Kursk Down (9 page)

Beyond that, and of potentially equal importance, came dealing with the families, maintaining Russian prestige, keeping a high level of morale in the Navy, not allowing the incident to become politically destabilizing, as well as a host of other vital issues.

Without doubt, the Navy high command was faced with an enormous responsibility. Hard choices had to be made—and be made quickly.

12 August 2000—1700 Hours—Northern Fleet HQ

The
Kursk
’s reporting deadline was 1800 hours and based on what was already known, it was senseless to wait until that time. More than five hours, used for hurried discussions and preliminary planning by the high command, had elapsed since the second blast.

To begin the operation, naval officials went to the rule book. At 1700 hours, the Northern Fleet Rescue Service chief on duty was notified that there might be a problem on board the
Kursk
. With this done, Northern Fleet HQ used a secure communications channel, and 30 minutes later, at 1730, sent an order to the
Kursk
: “Report your coordinates and operations.”

The Navy procedure manual allows six hours for a response. Anxious officers and men, divided into parties for monitoring space communications, automatic communications, radio intelligence, telegraphy, and regular radio bands, dealt with every form of long-distance communications technique available.

No response was received.

In accordance with what Colonel-General Valeriy Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, was quoted as calling the “requirements of normative documents,” the
Kursk
was declared to be in distress. A Northern Fleet emergency alarm was sounded. The time was 2330 hours. The date, Saturday, August 12, 2000, almost exactly 12 hours after the explosions.

This moment marked the commencement of one of the largest search-and-rescue investigatory salvage operations in the history of the Russian Navy.

At that point, no one knew actual conditions aboard the
Kursk
. Several high-ranking officers had strong suspicions, and rumors were rampant. Even though efforts had been made to prevent news of the accident from reaching the media, word of trouble travels fast in the military.

In Vidyaevo, the Navy village where so many of the submariners lived, families appeared to have known there was something wrong by 1700 hours on Saturday. More, a story passed from one to another was that the
Kursk
had been hit by a Russian missile during the exercises. The sub’s fate was cloudy. Some said there had been great damage; others, more optimistic, believed the boat was still operational.

In an attempt to contain such gossip, and to leave communications links open, telephone service to the various residential enclaves was shut down. Only official calls were allowed in or, more important, out. Disruption of service effectively isolated these communities from the rest of the nation.

On a more heroic level, the men of the Northern Fleet Rescue Service went into action. Most of these sailors knew nothing of the loftier concerns being debated in high places. They assumed the
Kursk
was down. It was their job to save the lives of as many of the crew as possible.

A two-pronged operation was launched. One effort focused on finding the stricken vessel. The second was rapid deployment of ships and equipment needed to help those on board. Fortunately, the operating area assigned to the
Kursk
was known. There was no reason to assume the submarine had left its war games zone. So all activities for locating the vessel would be concentrated in that limited geographic area. This knowledge also allowed the Rescue Service to transport its resources closer to where they would be needed.

A joint air-sea search was quickly instituted. A Russian officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dergunov, commanded one of the four-engined Ilyushin-38 aircraft. With a useful range of 4,500 miles, this workhorse plane was sufficiently fast and ideal for sea searches. Flying in formation with a fellow officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dovzhenko, commander of a second Il-38, this team began an aerial examination of the sector in question.

Aided by evening daylight, a visual inspection of the sea proved possible. This, coupled with use of onboard electronic gear, gave the two Il-38s a significant advantage.

Air reconnaissance may be both tedious and stressful. The passing of hours in a droning aircraft can be difficult enough. Fatigue comes from an endless scanning of water through binoculars, with hopes rising and falling at each unusual glint of light on the waves. Equally tiring is the ceaseless working up and down through various radio bands while static snaps and crackles in the earphones. Both these pursuits must be diligently performed or there is no use bothering to precision fly the checkerboard search coordinates and cover the selected site.

