Sunday, August 07, 2005

A Feel Good Story... Russian Sub Rescue

This from the Boston Herald :

British team saves Russian sub crewBy Associated PressSunday, August 7, 2005 - Updated: 08:35 AM ESTPETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia - Seven crew members aboard a Russian minisubmarine trapped for three days beneath the Pacific Ocean were pulled to safety early today after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled it, Russian naval officials said.
Naval spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said the crew appeared to be in satisfactory condition and were being examined by ship medics.
The sub was raised after becoming stranded in 600 feet of water off the Pacific Coast on Thursday.
``The rescue operation has ended,'' Rear Adm. Vladimir Pepelyayev, deputy head of the navy's general staff, said in televised comments.
A Russian naval spokesman who asked not to be named said the AS-28 made an emergency surfacing and appeared on the water at around 4:26 p.m. local time.
A British remote-controlled Super Scorpio cut away the cables that had snarled the mini-submarine some 625 feet below the surface off the shore of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
With the stranded crew's oxygen dwindling, rescuers raced to bring the 44-foot-long craft to the surface in Beryozovaya Bay, about 10 miles off Kamchatka's east coast.
Russian authorities had hoped the British unmanned submersible could help free the sub and avoid losing a sub crew as they did with the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank five years ago, killing all 118 aboard.

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