Russian captain tried to save son in sunken submarine

MURMANSK - First Class Captain Vladimir Geletin had the worst job in the world last week - helping to coordinate Russia's vain efforts to save its sunken submarine, the Kursk, while his son was dead or dying on board.

His jaw set and his hands clasped together, Geletin spoke yesterday of how 25-year-old Boris perished on the Kursk along with the rest of its 118 crew, and pinned the blame for the calamity on the state of Russia's crumbling military.

"This is hard for me to talk about, but I wanted to," he told a news conference in the Russian port of Murmansk.

"Why? Because my honour as an officer and my memory of my son compel me to tell the truth," said Geletin, his voice trembling.

He spent the last 10 days on board one of the Navy's rescue vessels in the Barents Sea, coordinating the "colossal work" to try to save his son, a lieutenant, and his comrades trapped on the seabed, 108m below the surface.

"We did everything we could, everything we could. Yes, the fleet does need good emergency rescue units and we didn't have them."

Geletin lashed out at critical media coverage of the rescue effort. The Navy has come under fire for making contradictory and unreliable statements about the crisis.

"The fleet command always told the truth ... [at the beginning] nobody could say exactly what had happened to the vessel," he said, explaining why initial Navy reports played down the seriousness of the Kursk's situation.

"Nobody could have said, 'Right, the vessel is on the seabed. That means everybody is dead'."

Geletin said that from the very moment the Kursk went out of radio contact during exercises, he knew it was his son's crew on board submarine K-141, rather than the second crew that all Russian subs have.

He never gave up hope for Boris, even though his son served at the front of the vessel, which was probably flooded almost instantly.

"Only after the official announcement did I say, my son has perished, along with his friends and comrades.

"I don't know if you could find a man who could have said so earlier," Geletin said, drawing deeply on a cigarette and looking at the floor.

Russian officials now think the submariners died almost instantly when an explosion ripped through the vessel.

Early last week, they said they had heard tapping on the hull, indicating that crew members were still alive.

"You can be mistaken about these sounds, about what caused them - whether they were human or mechanical noises. We really wanted it to be so - that they were still alive," Geletin said.

The blame for the accident obviously lay in the fact that Russia's superpower-sized military was trying to subsist on a Third World-sized budget, he said.

The nation held its breath last week during the frantic efforts to attach a rescue capsule to the Kursk.

The failure to do this, and the rapid success of Norwegian deepsea divers who opened a hatch on Monday, have highlighted the crumbling state of Russia's impoverished military.

One of the Norwegian divers - who is still in a decompression chamber - said yesterday that the dive had been "easy."

"The Russians have not seen the kind of equipment we have and they don't understand the possibilities we have with this equipment." said Jon-Are Hvalbye.

Geletin told the news conference that the fleet had many problems "like the whole military; like the whole country."

President Vladimir Putin briefly visited Russia's Arctic north to talk to several hundred shocked and grieving relatives on Wednesday.

Geletin said he would have put one simple question to Putin: "Are we waiting in vain for funding for the armed services?"

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: Russian submarine disaster

Russian Centre for Arms Control: OSKAR subs

World Navies Today: Russian subs

Russian Navy official website