Note found on another Russian submariner’s body, official says

Jim Heintz

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2000 | 8:29 a.m.

MOSCOW - The mission to recover remains from a sunken Russian nuclear submarine has turned up a second note on a sailor's body, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said Wednesday, according to the Interfax news agency.

The note was written shortly after the submarine Kursk sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, crippled by explosions, with 118 men aboard, Klebanov told the commission investigating the sinking, the report said.

It was not clear if the note contained information that would help determine the cause of the accident. But, like a previous note found on a sailor's body, it gives a terse description of the trapped sailors' desperation.

"The general feeling is bad ... the pressure is increasing ... we can't last more than a day," the note says in part, according to Interfax.

The note was found on the body of a sailor in the submarine's stern compartment, where the other note also was recovered. That note told of how 23 sailors had crowded into the compartment but were unable to get out the compartment's escape hatch.

Klebanov said that pictures taken of the submarine during the operation to recover bodies has produced new evidence supporting the theory that the accident was caused by a collision with another vessel, possibly a foreign one, news reports said.

The evidence includes videotape footage showing a dent in the submarine's upper section, he said. But Klebanov said other possible causes of the accident are being considered and that no final determination had yet been made.

Russian officials have said the disaster was most likely caused by a collision, pointing to the presence of foreign military vessels in the Barents Sea during the military exercises in which the Kursk was taking part.

Both Britain and the United States had submarines in the Barents Sea, but deny their vessels were in the area of the Kursk. Other observers have said the sinking most likely was caused by a torpedo exploding in a tube.

The sinking was a trauma for Russia, both because the demise of one of its most modern vessels underlined the cash-strapped Navy's troubles and because of the government's slow and apparently confused response.

Russia held off for days on accepting foreign offers of help even as its own divers struggled ineffectually to open the Kursk's escape hatch. Norwegian divers eventually opened it within hours of arriving on the scene, but found the submarine filled with water.