The nuclear submarine involved in Russia’s worst naval disaster for eight years was destined to be delivered to the Indian Navy, it was reported yesterday.

Russia was mourning the victims of the accident that killed 20 people and injured 21 on board the Nerpa, an attack submarine that was undergoing sea trials when its firefighting system activated suddenly.

The Nerpa was due to be leased to the Indian Navy in a contract worth £415 million over ten years, according to reports. Indian media said that the submarine was due to enter service next August, although the Russian paper Kommersant quoted a shipyard official as saying that production problems had forced delivery to be postponed twice from its original date of August last year.

India’s Navy declined to comment. The head of the Navy, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, has stated previously that India was negotiating to lease two Russian nuclear submarines.

The addition of new nuclear submarines to India’s naval armoury would strengthen its hand in the rivalry with China for dominance in the Indian Ocean. India leased a nuclear submarine from the Soviet Union previously between 1988 and 1991.

The Nerpa, an Akula II attack submarine, sustained no damage in Saturday’s accident off Russia’s Pacific coast, Russian officials said. It is considered among Russia’s quietest and most deadly vessels, capable of firing cruise missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles).

The dead and injured were overcome by freon gas, which extinguishes fires by expelling oxygen from the surrounding environment. Officials in the Far East port of Bolshoi Kamen are still investigating what caused the system to go off and why the victims lacked protection from gas masks that are issued to submarine crews.

The Governor of Khabarovsk region, Viktor Ishayev, disclosed that the Nerpa had been testing an automated system that differed from previous models. “The system must be modified. If there is any threat to human lives, the system should not turn on automatically,” he said.

There was speculation that the tragedy could have been caused by something as simple as a cigarette being lit while the vessel was underwater. The Nerpa had 208 people on board, three times its normal crew of 73.

Only 81 were navy personnel and the rest were civilian engineers from the Bolshoi Kamen shipyard that built the submarine. Seventeen of the dead were civilians, prompting claims that they either lacked the necessary safety masks or did not know how to use them in an emergency.

The head of the Navy, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, led a meeting of investigators and pledged to help families of the bereaved as a church service was held in Vladivostok, home to Russia’s Pacific Fleet. Relatives of the 20 people who died have been offered initial compensation of $3,700 each.

RED ALERTS

June 2000
Fuel leak from a missile poisons many servicemen at a naval base in the Russian Far East

July 2000
Kursk sinks in Barents Sea, killing all 118 submariners

August 2005
British Navy rescues seven Russian sailors in trapped in a minisubmarine sunk off Russia’s Pacific coast

Source: Times archives

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