A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy
by Robert Moore
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert MooreEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-01-14
ISBN: 0609610007
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Crown
Book Reviews of A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy
Book Review: Gripping account of a submarine disaster
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Moore has done a wonderful job of accumulating vast amounts of information from difficult sources and weaving it into a spellbinding tale. He tells the story of a Russian super submarine destroyed by its own munitions malfunction, losing the entire crew of 118 brave sailors, in August of 2000.
Moore's reporting talent is obvious as he takes the reader through the events leading up to the tragedy, the explosive accident and direct results, the fight for life by 23 survivors trapped in an ever-closing grave, and the attempts? some regrettably inept, others heroic?to save possible trapped survivors. The reader, through the author's words, is actually present with rescuers during the planning stages. One can feel the exasperation caused by inferior equipment during early futile attempts by a financially devastated Russian naval organization. You are next to the brave non-Russian divers in 350 feet of murky water as they struggle with unfamiliar and balky hatches in desperate last-ditch rescue efforts. Then you experience with them the letdown and horror of their inevitable findings.
Through it all, Moore is able to relay the deception practiced by older hard-line Russian officials and the frustration of others who frantically want to save their comrades even if outside help is needed. The anger of families over being lied to by rescue officials is palpable as is the anger of Vladimir Putin who feels he was also deceived during initial reports of the accident. And the author, at the end of the book, outlines the purge of high-ranking Russian naval officers by a vindictive Putin, putting a sad exclamation point to the story.
Moore is able to wend his way through mountains of research material, assemble it into careful chronological order, and then, in clear concise words, take the reader on a mesmerizing journey through the entire operation. Even where information was not forthcoming or events had to be reconstructed, Moore is credible and meticulous in his accounting. The narrative is neither confusing nor cluttered with nonessential information. The writer doesn't let politics or sentiment color the story. Instead, it's a straightforward, honest accounting of a tragedy and the forces that surrounded the attempts to mitigate it.
I promise you won't soon forget this wonderful book.
Schuyler T. Wallace
Summary of A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy
A At 11:28 a.m. on Saturday, August 12, 2000, high in the Arctic Circle under the roiling surface of the unforgiving Barents Sea, Captain Gennady Lyachin was taking the Kursk, the pride of Russia's elite Northern Fleet, through the last steps of firing a practice torpedo, part of an elaborate naval exercise. Suddenly, the torpedo exploded in a massive ?reball, instantly incinerating all seven men in the submarine's forward compartment. The horror, however, was just beginning. The full, gripping story of the remarkable drama inside the Kursk and of the desperate rescue efforts has never been told-until now.In A Time to Die, a critically acclaimed best-seller in the United Kingdom, international reporter Robert Moore-who covered the Kursk tragedy from Russia as it happened-draws on exclusive access he obtained to top Russian military figures in telling the inside story of the disaster with the factual depth of the best journalism and the compelling moment-by-moment tension of a thriller. He takes us right down inside the Kursk as two massive explosions-the second measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale-rip through compartment after compartment. Bringing the horror of the explosions vividly to life, he details the agonizing drama of the twenty-three men who survived as they fight against time to be rescued.
In a journalistic coup, Moore obtained secret access to the Kursk's highly restricted Arctic submarine base, and he makes the desolation of that forbidden world palpable on the page. As word of the tragedy breaks, he portrays the fear and growing rage of the families of the crew as they clamor for news of their loved ones and confront Vladimir Putin, Russia's newly elected president.
Moore also vividly re-creates the nail-biting tension of the heroic but deeply flawed Russian rescue efforts as men are sent down again and again, aboard antiquated mini-subs, in perilous attempts to get to the survivors. As Western rescuers are at last called in, Moore richly describes the fascinating world of the offshore divers who drop everything to make one last, desperate attempt to reach the trapped submariners.
A Time to Die is a riveting, brilliantly researched account of the deadliest submarine disaster in history and its devastating human cost.
In August 2000, explosions rocked the Russian nuclear submarine the Kursk, killing most crewmembers instantly and leaving the sub stranded in the Barents Sea where the remaining personnel would also soon perish. When the story was reported worldwide, it was met with considerably more questions than answers: What caused the explosion? Could the men be rescued? And why was the Russian military being so secretive about the incident? Journalist Robert Moore has gathered extensive information regarding the incident to answer those and numerous other questions in this exhaustive account. Moore pieces together a harrowing narrative of the events leading to the two on-board explosions that instantly killed 88 men while sparing, temporarily, 23 others. Soon, the story spreads beyond the Arctic Circle as the book offers tales of frightened families searching for information, international rescue teams attempting to reach the crew in time, a Russian government whose disorganization or obfuscation may have hampered those efforts, and American submarine crews poised just outside Russian waters. Where the book succeeds most is in the details: the fact that the rubber-wrapped Kursk was nearly impossible to detect on sonar, the speculation that the tapping noises often reported may have been tales invented by the Northern Fleet to add urgency to the rescue efforts, and the transcripts of notes left by the surviving crew members after the explosions had already occurred. --John Moe
Naval Books
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