K-219
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Big-picture summary: Naval disasters involving gunpowder almost certainly predate the Grand Duchy of Moscow gaining access to the sea, 500+ years ago, under Ivan the Great. Alfred Nobel figured out how to make nitroglycerine "safe-ish enough to actually be worth the risk" 150+ years ago. Since Nobel, clever chemists have cooked up all sorts of really cool & deadly dangerous things for modern militaries to use in weapons. Which of those things are just too dangerous & unstable to actually be worth the risk is a body of knowledge which is always growing - generally one disaster at a time.
I looked for more elaboration on this point but didn’t see anything:
Presumably, they don’t just shrug and say “oh well so much for those nukes” when a loss like this happens, but I’m curious about what recovery of nuclear warheads from 18k feet on the ocean floor involves.
Anyone have any details?
Any of these could visit the wreck at least in principle, but recover the warheads? That probably depends on the condition of the wreck. If the warheads were thrown clear they might be easier to recover, but harder to find. If the warheads are buried in the wreck, they might be nearly impossible to recover without cutting up the wreck, for which you'd probably need more heavy duty equipment than these DSVs.
Somewhat related, the Kursk sank with nuclear weapons and was cut in half and partially raised to recover them. But that was a very shallow wreck, just 108 meters. The salvage company Russia hired for the job made a neat documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQJ6IMREvz8
If you search Broken Arrow you’ll find several lists of past incidents and recovery operations.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960)#...