Russian submarine K - 141 Kursk K - 141 " Kursk " was an Oscar - II class nuclear - powered cruise missile submarine of the Russian Navy , lost with all hands when it sank in the Barents Sea on 12 August 2000 . " Kursk " , full name Атомная подводная лодка « Курск » , which , translated , means the nuclear - powered submarine " Kursk " [ АПЛ " Курск " ] in Russian , was a Project 949A Антей ( " Antey " , Antaeus , also known by its NATO reporting name of Oscar II ) . It was named after the Russia n city Kursk , around which the largest tank battle in military history , the Battle of Kursk , took place in 1943 . One of the first vessels completed after the end of the Soviet Union , it was commissioned into the Russian Navy ' s Northern Fleet . Background . Work on building " Kursk " began in 1990 at Severodvinsk , near Arkhangelsk . Launched in 1994 , it was commissioned in December of that year . It was the penultimate Oscar II class submarine designed and approved in the Soviet era . At long and four stories high , she was the largest attack submarine ever built . The outer hull , made of high - nickel , high - chrome content stainless steel thick , had exceptionally good resistance to corrosion and a weak magnetic signature which helped prevent detection by magnetic anomaly detector ( MAD ) systems . There was a gap to the - thick steel pressure hull . " Kursk " was part of Russia ' s Northern Fleet , which had suffered funding cutbacks throughout the 1990s . Many of its submarines were anchored and rusting in Zapadnaya Litsa ( naval base ) , from Murmansk . Little work to maintain all but the most essential front - line equipment , including search and rescue equipment , had occurred . Northern Fleet sailors had gone unpaid in the mid - 1990s . The end of the decade saw something of a renaissance for the fleet ; in 1999 , " Kursk " carried out a successful reconnaissance mission in the Mediterranean , tracking the United States Sixth Fleet during the Kosovo War . August 2000 ' s training exercise was to have been the largest summer drill — nine years after the Soviet Union ' s collapse — involving four attack submarines , the fleet ' s flagship " Pyotr Velikiy " ( " Peter the Great " ) and a flotilla of smaller ships . Explosion . " Kursk " sortied on an exercise to fire dummy torpedo es at the " Kirov " - class battlecruiser " Pyotr Velikiy " . These practice torpedoes had no explosive warheads , and were therefore manufactured and tested to a much lower quality standard . On 12 August 2000 , at 11 : 28 local time ( 07 : 28 UTC ) , there was an explosion while preparing to fire . The most credible report to date indicates the explosion was due to the failure of one of the " Kursk " ' s hydrogen peroxide - fueled Type 65 torpedo es . It is believed HTP , a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide used as propellant for the torpedo , seeped through rust in the torpedo casing . ( A similar explosion caused by an HTP - fuelled torpedo was responsible for the loss of HMS " Sidon " in 1955 . ) The explosion produced a blast equal to of TNT and registered 2 . 2 on the Richter scale . The submarine sank in relatively shallow water , bottoming at about off Severomorsk , at . A second explosion , 135 seconds after the initial event , measured between 3 . 5 and 4 . 4 on the Richter scale , equivalent to 3 - 7 tons of TNT . One of those explosions blew large pieces of debris back through the submarine . Rescue attempts . Though rescue attempts were offered by the British and Norwegian teams , Russia declined initial rescue offers . All 118 sailors and officers aboard " Kursk " perished . The Russian Admiralty at first thought that most of the crew died within minutes of the explosion ; however , some of the sailors had time to write notes . Captain Lieutenant Dmitriy Kolesnikov , one of the survivors of the first explosion , survived in Compartment 9 at the very stern of the boat after blasts destroyed the forward spaces of the submarine . Recovery workers found notes on his body . They showed 23 sailors ( out of 118 aboard ) had waited in the dark with him . There has been much debate over how long the sailors might have survived . Some point out that many potassium superoxide chemical cartridges , used to absorb carbon dioxide and chemically release oxygen to enable survival , were found used when the craft was recovered , suggesting some of the crew survived for a significant time . Kolesnikov ' s last note has a time of 15 : 15 , indicating that he and the others in the aft compartment lived at least four hours after the explosion . However 32 hours after the first explosion no attempt was made acoustically ( i . e . hull tapping ) to signal the Russian Submarine Rescue Vehicle ( SRV ) Priz when it attempted to mate with the aft escape trunk . Western media criticised the 32 hour response as being very slow however the international published SRDS response time in 2000 was 72 hours . The oxygen generator cartridges appear to have been the cause of death ; a sailor appears to have accidentally brought a cartridge in contact with the sea water , causing a chemical reaction and a flash fire . The official investigation into the disaster showed some men appeared to have survived the fire by plunging under the water . ( Fire marks on the walls indicate the water was at waist level in the lower area at this time . ) However , the fire rapidly used up the remaining oxygen in the air , causing death by asphyxiation . While the tragedy of " Kursk " played out in the Far North , Russia ' s then President Vladimir Putin , though immediately informed of the tragedy , waited for five days before he broke a holiday at a presidential resort house in subtropical Sochi on the Black Sea before commenting publicly on the loss of the pride of the Northern Fleet . A year later he said : " I probably should have returned to Moscow , but nothing would have changed . I had the same level of communication both in Sochi and in Moscow , but from a PR point of view I could have demonstrated some special eagerness to return . " Raising . A consortium formed by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International using the barge " Giant 4 " eventually raised " Kursk " and recovered the dead , who were buried in Russia – although three of the bodies were too badly burned to be identified . The heat generated by the first blast detonated the warhead s on 5 to 7 torpedoes causing a series of blasts big enough to be measured on a geological seismometer in the area – and those secondary explosions fatally damaged the vessel . Major concerns existed throughout the salvage operations relating to the armed cruise missiles remaining in the silo compartments , the risk of detonation of unaccounted - for torpedo and torpedo charge fragments , and recriticality or radioactive release from the two nuclear propulsion reactors on board . The London - based nuclear consultant John Large undertook the risk and hazard assessment , adapting this as further facts came to light throughout the salvage period . Russia said that that the sub ' s " Granit " cruise missile s were not carrying nuclear warheads , and no evidence has been provided to the contrary . When the salvage operation raised the boat in 2001 , there were considerable fears that preparing to move the wreck could trigger explosions , because the bow was cut off in the process , using a tungsten carbide - studded cable . This tool had the potential to cause sparks which would ignite remaining pockets of volatile gases , such as hydrogen . The successfully recovered portion of " Kursk " was towed to Severomorsk and placed in a floating dry dock where extensive forensic analysis was accomplished . The remains of " Kursk " ' s reactor compartment were towed to Sayda Bay on Russia ' s northern Kola Peninsula – where more than 50 reactor compartments were afloat at pier points – after a shipyard had defuelled the boat in early 2003 . The rest of the boat was then dismantled . In the end the bow was not recovered and was destroyed by explosives in 2002 . Only small pieces of the bow were recovered ( some torpedo and torpedo tube fragments etc . ) Investigation . In July 2002 , the investigation committee concluded that a technical malfunction on a single Type 65 - 76 " Kit " ( Whale ) torpedo caused the first explosion triggering a fire in the torpedo room which , 2 minutes later , caused a detonation of additional torpedoes stored in the torpedo room ( second explosion ) . The second explosion destroyed a large section of the submarine ( at least 4 of the 9 compartments ) killing up to 95 of the 118 crew members and causing the submarine to sink . Around 23 crew members survived the sinking and took refuge in the ninth compartment where they died due to carbon monoxide poisoning following a fire in that compartment ( between 6 and 32 hours after the sinking ) .