Original subtitles

In summer 2001

an international team assembles in Russia's Barents Sea

to attempt the most difficult operation

in the history of ocean salvage.

The mission

to raise a Russian nuclear submarine the Kursk

victim of a violent disaster.

An explosion that plunged the submarine one and a half football

fields long to the bottom of the sea.

How this could have happened is a mystery that only raising

the sub may solve.

Nothing like it has ever been attempted.

To succeed

salvagers must summon a network of ships, divers

and the heaviest lifting equipment in the world

in their quest to raise the Kursk.

The Barents Sea, far in the Russian north

is one of the harshest oceans on the planet.

The Barents is hospitable for only a few short months each summer.

By September

it is a frothing fury.

On September 26th

when Ocean Salvagers aboard massive barge arrived

to lift the sunken submarine Kursk

They feared they are too late.

A twisting road has led to this dramatic day.

For those who will attempt to raise the Kursk

it is now a battle against nature and time.

The Kursk's story begins a year earlier.

August 10th, 2000.

Dawn, the Barents Sea above the Arctic Circle.

In a restricted harbor

the nuclear submarine Kursk

prepares for the largest war game in her six years of service.

This place once symbolized terror to estern navies.

It was home to the Soviet Union's fleet of 120 nuclear submarines.

Now only 40 remain.

The Kursk is among the newest and fastest.

Two nuclear reactors gives her submerged speed at 28 knots.

The Kursk carries a crew of 118 men.

They are young and sharp

the finest crew in the fleet.

In an era of decline in the Russian military

these men are proud.

The Kursk symbolizes the future.

The Kursk is an Oscar II class submarine

the largest attack sub ever built.

Oh, it's huge. It's over 500 feet long

about 555 long.

The Washington Monument by comparison is 555 feet high.

It's taller than the Statue of Liberty is high.

At 24,000 tons

the Kursk is over three times the size of her U.S. counterparts.

Double hulled

she is built to withstand a direct hit from an enemy torpedo.

Her designers consider her virtually indestructible.

On August 10th, 2000

the Kursk takes part in the largest Russian naval exercise in a decade.

The entire Russian northern fleet is out in force

testing equipment and weapons in a way not seen since the height of

The Cold War.

American and British spy subs are in the area

with orders to learn about this unusual show of force.

The Kursk's role in the war game

is to hunt down the missile cruiser navy flagship, Peter the Great.

She fires an unarmed missile a supersonic

weapon codenamed Shipwreck.

The Kursk was built to attack the United States Navy.

The Oscar Class submarines were designed to sink U.S. carriers.

They're designed to trail U.S. battle carrier groups

in the event of war, fire their missiles and kill the carrier

before the carrier can kill some of their ships.

One month before this mission

Captain Lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov brings his new bride Olga aboard

to show her the Kursk.

For Olga

the state of the art sub is a comparing rival

for her husband's affections.

I was insanely jealous of that lady

because I knew he loved her.

At times I couldn't even tell

which of us he loved more me or her.

Dima told me many times

that he would come to no harm for as long as he served on the Kursk.

That's why when he left port I wasn't worried.

I knew that woman would protect him and take good care of him.

She wouldn't let anything happen to him.

August 12th, 2000.

The Kursk is scheduled to fire a practice torpedo.

The fleet waits.

The shot is never fired.

At 11:29 a. m.

the Kursk explodes and plunges over 300 feet down.

The missile carrier, Peter the Great scours the area with sonar

in a desperate race

to rescue anyone who may have survived.

Finally, after a day and a half

the Kursk is discovered.

A buoy marks the location of the stricken submarine.

If there are men alive on the Kursk

the near-freezing temperature and limited oxygen

offer only a few precious days' survival.

Still, Russia declines all offers for help.

August 20th. Eight days since the Kursk sank.

The Russian Rescue Operation has failed.

Norwegian divers are finally permitted to the disaster site.

A diver hammers on the hull.

There is no response.

A robotic vehicle opens the rear escape hatch.

