Did a U.S. sub torpedo the Kursk?

Another one for our resident sub experts: could this really be true, or is it just the figment of someones imagination?

Copied from: www.rumormillnews.com...

THE SINKING OF THE KURSK AND WHY IRAN HAS NEW TORPEDOES *PIC*

Posted By: FarSight3
Date: Sunday, 13 February 2005, 6:59 p.m.

In Response To: US SUB SSN 711 DAMAGE PICTURES RELEASED... *PIC* (FarSight3)

On August 12, 2000 the Russian Typhoon-class submarine KURSK (K-141) sank in the Barents Sea at the depth of 108 meters during tactical military exercise of the Russian Northern Fleet. Officially - 118 submarine crewmembers perished in the accident of the 154 meter nuclear powered colossus.

At the end of July, 2002, the governmental commission for investigation of the "Kursk" submarine accident finished its work, and its head, Ilya Klebanov, announced its findings, officially putting the "Kursk" incident to rest. The official version written in stone was: An exploding torpedo inside the sub is what caused the disaster.

Anyone who carefully followed the "Kursk" tragedy senses that this official governmental story is a complete falsehood. Since the tragedy there have been many unofficial publications published in Russia shedding light on the matter.

Even Admiral Vladimir Kuroedov, Commander of the Russian Navy, said soon after the 'accident' that he was 80% sure a foreign submarine sank the Kursk. Mr Klebanov immediately was out in the media the other day claiming that he did not share the viewpoint of the Admiral, and would rather wait for the investigation results of the Governmental Inquiry Commission.

The surface vessels and submarines of NATO countries monitor regularly military exercises of the Northern Fleet. In particular, the Norwegian intelligence vessel Marjata was observed several times during the present and past exercises. American officials confirm that a U.S. Navy electronic intelligence ship was tracking Kursk during the exercises in the Barents Sea although the vessel was four hundred kilometres away.

On the Aug., 19 a nuclear submarine of the Los Angeles class came into the Norwegian naval base Haakonsvern/Bergen and anchored close to the frigate of Oslo class as Russian intelligence satellite photos from that day have showed us. This boat - possibly the Memphis or Toledo - showed considerable damages in the bow. The thick rubber-ceramic skin of the submarine was torn off and the inner steel-structure seemed also damaged. Photos with naval base and the damaged submarine in the pier become a Top Secret matter...

The US sub stayed for necessary repaired for 8 days and departed on Aug. 27 for Southampton for final repairs in the closed docks.

Suddenly the CIA's director had arrived in Moscow for unknown reasons - possibly to hush up the conflict and to prevent a possible war. The Russian authorities knew about the truth concerning the accident. On the August, 19 the published photo was given to the Russian minister of defense and to commander-in-chief who was having a rest in Sochi.

The authorities of Russia and USA have agreed to hide the truth about debacle and so to prevent a possible conflict.

What could have happened really?

American military journal "Jane's Fighting Ships" for 2000-2001 writes: "The atomic submarine "Memphis" of the "Los Angeles" class, numbered No. 691, was re-equipped in 1989 as a testing platform for new types of experimental technologies, including new types of weaponry".

Now a piece of metal, a fragment of the body of that same ill-fated torpedo, was found cause the explosion. Here's what the experts write about this fragment: "...there's a piece of metal from the body of the torpedo which shows signs of the local influence of heat on its outer side... On the outer edge of this metallic fragment there are signs of the presence of high heat, more than 500°C... On the remainder of this torpedo body fragment the paint is unharmed."; "...we can confirm with a high degree of certainty that a powerful and sudden physical and heat impact was directed at the torpedo from the outside, from the left side of the inner hull of the submarine."

In fact, only a part of the torpedo shows signs of a "powerful and sudden physical and heat impact". What could have caused it? A beam of fire, a stream of incandescent gases, an explosion of a cumulative charge, or any similar phenomenon. It's important to note the circumstance that the supposed cumulative charge hit the torpedo from the outside, just at the place where it was unprotected by the outer hull of the sub.

We can theorize about the nature of the supposed weapon used, but one thing is clear: The demise of the "Kursk" was brought about not by internal factors, not by an explosion inside the sub or a mistake of the crew. No. The "Kursk" was hit by a "powerful outside impact". This is witnessed by the results of the investigation of the fragments.

NATO's small anti-ship torpedos, both the MK-50 and the "Stingray", are armed with cumulative charges....

