I was lucky enough to ride Memphis from FL to New London shortly after the Kursk incident. The Captain told us that they were there but were in no way involved with the sinking.
This is a note I received from an retired Naval Officer shortly after this report came out:
"I can tell you that this article is BULL SHIT>>>>>>>>> The warhead on the 48 is a conventional explosive and doesn't melt through any pressure hull material. It kills by over pressure that causes hull failure. I have also seen a lot of other information on the Kursk incident and the most credible is that they had a Weapons Incident similar to that that sunk the Scorpion. We stopped using NAVOL, Hydrogen Peroxide, when we decommissioned the Mk 16 Torpedo in the 60’s due to the instability of the NAVOL. It was fine in Conventional Boats where you ventilated frequently, but in the NUC’s it could be more of a problem , even though I can’t recall anyone ever having a serious NAVOL problem that led to a fire or explosion. The Russians were experimenting with a new long range, high speed, weapon that was powered by a NAVOL-like fuel and they had a weapon problem in the room. All the cover up was the Soviet Cold War Mentality that prevented them from asking for help in a timely manner that would allowed a UK or US DSRV to get on sight."