I’m no submariner, but this can’t be good news:
After battling for hours to extinguish a blaze aboard a nuclear submarine, Russian firefighters finally gained control of it early Friday by submerging the stricken vessel at a navy shipyard.
There was no radiation leak, the authorities said.
Television showed a giant plume of smoke above the yard in the Murmansk region of northern Russia as more than 100 firefighters struggled to douse flames that witnesses said rose 30 feet above the submarine.
The firefighters tried for hours to douse the flames with water from helicopters and tugboats before trying another approach: partly sinking the submarine. The fire continued to burn, but the intensity was reduced. “The fire has been localized,” Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said from a control room in Moscow more than nine hours after the blaze began on Thursday.
Wow.
Was in the yards, specifically in drydock in AW1′s neighborhood in 1984. The day welders had left something smoldering in the fuel tank under MER#1 at the end of the work day, where, to compensate for the CIWS and Tomahawk installs, they had been installing stacks of lead weights. Seems the rubber sheets between the layers of the lead ingots were burning from the slag. Being completely cold iron, and at the mercy of the Portland FD, who…surprisingly, had no training in fighting shipboard fires, it was put out. The side note is it was pretty low key anyhow, unlike what they dealt with, but it was an interesting day, when all your normal equipment and training can’t be used in the shipboard environment, and the “help” are great people, but it’s a foreign thing to them as well. It was my plant….and I was the DCO by assignment. Had to stand by and bite my tongue a lot.
Early press reports (yesterday) had claimed the fire was limited to outer hull, and there was no danger to equipment or crew.
So, some may ask why the sub did not submerge sooner, before seven crew members had to be hospitalized from carbon monoxide poisoning. Two reasons: 1- Some exterior hatches were no doubt fouled with customary dry dock maintenance power cables and compressed air hoses, which take significant time and care to remove safely. 2- This was no ordinary Russian sub, it is ballistic missile submarine that would ordinarily carry 16 nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles. No way the crew would be allowed to abandon the vessel. Russia had hoped the fire (began Thursday) could be doused quickly and embarrassing press avoided. This is a black eye for their program.
Heads will likely roll, even if someone is said to have “retired early”.
I wonder if “early retirement” might be similar to that of the Stalinist era. Probably not, but Medvedev has called for unspecified punishment for the culprits.
From the reports, it looks like the sub fire was confined to the exterior. How fire-resistant are anechoic coatings anyway? No ordnance onboard.
Xformed, that had to be a bad day. I closed out the space under AMR#2 where the lead ingots were placed during the CIWS instal on a Sprucan. Sure glad there was no fire there when I was DCA.
It was 979….
Ruskies have a history of ” mishaps ” like this which make me nervous that we rely on them exclusively to get our Astronauts to & home from the International Space Station….not thrilled with decision from NASA and/ or our government.
Ditto
Only one thing can make this fire go on so long…. A continuing source of heat. Since the claim is made that it started from welding cables, as long as there is something energized in the area which might keep the heat going, the fire is unlikely to burn out from extinguishers and water on the fuel. I sincerely doubt the claim of the fuel being scaffolding. Water from the hoses would put that out, even if there was a heat source nearby… Hull insulation could produce prodigious amounts of smoke if fed with continuous heat, and extinguishing it is extremely difficult without removing it from the hull. I suspect the external tiles are similarly hazardous smoke and fire substances.
No, this is obviously started by an electrical source, and couldn’t be extinguished because the heat kept reigniting either the tiles, or something inside the ship. This story is too sketchy and makes less sense than normal to properly define what the emergency crews are doing wrong.
I will note, however, that it is poor form for a crew experienced in firefighting to allow a fire to burn so long and not deenergize every cable going into the ship that could possibly be in the area. Our crews would NEVER abandon ship to allow the shipyard firefighters to handle the problem. US Navy firefighting personnel are at least as good as any civilian fire department, even with less impressive equipment on hand. As most have noted, however, labeling and understanding every single cable that gets laid out in the hatches is a daunting task. Just a few bad habits on the part of the yard and crew would have allowed this to happen in any shipyard…..
It is extremely unlikely there are any missiles aboard. We don’t take expensive missiles into an industrial environment because too much hot work would derange the electronics, and one too many poor habits might cause a rocket motor to light off. THEN you’d REALLY have a bad day! Loss of ship likely, although flight to a target downrange would be near impossible and the missile is far more likely to just blow up inside the tube than be launched anywhere. Russians aren’t totally stupid in this regard.
Subsunk
Excellent analysis, SS…
NaCly Dawg: Anachoic coating are pretty much usually synthetic rubber and…fill in the blank. Synthetic rubber is the base for solid rocket fuel, so they have a dandy fire on their hands. So do a lot of
Interestingly, the snazzy new fabric dope applied to the Hindenburg Dirigible had a synthetic rubber base and additives which made it burn like rocket fuel because it pretty much was.
delete “so do a lot of”.
Comrades! Is not to worry! Is but realistic training exercise! Everything under control!
Is not Emergency! Everybody to get from street!
Some film for you: http://www.breitbart.tv/russian-nuke-sub-catches-fire/
Thanks Joe. My favorite comment was “I didn’t know ‘Trabant’ built subs!”
There is no doubt in my mind, based on Grandpa Bluewater’s comments, that the shear modulus of the outer hull is affected. If the source is electrical, then the inner hull of titanium (with about half the room temp shear modulus of HY steel) must also be replaced. Otherwise this will be one shallow-diving sub.
Sounds like win-win for the US of A. Not so much for the ship sup, the local firefighters and the poor firewatch guy with the tiny CO₂ bottle.
Otherwise this will be one shallow-diving sub.
Or real deep.
But I suspect it would be a one time only thing.
ahh but the order to submerge was to restore temper of the metal. See! No problem Comrade? We make strong — like Russian woman!
Not the first boat to use the ocean (on purpose) to extinguish a fire:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/USS_Sargo_%28SSN-583%29
Yeah, wilkipedia, but basically accurate. LCDR Nicholson went on to become VADM Nicholson, a great guy who is still with us. Remember James E. Smallwood/MM3(SS) when you have a chance.
Happy New Year to all.