Posted on 08/07/2005 6:01:41 PM PDT by blam
Submariners in peril are saved by the 'brotherhood of the sea'
By Nick Allen and Caroline Davies
(Filed: 08/08/2005)
Seven Russian submariners who were trapped for three days on the icy Pacific Ocean floor emerged dazed but elated yesterday after a Royal Navy-led rescue team freed them hours before their oxygen ran out.
Looking shaken, the sailors climbed unaided from their stricken Priz AS-28 submersible as it resurfaced once the cables and fishing nets ensnaring it were cut by a diving robot operated by a British team flown out from Scotland.
The crew of the Priz AS-28 submersible breath again as their ship resurfaces after being freed
The dramatic rescue, off Russia's far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, came amid some estimates that the men had fewer than 10 hours of air left as they lay trapped 625 ft under the sea.
To conserve energy and precious oxygen, they had been forced to shut down most of the power inside the sunken mini-submarine, itself a rescue vessel, and turn off the heater.
With temperatures at around 5C they had donned thermal suits to try to keep warm. They lay huddled together in the dark in just one compartment, trying to remain as still as possible to reduce their use of oxygen.
Rescue mission: click to enlarge
At the same time they were in danger from the build-up of carbon dioxide from their exhaled breath.
Conditions were "pretty awful", said Cdr Ian Riches, the leader of the British team operating the Scorpio 45 submersible, which is fitted with lights, cameras and powerful cable-cutting pincers.
"Let's put it this way, it must be like being inside a lift trapped between floors but a lot, lot deeper, cold and lonely," he added.
"If we had not been able to cut them free … they would have died.
Lt Capt Milashevsky leads his crew back on to dry land
"From the Russians' perspective it was probably getting quite cold, dark because they would have been saving electricity; the atmosphere would have been getting quite foul with a rise of carbon dioxide which would have been making them quite unwell."
After the men were safely brought ashore at the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, where they were greeted by an ecstatic crowd, Russia's defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, saluted the rescuers.
"We have seen in deeds, not in words, what the brotherhood of the sea means," said Mr Ivanov, who was dispatched by President Vladimir Putin to supervise the operation.
But, for a nation still haunted by the tragedy of the Kursk five years ago, when 118 submariners died on the Barents seabed after Russia fatally delayed seeking foreign help, the latest drama underscored the Russian navy's lack of preparedness for rescue operations despite Mr Putin's promises to restore the country's military might.
Russian navy ships had tried in vain for almost three days to loop cables under the red-and-white Priz AS-28 in an attempt to raise it to around 200 ft so that divers could safely reach the men.
A Priz AS-28 submersible [left] and a Scorpio robot submersible
Another attempt to tow the craft to land faltered when the recovery cables hooked but then slipped off.
As hopes rose, then fell, the Royal Navy was already preparing to fly out its remote-controlled robot submersible.
The Scorpio 45, which is managed and operated by Glasgow-based marine specialists James Fisher Rumic, touched down in Petropavlovsk-Yelizovo with an eight-man team at 6am (GMT) on Saturday to began its journey to the rescue site.
By the time it was lowered into the Bay of Beryozovaya at 10.25 that night, conditions for the trapped men were deteriorating hourly.
Amid conflicting reports about how much oxygen was left, contact with the world above had been severely restricted during the three days as the rescue attempts by the Russian ships failed.
Desperate to save power, the Priz's commander, Lt-Capt Vyacheslav Milashevsky had been forced to limit radio contact with the surface to the briefest of messages every few hours.
Although just 25, Milashevshy, the father of two-year-old twin girls, is regarded as a seasoned sailor. He was leading his seventh sub voyage, and had already received an award for his skills.
Yesterday he won plaudits, along with his five crewmen and a civilian engineer, for remaining utterly professional during their ordeal.
Throughout it all, they had clung on to hope, he revealed. "We believed the whole time that we would be saved," he said later.
By the time the British Scorpio was in place, a dozen Russian vessels and four Japanese navy ships were still making their way to the rescue site, along with two US Super Scorpio diving robots flown from California.
Within 20 minutes of taking up position, Scorpio's operators had used its three cameras to locate the 55-ton mini-submarine. The vessel, which had been on a military exercise reportedly repairing the sonar system that tracks US submarines, had become snarled in debris.
The propeller of the 44 ft vessel appeared to have become entangled in fishing gear. But there were unconfirmed reports that its hull was caught on an underwater sonar antenna lattice, held down by two 30-ton concrete anchors.
Mr Ivanov later insisted that the biggest cable was from a fishing net laid by poachers. However, the area is also home to Russian submarine and test-range facilities. "The main thing is to save people," said Adml Viktor Fyodorov, Russia's Pacific Fleet commander, apparently determined not to let sensitivities about military secrets compromise the rescue mission.
On the surface, the British team deployed the Scorpio's cutters all too aware this was a race against time.
"We were conscious that the crew were running out of oxygen and that we could not afford any great delays in cutting them free," said Cdr Jonty Powis. "This was a fairly routine procedure, but the fact that we were dealing with people's lives created extra difficulties."
The Scorpio 45 began cutting at around midnight and continued for three hours. Then there was a glitch and at 3am the robot had to be brought to the surface for minor repairs to its cutting tool.
