Nations rush to rescue sailors

[proud_ionian]

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- The United States, Britain and Japan scrambled Saturday to rescue seven Russian sailors trapped in a mini-submarine 625 feel below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

A U.S. Air Force C-5, loaded with two unmanned submersible rescue vehicles along with 40 submariners, divers and other experts, landed in eastern Russia about 3:15 a.m. ET, a U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman said. A U.S. C-17, carrying equipment and specialists, landed about two hours later.

"This is an international effort, involving the British and Japanese, and led and coordinated by the Russians," said spokesman John Yoshishige.

A British plane, also carrying an unmanned rescue vehicle, landed about two hours earlier. The Scorpio 45 has three cameras as well as cable-cutting equipment.

πηγη: cnn

[proud_ionian]

Just before 4 a.m. ET, the Russian news agency Interfax reported the rescue equipment would arrive at the mini-sub in about three and a half hours. Russia's deputy naval chief of staff Rear Adm. Vladimir Pepelyayev told Interfax on Saturday the rescue mission should be completed within 24 hours "because the onboard air supply is not limitless."

Interfax reported that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has left for the site at the order of President Vladimir Putin.

Although initial reports said the propeller of the sub, an AS-28, became stuck on some fishing nets or cable, Interfax later reported the sub was fitted with a coastal observation aerial, held to the ocean floor by at least one anchor.

The apparatus is keeping the sub from rising, and Interfax said the anchors were to be blown up. An earlier plan to cut the antenna and anchors apparently was abandoned. It was unclear whether a fishing net or cable was also involved.

The sub is nearly 625 feet deep on the Pacific floor in Beryozovaya Bay, 43 miles south of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's east coast.

Interfax, citing Russian Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Viktor Fyodorov, reported early Saturday that the sub was moved 100 meters to shallower water.

Fyodorov said there was enough oxygen aboard to last more than a day, Interfax reported. He had earlier told the news agency there was enough oxygen to last until Monday and that the crew was ordered "to stay in a horizontal position and save strength and air."

Details about how the vessel was moved were not immediately available.

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