Only a final burst of air

118 men are dead.

Those who survived the explosion must have died a horrible, slow death.

It's like Dante's Inferno, I mean it's like going to hell.

I mean those poor guys are stuck in a sunken ship

with limited air supply waiting to die.

The divers also discover that the submarine's bow is severely damaged.

The mystery behind what sank the Kursk

Iies somewhere in this twisted forward section of the submarine.

Families of those lost on the Kursk seek answers.

None more so than one mother Nadezhda Tylik.

So, then I screamed at them to tear off their own epaulets.

Because I think such people don't deserve to be in the military.

They had murdered our kids our near and dear.

When a Navy sedates Tylik

it's a P.R. catastrophe.

Russian president, Vladimir Putin steps in.

He vows to raise the Kursk.

His pledge sends a message of hope and strength.

The operation will cost 130 million us dollars

but Russia believes it must be done.

There are several reasons for this.

The first and most important one is that we need all the information on

the disaster that we can get.

The other reason, no less important is to get this huge hazardous object

a nuclear object, out of the area of the Barents Sea

which is characterized by heavy traffic.

These are the two reasons that make the raising of the Kursk necessary.

In May 2001, The Dutch company Mammoet, signed the contract to raise

the Kursk by September.

Mammoet is a world leader in lifting and transport.

It is a very complicated job, because you have nuclear aspects.

You are working on a, on a depth of 118 meters.

You have a very, very special equipment to do the lifting

So it is for our company...

...it is really, really a milestone to do this job.

Mammoet brings in the Rotterdam company, Smit international

as a partner.

Together, they will tackle the most complex ocean salvage job

operation in history.

The salvagers devise a plan.

And the enormous barge, called the Giant 4

will be anchored over the Kursk.

26 cables will be lowered from the Giant and attached to the submarine.

Each one will be fitted into a hole cut by divers into the sub's hull

The sub will be lifted from the bottom

and secured under the barge.

The Kursk will then be towed to a dry dock, 110 miles away

near the Russian city of Murmansk.

Theory pales against practice.

If they succeed, The Kursk would be the heaviest vessel ever lifted

from the ocean floor.

No ship to my knowledge, this large

has ever been salvaged from about 300 feet.

Something displacing over 20,000 tons

I don't think we've ever undertaken anything of this size or complexity

The Kursk's two nuclear reactors were shut down.

But the sub also contains dozens of missiles and torpedoes.

A weapons explosion could unleash a nuclear disaster.

I don't say there is no risk.

There is always the risk in this type of operations

but you make your assessments in such a way that you eliminate

all the events

and you limit, you limit the risks in that respect

but there is always the risk.

The countdown begins.

The salvagers have just 4 months.

before Arctic weather forbids them from raising the Kursk.

July, 2001.

In Amsterdam, the Netherlands

an enormous barge undergoes its most unusual refitting

over 20 years of service.

She is the Giant 4..

At 24,000 tons and 450 feet long

the Giant's purpose

is to transport heavy objects for the oil industry,

even entire wreck?

But she has never lifted a nuclear submarine from the ocean floor

The barge is custom-fitted for each job.

For the Kursk

the Giant is outfitted with 26 lifting jacks.

Each jack has been tested to 900 tons.

A bundle of 54 cables extends from each jack

which will be lowered to the Kursk.

During experiments in a Russian laboratory

the cables prove stronger than the steel plugs

that will marry them to the Kursk.

To keep the barge steable over the sub the lifting jack

has a hydraulic system much like a car's suspension

to counteract wave action of 8 feet.

So what we have to do is to create a suspension system based

on gas cylinders

that takes out the action of the waves

which then takes all the forces and the load from the waves

but does not affect the lifting units.

The Giant undergoes another critical modification.

A massive hole is cut into her hull

in order to accommodate the Kursk's conning tower, once sub

and barge are married.

The bottom of the barge is partly opened up.

One part to, to, to have the the plane

say the command tower of the submarine will fall

into the structure of the barge.

