A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy
Robert Moore. New York: Crown, 2003. Photos. Index. $25.00.
Kursk: Russia's Lost Pride
Peter Truscott. London: Simon & Schuster UK, 2002. 320 pp. Photos. Index. L16.99 ($26.88). U.S. members can order direct from the publisher at www.simonsays.co.uk or by calling 011-44-141-306-3100.
Reviewed by Captain Robert B. Brannon, U.S. Navy
The public record today is replete with information on this terrible tragedy. More than two years after it happened, there are literally hundreds of internet web sites offering details and insights purportedly related to the event. Quite possibly no other submarine disaster ever has been afforded the kind of interest the press has given to the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk on 12 August 2000. As is often the case with sensational stories that grab headlines, among the pearls of truth are many fallacies. Finally, late last year, the Russian government's commission charged with investigating the incident published its final report, offering official punctuation marks to many of the questions about what really happened. The veracity of that report will have to stand the test of time, and it already is being challenged.
Despite extensive coverage, what has been absent to date is a genuine effort to examine the event for the comprehensive saga that it was—hugely important to the Russian Navy and to the fledgling President of the Russian Federation who had only just begun to lead a nation already wracked by many difficult stress points. I watched this story play itself out from my vantage point at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Examining the topic closely, both in official embassy reporting and in many conversations with Russian naval officers and other government officials in the course of my duties as the naval attaché, I became familiar with the litany that would become the story of the Kursk.
Examining a story of this magnitude is a daunting experience for any serious researcher. Nonetheless, each of these authors has given us an account that indeed is a serious effort at reporting a complicated story. At the outset, absent firsthand experience, writers of works such as these have to seek information from people who have had direct access to the story and to the facts.
Both authors make extensive use of credible primary sources, although neither uses footnotes to offer attributions or cite reference material. In both cases, however, the authors identify in general terms as many personalities as possible, a difficult task given the constraints of the circumstances. In Robert Moore's book, the author not only interviewed many key witnesses, but also obtained firsthand experience by being the only foreign journalist with access to the British and Norwegian diving expedition on board the Seaway Eagle during the first Kursk recovery operations immediately following the incident. Peter Truscott's solid reputation as a member of the European Parliament and well-established credibility gave him entree to key senior officials at many levels, affording insights unique to his work.
Everyone who followed this tragedy agrees the submarine sank because of internal explosions related to exercise torpedoes and their propellants. Allegations of a collision with a foreign submarine finally have been given up by even the most anti-Western voices in the Russian government. The official investigation attributes the sinking to "damage inflicted by a torpedo malfunction." Both Moore and Truscott reveal the physical aspects of the disaster in accurate detail. Still, some mysteries remain.
Among the most strident questions is whether the survivors could have been saved if Russia had accepted Western assistance more quickly. In a word, the answer is no. Since the first remains were discovered and brought up, it has been apparent that at least some among the crew of 118 did survive what must have been an explosion of horrific proportions. We know 23 sailors took refuge in the aft compartments, finally succumbing after a time estimated at between five hours and five days. Almost certainly, none lived as long as the latter time period. If shreds of notes written by survivors in the last moments of their lives are to be believed, they lived for at least several hours. If we accept evidence that survivors may have lived as long as several days, it is remotely possible that Norwegian or British help might have reached them in time.
The British slant to both of these books discounts U.S. efforts, because the Russians slammed the door in my face when rescue assistance was offered. For whatever reasons, probably related to mistrust, resentment, and fear, the Russian Navy chose to firewall every effort on our part to help. Despite the fact that it took more than 48 hours to obtain written correspondence offering concrete assistance from Secretary of Defense William Cohen to Russian Minister of Defense Igor Sergeiev, when it did arrive on the evening of 15 August, that letter was politely but very firmly rebuffed. Regardless, I believe the only chance the crew might have had would have been at the hands of the Russians themselves, using outdated and ill-performing equipment such as the submersible Priz. Western assets were simply too far away to have been brought to bear in time.
Both these books are very good and pretty accurate. Truscott can be forgiven for giving voices to the dead in his efforts to bring the story to life. His segue into the subject of "spying" in antisubmarine warfare and other areas is less appropriate. Interesting and accurate as far as it goes, it remains distracting, apparently intended to provide filler for his story. Although I agree with his indictments of the Russian Navy leadership as ultimately responsible for this tragedy that could have been avoided, he does not really address the issue directly.
Moore's book is the better of the two. His presence in key locations makes his story very real. When describing the shabby "officers club" where families of the crew were repeatedly lied to about the fate of their loved ones, he uses words that could be written only by someone who was there. The best parts of his book are his narratives based on the divers' stories about recovery operations. Moore has a talent for on-scene reporting that is apparent in his riveting prose.
