Keeping the blogosphere posted on the goings on of the world of submarines since late 2004... and mocking and belittling general foolishness wherever it may be found. Idaho's first and foremost submarine blog. (If you don't like something on this blog, please E-mail me; don't call me at home.)

Monday, August 08, 2005

MosNews Synopsis of AS-28 Saga

MosNews has a timeline up of last week's events of the trapping and subsequent rescue of the crew of AS-28. They also provide some guesses as to what was happening behind the scenes:

"The first and only official cause of the accident was a fishing net. That was what the navy insisted upon from the start, that is what Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Viktor Fyodorov said, and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov named nets asthe culprits when he commented on the results of the rescue operation."Still, the journalists doubted the version from the start. First of all, sailors from the region said that there had never been any fishing in the Berezovaya Bay. Official sources immediately implicated illegal poachers, and closed the issue. But then the Kommersant daily, citing its sources in the navy, reported that propellers of the submarine have special mechanisms protecting them from such incidents. [Note: That would be the Russian equivalent of a "rope guard", I guess.] Moreover, the newspaper named specifically the kind of research the submarine was conducting: they were to replace a part of a hydro acoustical apparatus installed with the aim of fighting nuclear submarines from the United States. The mysterious “60-tonn anchor” was