Russian submarine Kursk (K-141)

The Oscar II class submarine K-141 Kursk
Career
Ordered:
Laid down:	1992
Launched:	1994
Commissioned:	December 1994
Fate:	Lost at sea August 12, 2000
Homeport:	Vidyaevo, Russia
Stricken:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	13.400 t, 16.400 t
Length:	154.0 m
Beam:	18.2 m
Draft:	9.0 m
Propulsion:	2 nuclear reactors OK-650b, 2 steam turbines, 2/7-bladed props
Diving depth:	300 to 600 meters [by various estimates]
Speed:	32 knots (59 km/h) submerged, 16 knots (30 km/h) surfaced
Range:
Complement:	44 officers, 68 enlisted
Armament:	24 x SS-N-19/P-700 Granit, 4 x 533 mm and 2 x 650 mm bow torpedo tubes

K-141 Kursk was a Russian nuclear cruise missile submarine which was lost with all hands when it sank in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000. The Kursk, full name Атомная подводная лодка "Курск" [АПЛ "Курск"] in Russian, was a Project 949A Антей (Antey, Antaeus but was also known by its NATO reporting name of "Oscar-II" class). It was named after the Russian city Kursk, around which the largest armored battle of World War II, The Battle of Kursk took place in 1943. One of the first vessels built after the fall of the Soviet Union she was commissioned into the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy.

Background

Construction of the Kursk began in Severodvinsk, near Arkhangelsk, in 1992. She was launched for the first time in 1994 and formally commissioned in December of that year. The ship was "baptized" by an Orthodox priest in 1995. The Kursk was the last of the large Oscar-II class submarines to be designed and approved in the Soviet era. At 155 metres in length, and four stories high, it was the largest attack submarine ever built. The class had also been described as "unsinkable" on account of its double hull. The outer hull, made of high-nickel high-chrome content steel just 8.5mm thick, had exceptionally good resistance to corrosion and a weak magnetic signature which helped prevent detection by Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) systems. There was a two-metre gap to the two-inch-thick steel inner hull.

Kursk formed part of the Russian Northern Fleet. The Fleet had suffered tremendous cutbacks through lack of funding throughout the 1990s. Many submarines had been brought into docks along the Barents Sea and left to rust. All but the most essential frontline equipment was inadequately serviced, including search and rescue equipment. Sailors of the Northern Fleet had gone unpaid in the mid-1990s due to money being re-appropriated before reaching the Arctic North. However, the end of the decade represented something of a renaissance for the fleet. In 1999 Kursk had carried out a successful reconnaissance mission in the Mediterranean, spying on the United States Navy's Sixth Fleet during the Kosovo War. The training exercise of August 2000 was to be the largest summer drill since the collapse of the Soviet Union ten years before, involving four attack submarines and the Fleet's flagship Peter the Great amongst a flotilla of smaller ships.

Explosion

Further information: Russian submarine Kursk explosion

File:Kursk in Dock.jpg

Salvaged Kursk, minus the bow which was cut away during recovery, delivered to Roslyakovo dry dock to be scrapped.

The Kursk sailed out to sea to perform an exercise of firing dummy torpedoes at the Pyotr Velikiy, a Kirov-class battlecruiser. On August 12, 2000 at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), the missiles were fired, but an explosion occurred soon after on the Kursk. The only credible report to-date is that this was due to the failure and explosion of one of Kursk's new/developmental torpedoes. The chemical explosion blasted with the force of 100-250 kg of TNT and registered 2.2 on the Richter scale [1]. The submarine sank to a depth of 108 metres, approximately 135km (85 miles) off Severomorsk, at 69°40′N 37°35′E. A second explosion 135 seconds after the initial event measured between 3.5 and 4.4 on the Richter scale, equating 3-7 tons of TNT [2] Either this explosion or the earlier one propelled large pieces of debris far back through the submarine, hinting at an explosion of massive proportions, such as would occur due to a detonation in the torpedo room.

Rescue Attempts

File:Kursk Memorial (Kursk).jpg

President Vladimir Putin at the Kursk, Russia memorial to the Kursk submarine.

Though a rescue attempt was made by British and Norwegian teams, all sailors and officers aboard the Kursk were lost. The first investigations suggested that most of the crew had died within minutes of the explosion, however journal entries show that many survived in the rear of the ship for hours after the blasts. The Kursk was eventually recovered from her grave by a Dutch team and using the barge Giant 4 and 115 of the 118 dead were recovered and laid to rest in Russia. Russian officials have strenuously denied claims that the sub was carrying nuclear warheads. When the boat was raised by a salvage operation in 2001 there were considerable fears moving the wreck could trigger explosions.

According to Raising the Kursk broadcast by the Science Channel: "In June of 2002, the Russian Navy recovered the Kursk's bow section. Shortly afterwards, the Russian government investigation into the accident officially concluded that a faulty torpedo sank the Kursk in the Summer of 2000."

See also

• Major submarine incidents since 2000
• Russian subs sunk in August: Kursk (2000), K-159 (2003), AS-28 (2005)
• Submarines destroyed by hot-running torpedoes: HMS Sidon (P259) – USS Scorpion (SSN-589) – Russian submarine Kursk
• Igor Spassky - The designer of the Oscar-II class

External links

• Template:Ru icon Some pictures of Kursk submarine
• Kursk Lifting Operation: official information channel (in English)
• Kursk Lifting Operation: official information channel (in Russian)
• History Channel Modern Marvels: Inviting Disaster DVD set (includes The Sinking of Kursk)
• Project 949 Granit / Oscar I Project 949A Antey / Oscar II
• BBC: Kursk mistakes haunt Russia
• Kursk memorial website
• "A Submarine in Troubled Waters" documentary