By STEVEN
LEE MYERS and CHRISTOPHER DREW
 WASHINGTON
-- Six days after something went dreadfully wrong with the Russian
nuclear submarine Kursk, another submarine quietly pulled into
a Norwegian port, carrying some of the most detailed evidence
so far of why the pride of Russia's navy sank to the bottom of
the Barents Sea.
Above:Crew members of the Kursk on July 30, during a naval
parade before it set out on its last voyage. The skipper, Capt.
Grigory Lyachin, is at right.
The other
submarine was the Memphis, a nuclear-powered attack submarine
based in Groton, Conn., and one of two American submarines that
were spying on the largest Russian naval exercise in years when
disaster struck the Kursk on the morning of Aug. 12.
By the time
the Memphis reached Bergen, Norway, Russian officials, including
the defense minister, Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, had said the Kursk
had probably sunk after colliding with a foreign submarine or
a World War II mine. So the arrival of the Memphis spawned news
reports in Russia that a damaged submarine needing repairs had
limped into port.
Publicly,
the Pentagon still refuses to comment on the whereabouts or the
mission of the Memphis. And they say the most likely cause of
the sinking is the misfiring of one of the Kursk's torpedoes.
They insist
that the Memphis was not damaged. Nor was it, the other American
submarine or any other foreign submarine involved in any collision,
they said. The Memphis's arrival in Norway was a long-scheduled
liberty call, they said.
The call allowed
the submarine to unload sonar tapes and other recordings that
the Americans say captured two explosions that ravaged and sank
the Kursk, killing all 118 people on board.
Those tapes,
now being analyzed at the National Maritime Intelligence Center
in Suitland, Md., contain the strongest evidence, until now not
discussed in detail, to support the leading American theory of
what destroyed the Kursk.
And that theory,
they said, does not include the collision that the Russians have
said probably occurred. "We have subs that hear everything
that goes on," a senior officer in Washington said. "It's
pretty clear to us what happened."
According
to the American theory, a rocket-propelled torpedo being loaded
or launched as part of an exercise misfired, its engine or its
fuel exploding.
After 2 minutes
and 15 seconds -- during which time the Kursk's captain either
increased power from the nuclear reactor or blew ballast in an
effort to surface -- a powerful explosion of the torpedo's warhead
tore a gaping hole in the submarine's bow, killing most if not
all of the crew instantly.
[In Vladivostok,
Russia, today, a former submarine officer who is a member of a
governmental commission investigating the explosion said a new
weapons system was being tested on board the Kursk when it sank.
But the former officer, Sergei V. Zhekov, would not elaborate
on the system during a news conference, saying it was a state
secret, the news agency Interfax reported.]
When the Kursk
sank, the United States government knew within hours. The Americans
collected telltale recordings by means of submarines and a surface
ship, and even from shore.
They detected
no sounds of a collision. And they monitored the Russian fleet's
emergency radio transmissions closely during the aftermath.
In addition
to two submarines, the Navy had a surface ship, the Loyal, in
the Barents Sea.
The Loyal
is one of a class of surveillance ships operated by civilian contractors,
but with as many as 15 Navy sailors and officers aboard.
According
to the Navy, ships like the Loyal have only a single mission:
"to gather underwater acoustical data" in support of
"the antisubmarine warfare mission" of fleet commanders.
The ship can
tow an array of underwater listening devices that pick up the
most minute data, and that, the officials said, was precisely
what it was doing.
A senior American
officer said the two submarines were "a long ways away"
from the Kursk at the time of the explosions, but he declined
to say how far. Another senior officer said that under the Navy's
rules of engagement the submarines would not have gone any closer
than five miles, especially because the Russian ships were testing
weapons. The Loyal, whose presence would have been obvious to
the Russian fleet, was presumably even farther away.
Still, the
senior officer said, the submarines were close enough not only
to detect the explosions with their sonar, but also to feel the
underwater concussion caused by the second, larger blast.
Even so, there
was no damage to the Memphis or the other submarine, all of the
officials said. "Not a teacup was rattled," the senior
military officer said.
Britain, the
other country whose submarines regularly prowl the Barents, has
denied that it had a submarine in the area at the time.
Within hours
of the explosions, both American submarines radioed messages back
to fleet headquarters. "They were alive and well and had
no bumps," another senior officer said.