And underneath the barge, we have made a kind of shuttle

which are, are perfect with wood.

And those shuttles, they have the same curve

as the outer hull of the submarine.

Modifications on the Giant continue 24 hours a day

to meet the September deadline.

On July 16th, in the Barents Sea

another ship begins the first phase of the operation

over the wreck of the Kursk.

She is the Mayo. 270 feet long,

the Mayo is the dive support vessel

for the men with the most perilous job in the entire Kursk operation.

A rotating crew of 12 divers and 70 support staff are aboard

The Mayo contains such "saturation diving system."

In order to give the divers maximum time under water

they live for four weeks in tiny steel cylinders

their bodies pressurized to a depth of Kursk.

They are unable to leave the chamber during their month-long job.

It would kill them if they did.

The living chamber is connected to the diving bell, so that the divers

can transfer from one to the other without depressurizing.

So when this bell is mated

onto here, you've got a sequence of doors that have to be opened

and closed when the divers pass from the living quarters actually

into the diving bell.

And then this has to be parted from the living system and then tracked

out to the moon port

and dropped down to their working depth to carry out their work.

So basically this is a taxi to their job.

A tether connects the divers to the bell

delivering them air, light

and hot water to heat their suits...

...as the sea temperature is barely above freezing.

Two divers work at all times while another monitors them from the bell.

300 feet down their first task is to clear the hull of debris and silt.

It is dangerous and gruesome work.

The Kursk is a tomb to the remains of over a hundred men.

She also contains unexploded weapons and two nuclear reactors.

The divers are on constant alert for radiation leaks.

Their most critical job is to cut 26 holes into the Kursk's hull

to attach the lifting cables.

To do this

the divers use an abrasive water jet system.

Shooting from the nozzle at up to 22,000 p-s-i,

the water and grit combination can cut through the Kursk's steel hull

Iike a laser.

For the divers' safety

the Mayo must remain exactly in place over the Kursk.

What the ship does is

we've got three bow thrusters forward and we got two of them

other thrusters aft

and what he's doing is instructing the computer to actually move.

So it's got a G-P-S position where it knows where it is

and it's now gonna move ten meters in the direction to that new position.

And it will then sit on that position

and you can move the ship any which way, what, whatever you want.

The divers rotate around the clock in 6 hours.

After each shift

they return to their cramped compressed home.

Cutting the hull turns out to be a much more difficult

operation than expected.

The Kursk is covered by six inches of rubber, a noise reducer.

The precise high-pressure jet merely mangles this rubber layer.

After two weeks work, just two of 26 holes are cut.

There is no time for this setback.

As divers labour on the hull of the Kursk, they report that

the bow is destroyed.

Few things could cause such destruction.

Many in the Russian Navy believe

American spy submarine collided with the Kursk.

I think that as the submarine Kursk

was working on its mission in the Northern testing areas

it was kept under surveillance by foreign submarines.

I'm not pointing any fingers here.

It isn't relevant

whether those were U.S. or British or some other submarines.

There have been dozens of submarine collisions

most in Russia's Barents Sea.

Captain Sergei Bolgakov experienced one of the most recent.

In March, 1993

I was on active duty.

On March 20th, the collision occurred.

As we found out later, we collided with the U.S...

submarine, Grayling.

It happened in the Barents Sea.

The U.S. Navy has been operating up there for quite a while

keeping an eye on the Soviet Navy

really to see see how they operate

and what their capabilities were so in the event of a war

we would be able to handle them a lot more easily.

Three American submarines were in the area

spying on the Russian naval operation when the Kursk sank.

But the United States denies that one of its submarines collided

with the Kursk.

I don't think the American submarine would have, one, made it back.

Two, if it made it back

it would have probably done so on the surface.

And three

with 130 people on the American attack submarine...

we'd know by now.

The Russian Navy continued to search clues

a telltale scrape

maybe even some parts from a NATO sub.

So far they find no evidence.

The Navy now guards the Kursk's site from any other unwelcome intruders.

