However, apart from the two explosions registered by Norwegian seismologists (NATO representatives were insistently talking about them at that time) there was also a third explosion. Jimmy Carter heavily damaged during the ram attack was slowly crawling away from the Kursk, throwing distress buoys. 45 minutes and 18 seconds were needed to the American submarine to get away from the place of accident by only half a mile. Most probably the submarine was practically drifting. During all this time its crew was desperately fighting for their lives. But at this time an explosion was heard on the American submarine cruiser. After this all trace of the killer submarine vanished. Most probably slow paced, it got to the closest NATO military base, where it is hiding to this day. The Americans demonstrated the second Los Angeles-class submarine Memphis to the entire world. And they even let the VGTRK correspondent Sergey Brilev to a safe distance to it. Nobody has ever seen the first submarine.”
Further Stringer substantiates its text: “The records of hydro-acoustic instruments made by specialists of the RF Navy show that three explosions were heard in the area where the Kursk was lost. The first at 7:30AM on August 12th was a small one – equivalent to up to 300 grams of trotil, the second 145 seconds later; a more powerful one – equivalent to up to 1700 kg of trotil. The third – after 45 minutes and 18 seconds. It was equivalent to up to 400 grams of trotil.
The first and the second are identified with the place where the Kursk was discovered, in an area of about 150 meters in the diameter of variation. The third was registered about 700-1000 meters from the spot where the Kursk is located. … All the above-mentioned permits to conclude that the version about Kursk being hit by a military product, an hydrogen explosion or a mining does not appear to be possible. Since in this case the lapse of time between the first two explosions is unexplainable.
The available data shows that a possible cause for the detonation of the torpedoes could have been Kursk’s collision with the bottom of Barents Sea that followed the first explosion at 7:30AM on August 12th. A 120-meters-long gash from the submarine is clearly seen on the seabed.
The total absence of any attempts by the submarine crew to use any rescue equipment or distress signalization in the following 145 minutes demonstrates that the control over the submarine was lost in the first 10-20 seconds after the beginning of the tragedy. This (the loss of control) could have happened only as the result of a rapid flooding (burning) of the second control compartment, consisting of four levels making up 500 cubic meters in total. Such large-scale damages by a small explosion registered at 7:30AM are unlikely. According to Rubin Design Bureau where the submarine was projected, the solidity of its body and the air reserves allow to keep the control over this kind of ships when one of their compartments is hit by a directed weapon equivalent to 500 kg of trotil. It would be truer to see this explosion not as the cause of the Kursk’s loss, but as a consequence (sign) of an unfolding catastrophe. According to the constructors such an explosion could have been caused by a mechanical blow to one of the high-tension containers situated between the light and the solid bodies in the area between the first and the second compartment. In this case the version of the Kursk’s collision with an underwater object becomes the most probable one.”
As we see from the analysis of the Kursk catastrophe given here during the very first month the investigation possessed credible information about what has happened. In reality, I have already mentioned that in the evening of August 15th the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy Vladimir Kuroedov said that possibly the Kursk collided with an American submarine. In response the USA organized an information leak about the two explosions on the Kursk and put forward the version about trying a new missile-traction torpedo that supposedly has become the cause of the tragedy. “At this moment, continues the Stringer, the president and the Defense Ministry were already one hundred percent sure that the Kursk collided with another submarine. A distress buoy was fished out (a white and green buoy, which are used in emergency situations in the US Navy. We use red and white buoys), and fragments of the killer-sub remaining on the place of the accident were lifted from the seabed. Only the ‘national identity’ of the sub was not determined. Hypocritically parroting about a new Russian torpedo the Americans apparently hoped that there would be not enough fragments of the Sea wolf-class submarine for fully identifying its nationality.”
