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups and was often equipped with two dozen SS-N-19 missiles with a range of 341 miles (550 kilometers). But no submarine is impervious to the ocean—or to human error. Russian media reported that one torpedo loaded onto Kursk was accidentally dropped on the quay. Without proper inspection, it was allegedly loaded into the submarine just before the Kursk left to perform target practice in the frigid Barents Sea. "Submarine accidents are terrible, because often everyone aboard dies. The Kursk was not an exception," said Gary Weir, author of numerous books on naval and submarine history and head of the Contemporary Historical Branch of the U.S. Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C. On August 12, at 9 a.m., the Kursk crew prepared for a torpedo attack on a simulated nearby target, the cruiser Peter the Great. The Russian Northern Fleet commander, Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, issued the order to proceed. But something went wrong, and a blast ignited the Kursk's torpedo room. (Two years later the Russian government concluded that propellant from a leaky torpedo caused the explosion.) The Kursk sank within a few minutes of the initial explosion. The Russian sub, designed to kill others, now killed its own. Most of the crew died in the first few minutes. But in the ninth compartment, furthest from the explosion, 23 survivors huddled in the dark, 350 feet (106 meters) below the surface on the ocean floor. "Operating in a submarine is a fairly unique experience, because the outside environment is very unforgiving," said Captain William Hicks, currently Director for Operations for the staff of Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, based in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. "The closest parallel to the unforgiving environment might be operating in a space shuttle." Tragedy Strikes Russian Submarine Crew Limited funds for proper rescue equipment, embarrassment, Russian bureaucracy, and a deeply engrained cold war tendency to cover up accidents all contributed to the botched rescue attempt and death of the 23 crew members who survived the initial blast on the Kursk. It took 30 hours after the sub sank to launch a Russian rescue mission. Four days later the Russians still refused foreign assistance, even though the Russians were unable to help the mariners. Three more days passed. On August 20 a team of British and Norwegian divers were summoned when the Russians admitted they couldn't complete the rescue. Less than a day later a Norwegian rescue diver reached the Kursk. By then it was too late. There was no oxygen left. All 118 men aboard the Kursk were dead, even though tapping noises from the hull were reported as long as 48 hours after the explosion. The Kursk disaster was televised worldwide, reminding viewers of the dangers of submarine activity and the government's responsibility to protect the sailors. "When you're viewing it [an underwater submarine wreck], you're viewing something very sad," said Robert Ballard, president of the Institute for Exploration (IFE) at Connecticut's Mystic Aquarium and a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, in the documentary Dangerous Jobs: Submarine Disasters. "It's the little boys and little girls [whose] daddy didn't come home to—the husband that didn't come home," said Ballard, who mapped the wreck site of Thresher in 1984 for the U.S. Navy. Thresher sank in 1963, 200 miles (322 kilometers) off Cape Cod, Massachusetts—129 men died. After the Thresher tragedy, the U.S. Navy launched SUBSAFE, a program to improve safety and design standards on submarines. Two of the more important goals were to implement strict inspection procedures for submarines and their overall maintenance, and to install a submarine operator one second away from flipping an emergency switch that causes the main ballast tanks to vent and the sub to immediately rise to the surface. Such an operator may have prevented tragedies such as the Thresher and Kursk. For more on submarines, tune in to this week's Dangerous Jobs. The TV series airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. PT in the United States and is available only on the National Geographic Channel. 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