[OT] Secret torpedo test 'blew sub apart' [was Fw: High speed subs]

Chris DeBoe wrote:

> Woah...
> http://www.newscientist.com/features/features_224813.html

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/08/27/stifgnrus01003.h
tml

TWO civilian experts from a Russian military plant were conducting
secret
munitions tests aboard the Kursk submarine, which sank after the hull
was
ripped apart in an accident, it emerged last night.

The final moments of the doomed craft have been pieced together by
Western
military experts, who believe a test firing went disastrously wrong,
igniting highly inflammable propellant and detonating missile and
torpedo
warheads.

The resulting explosions blew a huge hole in the right-hand side of the
Kursk's nose, where the torpedo room is located. Water flooded in,
causing
the pride of the Russian submarine fleet to sink in seconds.

Military experts said they believed the crew of the Kursk were testing
one
of two weapons systems: an anti-submarine missile that fired from a
torpedo
tube out of the sea, then re-entered it to attack submarines; or an
upgraded
version of a fast and silent torpedo called the Squall.