On October 3, 2001, some 15 months after the accident, the hull was raised from the seabed floor and hauled to a dry dock. A barge was modified and loaded with the equipment, arriving in the Barents Sea in August. Within a three-month period, the company and its subcontractors designed, fabricated, installed, and commissioned over 3,000 t (3,000 long tons 3,300 short tons) of custom-made equipment. The Dutch company Mammoet was awarded a salvage contract in May 2001. The resulting fire killed several crew members and triggered a flash fire that consumed the remaining oxygen, suffocating the remaining survivors. When oxygen ran low, they attempted to replace a potassium superoxide chemical oxygen cartridge, but it fell into the oily sea water and exploded on contact. Analysts concluded that 23 sailors took refuge in the small ninth compartment and survived for more than six hours. They tore a large hole in the hull, collapsed bulkheads between the first three compartments and all the decks, destroyed compartment four, and killed everyone still alive forward of the sixth compartment. Two minutes and fifteen seconds after the first explosion, another five to seven torpedo warheads exploded. The explosion blew off both the inner and outer tube doors, ignited a fire, destroyed the bulkhead between the first and second compartments, damaged the control room in the second compartment, and incapacitated or killed the torpedo room and control-room crew.
The torpedo manufacturer challenged this hypothesis, insisting that its design would prevent the kind of event described. Two days later, British and Norwegian divers finally opened a hatch to the escape trunk in the boat's flooded ninth compartment, but found no survivors.Īn official investigation concluded that when the crew loaded a dummy 65-76 "Kit" torpedo, a faulty weld in its casing leaked high-test peroxide (HTP) inside the torpedo tube, initiating a catalytic explosion.
President Vladimir Putin initially continued his vacation at a seaside resort in Sochi and authorised the Russian Navy to accept British and Norwegian assistance only after five days had passed. Officials misled and manipulated the public and news media, and refused help from other countries' ships nearby. Its response was criticised as slow and inept. Over four days, the Russian Navy repeatedly failed in its attempts to attach four different diving bells and submersibles to the escape hatch of the submarine. The submarine's emergency rescue buoy had been intentionally disabled during an earlier mission and it took more than 16 hours to locate the submarine, which rested on the ocean floor at a depth of 108 m (354 ft). The crews of nearby ships felt an initial explosion and a second, much larger explosion, but the Russian Navy did not realise that an accident had occurred and did not initiate a search for the vessel for over six hours. It was taking part in the first major Russian naval exercise in more than 10 years.
The nuclear-powered Project 949A Antey (Oscar II class) submarine K-141 Kursk sank in an accident on 12 August 2000 in the Barents Sea. Loss of the boat, crew, headquarters personnel Kursk (Northwestern Federal District) Show map of Northwestern Federal Districtġ1:29:34 a.m.
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