On board Lieutenant Colonel Dergunov’s Ilyushin, which carries a normal crew of ten, men sat at their observation stations. As hours passed, the watchers and listeners had to stay alert. Any brief attention lapse might mean missing the lone clue that would unravel the mystery.

Then, suddenly, the searchers were successful. A large oil spill marred the sea. Map coordinates were relayed to Northern Fleet HQ. According to unconfirmed reports, the pair of airborne spotters also saw a “foreign” submarine lurking underwater at five knots. And they supposedly sighted white and green emergency buoys. White and green are not the colors of Russian signaling devices, so these were determined to be from a sub of another nation.

The story of spotting a foreign sub and the emergency buoys marked the opening of a campaign to transfer any blame for the
Kursk
disaster from the Northern Fleet to another country. It’s interesting that the buoys were later believed to be cabbage heads, but finally identified as a floating sack of potatoes. As for the mysterious submarine, it could have been one of the three U.S. or British boats monitoring the exercises. It might also have been misinformation designed to support shifting responsibility for the disaster.

Of greater political importance, however, was the confirmed sighting of two foreign P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft at or near the disaster site. Since NORSAR, the seismological observatory, had recorded the explosions, they had a precise fix on the location. Even nonscientific curiosity would have mandated a visual inspection of the area. Conveniently, there had been daily flights to observe Russian sea maneuvers. Since the planes were in the air already, making a quick check was simple.

The Orions flying over that particular spot in the ocean must have been troubling to those attempting to keep a lid on this situation. The presence of the two planes could be viewed as an indication that another government suspected there had been some kind of disaster associated with the sea exercises.

While the incident was highly confidential, the circle of people who knew of the
Kursk
sinking expanded beyond the military to include top government officials. That, in turn, spread the news, as seen through an action of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Conscious of relations with Norway, a close neighbor on the Barents Sea, a Foreign Affairs minister contacted the appropriate Norwegian authorities and alerted them to a possible accident with a nuclear submarine.

12 August 2000—2350 Hours—On Board thePeter the Great

The effective underwater detection capabilities of the
Peter the Great
were brought into the hunt shortly after the rescue alarm was sounded in the fleet. With all available systems operating, the cruiser began a sea search to complement the air survey. Because of her speed and excellent equipment, the ship was able to quickly cover a large segment of the patrol area assigned to the
Kursk
. Likewise, the pair of undersea explosions that had been recorded by the sonar group gave a good indication of where to look.

A quick pinpoint location of the lost submarine was vital. Help was on the way from Fleet HQ in Severomorsk. Guiding the rescue fleet to the right spot could save hours and possibly lives. The flagship redoubled its radio watches and intensified efforts to contact the
K-141
.

12 August 2000—2100 Hours—NorthernFleet Rescue Service

Alexander Teslenko was head of the Rescue Service of the Northern Fleet. And at his disposal were a tugboat and two rescue vessels. One, the
Mikhail Rudnitsky
, had a sister ship undergoing repairs. Constructed in the Vyborg Shipyard in 1980, the
Rudnitsky
was modified from a lumber carrier. She was intended to serve as “mother ship” to a pair of Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles (DSRVs).

Two DSRV designs were immediately available. The Briz-class minisubs were constructed between 1986 and 1989. Operated by a crew of four, this rescue vehicle attaches to the escape hatch of a sunken submarine and can carry as many as 20 passengers to safety. The smaller, later style Bester model uses the same system. Its crew of three is able to save 16 to 18 people at a time. The
Rudnitsky
was also equipped with a diving bell, underwater TV, lifting cranes, and other specialized gear. At full speed, she made l5.8 knots.

A DSRV is not a sleek, undersea boat. It looks like a huge industrial-grade boiler with a hatch projecting upward from the top. A large propeller at the rear is protected by a cowling. Snub-nosed, it is fitted with streamlined pods attached to the sides of the round vessel to handle air, ballast water, and other necessities. Ungainly on the surface, it is highly controllable when submerged. In addition to bright lights, they are equipped with sonar, electronic listening-detection devices, and other search-rescue gear.

