Torpedo sank nuclear sub, says note from the dead
A note left by a dying officer on the Kursk says the nuclear submarine was sunk by the explosion of one of its own torpedoes, reports a Russian newspaper.
The Izvestia has quoted naval officers as saying that the note was written by Lieutenant Rashid Aryapov, who said a misfiring torpedo caused the first explosion.
Navy officials have refused to comment on the claim.
"That confirms the reason for the disaster that is the most unpleasant for the military leadership," the newspaper said.
Russian officials found two notes from different crew members during the operation to retrieve some of the bodies of the Kursk's 118 crewmen last autumn, but said at the time that neither shed any light on the cause of the disaster.
The first note, written by Lieutenant Dmitry Kolesnikov, told of how 23 surviving sailors crowded into the crew's rear compartment and were unable to escape after the Kursk sank in the Barents Sea on August 12.
Until now, officials have never identified the author of the second note or spelled out its contents.
The government hasn't yet made its verdict on the cause, saying the disaster could have been touched off by an internal malfunction, a collision with a foreign submarine or a Second World War mine.
Navy officials have said that a collision with a Western submarine was the most likely version.
The unidentified Northern Fleet officers told Izvestia that the letter described how the heavy submarine had somersaulted in the water after the explosion and pieces of equipment that the shock wave tore from their stowage places injured crew members.
Northern Fleet spokesman Captain Igor Babenko refused to comment on the report.
"The note immediately went to the government commission in charge of investigating the cause of the disaster and we have never seen it," he said.
Igor Spassky, the head of the Rubin design bureau that designed the Kursk, has said that he knew what caused the disaster but refused to name the reason.
Izvestia quoted Igor Kurdin, who leads a group of retired submariners, saying that Spassky had told him that the first blast indeed came from a misfiring torpedo.