Further the Stringer cites materials from the RF Defense Ministry about NATO ships and planes in the area of the Barents Sea. “According to the data collected by radio intelligence and acoustic scanning two USA submarines were present in the area of training exercises of the Northern Fleet from August 7th to 12th. One of them was a Los Angeles-class, the other a Sea wolf-class. Also the Norwegian Navy ship Maryata and up to five Orion spying planes were involved. Right after the Kursk catastrophe the espionage activities of the above mentioned ships rapidly declined, which is not typical of NATO actions in such situations; in such cases they try to gather the most detailed information. Instead NATO ships left the training area and called at bases in Norway. … The American submarines left the training area, but from that moment all information about these submarines ceased to enter. The Los Angeles-class submarine is called at a Norwegian base, where the crew is replaced. The whereabouts of the second submarine are not established. … Estimations show that the solidity characteristics and also the constructive particularities of some US types of submarines allow versions, in which damages occurred during a collision do not lead to catastrophic consequences for the ramming submarine. In the situation with the Kursk submarine a situation is possible, in which the ramming submarine was ‘lifted’ and pushed to the surface by the Kursk after reaping its body, which gave the crew time for an active organization of rescue operations. … Sea wolf-class submarines are considered more modern than Los Angeles-class ones. Their production was unfolded in the midst of the Cold War, after which the expensive project was folded. All submarines of that type were reequipped as exercise trainers. All except for one. A Sea wolf-class submarine, the US Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) was modernized and given to the NATO forces. A new nuclear reactor was installed on it, making the sub more silent and invisible. The body was strengthened with ceramic and plastic, which augmented the diving capacity. The navigation equipment was replaced with a modern one with an ultrasound system. But the navigation remained Carter’s weak spot. The last of Sea Wolves was exclusively used for intelligence operations, since it was not equipped with a system of vertical launching of nuclear missiles.”
The day after Russia officially acknowledged the Kursk catastrophe, Great Britain, Norway and the USA proposed their help to rescue the sub crew. Great Britain’s Defense Minister Jeff Hoon made it twice and commenting it each time. The first time he said: “Concerning the version about the Kursk’s collision with a foreign submarine, this was certainly not a British submarine”. In the second: “At that time there was no ships of Great Britain’s Navy in the disaster area. Therefore they could not have been involved in a collision with the Kursk.” Nevertheless the NATO staff already knew that Russia knows about the collision of the Kursk with a US submarine. The entire day of August 16th information was circulating about talks and consultations between British and Russian militaries. Most probably they were sorting out the confusion that appeared in the beginning because of the official registration of the SNN-23 to the NATO. (There was also confusion in names. An attentive reader has probably already noticed that in one case the killer-sub is called Jimmy Carter and in the other Toledo. According to my sources, it was renamed Toledo and included in NATO’s naval group – E. L.) The day ended with an official request for help from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs only to Great Britain and Norway. And on August 17th Putin officially thanked Great Britain’s Premier Tony Blair for the help. Even Israel’s Premier Ehud Barak was awarded with gratitude. However the RF president has not said a word about the USA and Clinton.
Also on August 17th the Deputy Head of Staff of the RF Navy, the V
ice-admiral Alexander Pobozhy held talks in Brussels with the commander of NATO’s united forces. At the end of the meeting it was declared that “complete mutual understanding” was reached. The national identity of the killer-sub was finally established. On August 18th the Rear-admiral Kraig Quigley from the Pentagon declared: “The Kursk accident does not say anything about the state of readiness of the Russian Navy. I would draw no such macro-conclusions from this or any other accident. They can occur for a variety of reasons to a variety of navies around the world. So I think our focus and our concern at this point is to try to rescue those crew members on board that submarine.” The result of admiral Quigley’s declaration was a change of tone in the Western press in its covering of the Kursk tragedy. Before this Western media wrote about “the end of the Russian Navy and Putin’s dreams about the rebirth of Russia’s naval glory”. After this a human and compassionate pattern started to dominate.
After August 21st, when the loss of the Kursk crew was declared, many heads of States have called Putin and presented him their condolences. Clinton called as well. One can only guess what they were talking about. The official information said that Putin “pronounced words of gratefulness and expressed his assurance in further mutual understanding”. In the beginning of September 2000 Putin has met with Clinton in New York.
