Robert Moore: A Time to Die

By ANDREW LAXON

The USS Memphis sat just below the surface of the Barents Sea, spying on Russian naval war games. It was August 12, 2000, and the Cold War was officially over.

But at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, the Americans still tracked Russian submarines which carried enough nuclear missiles to wipe out the United States in wartime.

That morning the "spooks" on board the Memphis were expecting to pick up the usual sound of missile launches and torpedo firing. Nothing prepared them for the twin shockwaves that rang through the hull at 11.28am, suggesting some unimaginable catastrophe.

The Memphis slipped away, unable to communicate without giving away her presence and risking a major diplomatic incident.

After 24 hours of analysis, the spooks had confirmed their original gut feeling. They had just witnessed the death of a nuclear submarine.

The sinking of the Kursk that day and the fate of the sailors trapped inside gripped the world, yet the facts behind the tragedy have always remained elusive.

In A Time To Die television journalist Robert Moore provides a clear and harrowing account of the disaster.

Over two years the former ITN Moscow correspondent talked extensively to submariners, diving experts from the rescue mission, Russian naval officers of all ranks (on and off the record) and the families of the Kursk victims. The result is a gripping read, written in the style of a thriller, which serves both as a fitting memorial to the lost sailors and an indictment of Russia's military and political leaders.

The Kursk was thought to be unsinkable. She was designed to destroy US aircraft carriers and belonged to the largest class of attack submarine ever built - the height of a four-storey building and longer than two football fields. Her double steel hulls consisted of one thin 8mm outside layer and a 50mm thick inside hull 2m apart.

The war games watched by the USS Memphis that August morning were the Russian Northern Fleet's biggest exercise in years. They included a tactical test for the submarine captains, who had to hit the fleet's flagship Peter the Great with torpedoes fitted with dummy warheads as it sailed through the exercise area.

Drawing on interviews with Russian naval leaders, Moore reveals that unknown to most participants, except Northern Fleet commander Admiral Viacheslav Popov and a handful of senior officers, the exercise was also a smokescreen to hide a submarine laden with nuclear missiles under the summer Arctic ice. If the plan succeeded, Russia would gain a vital tactical advantage - an invisible submarine with nuclear strike capability.

As the Peter the Great steamed into the target zone, the Kursk crew loaded their practice torpedo into the launching tube. The Russian Navy still used a torpedo fuel known as HTP, a highly concentrated but volatile form of hydrogen peroxide. It had been banned by Britain's Royal Navy since 1955, when an HTP-fuelled torpedo exploded, sinking a submarine and killing 12 men on board.

Just before 11.30am the Kursk's practice torpedo exploded. The blast instantly killed the crew in the forward compartment and sent the submarine into an uncontrolled dive to the seabed 100m down.

The second, far bigger blast occurred when the fuel and warheads of the Kursk's remaining torpedoes in the forward compartment exploded. Experts believe it was caused either by the impact of the submarine hitting the ocean floor or combustion from the rising heat generated by the first blast.

This massive explosion punched a hole through the Kursk's reinforced double hull and ripped through the submarine, stopping just short of the nuclear reactors.

What happened next still defies belief. Moore describes how a Norwegian seismologist 400km away detected the blast within a minute. Yet a nearby Russian submarine captain who felt the shockwaves made no report to his superiors.

It is the first in a series of blunders outlined in the book, based on a reluctance in the Russian military to pass on bad news to superiors because of an (often justified) fear of the consequences.

The naval exercise continued as normal, as organisers assumed the Kursk was having communications problems - not uncommon on Russian submarines. Western intelligence was also slow to grasp what had happened, especially as the Russians were making no attempts to launch a rescue.

On board the submarine, 23 survivors huddled in the ninth compartment at the rear of the Kursk, assessing their options. They could try to get out through the escape hatch, risking crippling injuries and hypothermia. They chose instead to wait and hope to be rescued before they ran out of oxygen or - more likely - were poisoned by rising carbon dioxide levels.

Meanwhile, the Russian authorities finally shuffled into action. The Navy started searching at 5pm, hampered by hopelessly rundown search and rescue equipment. At 7am on Sunday, Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev rang President Putin, who chose to stay on holiday, apparently unaware of the scale of the crisis because his subordinates were afraid to tell him the full, awful truth.

On the sea floor, the Kursk was slowly leaking, threatening the survivors with rising air pressure and eventually drowning. The lights had failed and Captain-Lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov - who drew up a list of survivors with military precision hours after the explosions - now scrawled a second note in the darkness.

"It seems like there are no chances, 10-20%," he wrote. "Let's hope that at least someone will read this."

Norwegian Admiral Einar Skorgen knew Admiral Popov personally. He had taken him cod fishing in a popular fiord during a naval exchange visit and the two men chatted about their jobs, families and hobbies. When Skorgen noticed Russian ships circling a spot in the Barents Sea, he rang Popov on a little-used hotline offering to help. The Russians politely but firmly refused.

