SEVEROMORSK. June 13 (Interfax-Northwest) - Experts headed by leader of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office investigating team Artur Yegiyev will arrive in Severomorsk Thursday evening to give the go ahead to the start of the second stage in raising parts of the Kursk submarine's bow or to order the end of the activities, Northern Fleet Deputy Prosecutor Pavel Vodinsky told Interfax.
Some "small fragments" of the submarine's bow raised during the first stage have been sent to St. Petersburg, chief of the fleet press service Colonel Vladimir Navrotsky said. The high pressure air tank and parts of the torpedo tube will be kept by the fleet's prosecution service for Moscow experts to examine them, he said.
Navrotsky recalled that all recovered fragments were delivered to the Prometei Central R&D Institute in St. Petersburg. Fragments and elements of the submarine that were cut out or removed from its hull during the vessel's stationing in the dock of the Roslyakovo ship-repair plant are also at Prometei. Among these fragments was a piece of the hull with a dent "that many people considered to a proof of the submarine's collision with an outer object," the colonel said.
Three fragments of the Kursk's first compartment are targeted for recovery at the second stage. Among them are a piece of the rigid hull's cylindrical bulkhead weighing about 30 tonnes and the left segment of the bow spherical bulkhead with an equal weight. Their examination will help establish whether a fire occurred in the compartment and estimate thermal or other effect on the compartment.
Pieces of the hydroacoustic system's fairing weighing about five tonnes will also be recovered in order to study the nature of the effect.
The RTM-500 TV apparatus continues surveying the sea bottom in the Kursk disaster area. The weather in the Barents Sea favors continuation of the work. The sea swell is 0.5 to 1 points, and the wind speed is five to seven meters per second.
The Kursk sank during an exercise in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000 killing all the 118 people aboard. Circumstances of the disaster are still unclear.