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Posted on 09/10/2001 3:28:36 AM PDT by Movemout

By Patrick E. Tyler

The New York Times

Sunday, September 9, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- For nearly 400 days since two mysterious torpedo room explosions ripped open the nuclear submarine Kursk, causing the deaths of all 118 Russian crewmen, the 505-foot vessel has been nestling into the sediments on the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Periodically, Russian warships on guard above the wreck have thrown hand grenades into the water, to ward off any prying foreign submarines that might be interested in scavenging the Kursk's weapons, codes or electronics.

Now, a fleet of high-tech salvage vessels is taking over from the warships. If all goes according to plan -- and little has so far -- a Dutch lifting barge called the Giant 4, tethered by eight anchor lines, will raise the Kursk from the seabed this month using 26 computer-controlled hydraulic jacks in an operation that, its designers say, can be accomplished in 12 to 16 hours.

But the raising of the Kursk, one of the largest and most complex salvages ever attempted, invites dangers such as disturbing the Kursk's twin nuclear reactors and jostling its lethal payload of unexploded torpedoes and 22 supersonic cruise missiles, still snug in their 30-foot launching canisters. Each carries a warhead packed with nearly 1,000 pounds of high explosives.

Russian officials say the risks are outweighed by their duty to the perished crew as well as the Arctic environment. In November, during the first examination of the interior of the submarine by Russian divers since the Aug. 12 explosion, 12 bodies were recovered, but perhaps 100 more remain entangled in the wreckage of the control room or locked in the rear compartments, where sailors fled the onrushing sea, then waited in darkness -- some writing farewell notes to loved ones -- for the rescue that never came.

Looking on is a nervous Europe, where there are always fears of another Chernobyl-style radiation spill. Big salvage projects can produce big disasters. In 1974, when the Hughes Glomar Explorer latched onto a Soviet Golf-class submarine that sank in 17,000 feet of water northwest of Hawaii -- part of a secret recovery scheme conceived by the CIA and the U.S. Navy -- the stresses of the lift broke the submarine apart, sending large pieces crashing back to the bottom.

The Kursk will be raised from relatively shallow waters -- less than 350 feet -- but the Kursk weighs nearly 10 times as much as a Golf-class submarine. And if the Kursk breaks apart and spills the radioactive contents of its reactors in the Barents Sea, the results will threaten one of the Arctic's most productive fishing grounds.

"This is a big, super-modern military object which has 22 super-modern missiles on board with big warhead charges -- not nuclear, but powerful charges -- and two reactors, and all this in the center of an area which is in economic use in shallow waters," said Russia's leading submarine designer, Igor Spassky. "I cannot conceive that such an object could be left on the ocean bottom."

"This is the biggest lift ever made from the seabed," points out Malcolm Dailey, the senior consultant with the Dutch heavy lift and transport company Mammoet who is directing the Kursk lift. But even so, he seemed to be full of confidence that -- weather permitting -- it will be done safely.

"Our idea is to peel the Kursk off the bottom," said Dailey, a Briton who now lives in Houston. "The sub is laying at a 5-degree angle, and her bow is stuck into the mud that is the consistency of chewing gum." The mud around the Kursk's bow has risen nearly 10 feet since her sinking last year.

Standing on the deck of the Giant 4 one day late last month as it prepared to depart Amsterdam for the Arctic waters near Kursk, Dailey said that although he worried about radiation accidents and torpedo and missile explosions during the lift, his biggest worry was how to break the suction force of a 17,000-ton ship stuck in the mud. Explosions are one thing, but "mud is mud," he said. The slimy bottom sediments might make the hull seem as if it were glued to the earth.

One great unknown is what hidden structural damage the Kursk suffered along the hull, its ribs, frames and bulkheads when the second and most devastating explosion went off with the force of 10,000 pounds of TNT and produced a shock wave as powerful as an earthquake of 3.5 magnitude.

Much of Dailey's strategy is focused on the first three to four hours of the lifting sequence, when he will raise only the tail of the Kursk, then slide a cable underneath the hull that two auxiliary ships on the surface will pull along the keel trying to separate the Kursk from the mud.

"This is to create a gap to get water between the submarine and the soil so she will want to come up and we can minimize the breakout force," Dailey said.

This "breakout force" is his nightmare. In the worst case, the lifting barge would pull with thousands of tons of pressure against the Kursk only to have it suddenly pop free of the bottom, surge upward like a yo-yo toward the barge, then fall back to the bottom, yanking the barge with a tremendous whiplash that could damage or destroy the lifting equipment.

Before the lift the most important task is slicing off a 45- to 50-foot section of the Kursk's destroyed bow, where torpedo fragments and even complete warheads could be hidden in the debris.

"In the area where the slicing of the compartment will take place, I can say with confidence there are no torpedoes left," said Russian Rear Adm. Mikhail Motsak, chief of staff for the northern fleet. "But there may be torpedoes in the other corners of the first compartment, which are littered with metal debris. That is why we take serious security precautions."

So much of Kursk's bow is destroyed, and so much mud has settled in the first compartment, that Mammoet's engineers feared it might break off during the lift. The Russian navy plans to raise the bow section separately next year to investigate the explosions.

A giant remote-controlled saw began slicing off the bow Tuesday.

Mammoet won the Kursk contract on the strength of its pledge to raise the submarine this year; the company said only bad weather could excuse failure.

