Safe after 76 hours trapped on seabed

Key points

• Crew of Russian mini-submarine are saved from ocean

• Trapped men maybe had only 8 hours of oxygen left

• UK rescue craft played major part in salvation

Key quote

"Everything went very well - it all fitted into place. The guys were absolutely elated to have been able to help. It shows what we are capable of doing - reaching the scene within 36 hours of a call-out with a vehicle in the water effecting a rescue." - Ben Sharples, Scorpio 45 project director

Story in full

AFTER 76 hours entombed at the bottom of the Pacific, the young Russian mini-submarine commander allowed himself a faint smile as he emerged from an ordeal that had a nation and the world holding its breath.

With a peremptory salute he led his crew down the gangway before telling the waiting world: "I feel good."

The race against time had been close. With just six hours of oxygen left, the trapped rescue submarine and its seven occupants were plucked to safety by a Scottish-based rescue craft.

Russia's defence minister personally thanked the rescuers while the families of the crew members "danced for joy".

During the final hours Lieutenant Vyacheslav Milashevsky had instructed his crew to don thermal suits, lie still and breathe lightly in the darkened mini-submarine to eke out the remaining oxygen as the temperature inside dipped to 5C.

The lights were switched off and there was only sporadic contact with the surface. One crewman said: "It was cold, cold, very cold."

Commander Ian Riches, the Royal Navy rescue team leader, said: "It must be like being inside a lift trapped between floors but a lot, lot deeper, cold and lonely."

Lt Milashevsky's wife said: "I was happy, I cried."

Almost exactly five years on from the Kursk disaster, the world again watched in horror as another Russian submarine drama unfolded. But fortunately for those inside the tiny AS-28 Priz in 600ft of water off the Kamchatka peninsula, the outcome was very different.

While the Russian authorities failed to call for help until several days after an explosion aboard the Kursk, their much speedier plea for assistance for the Priz enabled the Renfrew-based Royal Navy submarine escape and rescue team to arrive in the nick of time.

Commander Riches said the rescuers were "absolutely overjoyed" at their success. He said there was a charge across the deck of their Russian support ship after the freed craft surfaced on the opposite side from which they were expecting it.

The Russian navy expressed its sincere gratitude, but President Vladimir Putin has ordered an inquiry into the incident and Russian politicians have demanded to know why its navy did not have suitable rescue craft of its own.

The Royal Navy-led crew flew from Scotland on Friday night, uncertain whether the trapped Russians would have enough air to hold out.

Commander Riches had told The Scotsman at Prestwick on Friday that the team might be the Russians' best hope - and he was right. The team was able to prepare its remotely operated Scorpio 45 vehicle during the ten-hour flight, so it was ready to be launched shortly after reaching the scene late on Saturday night.

The successful operation came in stark contrast to the secrecy surrounding the Kursk incident, to which the team had also been belatedly called, but never deployed.

Team members found themselves working at the weekend with Russians with whom they had staged a joint submarine rescue exercise off the Italian coast just three weeks ago.

The Russian AS-28 craft, just longer than a bus, became entangled in fishing nets and underwater antennae during a combat training exercise on Thursday.

Less than 24 hours later, in response to a plea for international assistance, the British team had mobilised along with counterparts in the United States and Japan.

Russian ships had tried to drag the submarine into shallower water where divers could reach it, but were able to move it only about 100 yards.

The Scorpio 45, the size of a Mini car, was launched from the deck of a Russian cable-laying ship, with its cutting equipment slicing through the nets and cables to free the stricken mini-submarine and enable it to re-surface. Commander Riches said that by the time the trapped men were raised to the surface, "they were running out of oxygen."

"There were a lot of difficulties involved, but it was extremely rewarding and it wouldn't have been possible without the superb co-operation of the Russian navy.

"We went down using our cameras and our sonar and located the mini-submarine near the seabed tangled up in a quite considerable mess of fishing nets. It was wrapped around her propeller and wrapped around her as well."

Ben Sharples, the project director for the Scorpio 45's civilian operators, said: "It is fantastic for both the Russian crew and for our team, as this is what they are trained for.

"Everything went very well - it all fitted into place. The guys were absolutely elated to have been able to help. It shows what we are capable of doing - reaching the scene within 36 hours of a call-out with a vehicle in the water effecting a rescue."

Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defence minister who will head the government inquiry, said: "We have seen in deeds, not in words, what the brotherhood of the sea means." He said the biggest cable was from a fishing net laid by poachers.

Admiral Viktor Fyodorov, the commander of Russia's Pacific fleet, said: "Today was a very happy event."

But Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist party leader, said: "It is completely incomprehensible why the British have the necessary technology, but we don't."

The US had also sent remote-controlled underwater vehicles for the rescue, but they arrived several hours after the British vehicle and were not used.

John Reid, the Defence Secretary, expressed his delight at the success. He said: "Britain has a world-leading capability in the field of submarine rescue, and we have been able to utilise that capability to save lives."

Operation marks the first lives saved by Navy rescue craft

THE successful operation marked the first lives to be saved by the Royal Navy's current generation of rescue craft, which are operated by civilian contractors James Fisher Defence and based in Renfrew, near Glasgow.

The Scorpio 45 remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) and its sister vessel, the LR5 mini-submarine - similar to the trapped Russian craft - are on permanent standby to fly anywhere in the world at 12 hours' notice.

Half of the eight-strong crew of the ROV, led by supervisor Stuart Gold, are Scottish and several were on the aborted mission to save the Kursk in August 2000, in which all 118 men aboard the Russian submarine died.

The craft spends 30 days a year in the water. Scorpio 45 took part in an international exercise in the Gulf of Taranto in south-eastern Italy last month, and LR5 is involved in one off Bergen in Norway.

The Scorpio 45, which has four cameras, a robot arm with two cutting devices and a large hook, has previously been used in the North Sea, to recover mines, torpedoes and aircraft. It weighs 1.4 tonnes and has a top speed of 5mph.

The two craft are due to be replaced by the 47 million NATO Submarine Rescue System next year, whose twin components are similar but will be able to dive deeper and travel faster. James Fisher Defence is part of Cumbria-based Rumic, which has held the naval contract for 15 years.

Horrors of Kursk resurface as Putin's crisis plan queried

THEY were images that were seared into the minds of the Kremlin: five years ago, as the Kursk submarine disaster unfolded, TV pictures showed the distraught wives of the doomed crew begging to know why Moscow had refused offers of foreign help for five long days.

The resulting furore was a disaster for the tenure of the president, Vladimir Putin.

"The Kursk sailors fell silent yesterday," newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said at the time. "Why is the president silent?". It was a mistake the Kremlin was determined not to repeat.

Yet such a scenario seemed to be repeating itself last Thursday. Almost five years to the day after the Kursk went down, news came of a submarine again trapped far below the surface. And once again the navy declined foreign help. "We can handle it" was the message from crusty admirals who joined the navy during the Cold War, when secrecy was more important than the lives of ordinary sailors.

But the difference, this time around, was Sergie Ivanov. Russia's defence minister, a former KGB colonel and long-time friend of Mr Putin, seemed determined not to endure a second Kursk.

Russia is a member of an international group of navies pledged to help each other in times of crisis, and on Thursday Mr Ivanov demanded the navy ring the bell. A crash-meeting was held that night with Russian liaison officers at America's Pearl Harbour naval headquarters in Hawaii, while calls went out through British and Japanese embassies in Moscow.

This decision to get help early almost certainly meant the difference between life and death for the sailors.

The British won the race and the Russian sailors worked mightily to get the craft to the disaster scene.

Yet even as the crisis unfolded, Russia's navy brass insisted the foreign help would not be needed. "Nobody wanted to use this help," said the Moscow journalist Anya Shpakova. "All the military guys said they will do it themselves."

They could not. After three days of fumbling effort, it was a British mini sub that cut the cables that had ensnared the submarine.

One change from the Kursk tragedy is the flow of information. The crew's families were kept informed.

President Putin has now ordered an inquiry, which is likely to focus on why, once more, the navy tried to delay getting out the bad news.

One thing seems clear: while Russia has undergone chaotic somersaults in moving from Communism to a form of capitalism in the 15 years since the Soviet Union was dissolved, its armed forces remain trapped in Cold War thinking, blissfully unaware that the outside world has moved on.

CHRIS STEPHEN MOSCOW