What conclusions were made and decisions taken after the "Kursk" disaster? Navy head Admiral Kuroyedov issued an order to immediately remove all "fat" torpedos of classes 298 and 298A from the Russian fleet – those very same torpedos which Klebanov and Ustinov blame for the tragedy. And it's just this decision, in the opinion of specialists and high ranking Russian Military, which could have fatal consequences for Russia's whole military doctrine. Generalsky don't like this. A further hint for Putin's efforts to claim back his decisive power over the military at that time?

Why fatal consequences for Russia's Navy? Let's take a closer look at these torpedos, the 298 and 298A, called "fat boys" for their large 650 mm. caliber. They were created specially to do battle with the large ships of the US Navy, above all with aircraft carriers and their escorts.

From the moment of its appearance 20 years ago Russia's "fat" torpedo has been a chronic headache for American admirals. At the beginning of the 1980's the USA adopted a new strategic conception with the main accent on naval power (carrier attack groups and submarines armed with strategic nuclear missiles). And here's the Soviet "fat boy", capable of breaking the back of any US aircraft carrier from an unthinkable distance....

Food for thoughts?

But there is still another interesting 'theory' that emerged in the wake of the sinking of the Kursk:

There have been 'VIPs' on board at the time of the 'accident'! Namely THREE high ranking Militaries - one from China (sic!) and two 'unspecified Arabs'. They were flown on board by helicopters for a demonstration of a 'new weapon' that could really topple the strategies of sea warfare: A HYPERSONIC TORPEDO called 'Shkval', developed by Russian scientists. The US-Navy seems to have something similar - called 'Supercav' – high velocity MHD torpedos! These torpedoes blow hot gas, provided by a secondary rocket. This gas is injected in the water just in front of the torpedo. The heat of this gas vapourises the sea water allowing the torpedo to move in such a bubble of vapor at higher velocities, up to 1500 knots.

Now there have been latest efforts to design an even faster weapon on a magneto-hydro-dynamic basics: MHD torpedos. (Anybody remembers Clansey's 'Red October'?) These are also propelled by a solid propellent rocket and moreover on the "divergent" of this rocket, a MHD generator transforms the kinetic energy of the gas into electricity. The system uses a wall MHD convertor. The electricity is sent to the linear electrodes of a MHD wall accelerator which sucks the water backwards very strongly canceling the friction drag. According to infos back from 1980, the velocity of the torpedo was about 6000 knots. 6000 knots! Under water...

But back to the (possible) happenings in the Kursk.

The US secret service defense could have been informed about the planned demonstration. So the NATO-submarine could have approached the Kursk and ordered it to break surface and hand them over the chinese VIP, stop the exercise or disturb it otherwise. The Russians did not answer. As a consequence, the decision to sink the Kursk or to mess with the 'ongoing' demonstration could have been taken for 'torpedoeing' any future business harming the interests of the US. At any costs...

The Barents sea is not so deep where the Kursk sank. Considering its height the upper door of rescue chamber should be only 90 meters below the surface. All the submarine's crew men have individual rescue suits. In Europe, these suits are designed by the UK Beaufort Company. Additionally there were two rescue-subs on board, capable of evacuating the whole crew of the Kursk.

Interestingly – a paper was found in the pocket of a Kursk seaman. He wrote (in obscurity, it was said) : "We are in the rescue chamber. Two officers are trying to handle the door. The said they know the system very well. But it seems to be locked."

Now what happened - up to my sparely infos - was that the decision was taken immediately after the 'accident' to protect the anonymity of the VIPs at any price. The Admiral ship "Peter the First", who was in charge of all operations in the area, sent a sonar-command which immediately locked all doors of the submarine and moreover cancelled all possibilities for communication with the surface. Order was given to all ships located around:"The first to approach the Kursk, will be sunk!"

Then the Russians tried to pick up their VIPs on board. A Russian ship approached the Kursk with two small submarines aboard. One was put at sea and reached the wreck. As only eight men could come aboard, the crew of the Kursk did not believe they would come back to save them A mutiny occured and some members of the crew were killed. The officer who kept the arms on board had been found dead with a bullet in his head after the Kursk rescue...

So the small submarine went back to his Russian carrier.

Putin decided to let the crew of the Kursk die as there were more important things at stake.

Later the wreck was recovered, not to recover the corpses but to hide the evidences. The torpedo chamber, with its enlarged tubes was destroyed down deep and the MHD torpedoes were recovered, including the precious Granit supersonic missiles.

See pic below of the recovered hull of the Kursk with a 'strange' hole, indicating an impact from the outside...

Now read the latest news from Iran, claiming a 'new' superdupersecret torpedoe and draw your own conclusions:


TEHRAN, Feb. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran Saturday launched a productionline of torpedoes in order to promote its defense capability at seaas the United States has recently escalated its threats on Tehran,the official IRNA news agency reported.

Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said at the launch ceremony thatthe production marked completion of "the Islamic Republic'sdefensive cycle at sea."

"Iran's marine units have now achieved an effective weapon witha complicated and modern technology in confronting surface andunder-sea threats," Shamkhani said, adding the torpedoes could bemounted on helicopters, surface vessels and submarines."Some of the important features of this weapon are thepossibility to use it in shallow waters, without being spotted byradars, as well as its extraordinarily high speed, while beingnotably cost-effective," he said....

From:
news.xinhuanet.com...


War on Error, Part 141: "Sinking evidence of China"
Far Sight 3

There was an incident either at the end of WWII or right after WWII with a British sub in harbor where they had a torpedo accident similar to the Kursk that sank it while it sat at the dock. Apparently one part of the torpedo fuel is a form of hydrogen peroxide and it can be unstable. There have been several incidents of torpedo accidents since WWII, that were all caused by simple malfunctions. At least one American sub was sunk by its own torpedo in the forward torpedo room. It was coming home, and apparently developed a torpedo problem. They way they would fix it was to do a 180 degree turn, I don't know what exactly this did, but apparently when another sub had the same problem, this worked to fix it, so they performed the turn, and sometime after they turned the torpedo exploded sinking her with all hands lost. There were several other incidents of this nature, but that's the only one that was lost because of it that I know of. I BELIEVE it was Thresher, but I'm not positive on that.

It seems to me that if they had a sub docked next to a Norweigan ship for 8-9 days they should have been able to figure out which one it was. It could very easily have been a sub on an ELINT mission following a Russian sub and they bumped during a "Crazy Ivan" manuver that was kept quiet.

As far as the Russian general saying that he was positive that Kursk was sunk by a foreign vessel, that makes a lot of sense from their viewpoint. Here they are trying to sell new weapons to other countries, and one of them sinks their own submarine. They're going to want to place the blame somewhere else so they don't look bad.

[edit on 5-7-2005 by Zaphod58]

Originally posted by JamesinOz
On August 12, 2000 the Russian Typhoon-class submarine KURSK (K-141) sank in the Barents Sea

Except it was an Oscar II class sub.

www.janes.com...

kursk.strana.ru...

Kind of takes the steam out when they don't know what kind of submarine it really is...

Please don't copy and paste entire web pages, a paragraph in a quote box followed with a link is sufficient.

Hey, I also got a thread about that. Not to spoil your fun, but...

ATS: Did the Americans sink the Kursk?

Possible... But i don't think that it would "have been left there" if you get it... The Russians would ahve done something about it...

Wait... i read that thing true again... And you surely have a lot of evidence... i don't know... But it's always good to question the politicans...

Although this is a little off subject it is still related to the Kursk so i'll ask here!

Why did the Russians only salvage 3/4 of the Kursk?

The explosion was at the front so obviously the front would hold most of the clues as to why it sank, yet only the back section was salvaged???

What are they hiding at the bottem of the Barents Sea?

Mic

Originally posted by MickeyDee
Although this is a little off subject it is still related to the Kursk so i'll ask here!

Why did the Russians only salvage 3/4 of the Kursk?

The explosion was at the front so obviously the front would hold most of the clues as to why it sank, yet only the back section was salvaged???

What are they hiding at the bottem of the Barents Sea?

I spoke a while back with the guy at SMIT international (The salvage company that raised the Kursk) about this. He said that it was concern about the nuclear reactor that made them decide to remove the front of the vessel. They had to ensure that when they raised the vessel the lift kept the vessel as level as possible. The jagged front end made this very unstable and hard to predict so they decided to cut the front end off.


[edit on 5-7-2005 by paperplane_uk]

I saw a documentary on this and I believe the Russians came back later themselves and raised the front section that the Dutch team had cut off.

Originally posted by Mirthful Me

Originally posted by JamesinOz
On August 12, 2000 the Russian Typhoon-class submarine KURSK (K-141) sank in the Barents Sea

Except it was an Oscar II class sub.

www.janes.com...

kursk.strana.ru...

Kind of takes the steam out when they don't know what kind of submarine it really is...

Please don't copy and paste entire web pages, a paragraph in a quote box followed with a link is sufficient.

An obvious error makes this report invalid in my mind. This an easy fact check. I mean, you know of a secret conspiracy, and an iranian torpedo, but you're not sure what kind of sub the Kursk was?

Sounds like 100% BS to me.