I recommend both these works to anyone who is interested in this story. The photos in each offer considerable veracity to the stories that they alone can tell. In particular, several pictures of the submarine after it was raised provide chilling evidence of the nightmare that happened that day in the Barents Sea to a submarine that was thought to be almost invulnerable. No one involved in her design ever thought to defend her against an explosion from inside her double-hull construction. In the end, the Kursk died with her pride intact. In the last words of Lieutenant Dmitri Kolesnikov to his beloved Olga, written on 12 August, less than four hours after the submarine sank, "It's too dark to write here, but I'll try. It looks like we have no chance, maybe 10-20%, will hope that someday someone will read this. Don't despair."
Captain Brannon was the U.S. naval attaché in Moscow from 1998 to 2001. Soon after the Kursk disaster he was expelled from Russia, allegedly for spying. Captain Brannon is the Chief of Naval Operations Chair and Professor of National Security Studies at the National Defense University’s National War College.
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
Robert Coram. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. 470 pp. Appendix. Bib. $27.95.
The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security
Grant T. Hammond. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. 234 pp. Photos. Notes. Index. $29.95.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Richard Seamon, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Retired)
He was an outspoken whistle-blower, cocky, confrontational, irascible, intransigent. He was acknowledged to be the best fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and he let everyone know it. Understandably, he developed armies of detractors, people who nurtured a visceral dislike for his ideas and his personality. Fortunately for the Air Force, as well as the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, Colonel John Boyd (1927-1997) also had his admirers. They included the so-called Fighter Mafia, men who paid attention to his long-winded harangues and helped him promote his ideas about how to revolutionize air-to-air combat tactics. Another small group of officers and scientists in the Pentagon came to be known as Boyd's loyal "Acolytes," men who appreciated the scope of his thinking, and who could put up with his incessant phone calls that came at all hours of the day or night. Boyd was a relative rarity—a thinking fighter pilot.
Much as he reveled in the thrill and danger of dogfights between state-of-the-art aircraft, merely becoming better and better at the controls of a plane was not enough for Boyd. Late in his 24-year Aii Force career he became something of 2 polymath. He went back to class to learn advanced mathematics and physics. His later briefings were weighted down with Godel's closed systems theory, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He read widely—Alfred Thayer Mahan, Carl von Clausewitz, Baron de Jomini, Sun Tzu, and Mao Tse Tung. He worked his way back through history beyond the Mongols and Tartars to learn not what had changed over the years, but what principles had remained constant.
Readers who would like a concise, informative course in Boyd's carefully thought out theories, which have contributed so much to the conduct of contemporary warfare, would do well to study The Mind of War. The chapter "Energy Maneuverability," for example, offers a clear and concise explanation of how Boyd used math and physics to construct the first scientific definition of aircraft maneuverability and make it more than an art. "Boyd's approach," Grant Hammond writes, "plotted the ability to change altitude (potential energy), airspeed (kinetic energy), and direction (turn rate, radius, or g) in any combination for each airplane in the U.S. fighter inventory. More important, Boyd devised a way to compare them with each other and against any Soviet aircraft or other plane one wished." Equally important was Boyd's development of the OODA Loop (observation, orientation, decision, action), which encourages war fighters as well as businessmen to get inside an opponent's mind, to think ahead and make winning moves.
Robert Coram's Boyd inevitably covers the same material, but in a more leisurely, relaxed manner. It is a book for anyone eager for more personal details about the boy who yearned to be a pilot and grew up to earn his wings along with such apt nicknames as "the Mad Major" and "Ghengis John." It is a book spiced with telling anecdotes. Soon after he was sent to flight training in 1951, Boyd, already the confident pilot, offered to bet any pilot within earshot that he could let a man get on his tail in a mock dogfight and reverse the positions within 40 seconds. When he was an instructor at the Air Force Fighter Weapons School, he motivated a screw-up student to become the first man ever to score 100% on every final exam. And ever the scrapper, he once loudly dressed down Air Force Brigadier General John Ewbank in a Pentagon corridor. Boyd was smoking a cigar at the time and he "began poking Ewbank in the chest, jabbing with the hand holding the cigar and dribbling ashes down the front of the general's flight suit," said one witness. "If I'd been a brigadier general and he did that to me in public, I'd have court-martialed him."
As a Pentagon warrior, Boyd seemed always to be skirting the edge of serious trouble. He ignored protocol as he went on his many crusades. Convinced on the basis of his energy maneuverability theory that the Air Force needed a light, fast, agile fighter, he went to bat for the F-16 when his superiors stubbornly preferred the heavier F-15. If that meant going over their heads to higher Air Force brass, so be it. As he fought Pentagon politics in argument after argument, Boyd rarely lost a battle. He thrived on combat and did anything to win. In the Pentagon's guerilla warfare he was not above leaking confidential reports as he lobbied to get influential congressmen and Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, to sign on with his group of reformers.
