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And death shall have no dominion...
Aug. 22nd, 2000 11:00 pmThough they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
So saith the late Dylan Thomas (with a nod to a collection of verse titled Romans).
The Russian government has declared tomorrow to be a national day of mourning for the crew of the ill-fated nuclear submarine Kursk. Reliable news of what happened has been difficult to come by. Between the inbred tendency of the ex-Soviet military to Never Reveal Anthing (Lest the Enemy Learn Our Secrets) and the ability of journalists to manufacture every kind of fantasy (and Russian newsies seem even more imaginative than our home-grown product), there is the truth, which will never be known.
Initially, I avoided listening to news of the Kursk, because quite frankly, I didn't think the crew had a snowflake's chance in hell of survival. After all, when a submarine suffers damage severe enough to scram its reactor and cause the boat to settle to the bottom, the pressure at a depth of 350 feet will magnify the effects of any damage. Small cracks will become big cracks, and structures built to withstand the enormous pressures of the sea will fail.
However, piece by piece, bit by bit, I was drawn into the story, not that I expected a rescue to succeed, but because to me, the rescue attempt itself exemplified the best in human action. (How many times have you read of rescuers risking their lives - and sometimes dying themselves - in an effort to save someone? It happens all the time. I, for one, am happy to be a member of such a species.) But I digress...
In the end, despite the attempt at rescue, the story of the Kursk also exemplified much of what stinks about human nature. Secrecy. Cover-up. Cover-your-ass.
The military initially claimed that the Kursk had collided with another, presumably Western submarine. Besides NATO and U.S. denials, it turns out that the damage inflicted on the bow of the Kursk, according to NTV - one of Russia's biggest independent networks - excludes this possibility, based on Norwegian observations. A rumor I heard via my own Russian contacts - to the effect that an ignited missile failed to exit its tube - would also seem to be false.
This leaves the "leftover-WW-II" mine theory - which is very, very doubtful - and the most likely scenario: a torpedo malfunction. Yet even here, there are variations on a theme. The most generic scenario is that something caused one of the torpedos aboard the Kursk to explode, resulting in a secondary explosion and loss of the boat. On the other hand, NTV broadcast a story suggesting that the developers of the `Shkval' high-speed torpedo system launched a torpedo that accidentially homed on the sub itself. Your guess as to where they got their information is as good as mine; I'd guess they lifted the story idea from the climax of the film Hunt for Red October.
All of this is idle gossip, of course, and skirts the incontrovertible fact that the crew is dead.
May they rest in peace.
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
So saith the late Dylan Thomas (with a nod to a collection of verse titled Romans).
The Russian government has declared tomorrow to be a national day of mourning for the crew of the ill-fated nuclear submarine Kursk. Reliable news of what happened has been difficult to come by. Between the inbred tendency of the ex-Soviet military to Never Reveal Anthing (Lest the Enemy Learn Our Secrets) and the ability of journalists to manufacture every kind of fantasy (and Russian newsies seem even more imaginative than our home-grown product), there is the truth, which will never be known.
Initially, I avoided listening to news of the Kursk, because quite frankly, I didn't think the crew had a snowflake's chance in hell of survival. After all, when a submarine suffers damage severe enough to scram its reactor and cause the boat to settle to the bottom, the pressure at a depth of 350 feet will magnify the effects of any damage. Small cracks will become big cracks, and structures built to withstand the enormous pressures of the sea will fail.
However, piece by piece, bit by bit, I was drawn into the story, not that I expected a rescue to succeed, but because to me, the rescue attempt itself exemplified the best in human action. (How many times have you read of rescuers risking their lives - and sometimes dying themselves - in an effort to save someone? It happens all the time. I, for one, am happy to be a member of such a species.) But I digress...
In the end, despite the attempt at rescue, the story of the Kursk also exemplified much of what stinks about human nature. Secrecy. Cover-up. Cover-your-ass.
The military initially claimed that the Kursk had collided with another, presumably Western submarine. Besides NATO and U.S. denials, it turns out that the damage inflicted on the bow of the Kursk, according to NTV - one of Russia's biggest independent networks - excludes this possibility, based on Norwegian observations. A rumor I heard via my own Russian contacts - to the effect that an ignited missile failed to exit its tube - would also seem to be false.
This leaves the "leftover-WW-II" mine theory - which is very, very doubtful - and the most likely scenario: a torpedo malfunction. Yet even here, there are variations on a theme. The most generic scenario is that something caused one of the torpedos aboard the Kursk to explode, resulting in a secondary explosion and loss of the boat. On the other hand, NTV broadcast a story suggesting that the developers of the `Shkval' high-speed torpedo system launched a torpedo that accidentially homed on the sub itself. Your guess as to where they got their information is as good as mine; I'd guess they lifted the story idea from the climax of the film Hunt for Red October.
All of this is idle gossip, of course, and skirts the incontrovertible fact that the crew is dead.
May they rest in peace.
