09/07/2019
After the Losharik submarine tragedy, RBC's correspondent visited the Murmansk region to understand the details of the classified incident in the Barents Sea
The materials of the commission headed by Navy chief Nikolai Yevmenov are not available even to the acting head of Murmansk region Andrei Chibis. The details of the incident belong to the state secret. Relatives of the dead and injured had to sign non-disclosure papers. RBC correspondent visited Murmansk region and talked to representatives of regional authorities, military personnel and acquaintances about the investigation of the tragedy to restore the chronology of the incident in the Barents Sea.
Explosion in the Motov Bay
The nuclear powered deep-water station of project 10831 AS-31 ("Losharik") and its base station, the nuclear submarine "Podmoskovye", are assigned to the 29th division, which is located in the village of Olenya Guba on the western coast of the Kola Bay, a source familiar with the details of the incident told RBC, and a second interlocutor familiar with the investigation confirmed it.
On July 1 at about 9 p.m., a nuclear submarine docked with the base station left Olenya Guba and, presumably, went to the northwest to Motovka Bay. In this bay there is a test site where Russian submarines dived to the extreme depths of 600 m, explains a former submariner who served in the region. After completion of the task, the nature of which is not specified,
"Losharik" went up and docked with the carrier boat, and then an emergency occurred. This very circumstance allowed to save a part of the crew and the station itself.
According to preliminary data, the
fire and explosion occurred in the nose compartment where the battery was located, said another RBC interlocutor familiar with the commission's work. This information was also confirmed by the interlocutor who is familiar with the progress of the investigation. The accident happened precisely at the deep-water station АС-31, and not on the carrier boat.
The exact number of people at AS-31 was not disclosed at the time of the fire. Officially announced 14 dead. "There are 24 berths on the submarine," said the interlocutor who took part in such exercises. In addition to the 14 dead and five injured, the boat could accomodate five more, he suggested. There is no data about them and there will not be, given the secrecy of the operation, the interlocutor added. All those on the boat known to be present were officers. Of the 14 dead, seven were first rank captains. "This is a normal composition for such a submarine. Specially trained people work at such depths. The crew of the AS-31 does not include conscripts, but only officers," he explained.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that part of the crew was rescued, but did not specify the number of survivors. Five of the injured were in a closed ward of the North Sea hospital, all of them received contusions, but by Thursday, July 4, everyone had regained consciousness, said a source familiar with the investigation. According to him, everyone was discharged on Saturday so that they could attend the funeral of their colleagues.
The only civilian on board, in all likelihood, was a representative of the Sevmash factory, which builds submarines, and
carried out the adjustment of mechanisms, noted a sailor familiar with the circumstances of the emergency. The servicemen do not set up the equipment themselves, they only operate it, he explains, while maintenance work is carried out by specialists from the manufacturers. "The ship went out to sea, they had to work on some tasks. I suppose it was a training exit to check the readiness of the ship," says the submariner.
Rescue of a civilian and unused gas masks
"The commission raises questions about the cause of the explosion in the compartment where the battery was located, as well as the fact that the sailors did not use portable breathing apparatus, which, according to the instructions, should have been used first of all," says a RBC interviewee familiar with the investigation into the circumstances.
It is, most likely, a
lithium-ion rechargeable battery that was believed to be absolutely safe, says another experienced submariner. "Not a single serious accident on these batteries happened in the 45 years of the submarines' existence," he emphasizes. The lithium battery is a backup power source on this nuclear submarine, another former submariner explains.
Each submariner, among other things, has a portable breathing apparatus (PBA) - a red box containing a gas mask and a closed-loop breathing device, as confirmed by a submariner familiar with the deceased crew members. The PBA allows you to fight for up to 20 minutes for the survivability of the boat despite the products of combustion, he said. In addition, the sailors had insulating /self-contained gas masks (IP-6): when the air in the PBA ran out, they had to switch to IP-6, whose regenerative cartridge allows them to hold on for another 40 minutes, he explains.
Probably, the sailors did not have time to use the means of protection because of the explosion - someone died immediately, and someone lost consciousness and suffocated before wearing the PBA. It is possible that someone was not on the watch and slept, RBC's interlocutor suggests. In a submarine of this type two or three breaths is enough to be poisoned by the products of combustion and lose consciousness, the submariner explains.
The deceased sailors were in the bow section of the submarine, four others were in the central section, they were not involved in the docking and managed to get into the carrier boat, said the interlocutor, familiar with the circumstances of the tragedy. The civilian was in the bow compartment, he was evacuated from there, he said.
It is not known exactly how the civilian was evacuated and the bow section isolated. The official report of the Ministry of Defense states that Captain Dmitri Solovyov, the second rank captain, took the civilian out of the compartment and battered down the hatch. If the hatch was blocked by one of the seamen who died later, he probably had a few seconds to do so - and in that case, one can assume that he decided not to spend time to connect to the PBA, sacrificing his life to save the others, RBC's interlocutors argue. However, However, the option that the hatch was battened down from the other side is not excluded.
The nuclear reactor at the AC-31 is of low power, it is located in an absolutely hermetic compartment and is controlled remotely, the submariner explains. "Therefore, there could not be a nuclear explosion. But
if the bow section hadn't been battened down, the fire would have spread over to the carrier boat, and we would have faced the death of many more people and, perhaps, the death of both the Losharik and Podmoscovye ships," he adds.
