Back in September 16th 200, a month after the catastrophe, the site Korrespondent.net published information taken from the Stringer newspaper, called “Kursk collided with an American submarine!” with the subtitle “The last ram attack”. I abridge the text below: “Russia’s president has put 118 lives on the victory altar of Albert Gore on the presidential elections in the US. The editorial staff got documents proving that the reason of the Kursk loss was a collision with the American Sea wolf-class Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) submarine.” Then the Stringer editorial board starts to justify president Putin: “We perfectly understand the frightening choice that stood before Putin right after the Kursk tragedy/…/ Either to stay silent and get a deal, with his conscience in the first place, but to receive a real benefit for Russia in result. We do not condemn Putin’s choice. Maybe on his place anyone would have done the same thing. We are not going to read notations to the president…” But let us go to the text through the justification: “Three explosions. Everything happened suddenly, during 10-20 seconds. The nuclear submarine Kursk was raising to the surface with a speed of 20 knots (about 40 km/hour). The periscope and the antennas were already raised. /…/ Suddenly metal screeching was heard in the front compartment. A container with compressed air exploded from a collision with an unidentified object. The head of the submarine was thrown down. 145 seconds later the cruiser crashes at full speed into the bottom of Barents Sea. The blow of a machine weighting 18 thousand tons against the ground was terrifying. /…/ The blow caused the torpedoes to fall from their fastenings and to detonate. /…/
However, apart from the two explosions registered by Norwegian seismologists (NATO representatives were insistently talking about them at that time) there was also a third explosion. Jimmy Carter heavily damaged during the ram attack was slowly crawling away from the Kursk, throwing distress buoys. 45 minutes and 18 seconds were needed to the American submarine to get away from the place of accident by only half a mile. Most probably the submarine was practically drifting. During all this time its crew was desperately fighting for their lives. But at this time an explosion was heard on the American submarine cruiser. After this all trace of the killer submarine vanished. Most probably slow paced, it got to the closest NATO military base, where it is hiding to this day. The Americans demonstrated the second Los Angeles-class submarine Memphis to the entire world. And they even let the VGTRK correspondent Sergey Brilev to a safe distance to it. Nobody has ever seen the first submarine.”
Further Stringer substantiates its text: “The records of hydro-acoustic instruments made by specialists of the RF Navy show that three explosions were heard in the area where the Kursk was lost. The first at 7:30AM on August 12th was a small one – equivalent to up to 300 grams of trotil, the second 145 seconds later; a more powerful one – equivalent to up to 1700 kg of trotil. The third – after 45 minutes and 18 seconds. It was equivalent to up to 400 grams of trotil.
The first and the second are identified with the place where the Kursk was discovered, in an area of about 150 meters in the diameter of variation. The third was registered about 700-1000 meters from the spot where the Kursk is located. /…/ All the above-mentioned permits to conclude that the version about Kursk being hit by a military product, an hydrogen explosion or a mining does not appear to be possible. Since in this case the lapse of time between the first two explosions is unexplainable.
The available data shows that a possible cause for the detonation of the torpedoes could have been Kursk’s collision with the bottom of Barents Sea that followed the first explosion at 7:30AM on August 12th. A 120-meters-long gash from the submarine is clearly seen on the seabed.
The total absence of any attempts by the submarine crew to use any rescue equipment or distress signalization in the following 145 minutes demonstrates that the control over the submarine was lost in the first 10-20 seconds after the beginning of the tragedy. This (the loss of control) could have happened only as the result of a rapid flooding (burning) of the second control compartment, consisting of four levels making up 500 cubic meters in total. Such large-scale damages by a small explosion registered at 7:30AM are unlikely. According to Rubin Design Bureau where the submarine was projected, the solidity of its body and the air reserves allow to keep the control over this kind of ships when one of their compartments is hit by a directed weapon equivalent to 500 kg of trotil. It would be truer to see this explosion not as the cause of the Kursk’s loss, but as a consequence (sign) of an unfolding catastrophe. According to the constructors such an explosion could have been caused by a mechanical blow to one of the high-tension containers situated between the light and the solid bodies in the area between the first and the second compartment. In this case the version of the Kursk’s collision with an underwater object becomes the most probable one.”
As we see from the analysis of the Kursk catastrophe given here during the very first month the investigation possessed credible information about what has happened. In reality, I have already mentioned that in the evening of August 15th the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy Vladimir Kuroedov said that possibly the Kursk collided with an American submarine. In response the USA organized an information leak about the two explosions on the Kursk and put forward the version about trying a new missile-traction torpedo that supposedly has become the cause of the tragedy. “At this moment, continues the Stringer, the president and the Defense Ministry were already one hundred percent sure that the Kursk collided with another submarine. A distress buoy was fished out (a white and green buoy, which are used in emergency situations in the US Navy. We use red and white buoys), and fragments of the killer-sub remaining on the place of the accident were lifted from the seabed. Only the ‘national identity’ of the sub was not determined. Hypocritically parroting about a new Russian torpedo the Americans apparently hoped that there would be not enough fragments of the Sea wolf-class submarine for fully identifying its nationality.”