The Kursk

A practice torpedo leaked its propellant and detonated in the forward compartment during an exercise in the Barents Sea. Two minutes later the warheads of the remaining torpedoes went up with a force registered as an earthquake in Alaska.

She went to the bottom at a hundred and eight metres. Most of the hundred and eighteen aboard were killed at once.

Twenty-three men reached the ninth compartment aft and were alive there. Captain-Lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov wrote a note in the dark listing who was with him, and a second one to his wife.

The navy said for days that contact had been made by tapping. Offers of British and Norwegian help were refused for five days. When Norwegian divers were finally allowed, they opened the escape hatch in a few hours.

All twenty-three were dead by then. The notes were found in Kolesnikov's pocket.