The Northern Fleet also had one rescue submarine with the NATO designation of India. This boat was specifically designed for undersea rescue work and is capable of carrying two DSRVs. In a St. Petersburg yard for repairs, it could not be utilized on this mission.

Without waiting for the
Kursk
’s 2300-hour reporting deadline, Teslenko began immediate preparations. The captain of the
Rudnitsky
, docked at Severomorsk, the main Northern Fleet base, received orders to stand by. He was to be ready for departure on 60-minute notice. The captain immediately loaded and checked the pair of Briz-type DSRVs. By 2220 hours he was set to leave.

The
Altay
, a second vessel, was designed to support divers, tow grounded ships to deeper water, rescue people in the sea, and work above sunken vessels. She was ordered into one-hour readiness as well.

The tug, which had been near Kildin Island, had been dispatched to the
Kursk
’s patrol zone much earlier, at 1831. It would take four hours to make the trip.

When the deadline for the
Kursk
to report had passed, Teslenko wasted no time. He hurried aboard the
Rudnitsky.
Moments later, they cast off all lines and, at full speed, started their dash for the
Kursk
’s patrol area.

13 August 2000—0430 Hours—Aboard thePeter the Great

Deep inside the
Peter the Great
, in a red-lighted room far from the tranquility of sea and sky, specialists and technicians were hard at work. The sonar and electronic scanning had continued for several hours. Using coordinates provided by the search aircraft and their previous plot estimates from the explosions, the flagship had been making its own checkerboard pattern.

Shortly before 0436 hours on Sunday, August 13, a sonar operator caught an anomaly on his screen. Tense moments followed as others joined in and they enriched their findings by changing angles and moving closer. One after another, features began to match the profile of
K-141
. Moments later, there was agreement. They had located the
Kursk
on the sea floor. But was that all they found?

According to a document from the Russian Navy Museum, a submarine operated for the Main Intelligence Department appeared at the site. This boat remained in the area for several hours. It inspected the bow of the damaged
Kursk
during the night of August 12 and morning of August 13. High Russian officials later denied that this investigation took place. Sketchy naval records indicate it did. And if it did, which seems probable, the high command had credible information about the extent of damage their submarine had suffered.

In any case, based on some form of positive identification and, again according to a Russian Navy Museum document, Minister of Defense Igor Sergeyev was notified. At 0700 hours on August 13, Sergeyev contacted President Vladimir V. Putin and explained the
Kursk
emergency. Putin was vacationing in the southern resort town of Sochi on the Black Sea. During this talk, the Defense minister “did not recommend him to arrive on a crash scene.” This is an important point. In the turbulent political fallout to follow, Putin would be severely criticized for not ending his holiday and personally going to the rescue site.

In truth, Putin’s presence, while lending a morale element to the effort, would have had little practical value. A major salvage and rescue mission had begun. Admiral Popov was assuming direct command from his
Peter the Great
flagship. And all available resources were on the way.

Another issue also emerged. The Russian president cutting short his vacation for a sudden trip to the Barents Sea would have whetted the interest of the news media. No press announcement regarding the
Kursk
had been made. At this point the Navy, as it later did, could cite the uncertainty of the situation as a defense for not releasing information. The question, however, is just how much uncertainty remained? Between sonar and other electronic evaluations performed by the
Peter the Great
, and quite possibly observations made by an intelligence department submarine, a great deal must have been known about the
Kursk
’s condition.

On a separate note, yet related to this question of knowledge, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, commander in chief of the entire Russian Navy, reportedly tendered his resignation on the night of August 12. Clearly, the top officer in the Navy is not expected to resign every time a ship is lost. Tragedy or not, military vessels sail in harm’s way. They are heavily armed and, in spite of all possible care, accidents happen. Why then, would Admiral Kuroyedov make such an offer? Was it because he, and others in high command, knew the cause and extent of damage sustained by the
Kursk
? Did they have a sound estimate of the fate of the crew? That information, if they possessed it, may well have been reason enough to resign.