Kursk Destroyed By Cavitation Missles?

A reader submitted: "One of Russia's biggest independent TV networks, NTV, broadcast at about 22:20pm that the developers of the Shkval torpedo system (which was discussed here on July 23rd) claim that Kursk was testing their torpedoes, and one of them accidentially homed on the sub itself. It was also mentioned that the torpedo can travel at the speed of 200 knots. What could it mean to the development of the supersonic underwater devices? It seems that even before corporations get to science, blood does." I just saw this on the news as well, and a number of readers submitted this over the last few days.

Comments

Sigh....

[sdo1]

Didn't they learn anything from Hunt for Red October?

Probably Not True

[scotpurl]

Since a fast torpedo goes fast and turns slowly -- I doubt that it got turned around.

More likely they've got the same problems that plagued the US torpedo inventory during the 50's and 60's. Namely, spontaneous arming. One of the US subs was lost in the Atlantic owing to a torpedo that armed itself in the tube.

Hope the engineer that built that one feels at least slightly guilty.

Re:Probably Not True

[Macgruder]

>>More likely they've got the same problems that plagued the US torpedo inventory during the 50's and 60's. Namely, spontaneous arming. One of the US subs was lost in the Atlantic owing to a torpedo that armed itself in the tube.

It sounds like you are refering to the dimise of the USS Scorpion. While the batteries of the Mark 37 were known to overheat, and posssibly set off what is known as a 'low-order' cook off, there is little evidence to show this was what sunk the Scorpion.

Instead, it appears as though the inner door of the Scorpion's Trash Disposal Unit (TDU) failed. The outer door was already listed as out of commision. When it failed, there was approximately a 5 inch hole open to sea. Directly below this compartment are the lead-acid wet cell batteries that provided backup power. When sea water comes in contact with the battery acid, Chlorine and Hydrogen are the byproducts. Not to mention short circuiting the cells themselves. SPARK + HYDROGEN = BOOM.

The hole found in the operations compartment when they located wreck is located right next to where the batteries were located.

There is a bit more data, but I belive it's still classified.

My credentials? I'm a former submariner, and my father (also a submariner) was involved in the Scorpion's investigation.

Re:they torpedoed themselves?

[sulli]

Sure. Just type:

torpedo 127.0.0.1

and kaboom!

sulli

Torpedo probably got

[AbbyNormal]

a BOD.
"Torpedo Program not responding. Press any key to return to submarine"

You are a unique individual, just like everyone else.

Homing Missles...

[Signal 11]

From: Engineering Team (techgods@kremvax.org)
To: Admiral Xinablutznuk (phb@kremvax.org)
Subject: homing circuit
Date: 8, October, 1999

Hey, like, dude, we just, like, wanted to let you know that, uhh, there's a bug, well, a really small one, in the guidance system. If you, uhh, point the torpedo at yourself, it will, you know.. do it's thing...

Probably nothing though, we fixed it by putting a sign on the side of the launcher that says "Point this side towards enemy"..

From: Admiral Xinablutznuk (phb@kremvax.org)
To: Engineering Team (techgods@kremvax.org)
Subject: homing circuit
Date: 21, Jun, 2000

Das, are you thinkink we are stupid? Remove the sign, our sailors know this!

Torpedo Accident

[Sun_Tzu99]

Remember
Torpedoes don't kill people... People kill people
I actually have a few issues with NTV, from the filtered, poorly translated material that I see from them they don't really seem to know what is going on. It might be the fact that you can't seem to get a straight answer out of the Russian government or it might be incompetent news people. I'll wait a little before I give this report credability.
It is a shame that people have to die in the name of science but sometimes things just need to be tested first hand. Think about the first person to eat an egg... or the first person who found out that cyanide kills.

This looks like a job for the US Navy SEALS....

[cybrpnk]

Anybody want to start a betting pool ***(pun)*** on just how long before covert US Navy SEAL divers are roaming up and down the flooded passageways of this sub? It has never-before-seen surface-to-surface missiles designed to take out US aircraft carriers, maybe warp-speed torpedos, certainly top-of-the-line Russian crypto gear, in only 350 feet of international water. Project Jennifer raised a sub from miles down back in the early 70s, and a Russian boomer that sank due to internal fire off the coast of Bermuda in 1986 in thousands of feet of water mysteriously had the missile hatches peeled open and several missiles gone when a follow-on Russian oceanographic expedition photographed it a few months later. Hmm, wonder who did that? The Kursk is a piece of (very tempting) cake in comparison...

Anyone else find the humour here inappropriate?

[Jinker]

C'mon people, a hundred and some people died 9 or ten days ago and this thread's filled with all sorts of intellectual commentary such as:
'Das noogoodnick 0,0 coordinates are targeting torpedo at 127.0.0.1 and causing a bluescreen.'

The guys are DEAD. Even if it was some giant Russian cock-up, I don't think it's all that funny.

How amusing were all the morbid NASA jokes when the Challenger blew up?

-Greg

Re:Anyone else find the humour here inappropriate?

[SgtPepper]

Actually I did find the morbid NASA jokes when Challenger blew up funny.

Now this doesn't take away from the tragedy at all. Some people simply deal with these situations better with humour. I know I do. And apperantly so do a number of others.

Hell, the military has it's own morbid sense of humour about such things. They call the escape hatches "Mother Hatches", supposedly because only their Mom's believe they can escape from them.

So, yes, they are dead. We are not. They were courages men, regardless of the flag they flew under. Let's not forget that. But for chrissakes, if you can't laugh at tradgedy, what are you going to laugh at? In this real world, light moments are few and far between, if we don't laugh at the dark, we might as well just commit suicide ourselves.

"hot run"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kursk disaster was almost certainly caused by a "hot run" in one of their torpedo tubes.

A torpedo fired from underwater must carry an oxidizer with the fuel, since it is hard to get the O2 out of H2O on the fly. This creates a potential hazard, and a "hot run" is what happens when the torpedo starts up before it is supposed to (i.e. in the tube or on the rack).

If this happened, it is possible (although unlikely if you believe the hype in the case of the MK 48's currently used on U.S. submarines) that a warhead could "cook off," causing an explosion. It is also possible that the torpedo in the tube could have itself exploded, causing a serious flooding casualty.

The men in the torpedo room would have perished instantly from high-speed water in the people compartment and the resultant pressure increase. Those that survived would have been behind an already closed watertight door, because a hull breach of the diameter of a torpedo tube or larger at operating depth for a nuclear sub would cause an increase in air pressure too rapid to permit casualty actions before rendering the crew incapable of them.

I speculate that there is an engine room watertight door on that class of ship, and no others forward of it. The people in engineering probably survived (accounting for the shut down reactor and lack of a radiological event), and that those are the people who were doing the tapping. If a Russian sub is anything like a U.S. sub, there would have been 8 and 20 people working in the engineering spaces. Everyone else would have been in the forward compartment at battle stations for the torpedo drill.

A lot of this is based on SOP for U.S. subs, but I have a feeling that the Russian procedures are fairly similar.