Russians Recover Hull of Sunken Submarine Kursk

With a screech of metal and the strain of 26 hoists, Russia raised the decapitated carcass of the Kursk nuclear submarine from its muddy seabed Monday--a feat that defied naval tradition, gravity and, most improbably, the elements.

The moment was a catharsis for the comrades and families of the 118 seamen who died when the state-of-the-art Kursk exploded and sank during naval exercises in the Barents Sea nearly 14 months ago.

It also was a moment of reckoning for the country. Russians’ faith in their military and government sank as quickly as the Kursk as authorities bungled the rescue, appearing more concerned with avoiding blame than saving the seamen.

“It was a major shock to us when we realized that the submarine was gone with every single crew member on board--it was like falling down an abyss,” said Alla Kokurina, whose only child, Lt. Cmdr. Sergei Kokurin, was one of the victims. “Now, after the Kursk is raised, all those responsible for the inaction must be held accountable for not doing their job properly.”

Interest in the salvage operation, which began in late July, had waned as repeated technical problems and inclement weather stopped and started the operation countless times. Recovery officials originally had set a Sept. 15 deadline for the operation to avoid winter storms.

Despite the delays, the actual lifting went smoothly, officials said. The mud on the seabed caused less suction than anticipated. All of the 26 cables attached to the hull held firm. A computer-assisted hoist system regulated strain to keep the cables from pulling unevenly, which might have caused the wreck to break apart. Officials said there was no sign of radiation leakage from the submarine’s two nuclear reactors, which shut themselves down at the time of the accident.

“I cannot hold my tears back,” said Igor Spassky, director of the Rubin design bureau, which built the Kursk. “Everybody--the [foreign] firms, the navy, our Rubin staffers--performed up to the mark. It worked out perfectly.”

The Kursk is the first nuclear submarine ever salvaged after sinking and at 14,000 tons is one of the largest. The $130-million salvage operation was a complex feat of engineering, conducted largely by two Dutch firms--Mammoet, which handled the lifting, and Smit International, which managed the undersea work, including the teams of British, Dutch and Russian divers.

After nearly three months of underwater work--cutting off the sub’s damaged bow, drilling holes in the double hull, attaching grips and cables--the operation to lift the submarine got underway just hours after the United States and Britain attacked Afghanistan.

“The Kursk drama has in effect been dwarfed by the plane attacks on the United States and the retaliation strikes,” said Leonid Radzhikhovsky, a commentator for Itogi magazine. “Any local-scale tragedy will be eclipsed by what may be the beginning of World War III.”

After being pulled up from the sea floor, the sub docked with a specially outfitted barge, which will tow it slowly to shore over the next couple of days, weather permitting. After reaching shore, the Kursk will be docked inside a special hangar, where investigators and forensic experts will retrieve bodies and search for clues to the cause of the accident. They also will examine and safeguard the vessel’s two nuclear reactors and more than 20 cruise missiles.

The severed bow of the submarine, with its potentially dangerous cargo of damaged torpedoes, will be left on the seabed for the winter and will be recovered in the spring, Russian officials have said.

Western officials say two explosions were registered aboard the Kursk on Aug. 12, 2000, at about 11:30 a.m. They say the most likely explanation is that a torpedo misfired, igniting the other torpedoes in the bay, and that the combined explosions ruptured the double hull.

Russian officials have insisted, however, that the Kursk may have been struck by a foreign spy submarine, causing the Kursk to sink and explode when it struck the ocean floor, 354 feet below.

The navy didn’t notice that anything was wrong until nearly 12 hours later, when the sub failed to make a scheduled radio contact. Rescue efforts got off to a slow start, with the first submersible reaching the Kursk more than 36 hours after it sank, and then the vessel only surveyed the wreck. Urgent efforts to reach the crew began only after the accident was made public--two days after it took place.

Russian officials at first turned down offers of help from the West, a decision fiercely criticized inside and outside Russia. Russian divers fought for days to reach the sub and open its hatches; British divers who arrived a week after the accident managed to do so in just a few hours. Navy officials complained that budget cuts had ravaged their rescue services.

In the grief and disbelief that followed the accident, President Vladimir V. Putin boldly promised to raise the sub and return the bodies of the crew members to their families. At the time, his pledge was seen as a foolhardy attempt to rescue his reputation, damaged by his decision to remain on vacation during the crisis.

His pledge took on new meaning after divers managed to enter the submarine’s rear compartment last October, recovering 12 bodies and a note from one of the sailors indicating that at least 23 of them had survived the explosion and remained alive for at least a few hours.

Some of the families, citing naval tradition, argued that the sub and its corpses should be left at the bottom of the sea. Some wondered whether the Kremlin’s emphasis on raising the sub was more an effort to guard its secrets than ease their grief.

For Kokurina, whose son was stationed in the submarine’s second compartment, the issue is particularly painful. Because the explosions took place in the torpedo bays in the first compartment, she knows there is little chance that there is anything left of her son.

“When they start taking the bodies out, people like me will feel psychologically squashed,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in the southern city of Voronezh. “While other mothers will be able to bury their sons, we will have to walk away empty-handed, without any trace of our children left in this world.”

Russian officials said that to protect the environment, particularly fishing areas near the accident scene, the two nuclear reactors had to be retrieved.

And the raising of the Kursk also was seen as a morale booster for the navy, a sign that the days of government neglect are over and that the service’s honor will be restored.

“I feel happy,” said Capt. Vladimir M. Navrotsky, chief spokesman for Russia’s Northern Fleet. “It will not be so distasteful to serve here, knowing that our own submarine is no longer lying next to Russian shores and that we have done something good for the benefit of the coming generations.”

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Alexei Kuznetsov and Yakov Ryzhak of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.