It is interesting that it is from September 2000 that the Russian authorities have started to badly react on any information about a collision with an American killer-sub as the reason of the Kursk’s loss. Thus, on September 27th 2000 Linter cites an article in the Versia newspaper untitled “Version: Putin and Clinton have agreed to hide the truth about Kursk’s loss. The text says: “The authorities of Russia and USA knew that the reason of Kursk’s loss was a collision with an American submarine, but they hid this information in order to avoid an armed conflict. ” This information, together with a photo of an American submarine called at a Norwegian naval base for repairs soon after the Kursk accident was published by the Versia newspaper on September 26th. A Russian satellite made the photo on August 19th 2000, affirm the journalists. The same day Russia’s minister of defense was given a photo of a damaged American submarine called at Haakonsvern, a Norwegian naval base. At the same time the CIA director George Tenet arrived in Moscow with the purpose of hushing up a conflict that could lead to a war, the newspaper writes. Remember that the Russian media have made the supposition that the reason for the Kursk’s loss was a collision with Memphis, an American Los Angeles-class submarine. The photo shows a submarine precisely of that type, having serious damages in the frontal part, as the journalists found out. Probably it is the Memphis or the Toledo sub. And already on November 10th, two weeks later, the agency Echo of Moscow declared that – I am citing the title and the text – “Criminal charges were brought against the Versia newspaper for the publication of photos of an American submarine, which supposedly collided with the Kursk. A criminal case was opened in connection to the publication in the Versia newspaper of photos of an American submarine, which supposedly collided with the Kursk submarine, said the editor of Versia’s investigations section Dmitry Filimonov. He appears on the case as a witness. Friday a computer was confiscated from the newspaper offices. The confiscation was done after D. Filimonov was interrogated in Moscow district’s FSB as the author of an article, which said that the Kursk submarine has preliminary collided with an American submarine. … ’The special services were interested in the satellite photos published in the newspaper. The photos show an American submarine called at a Norwegian naval base and showing clear signs of damage in the frontal part’, explained D. Filimonov. The special services are now trying to find out where did he get the photos. According to D. Filimonov, the newspaper received the photos from an anonymous individual who sent a disc with the information in an envelope.”
On November 5th 2001 the site Dni.ru published the position of the Prosecutor General citing Interfax: “The Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov has again refuted the supposition that the Kursk submarine might have been lost after a collision with another submarine. According to Interfax, Vladimir Ustinov declared that at the present moment the investigation does not have any such supposition.”
It was to be expected that already in 2003, after the false conclusions of Klebanov’s commission, on February 6th “the Federal Security Service refuted claims that the FSB is putting under doubt the results of the investigation about the Kursk’s loss.” According to RIA-Novosti “The FSB refuted the claims of a Moscow newspaper that “the FSB is putting under doubt the investigation of the Kursk’s loss”. As RIA-Novosti informed Thursday in the FSB Center of Public relations, the information presented in the article of a Moscow newspaper in February 2003 does not correspond to reality.” When mister Putin’s FSB or mister Putin’s Prosecutor General refute something, RF citizens usually suppose that what is refuted is the truth.
Meanwhile, all the largest Russian naval specialists have unanimously and independently from one another said: yes, there was a collision with a killer-submarine.
Back in August 18th 2000 the former commander of the Black Sea Fleet, adm. Edward Baltin has declared this to Echo of Moscow. “The accident aboard the Kursk submarine took place in result of a collision; not with a dry cargo ship or an icebreaker, but with an American submarine.”