As official news of the disaster spread - complete with false Russian accounts of tapping on the hull and claims that the Kursk had sunk on Sunday - a furious political row broke out in Britain and the United States over how to respond.

Some diplomats even questioned whether the West should offer to help at all. The Americans were unsure at first whether their own submarine, the Memphis, had collided with the Kursk. For them any transition from spy to rescuer was potentially awkward.

Confusion deepened when the head of the Russian Navy, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, described the accident as a serious "collision". The idea was plausible - Western subs had hit Soviet subs before - and it made sense to the few Russians who knew about Popov's secret plan to hide a sub under the ice.

In Moscow the Russians were locked in their own battle over whether to ask for Western help. Hardliners were adamant that Westerners must not see the military secrets on board the Kursk. Brought up in the old Soviet school, they maintained that if the men on board had to die, so be it.

In the end Popov broke the deadlock and rang his friend Skorgen back to ask for help. The Norwegians enlisted oil rig support company Stolt Offshore, which sent its best diving vessel, the Seaway Eagle.

Hours later, a group of Russian naval officers visiting Nato headquarters asked the Royal Navy for assistance. The British had anticipated the request. Their LR5 rescue submarine, which could bring out survivors, was already on its way.

In Russia public outrage was growing at the lack of action and misinformation from the Navy and the Government.

On Thursday the Navy unexpectedly announced that the men inside the Kursk could last another week - contradicting an earlier prediction from the submarine's designer that they could last until Friday at the latest. Newspapers attacked President Putin and furious wives and mothers screamed at Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov when he spoke to them in Vidyaevo.

Moore reports that at this meeting, Nadezha Tylik, mother of Senior Lieutenant Sergei Tylik, screamed at Klebanov: "My husband served for 25 years. For what? Just for me to bury my son? I'll never forgive you for this!

"Tear off your medals and shoulder boards!" she shouted. "Do it right here, right now, you son of a bitch!"

A female naval officer crept up behind her and stabbed a needle into her thigh. Days later the world watched horrified as video images showed a sedated Nadezha Tylik collapsing and being half carried, half dragged from the hall.

Despite constant problems with outmoded and rundown equipment, Moore argues that the Russians came tantalisingly close to reaching the survivors. On Thursday their submersible craft Priz settled on the Kursk's hatch but could not lock on to it.

By the time the Norwegian-British rescue team arrived late on Saturday, hopes were already fading. Yet it still took a bleary-eyed, all-night argument with the Russians - who tried to insist that Western divers must not view the whole submarine - before the rescue mission was approved at 4.26am.

A few hours later diver Tony Scott swam over to the Kursk and tapped on the hull. There was no response. Now the rescuers had to work out how to open the submarine's escape hatch without flooding the compartment inside. This led to the revelation that the Navy's senior officers did not even know which way to turn the pressure equalisation valve to open the hatch.

In the end the Kursk gave up its own secrets. The outer hatch swung open and the rescuers noticed telltale air bubbles and changes in air pressure which suggested the compartment was already flooded.

They opened the inner hatch and lowered a video camera inside. The Britishand Norwegians were surprised to seea thick mist. Then they noticed theblackened paintwork on the walls. The23 Kursk survivors had died in theextreme heat of a flash fire.

Moore tentatively suggests that a Russian Navy investigation later found they may still have been alive - no one can know for certain - when the Russian submersible Priz tried to dock on Thursday.

They probably died while changing the chemical air purifier cartridges, which replace carbon dioxide with oxygen. After several days on the seabed with the Kursk slowly leaking, the men were standing almost waist deep in water, which was polluted with oil.

When one of the men dropped a cartridge in the water, the chemicals reacted with the oil and fire swept through the compartment.

Some of the sailors must have dived underwater to escape. Their backs were badly burned but their chests barely touched by fire. Those who survived and came up for air died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Their last vision of the ninth compartment," writes Moore, "would have been a rapidly narrowing tunnel surrounded by darkness."

For most readers, A Time to Die offers comprehensive answers to the big questions surrounding the Kursk disaster - why did the submarine sink, why did it take so long for Russian authorities to act and how long did the men inside survive?

Those fascinated by the tragedy may want to compare Moore's account with other sources. Both the Russian Government and another book, Kursk: Russia's Lost Pride, argue that the men on board died within 12 hours of the accident.

Some critics have unkindly suggested that Moore's racy writing style and lack of references detract from the book's credibility. In fact, the book crackles with the authority of two year's solid research - but unlike some historians, Moore concentrates on telling the story.

The extended rescue sequence, heavily sourced from the rescuers themselves, has an occasionally Boy's Own quality with an "us and them" feeling stemming from the rescuers' obvious frustration with the Russian Navy.

But the overall picture of the Russians in this book is everyday heroism in the face of a corrupt military bureaucracy, which was largely to blame for the tragedy.

Crown $37.95

Herald Feature: the Kursk disaster