No, this is part of the marine culture. It comes from the fact that the see is the strongest, keeping everybody humble in face of nature.

Had that been the case they would have taken higher quality video. There's nothing to indicate the sentiment wasn't genuine.

yea, man, in any case it beats waiting for several days while your own sailors on Kursk were banging at the walls.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_%28K-1...)

It was just 100m depth - a normal dive for professional divers - and i just remember how it was surprising that nothing was done during the next couple days. I mean such paralysis is typical for Russian bureaucratic machine, be it civilian or military (remember Rust?), yet these bangs were obviously easily heard by the listening anti-submarine posts of the Russian Navy ships idling right on top of it and nobody did nothing while waiting for the orders from "the top" and working around the clock trying to cover their a&&es.

There was a book that covered this -- maybe one of the James Bamford books, and it was related by the sources as an act of respect and marine tradition and nothing indicating it had to do with the eventual declassification of the event.

This sort of mutual respect and tradition between enemy aircrews is not uncommon.

My grandfather was an engineer on this project - it was done as a hedge against it coming out.

kind a cynical outlook. sailors have respect for each other, just as all warriors do.

I worked with the US navy for years, and while I suspect this was taped so they could prove the Soviet sailors were treated with respect, I have no doubt they would have treated the dead honorably in any case. That's the way sailors (particularly military) think, because they know they themselves could be under a flag tomorrow. They don't operate under the same day-to-day assumptions the rest of us do.