On November 16th 2001 the Izvestia newspaper has published a long interview with the Vice-admiral Mikhail Motzak, Chief of Staff of the Northern Fleet. The interview in Izvestia is followed by the newspaper afterword. Here it is: “The Vice-admiral Mikhail Motzak, Chief of Staff of the Northern Fleet was among the instructors of the training exercises during which the Kursk was lost. Today we are publishing a confession, which the vice-admiral made in a conversation with the Izvestia correspondent Konstantin Getmansky. For the first time the Vice-admiral brings evidence that the Kursk was lost in result of a collision with a foreign submarine. We do not know why he decided to tell about this now. The military that occupy such high functions very rarely make such declarations without consulting their leadership. If such a consultation took place, it means that after the Kursk was salvaged, the commission managed to obtain the final evidence of a collision. However, if it did not – it means that the Vice-admiral staked his all, placing his admiral’s honor above his carrier.” I will cite the most interesting passages from the interview with the Vice-admiral.
“A lot of direct signs were registered proving that a second underwater object, possibly wrecking itself, was in the vicinity of the wrecking Kursk. Peter the Great has registered this object with hydro-acoustic equipment. It was also visually registered by people who tried to get distress buoys out of the water…
– Then why wasn’t the buoy fished out? It could have served as evidence of a collision.
– The buoy was retained by a cable-rope about three-meters-deep. It was practically anchored. Anything could have been this anchor.
– Could it have been another submarine?
– Yes. And when an officer tried to hook the buoy with a gaff he didn’t succeed. Unfortunately, later the buoy was lost because of bad weather. By the evening of August 13th our pilots have registered fuel bubbles on a distance of about 18 miles to the northwest from the Kursk. Then anti-submarine planes discovered a submarine leaving the Barents Sea. The same flight was done on the following day, in order to confirm the location of this submarine, but the signal of all of our hydro-acoustic buoys was suppressed on all the channels by our ‘friends’ from NATO.
– Then why was the ‘underwater’ object lost by such ships as Peter the Great and Admiral Chabanenko, which are specially designed for searching submarines?
– As a head of staff I admit that this was a neglect. When it discovered the sunken submarine and registered a second underwater object, Peter the Great decided its main task was to bring rescue forces to the Kursk. Maybe it was wrong. In this situation it had to execute both the rescue task and the task of finding out the real cause of the catastrophe.”
Another confession: “Twenty three people in the ninth compartment have maybe died eight hours after the catastrophe, already when the compartment was flooded. Still sailors might have remained alive in the fifth and the second-fifth compartment and they continued to bang. We heard the last bangs at 11:00AM on August 14th.” This confession is unpleasant for president Putin. After all he gave the sanction to the Navy for using foreign help to rescue the crew only on August 16th (I remind that the Navy did not possess the technical means itself). Only after it has been two days that the banging stopped.
On December 13th 2001 a Soviet Union Hero, former commander of the nuclear submarines fleet, the Vice-admiral Matushkin gave an interview to the Pravda newspaper. The newspaper writes: “He reminded that white and green buoys were found on the surface in the vicinity of the accident, which are used in emergency situations in the US Navy. ‘We have red and white buoys’, the Vice-admiral said. Then, in his words, a distress signal from a submarine was acoustically registered. ‘Doubtlessly, it was a foreign submarine. In our fleet such signals are not transmitted automatically for secrecy reasons.” He supposed that the tragedy was unfolding according to the following scenario. The Kursk and the foreign submarine were going towards each other on different depths. The Russian submarine was going deeper than “the American submarine and when they collided it received damages on the upper left side.” With such an upper damage it is impossible to create counter-pressure and stop the water from entering. “Our submarine that had a speed of, let’s say, 5-6 knots, has sharply taken a trim by the bow (50-60 degrees) and sunk to the bottom”, Matushkin pointed out. Also a shelved torpedo fell and hit the body of the submarine. Then it detonated. Lev Matuhskin categorically disapproved the version of a torpedo dysfunction causing the Kursk’s loss. He considers that this “illiterate declaration is intended for the naivety of the society. Such declarations are an attempt to compromise the submarine crew and the services of torpedo bases.” As regarding the claims and the conclusions of the attorneys, then, as Matushkin said, “not a single attorney, even a military one, can be considered an expert in naval affairs. Only the opinion of a real expert in submarines can be precious here, obviously on the condition that he is honest.”
Limonov vs. Putin Page 7