The American
officials said that neither the two submarines nor the Loyal had
detected any sounds that would suggest that the Kursk had been
involved in a collision of any sort.
Even at great
distances, the signals created by a collision or an explosion
are easy to distinguish, the officials said.
One official
also said that given the Kursk's immense size, larger than the
American Trident ballistic missile submarines, it was unlikely
that another vessel could have endured a collision without suffering
significant, perhaps debilitating damage.
It is also
unlikely, given the Kursk's double-hulled design intended to withstand
crashes or torpedoes, that a collision alone could have caused
the damage that doomed the Kursk, the officials and experts said.
Ever since
the Kursk sank, Russian accounts of what happened have been imprecise
and sometimes contradictory. Officials in Russia did not report
the accident until early on Aug. 14, which was a Monday, a day
after the they realized that something had gone wrong and nearly
two days after the accident. Even then, they said it had happened
on Sunday, rather than on Saturday.
The Russians
do not deny that a massive explosion hit the Kursk. But they have
insisted that the submarine first was involved in a collision
with some huge object, possibly a submarine or a World War II
mine.
The Russian
assertions are based in part on five hours of underwater videotape
now being examined by an investigative commission headed by Deputy
Prime Minister Ilya I. Klebanov. Russians officials have cited
external damage on the submarine's hull that they said could only
have been caused by its scraping another large object, and they
have reported detecting pieces from unknown foreign submarines
on the ocean floor.
In a television
interview a week ago, Marshal Sergeyev, the defense minister,
said that Russian surface ships racing to rescue had detected
a second vessel on the seabed near the Kursk and had found an
unknown signal buoy like those used by submarines. Some Russian
reports said the buoy's markers were green and white and did not
match those of the Russian fleet. Mr. Sergeyev said the buoy had
never been recovered.
American officials
questioned the reports of a green and white buoy being found.
They said rescue buoys on American and British submarines are
orange, while emergency communication buoys are gray.
They also
discounted the possibility that the second vessel the Russians
claimed to have detected on the ocean floor could have been one
of the two American submarines.
"They
didn't go in that close to look at what happened," a senior
intelligence official said.
But even after
the explosion, the two submarines did not immediately leave the
area, the officials said. They continued to gather intelligence,
intercepting frantic, confused radio messages between the other
Russian ships trying to determine what had happened to the Kursk
and trying to coordinate a rescue effort, the officials said.
The officials
and submarine experts said it was possible that some of the crew
-- perhaps 15 men or more -- had survived the initial explosions
if they had managed to shut the watertight doors to their compartments
in the stern quickly.
The Russians
said they had detected tapping sounds from within the Kursk at
least two days after it had sunk, raising hopes that a rescue
of some crewmen might be possible.
Some American
officials said that neither the Loyal nor the American submarines
had detected the sounds, though they might not have been able
to do so if they had been too far away.
The officials
said it also appeared likely that the force of the second explosion
had torn the Kursk apart with the force of one to two tons of
TNT. The Norwegian divers who reached the Kursk a week after the
accident found the rear escape hatch deformed, suggesting that
the force of the blast might have rocketed throughout the submarine's
compartments.
One question
is whether the American submarines could have done anything to
help the rescue effort. The American officials said the American
submarines had not carried the kind of rescue equipment, like
a submersible vehicle, that could have helped.
While the
Americans had a fair guess of what had happened to the Kursk early
on, it was only after the Memphis unloaded its sonar tapes on
Aug. 18 that officials in Washington began to offer the theory
of the torpedo misfiring.
But how much
the Pentagon will be prepared to say in public remains in question.
The submarine fleet has been traditionally wrapped in silence,
and even now, more than two weeks later, the Pentagon has not
publicly acknowledged the presence of two submarines in the Barents.
Officials privately confirmed the role of the Memphis only when
the vessel surfaced in Norway, and they still will not disclose
the name of the other submarine. Nor have the Americans provided
information on the submarines' exact whereabouts when the Kursk
went down.
Given that
secrecy, and the likelihood that the Russians will not fully share
what they learn even if they recover the wreckage, it will be
difficult to learn with any certainty what happened to the Kursk.
In 1968 an
American submarine, the Scorpion, sank in the Atlantic near the
Azores. Like the Kursk, it may have have been destroyed in an
accident involving a torpedo misfiring. Other experts have argued
that a faulty battery led to a fire and explosion. But to this
day there is no public explanation of what happened.
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