Boyd published little but wrote quite a bit. Pamphlets for courses he taught at the Air War College grew into lengthy essays: "Strategy beyond Clausewitz," "Patterns of Conflict," "Discourse on Winning and Losing," "Destruction and Creation." His lectures ran on for hours, but his students, whatever their ranks, listened and learned from a warrior-philosopher. Although Boyd rarely earned much credit in the Air Force, says the author of The Mind of War, "his work on maneuver warfare had a significant effect on the Army and the Marines." In The Wall Street Journal, John Fialka reported, "Like the rain coming in through a leaky roof, Boyd's ideas thoroughly penetrated the winning strategy of U.S. forces during the Gulf War."
Of all the military services, it was the Marine Corps that most appreciated John Boyd. He was the Corps' kind of maverick, a nonconformist who did not hesitate to buck the system when he was convinced he had some valuable things to teach about the art of war. "Among the mourners at Boyd's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery," wrote biographer-turned-acolyte Hammond, "with the exception of the Air Force Band and Honor Guard, there was only one three-star general, the token representative from Boyd's service, and a major who had heard of Boyd and wanted to pay his respects. The general had no clue who Boyd was or what he had done. He was merely attending a ceremony as ordered. Large numbers of civilians and a few officers from the Navy and Army were present. So too were the Marines, in large numbers, one of whom laid his eagle, globe and anchor at the grave as a mark of the respect the Marine Corps had for Boyd."
Lieutenant Colonel Seamon writes “Books of Interest” for Proceedings and is a former assistant managing editor of TIME.
The Right Thing
Cdr. Scott Waddle, USN (Ret.), with Ken Abraham. Brentwood, TN: Integrity Publishers, 2003. 242 pp. Photos. $21.99.
Reviewed by Vice Admiral Jerry E. Miller, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Tragic accidents often provide lessons about how to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Many of the Navy's formal safety precautions can be traced to unfortunate accidents, such as an explosion in a gun turret or a massive fire on a carrier flight deck. The sinking of the Japanese fishing training ship Ehime Maru in a collision with the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Greeneville (SSN-772) off the coast of Hawaii in February 2001 resulted in the lost of nine lives. As tragic as it was, the accident did not provide any new lessons about how to operate submarines. It merely reinforced previous lessons about caution.
What the incident did present, however, is another review of the responsibility—and accountability—of commanding officers entrusted to "take whatever action is necessary" to safeguard those in their charge. People in positions of responsibility are liable to be called to answer for their actions. They are liable to legal review and, in case of fault, penalties. Commander Scott Waddle held the senior position of responsibility as the commanding officer of the Greeneville, with more than 100 members of his crew and several civilian guests on board at the time of the collision. This book is his account of the event.
The book begins with the author's early life, his desire to be an aviator, his inability to pass the eye examination, and his decision to join the nuclear submarine service, which he learned to love and in which he was highly successful. His account will be particularly enlightening for those young men (no women as yet) who are contemplating careers in the submarine community.
Waddle gives a detailed explanation of the events leading up to the accident as well as of the event itself. He recognized his responsibility and his errors in caution that resulted in the accident. He was ready to take all the blame, but the legal process created problems as he struggled to "do the right thing." The post-World War II introduction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice introduced more lawyers into the investigative and trial process, with one objective being more protection for defendants. That code created well-meaning defenders determined to protect their clients from any accountable actions.
The formal investigation to determine Waddle's fate was significant. The Japanese relatives of the deceased were deeply interested in the outcome, with many traveling to Hawaii to attend. They brought to the scene a feature of their culture that had a bearing on the case, one that Waddle recognized. To the Japanese an apology is an act of honor; to many Americans it is considered an admission of guilt. Waddle's counsel and some of the naval leadership did not want an apology to be issued. It could have jeopardized the outcome for Waddle, they argued, and also could have complicated bilateral relations with Japan. For Waddle, it was a case of guilt versus honor.
Waddle's decision to augment his defense team with civilian lawyer Charles Gittins is an interesting story. Gittins graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy about the same time as Waddle. He completed his obligated service and entered the legal profession. He became quite famous in military circles because of his willingness to take on issues where the system seemed driven to create scapegoats. The book gives an in-depth look at Gittins, his ability to defend his clients, and his reluctance to let Waddle take the stand.
Gittins was intent on saving his client's hide and keeping him out of jail or whatever the legal system had in store. In the end, because of Waddle's insistence, Gittins acquiesced. Waddle took the stand and was allowed to do the right thing, to accept the consequences of his action with regret—but with honor. His cherished career is finished, but his honor is intact because he insisted on taking full blame for the accident.
This is a great book for students studying the various aspects of leadership in the military. It ought to be read by leaders in the business world as well, as they accept responsibility for the welfare of both their stockholders and their employees. Scott Waddle's lesson in accountability is what many business leaders in the past several years seem to have missed in their experience. This book can help us all understand better the meaning of responsibility—and honor.
Admiral Miller is a former Commander, U.S. Sixth Fleet, and is the author of Nuclear Weapons and Aircraft Carriers: How the Bomb Saved Naval Aviation (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).