Most Russian officials are still sticking to the original Sept. 15 target date for raising the sub to the surface. However, with the weather expected to worsen, they warn that delay is possible.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who is overseeing the operation, said last Tuesday that the Kursk would be brought to Murmansk by Sept. 25. A less optimistic Motsak said it could be delivered between Sept. 25 and Oct. 2.

The preparation for raising the Kursk has taken months, and a complex choreography of engineering tasks must be executed in the next few weeks, or the threat of Arctic storms will shut down operations until spring.

"Good weather is a rare thing in this region," said Timur Amirov, the engineer who commissioned the Kursk from the Severodvinsk shipyard in 1994.

This article includes material from The Associated Press.

Okay Nimrod. Let me do your work for you. Go to Google.com and type in search terms Kursk + Putin + Criticism. Voila, hundreds of articles appear that indicate the mood of his countrymen at the time of the disaster. Your naivete is incredible, newbie. Here you go, an example:

To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser Australian Broadcasting Corporation LATELINE Late night news & current affairs TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT LOCATION: abc.net.au > Lateline > Archives URL: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s165273.htm Broadcast: 18/08/00 Russians direct Kursk anger at Putin As the stricken 'Kursk' lies silent on the bottom of the Barents Sea, the reckoning for the disaster has begun for Vladimir Putin. Tony Jones talks to Russian defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. --------- Compere: Tony Jones Reporter: Irris Mackler TONY JONES: As the stricken 'Kursk' lies silent on the bottom of the Barents Sea, the reckoning for the disaster has begun for Vladimir Putin. Facing mounting criticism for neglecting the crisis, the President now says he intends to fly back to Moscow from his Black Sea holiday. He'll return to a clamour of protest from a Russian public tired of the lies, half-truths and distortions they've been told from the beginning. As international rescue teams struggle belatedly to reach the scene, what started as a terrible tragedy for Russia is now looking like a national disgrace. IRRIS MAKLER: Six days after the submarine sank, rescue attempts continue. But Russia is now voicing fears that many aboard died instantly. A video shot by a Russian rescue craft shows massive damage to the hull in the forward section of the sub. This is where 43 men were stationed, including the captain and a commander of the northern fleet, according to a Russian newspaper which has obtained a list of the crew. IRINA LYACHIN, WIFE OF 'KURSK' CAPTAIN (TRANSLATION): There are a lot of rumours about what is going on and I've decided for myself that I will not listen to any of them. We'll just wait and endure. I hope that when the time comes, they will tell me the truth. IRRIS MAKLER: Experts hold out little hope of finding the crew alive. The international rescue teams are still making their way towards the scene, but there are fears that their mission will be in vain. The mood in Russia is very grim, with a feeling that the rescue has been bungled. Anger is being directed at President Putin, who's remained on holidays throughout the crisis. This is the first test of Vladimir Putin's presidency and he is perceived to be failing. Irris Makler, Lateline. ---------------------------------- TONY JONES: Pavel Felgenhauer is a defence analyst and scientist based in Moscow and like many Russians, he's been watching in dismay as the submarine crisis develops. I spoke to him just a short time ago. Pavel Felgenhauer, is there a growing belief in Russia that the truth about this accident and about the rescue attempts have been covered up? PAVEL FELGENHAUER, DEFENCE ANALYST: Oh, actually, yes, actually. The Russian media that in the first days of the accident was more or less following the Kremlin and government propaganda leads is now beginning to scream foul play, and in the Russian public, there's growing anxiety and growing anger on how the authorities have been handling this affair, because it's obvious to almost everyone that the authorities have been lying, withholding information, distorting the facts and inventing facts and presenting different kinds of guesses and presumptions as facts. TONY JONES: What sort of lies have been told that you know of, Pavel? PAVEL FELGENHAUER: Well, first of all, the Russian authorities said that the accident happened last Sunday, when actually it happened last Saturday before noon. The authorities said that there was contact, constant contact with the crew that indicated that everyone was alive, when there was no contact whatsoever and they didn't know about anyone being dead or alive and wounded, and then they were saying that they're pumping air and providing power to the sunken sub, and they were not doing anything of the sort. It was all just inventions. And they even said positively that the reactors have been closed down on the boat, but actually that's also just an assumption, because the boat went down without a whimper -- with just 'pop' and went down and there was not even distress call and no communications whatsoever with the boat. TONY JONES: So how do you read the latest statements from the authorities about the catastrophic damage to the 'Kursk' and the probable loss of life that occurred when those explosions happened? PAVEL FELGENHAUER: Well, they're still saying, presuming that the main theory is some kind of collision with some kind of mysterious ship. Some are presuming in the Russian navy, in a sort of knee-jerk Cold War reaction, that this was an American submarine that then sort of left the scene. But of course, that seems to be against very much inventions. They don't want -- the Russian navy and the Russian authorities have been in total rejection, first rejecting that such a thing could happen to an unsinkable new submarine. Now they're saying it could be a fault with the design, that it's a collision with some outside object. TONY JONES: How is all this going to affect President Putin who has refused to leave his holiday to take control of this crisis? PAVEL FELGENHAUER: It's quite obvious that this is going to damage President Putin politically inside Russia. What happened with the 'Kursk' was, of course, a terrible human tragedy. It's a military technical catastrophe that undermines the credibility of the whole Russian submarine nuclear fleet. But it also, of course -- the way the authorities handled this is much more of a crisis. This is a real disaster. TONY JONES: Pavel Felgenhauer, thanks for joining us tonight. PAVEL FELGENHAUER: Thank you.

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