Bookshelf: Cry from the Deep

Cry from the Deep – Ramsey Flynn

The massive Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea (north of Russian, on the eastern side of Norway, right near the Arctic circle) in August 2000 with 118 men on board. I remember the news reports – there were immediate offers of assistance from the USA, Britain and Norway, some of whom had submarines and vessels in the area as part of a naval exercise. The Kursk was situated close to the coast, in about 110 metres of water – shallow enough for human divers to access her, and almost certainly shallow enough for one of the various available submarine rescue techniques to be used.

The Russian government, however, seemed determined not to appear weak or lose face before the western nations – an after-effect of the Cold War, and stemming from an acute awareness that, to put it kindly, their naval dockyards and fleet of submarines and ships was a pile of steaming garbage. (One of the Russian crew on a visit to a NATO rescue vessel, when faced with the capabilities of the British and Norwegians, observed that “we are twenty years behind.”) The Russians therefore refused assistance until it was too late.

If the deplorably poor state of the Russian navy and all her installations was combined with compassion and regard for human life, particularly the lives of the unfortunate souls who served on her leaky rustbucket vessels, this story might not have been written. But after the Kursk sank – a result of an outmoded, incredibly unstable torpedo design that had a propensity for detonating in the torpedo tube before it could be released – the Russian navy and government officials engaged in an astonishingly disingenuous attempt first to conceal the fact that men were trapped inside the submarine on the ocean floor, and then to make it seem as though they had the capability to rescue them and were working hard to do so. In fact, nothing of the sort was going on. After taking their time locating the downed submarine, the rescue vessel – which had a shallow keel and was top heavy – struggled to launch its ageing submersibles, succeeding instead in bashing them repeatedly against the side of the ship as she rolled in heavy seas. A lack of maintenance and the absence of tools and spares meant that this effort was dead in the water.

The explosion in the torpedo room of the Kursk had killed a number of men instantly, and flooded several compartments, drowning others. Twenty three out of the 118 sailors on board barricaded themselves in the stern of the boat, and survived for – possibly – several days in the darkness before a fire caused by a chemical cartridge (containing potassium carbonide – remember from high school chemistry what potassium does when mixed with water?) dropped in water suffocated and burned the surviving sailors to death. A note found on one of the men in the stern compartment confirmed that – contrary to claims by the Russians – all 118 sailors had not been killed instantly by the torpedo explosion.

The bodies of all but one or two of the crew (vaporised in the torpedo room) were recovered. The entire remaining hull of the Kursk was eventually raised from the seafloor and returned to a naval base on the Kola Peninsula where access to it was heavily restricted.

I found this book fascinating – it’s the first coherent account I’ve read about the Kursk, and the colour provided by descriptions of the sailors’ living conditions in the naval base, their families, and life on board the submarine added interesting colour. I did, however, feel that the author failed to pull everything together at the end. After navigating through the denials and counter-claims by the Russians, I felt that I didn’t have the sequence of events quite straight.

Furthermore, it wasn’t actually completely clear why the Russians were so otherwise regarding rescue of the men. Was it as simple as trying to save face before hopelessly superior technology and organisation exhibited by the westerners, or was there a more sinister motive? The world’s press at the time of the accident seemed to imply that the Russians were refusing help from the NATO countries because they had something to hide, and they were actually waiting for the men on the Kursk to die before mounting a recovery attempt. Were they simply trying to hide their dangerous, irresponsibly poorly maintained equipment?

There have been several other books written about this incident – I’m going to try and get hold of one or two for some extra understanding. For a bit more insight into the Soviet submarine program, check out the article and pictures here.

You can purchase a copy of this book here if you are in South Africa, and here if you’re not. For the Kindle edition, go here.