The World - News from Aug. 7, 1989

A Soviet inquiry into the sinking of a nuclear submarine in April, with the loss of 42 crew members, blamed the disaster on “a whole series of technical imperfections in different systems of the submarine.” The panel of experts also said that the captain and crew had been slow to react to a fire that broke out April 7 in the submarine’s pump room while they were in the Norwegian Sea. A Communist Party official for defense industries, Oleg Baklanov, told the newspaper Izvestia that by the time the crew realized the gravity of the situation, “time had run out” for saving the ship and themselves. The report made no mention of any failures by the top naval command.