Posted on 08/06/2005 9:36:49 PM PDT by nuconvert
Russian Sub Surfaces; All Seven Crew Alive
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer
Seven submarine crew members trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean were rescued Sunday after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled the vessel.
The seven crew members, whose oxygen supplies had been dwindling amid underwater temperatures in the mid-40s, appeared to be in satisfactory condition, naval spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said. The seven were being examined by ship medics, he said.
The sub surfaced late Sunday afternoon, some three days after becoming stranded in 600 feet of water off the Pacific Coast on Thursday.
"The rescue operation has ended," Rear Adm. Vladimir Pepelyayev, deputy head of the navy's general staff, said in televised comments.
Russian authorities had hoped that the British unmanned submersible could help free the sub and avoid losing a sub crew as they did with the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank almost exactly five years ago, killing all 118 aboard.
In sharp contrast to the August 2000 Kursk disaster, when authorities held off asking for help until hope was nearly exhausted, Russian military officials quickly sought help from U.S. and British authorities.
Earlier Sunday, a British remote-controlled Super Scorpio cut away the cables that had snarled the vessel in Beryozovaya Bay, about 10 miles off the east coast of the Kamchatka peninsula.
The United States also dispatched a crew and three underwater vehicles to Kamchatka, but they never left the port.
Officials said the Russian submarine was participating in a combat training exercise and got snarled on an underwater antenna assembly that is part of a coastal monitoring system. The system is anchored with a weight of about 66 tons, according to news reports.
Russia's cash-strapped navy apparently lacks rescue vehicles capable of operating at the depth where the sub was stranded, and officials say it was too deep for divers to reach or the crew to swim out on their own. An earlier attempt to drag the vessel to shallower waters failed when cables detached after pulling it some 65 yards.
By early Sunday, President Vladimir Putin had made no public comment on the latest sinking, but Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov had traveled to the site of the rescue operation.
The new crisis has been highly embarrassing for Russia, which will hold an unprecedented joint military exercise with China later this month, including the use of submarines to settle an imaginary conflict in a foreign land. In the exercise, Russia is to field a naval squadron and 17 long-haul aircraft.
neet. Brits get the prize.
I find it odd that no freeper has brought up the question why this Russian submersible was so close to a communication cable to get snagged on it in the first place. The ocean is a big place as evidenced by the eighty years it took to find an ocean liner. Were they tampering with transatlantic cable traffic? Were they involved in corporate or military espionage? These are serious questions that need to be asked before everyone pops the champagne on a successful joint rescue effort.
And why were there 7 aboard?
"I find it odd that no freeper has brought up the question why this Russian submersible was so close to a communication cable to get snagged on it in the first place."
It is great to have asute posters here....
Buckhead and now SpaceBar...
Way to go Brits... (how did they have one so close?)
Now on to another matter... This sub did not look like any military vehicle - (7 man?) So what was it doing participating in a Military Exercise? Does this call into question any Russian claims for peacefull use of these gaudily painted subs?
While I happy the crew is safe I've had the same questions you do.
Why couldn't they be working on their own costal defense system? A cable tapping story would be sexier though.
Now, about those spying antennnas for use against the USA.......
"What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"
Rush said the other day that there were Russo-Sino war games going on. Funny, he thought, that they can have war games but finish up with a British-American rescue.
It was their own antenna. I see no conspiracy.
Great news!
The cable they were snagged on was part of the Russian Submarine Detection network, not a communication cable.
The sub, (oddly enough) is a Rescue and Research Sub. What was it doing participating in a military mission.
What I read today indicated that the sub is a rescue vehicle itself. It is small and only holds 7 men so that it can assist larger, trapped submarines. It was supposed to be on a training mission (rescue training).
This wasn't a communications cable, it was some sort of sensor/antenna array. Since this was pretty close to their bases in Kamchatka, so it make sense that they would have this sort of equipment in the area.
Geez, you're not a sailor. We do plenty of nasty stuff, but when a vessel needs assistance, you give it, no questions asked. It's the law of the sea.
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