The missile cruiser, Peter The Great keeps constant vigil

warding off NATO ships and submarines.

Spy ships circle the area

this one Norwegian

inquisitive about the unique salvage operation.

Out of sight, below the sea

divers continue their morbid work on a steel tomb.

Rusting Place but remained more than 100 men.

And on the first anniversary of the sub's loss

at a service in Saint Petersburg

the mourning has still only just begun.

12 corpses were removed by divers from the submarine in October, 2000.

One of them was Dmitri Kolesnikov.

On his body, a note wrapped in plastic

final words to his wife of four months Olga.

I love you. Don't be too upset.

I can't see my own writing in the dark

but I'll try writing nevertheless.

It looks like we don't have much chance

ten or 20 percent at best.

Let's hope someone will read this.

Here is a list of names of all compartment personnel who are

at present in compartment nine and are going to try to break out.

Love to everyone.

Don't despair.

Kolesnikov.

Kolesnikov's note says

he was trapped in the very rear of the submarine

with 22 other men.

He writes three hours after the explosion at 1:15 p. m.

and again at 3:45.

Proof that he and several others spent their final hours

in icy darkness

waiting for a rescue that would never come.

I don't know where Dima found the strength

to write those amazing words.

One year to the day since the Kursk's sank

the people of Saint Petersburg

pay tribute to the loss of the crew.

Many must have died instantly

But others, like Dmitri Kolesnikov lived a few harrowing hours longer

ultimately running out of oxygen and time.

For the families, raising the Kursk has a personal meanings.

It will bring their dead home.

When the Kursk sank in August, 2000

the sound was detected by scientists nearby in Norway.

They heard two noises just over two minutes apart.

The first, small.

The next, 3.5 on the Richter Scale

comparable to a small earthquake.

But one thing was unusual:

the explosions were eerily similar.

We compared them

and they were very, very close in terms of the, seismic signal.

Talking about the character of them now

of course the size was vastly different.

The, the first one was very small

and was barely undetected even at the closest station.

The acoustic evidence provides clues to what happened when the Kursk sank.

August 12th, 2000.

As part of a war game

the Kursk is ordered to fire a practice torpedo.

At 8:51 a. m.

the Kursk's captain radios for confirmation.

The missile cruiser, Peter The Great

moves 30 miles off and waits.

Two and a half hours later

a small explosion from below.

The captain does not surface the sub.

The Kursk must be severely flooding.

134 seconds later

a devastating blast.

The sound indicates that the first explosion was a single torpedo

The torpedo contains a tank of fuel propellant.

On typical Russian torpedoes that fuel is hydrogen peroxide.

Heated hydrogen peroxide in contact with certain metal surfaces

is known to explode.

Fire had started.

The hydrogen peroxide heated

and the crew failed to eject it overboard.

The explosion was inevitable.

That fire then, a couple of minutes later

spread to one or two other torpedoes

Iying alongside this one and that then detonated the warheads

which just tore open the bow of the submarine.

The second explosion would have killed everyone in the forward

half of the submarine in less than a minute.

But what triggered the first explosion remains an unsolved mystery.

August 14th, 2001.

300 feet below the dive vessel Mayo

the divers labor against the Kursk's tough outer hull.

After four weeks

only 11 of 26 holes have been cut in the submarine.

They had expected to be finished the first phase by now.

And winter weather is just one month away.

Despite to setback

Phase Two is set in motion. 200 miles west in Kirkenes, Norway

a barge carrying a revolutionary saw arrives from Holland.

The salvagers fear that the damaged bow may fall off during the lift.

They have decided to remove 60 feet from the front of the submarine.

But many believe the Russians have their own motives for this surgery.

It will leave the clues of what sank the sub

at the bottom of the Barents Sea.

I think the only hard evidence if it exists at all

is in the forward torpedo room.

And again that's the section they're leaving on the ocean floor.

But they've lost a chance to have technicians

forensic scientists if you will

go over that forward torpedo room once it was on the surface.

The saw is a cable encrusted in sharp steel cutting bushings.

