Last week we posted about a report by to the Russian magazine Vlast that claimed that “Russia [was] … on the verge of the largest man-made disaster since Chernobyl” when a fire broke out on December 29th, 2011 on the K-84 Ekaterinburg, a Russian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, in a dry-dock in Murmansk.
Despite claims by the Russian Defense Ministry that the submarine’s weapons had been removed prior to entering the drydock, Vlast said that the submarine was fully armed with 16 R-29 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each armed with four nuclear warheads as well as up to 12 torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles, each tipped with either 300 kilograms of high-power military explosive or a nuclear warhead.
Now, the Deputy Commander of the Northern Fleet, Vice Admiral Aleksander Vitko, has confirmed that the submarine was brought into dock outside Murmansk without first having the weapons removed. Sparks from welding were reported to have set fire to wooden scaffolding which spread to the rubber acoustic coating on the submarine’s hull. If any of the torpedoes had exploded, it is likely that they could have set off the fuel in the ballistic missiles or damaged the nuclear reactors.
Northern Fleet: The burning submarine was armed
Immediately after the fire broke out Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that all weapons had been unloaded from the submarine before she was taken into the dry dock for repair. Earlier this month Kommersant reported that the fire could have developed into the worst anthropogenic catastrophe since Chernobyl, as the submarine had up to 16 intercontinental “Sineva” missiles, each carrying four nuclear warheads, and 12 torpedoes on board when the fire broke out, as BarentsObserver wrote.
Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre last week instructed the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow to hand over a inquiry to Russian authorities to get an answer on whether or not the submarine did have nuclear weapons. “It is a clear obligation in the warning agreement between Norway and Russia from 1993, to have full openness about such events when they happen, ”Støre said.
According to the first official reports from the accident the fire only harmed the outer rubber coating of the submarine. Soon pictures and videos began appearing on blogs and social media that showed the fire was far more severe than the officials said.
According to Lifenews the firefighters that were sent in to put out the fire were not even informed that the submarine had torpedoes on board. Torpedo fuel is highly flammable and extremely toxic.
Holy cow! That’s much different from the first report we had on this. It looked then like the fire was confined to the rubber acoustic tiles (and that is what they first reported), but I had no idea that there was a hole that big in the side of the sub, nor did I realize until now that the fire was indeed inside the sub.
Those flames are burning very intensely, and I wonder what was really burning in there…not only are the Russians legendary for the scope of their industrial accidents, they are also masters of lying about what really happened.
I am amazed at the irresponsible behavior of the Russian Navy. It has been routine in most navies since World War II at least to remove all weapons before drydocking.
However, the holes noticed by BobK look more like torpedo tube outer doors than like damage; note they are perfectly round, and also that the firefighters are concentrating the stream of water on them — for reasons that are explained in the article.
Correction to my previous comment: following the links, it appears there is indeed a huge hole, and also that the hole was deliberately cut. It’s not shown on the photo in the Old Salt Blog post, and to me it doesn’t look like the inside of a torpedo room — there isn’t enough mechanical equipment. More likely it’s a ballast tank, but that adds further to the mystery because there shouldn’t be anything in the ballast tank that could burn. In one of the photos it’s also apparent the hole is a level below the torpedo tubes. It is hard to imagine keeping something that flammable in an area that is normally just a trim tank, but also there is something odd about the structures we see inside the hole in the first, pre-fire picture.