It was resubmerged, and finally cut through the last cable and the vessel resurfaced at 3.23am. The Priz AS-28 immediately blew its tanks and three minutes later was on the surface. The crew lifted the hatch themselves and clambered out, to be taken to the mainland by ship.
In all, the rescue had taken five hours.
"It was a fairly long operation, with quite a lot of cutting, but eventually when most of it was freed, the submarine blew a ballast tank and came free and shot to the surface," said Roger Chapman, the managing director of Rumic.
Adml Fyodorov praised the bravery of the Russian crew: "We didn't hear one whimper of complaint from down there. Just that their condition was normal, because they knew that only by showing courage would there be the happy outcome that we see today."
At the edge of the gangplank leading to the shore at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Capt Milashevsky performed a long and solemn salute, then a slight smile crossed his face. "I'm fine," he said as he climbed into a van to be taken to hospital.
"It was cold, cold, very cold," said one of his crewmen.
The Defence Secretary, John Reid, called the rescue "a fine example of international co-operation in the face of great difficulty".
Adml Fyodorov was unstinting in praise of the rescuers. "We bow before the experience brought by the sailor rescuers of Great Britain's Royal Navy," he said on national television, describing the British team as having "good technical equipment" and "the highest professionalism".
"Today was a very happy event … Our comrades in the crew opened the hatch themselves. They behaved valiantly over these 76 hours under water, we heard no complaints, all we heard was that they were fine … It's worth living for these moments," he added.
One voice not immediately heard was that of Mr Putin, who made no public comment during the three-day operation. His spokesman Alexei Gromov said the president was grateful to all those involved.
But the incident has highlighted deficiencies, especially an apparent lack of deep sea rescue equipment.
"If the country has modern submarines, then it should have effective rescue capabilities," said Adml Vyacheslav Popov, the commander of the Northern Fleet, which operated the doomed Kursk. "Otherwise it means more tragedy and us having to turn again to Nato countries for help."
Opposition parties vowed to raise the affair in parliament. "It is completely incomprehensible why the British have the necessary technology but we don't," said the Communist party leader, Gennady Zyuganov. "If we can't make effective rescue equipment ourselves, we need to buy it abroad."
"I am afraid this is not the last tragedy," one MP, Viktor Ilyukhin, told Kommersant newspaper.
The start of the domestic recriminations was far from the mind of Capt Milashevsky's wife, Yelena, who had endured a harrowing three days waiting for news of her husband.
On hearing that the crew had been rescued, she said: "My feelings danced. I was happy, I cried."
Hmmmm.....I heard the USA also lent a hand, as we sent something from McChord Air Base here......
Bump for outstanding news from a fellow sailor (though not a submariner --they are a special breed unto themselves).
Communism is definitely dead in Russia.
It will be a good day when it is dead in the USA.
We were en route with equipment but it was the Royal Navy's show. They deserve the Bravo Zulus.
Happy for the Russians too. We're going to need them in the coming war against Islamo-fascism.
It's a tank with a hole in the bottom, when the sub submerges the air in the tank is vented out. When it is time to surface, compressed air is forced into the top of the tank which blows the water out the hole in the bottom, producing positive bouyancy.
I understand now, makes sense. Thanks.
That means that they pressurized a ballast tank with compressed air..., expelling the seawater and thus, making the sub rapidly rise to the surface. Ballast tanks are gradually filled with seawater to establish "neutral weight condition" relative to the depth at which the sub is operating.
It's amazing. After more than forty years, I can still remember the sequence (front to back) of the tanks on an old WW-2 diesel sub. N,N,M,M,F,S,A,F,F,M,M,C,E,N,N.
Thanks for your reply.
It's getting stronger here.
Eminent domain and the no smoke in your own business.
The liberal elite commies know better than us common folk.
All they need is total control of the government and we're toast.
Then there will be no America to win our freedom back!
Thank goodness someone made it there in time!
Great job--to our U.K. cousins!
Thank you God for answered prayers.
Amen.
Roger that.
Drew68 is correct. We did our best, but it was the UK who got it done. We need to give all the congrats to the UK. There were three USN divers that helped in the sea while the UK piloted the ROV.
We don't have the full story why it took so long for us to get our equipment on the Russian ship and get to the site. Something got fouled up somewhere. Maybe we will hear why we could not get there in time in the coming days.
But for gosh sakes, goodness wins, give the UK the credit. That is an incredible rescue and the UK came through.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.
Subs can get into very dangerous situations suddenly and rescue can be completely unfeasable. Some have suggested matching sub and rescue hatches, but the subs who wreck are not typically on the bottom in such a way as to present their rescue hatches for all to latch onto.
The dynamics of underwater speeds during ship sinkings will astonish anyone. The SSN Thresher was estimated to be going at least (a) 100 MPH, (b)50 MPH (c) 299 MPH (d) over 500 MPH when it hit bottom.
Your guess?
The Brits needed this moment to feel proud to be British. This will encourage them to fight to hang on to their heritage in the face of Muslim extremists and others who want them to feel bad about who they are and what they stand for. This moment is also important, because the Russian people (and the rest of the world)are being shown that the the Brits and the US are good people. God works in strange ways, doesn't he. :>)
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