It has been tested on an old hulk

similar in strength to the hull of the Kursk.

But until the divers complete cutting holes, the saw barge will wait

in Norway, a delay the operation cannot afford.

110 miles south of the site

the largest dry dock in Russia awaits the Kursk.

But the dry dock is too shallow to accommodate the barge Giant

with the submarine harnessed beneath.

The solution lies in Severodvinsk in the Russian north

at the Sevmarsh shipyard.

Sevmarsh has the job of building pontoons for the final critical

part of the lift.

Ironically

this shipyard also built the Kursk ten years earlier.

The huge submersible pontoons

will lift the Giant fully out of the water

and escort the barge-sub combination into the dry dock.

The construction of 300-foot long pontoons in just three months

is the fastest large-scale operation in the history of shipbuilding.

August 21, 2001.

Salvagers get their first taste of winter.

All operations cease.

September will be much worse.

After three days of ferocious seas

work resumes on the wreck of the Kursk.

But the salvagers now officially admit that technical problems

have delayed the lift by a week.

Now the divers proceed at a furious pace.

Over the next two days ten holes are cut.

Finally, on August 28th

the last of 26 holes is finished.

The first phase is complete.

Now the salvage ships mobilize in a synchronized plan.

The saw barge leaves Norway.

And sixteen hundred miles away in Amsterdam

the Giant gets underway.

Towed at just five miles an hour

the Giant will reach the Kursk in two weeks.

After 2 month's success and delays

greatest risks are ahead.

August 30th, 2001

The cutting saw, designed to sever 60 feet off

the mangled bow of the Kursk

arrives at the site.

The humble, rusting barge is flagship of the next and most dangerous

phase of the operation.

The saw must be placed exactly

to avoid explosive impact with the sub's forward missiles

or with torpedoes in the devastated bow.

Two 40-foot-high anchors

designed to burrow their way into the seabed

will keep tension on the saw.

They are lowered and then positioned on either side of the Kursk's bow

an operation that takes four precious days.

The saw chain, with its steel bushings

stretches over the top of the Kursk's hull.

On September 4th

the cutting begins.

Diving operations halt

during lethal contact with the saw.

The chain slices through the Kursk at an amazing speed.

The operation was expected to take days.

25 percent of the cutting is complete after just two hours.

Then a setback.

The saw breaks loose from the anchors.

Working around the clock

it takes a full two days to reattach the saw.

After another day's work....

good progress

only 20 percent of the Kursk's hull remains to be cut.

But the saw now digs into the seabed

and breaks again and again.

The delay costs another three days.

Now the Giant completes her sixteen-hundred-mile voyage.

She arrives in nearby Kirkenes Norway, destructers to wait there.

If the bow is not removed

the Giant will never get her chance to lift the Kursk.

On September 11th

the terror event that shakes the United States

reaches the distant Barents Sea.

Russia joins the world in mourning.

But the operation does not pause.

Divers continue to grapple with the saw.

On September 14th

the final few inches of the Kursk's steel hull are severed.

Now another frenetic week passes

as teams of divers clear debris from the holes in the Kursk's hull

to install the lifting cables.

On September 26th, the Giant arrives from Norway

and anchors in position over the Kursk.

But the Giant may be too late.

The deadline to lift the Kursk has passed

and from now on

the weather will be the salvagers' worst enemy.

From mid-September on

you're not going to be able to pull off a salvage operation.

From mid-September probably to March

because of heavy weather.

Just then,

the worst storm of the year lashes the Barents Sea.

The Giant's captain, Pete Sink

calls his short team to consider the options.

Anchored

he runs the risk of facing the storm broadside

putting the barge in jeopardy,...

but to leave the shelter

would delay the lift even further.

Sink the team decides to ride it out.

For two days the Giant is battered by wind and sea.

The weather breaks at last

but the lift operation needs at least 48 hours of calm seas to succeed.

In nearby Murmansk

Project chief Frans van Seumeren makes a grim statement.

