News From the Week
Many different sites reported this week about the fire which occurred on the Delta-IV submarine Yekaterinburg in late December 2011. The reason that this is making news now is because it is being reported that the submarine had not offloaded its torpedo's or ballistic missiles prior to entering dry-dock. Before the fire was extinguished the submarine was on the brink of a nuclear disaster, on the scale of Chernobyl. Here is a good explanation of what happened leading up to the fire and during the fire.
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| The Yekaterinburg with flames coming from the bow section. forums.airbase.ru |
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| This is where the hull was being repaired. You can see where the flames from the picture above were coming from. |
To make it short and sweet the submarine had some damage to its hull and needed to be repaired. The submarine was put in dry dock and repairs were started, shortly after that the fire started. What wasn't said in the above explanation was that the common practice for the Russian Navy is to off load all weapons from the submarine prior to it entering dry dock, but according to sources this was not done.
In my opinion I find it hard to believe that the weapons were on board. If it was common practice to remove the weapons prior to going into dry dock, then why wasn't it done this time? Let me know what you think.
Here is the article for you Russian speakers out there:
In other news:
The Admiral Kuznetsov returned to its home port after a several month cruise in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
The Mistral's being built for Russia will be armed with Russian made weapons systems, and more heavily armed than their French counterparts.
The Russian Navy has decided that the Lada class submarines will not be produced further. One submarine is currently serving in the Baltic fleet, and two more were being built, but their construction has been suspended.
Sources: military-today.com, RIA Novosti, http://rpdefense.over-blog.com
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