A doomed Russian sailor trapped on the crippled submarine Kursk scratched out a last letter to his wife revealing that he and 22 comrades survived the blasts that sent them to the bottom of the sea.
As Lt. Dmitry Kolesnikov struggled to put down his final thoughts, freezing water seeped into the compartment and he knew there was little chance of escape.
"None of us can get to the surface," the 27-year-old officer wrote. "Two or three people might try to escape the submarine through the emergency escape hatch located in the ninth compartment."
Doomed sailor Dmitry Kolesnikov
Kolesnikov's letter, found in his pocket after divers recovered his body, provided no clues to the cause of the Aug. 12 catastrophe that killed all 118 aboard, Vice Adm. Mikhail Motsak, chief of staff of the Northern Fleet, said yesterday. But it had a brief description of how they fled to the rear compartment as seawater poured into the vessel.
Kolesnikov's handwriting in the first part of the note was neat. After the sub's emergency lights went out, his script turned into a desperate scrawl. "I am writing blindly," wrote Kolesnikov, the son of a submariner from St. Petersburg.
Mostak said the rest of the note was private. He said the doomed officer wrote it between 1:34 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. The explosions that sank the Kursk in the Barents Sea occurred around 11:30 a.m.
The Russian military and President Vladimir Putin had been criticized for their slow and confused response to the disaster. Kolesnikov's note raised that issue again.
The revelation that 23 sailors were alive for hours after the sub sank dealt a second blow to Kolesnikov's grieving widow. "I feel pain, enormous pain," Olga Kolesnikova said. "I had a premonition my husband didn't die instantly. The pain I felt then has come true."
Kolesnikov may have had a premonition of death — he left behind a mournful poem for his wife before he left for his last mission.
23 sailors survived the blast that sent the Kursk to the bottom of the sea.
Submarine expert William Green of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said the Russians probably wouldn't have been able to mount a rescue in time.
"I would have been surprised if the sailors would have lasted a couple hours," Green told the Daily News. "If they survived the hypothermia, a lack of air would have gotten them next."
The horror for the sailors lay in the knowledge that there was no escape, he said. Kolesnikov "had plenty of time to think about it," Green added.
Gerald McLees of Portsmouth, N.H., who survived the sinking of the American submarine Squalus in 1939, said the Kursk crew died a "ghastly death."
"I guess they knew that there was no chance of them escaping," he said. "We had contact with the surface, so we had some hope. But these poor guys didn't know how long the air would last. They didn't know if they would drown."
Divers started cutting into the Kursk on Tuesday to begin removing the bodies. Kolesnikov's was among the first four bodies retrieved Wednesday.
Most of the crew was blown to bits by powerful explosions in the weapons room in the submarine's bow.
While Western experts suspect a missile accident sank the sub, the Russians have proposed various theories that continue to blame it on a collision with a Western submarine, a World War II-era mine or an internal malfunction.
Letter Reveals 23 Survived Death of Sub
"All the crew from the sixth, seventh and eighth compartments Went over to the ninth. There are 23 people here. We made this decision as a result of the accident. None of us can get to the surface."
"I am writing blindly," the message continued later in disorderly handwriting after the lights went off.
From note found in pocket
of Lt. Dmitry Kolesnikov
When the hour to die will come
although I try not to think about it
I would like to have time to say,
‘My darling I love you’
Poem Lt. Dmitry Kolesnikov wrote his wife shortly before
he left for his final, fatal mission aboard the Kursk.