Of course

it is sad that the forecast for tomorrow is not good

because there's a lot of swell with the northeast wind

and probably we cannot do a lot tomorrow.

Thursday, Friday is, is by the weather not possible anymore.

But they have come too far to give up now.

The next stage of the operation proceeds.

Four cables from each lifting jack

guide heavy steel plugs called grippers down to the submarine.

The grippers secure each of the 26 lifting bundles to holes

in the submarine.

They expand and lock into position.

Now the Giant is married to the Kursk.

After four months

all of the intricate pieces of the operation are finally in place.

The weather must hold.

The lifting jacks can only compensate for waves of about 8 feet.

If the waves get any higher

the sub will be disconnected

and the lift called off maybe forever.

3:30 a.m.

October 8th, 2001.

In calm seas and biting Arctic air

the time has come the last to attempt to raise the Kursk.

Divers are cleared from the site.

If even a single cable breaks

the recoil could kill.

Okay, Malcolm

you starting with the lifting and pull to the back side

several tons, yes? Okay?

Jon van Seumeran is in charge of the Giant.

Yeah, I'm back. Yeah, touching on the aft section now.

The Kursk is embedded in the ocean floor

making an exact lifting calculation impossible.

The system can handle 18000 tons lifting power.

The salvagers begin with 4,000

about halfway divided between the bow and the stern.

Computers show the weight supported by each jack

and indicate how each hydraulic compensator counteracts

the motion of the sea.

Power is increased to 7,000 tons

Miraculously, suction from the seabed offers no resistance.

At 9,600 tons, the Kursk rises off the ocean floor.

The Kursk is the heaviest object ever lifted from the bottom of the sea.

At 5:30 p.m.

she fits snuggly under the Giant.

It is a technological victory that has never been equaled

in the history of ocean salvage.

Over a year since her catastrophic loss

the Kursk and her entombed crew are going home.

It takes two days for the Giant and her tragic cargo, reach the dry dock

110 miles south near Murmansk.

Another technical challenge awaits.

The dock is too shallow

so pontoons must lift the Giant and the Kursk.

The Russian-built pontoons are designed to lock onto the Giant's hull

but problems plague the seemingly simple plan.

The operation takes 12 days.

But in the sheltered bay, Arctic storms no longer pose any threat.

It is mid-October

a full month later than scheduled.

Finally, the pontoons lock onto the Giant.

Water is pumped from the pontoons

Iifting the barge 25 feet above the water.

The Kursk emerges beneath the Giant.

Russian Navy experts will spend the next months

combing the sub for clues to what sank her.

They find parts of the front of the sub embedded deep in her middle

terrifying proof of a massive torpedo explosion.

Experts estimates that the blast cost to 5 tons TNT

through the sub's steel hull.

But they can find no proof if the explosion was caused

by a collision or by human error inside the Kursk.

On October 21st, 2001

the Russian Navy eases the barge cradling their sheltered submarine

into the dry dock.

Underneath the Giant,

the lifting cables are lowered and grippers retracted.

Two days later,

salvage ship and submarine finally part.

The Kursk's conning tower

appears in the Arctic air.

The Kursk's fate is to be scrapped at a cost of ten million U.S. dollars.

A United States Congress Nuclear Safety Fund will pay

for her destruction.

Deep inside the Kursk

there is one final gruesome task

the search for human remains.

Of 118 men lost

82 bodies are recovered.

Most can be identified

evidence that many may not have been killed in the blast.

Several may have died hours later

trapped in darkness, knee deep in icy water

when oxygen finally ran out.

This image haunts Olga Kolesnikov

the final terrible moments of her husband Dmitri

stranded in the submarine.

I am still waiting for him to come back.

I am waiting for him all of the time.

With my mind, I understand that I must accept this tragedy

as an accomplished fact

but my heart refuses to believe it.

At the bottom of the Barents Sea

divers placed a memorial where the Kursk was lost

a permanent tribute to the catastrophe

and to the triumph of those who raised her

from the unforgiving sea.