Robert Moore's book, A Time to Die: The Kursk Disaster , was an acclaimed account of the failed attempt to rescue the sailors trapped aboard the Russian nuclear-powered submarine. A retired Russian Admiral raised speculation that the country’s worst post-soviet naval catastrophe occurred as a faulty torpedo belonging to the US had collided with Kursk, causing the dually-pressurised hulls of the submarine to explode. These speculations arose from the fact that the western submarine was also damaged by the powerful explosion and sent a distress signal. The Russian Media reports highlighted that three US submarines were spotted near the area where the disaster happened. On 26 July 2002, almost two years later, the government commission and Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov announced that the hydrogen peroxide fuel in the dummy torpedo inside the fourth torpedo launcher set off the initial explosion that sank Kursk. [13] Secret report [ edit ] N. A. "Kursk Inner Hull Breached." Australian, The (n.d.): Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 7 December 2011.

The Dutch consortium had already severed the submarine's mangled forward section, which was left on the seabed because of concern that it might have broken off and destabilised the lifting. Moore, Robert (2002), A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy. Crown Publishers NY, NY. ISBN 978-0609610008 The whole scene was captured by the TV crew, but it was not televised within Russia. Foreign media showed Tylik being removed by officials from the meeting. [20] :36 [65] Tylik later criticised President Putin because he "did not answer direct questions" at the meeting. "Maybe he did not know what to say, but we did not receive concrete answers to concrete questions," she said. [63] [66] Tylik told The St. Petersburg Times that she would go to any lengths to learn the truth about the submarine disaster: "They told us lies the whole time, and even now we are unable to get any information," she said. [63] Personnel who had loaded the practice torpedoes the day before the exercise noticed that the rubber seals were leaking fuel and notified junior officers of the issue, but they took no action because the exercise was so important to the Russian Navy. [6] Though the leaks on the dummy torpedoes had been detected, the rubber seals were not inspected before the exercise. [20] :35 The crew was also supposed to follow a very strict procedure while preparing the practice HTP torpedo for firing. [79] At 11:29:34 (07:29:34 GMT), seismic detectors at the Norwegian seismic array (NORSAR) and in other locations around the world recorded a seismic event of magnitude 1.5 on the Richter scale. [15] The location was fixed at coordinates 69°38′N 37°19′E / 69.633°N 37.317°E / 69.633; 37.317, north-east of Murmansk, approximately 250km (160mi) from Norway, and 80km (50mi) from the Kola Peninsula. [16] Secondary event [ edit ]Kudrik, Igor (3 March 2003). "Defuelled Kursk will join submarine graveyard". Oslo: Bellona Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 October 2007 . Retrieved 8 August 2007. But the Kursk tragedy has remained an unsightly scar on Putin’s record. In 2010, on its 10th anniversary, neither he, as prime minister at the time, nor then-President Dmitry Medvedev made any public comments on modern Russia's worst naval disaster.

Tony DiGiulian (19 November 2008). "Russia / USSR Post-World War II Torpedoes". Navweaps.com . Retrieved 6 February 2013. Experts feared it would be difficult to overcome the force of the sediment on the sea bottom, but that posed no difficulty. Then, Maurice Stradling, a torpedo designer and former lecturer at the Royal Naval Engineering College in Plymouth, began to examine the similarities between the Kursk disaster and the unsolved mystery of an explosion on board a British submarine in June 1955 at Portland.Putin answers questions from the relatives of those who died when the Kursk sank in the northern town of Vidyayevo on August 22, 2000. He put the blame on Russia’s economic and military decline -- before he came to power. Once we heard about the submarine we made the link and came to the conclusion that it was a very large explosion. I couldn't believe anyone had survived that.' When the nuclear reactors automatically shut down, the air-purification system would have shut down, emergency power would be limited, and the crew would soon have been in complete darkness and experiencing falling temperatures. [22] :88–92 Death of survivors [ edit ]