A 1500 knot torpedo ? LOL

Supposing there was a collision, I assume Oscar IIs have some type of EMBT blow system ? Look at the USS San Francisco, hit a seamount @ flank speed and still maintained pressure hull integrity. And that is hy-80 steal. Don't Russian subs use even stronger materials ? If an American sub and the Russian boat collided it would have been at much lower speed and I really don't see any possible way it could have resulted in the complete loss of the Kursk. Also, if the Russian Navy truly had hard evidence of something like this, i.e. satellite photo of damaged American sub, I think they would go public with the information.

The American sub whos own torpedo got it was USS Scorpion, you do a 180 degree in a hotrun situation to disarm the torpedo. In this case however, it sounds like the Russian torpedo simply detonated on it's own. I heard they didn't salvage the front part of the boat because they were afraid of the ordinance blowing it up. Lift it up, and a torpedo could slide out a whole hit the bottom and detonate. The Russian Navy never asked for submarine rescue assistance most likely because of pride, I doubt there was any super secret weapon they were afraid of revealing. Same goes for the Russian Navy official who was 80% sure it was a foreign subs fault. Oscar IIs are modern tech subs, not some junky Echo II, so they were probably quite embarrassed to have lost it.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
At least one American sub was sunk by its own torpedo in the forward torpedo room. It was coming home, and apparently developed a torpedo problem. They way they would fix it was to do a 180 degree turn, I don't know what exactly this did, but apparently when another sub had the same problem, this worked to fix it, so they performed the turn, and sometime after they turned the torpedo exploded sinking her with all hands lost. [edit on 5-7-2005 by Zaphod58]

If you have a "runaway" torpedo, i.e. one that arms itself and spins up its motor while still in the storage racks, SOP dictates that the ship performs a rapid 180 degree about turn. This causes the inertial sensors in the torpedo (which thinks it's in the water) to believe that it is heading back towards it's own launch submarine, thus activating a failsafe device and diasarming the warhead.

Q. Why would the U.S risk a nuclear war with Russia?

A. They wouldn't.

The rescue chamber exterior door been locked can easily be explained by bad russian maintance and upkeep of the submarines, its a shame such subs have fallen in to not so great conditions.

The Kursk disaster was ceratianly not caused because of crash with SSN. Just compare the Kursk weight - over 18 000 tons and size with LA class SSNs and you will see that it would end with LA destroyed and Kursk only damaged.

ANd I don't believe it was sunk by US torpedo too. The results of such incident on Russian - American relationship would be disaterous. Simply not worth it.

As mentioned in a link I provided in my thread : ATS: Did the Americans sink the Kursk?

"The documentary says the Toledo accidentally collided with the Kursk, at which point the Russian submarine opened its torpedo tubes, leading to an attack from the Memphis, which was protecting the damaged Toledo while it retreated.

The cause of the sinking was covered up at the time in an act of diplomacy between then US presidents Bill Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin – a deal that included the cancellation of $US10 billion ($12.5 billion) of Russian debt, the film states."

IF Kursk was hit by a torpedo, as stated it would have hit the engineering area, because that's the noisiest part of the sub, and torpedoes are acoustic homing devices. They home on sound. They also would have snapped the keel of the sub like a twig. There would have been a LOT more damage than there really was. The Mk-48 that is the standard weapon of US subs detonates beneath the target creating an air bubble with great force that travels upward, and snaps the keel of the target. If you've ever watched video to modern torpedo tests, it's amazingly obvious when the torpedo goes off under the destroyer they used, because the middile of the ship snaps upward, with the bow and stern pointing down towards the ocean. You can see all around it the giant air bubble created by the torpedo detonating directly under the keel. In WWII, the torpedo would hit the target before detonating, but it was discovered after the war that it was MUCH more effective if it detonated below the target and used air to sink the ship, instead of direct contact explosives.

Seen the documentory on I believe PBS. Thought the conclusion was Torpedo incompetance by both designers and Kursk launch staff.

Dallas

As I understand it it was all down to the ultra volitile fuels they used in their torpedos.

IIRC hydrogen peroxide.

The British Royal Navy looked at this stuff for a while back in the 1950's, suffered several accidental losses and deaths and decided it needed too much careful handling to be useable.

I am told British Navy people were astounded the Russsians went ahead with his technology and used it in their navy when this all eventually came out.
So much so that I was told a major accident was just a matter of time and luck of the draw for which boat and desparately unlucky crew suffered the tragedy.

Incredibly it ended up being such a high profile sub, the Kursk.

What are the chances of two subs colliding with each other? And do people really believe that the US sub would suffer only minor damages and be able to still travel of hundreds of miles to a port?