[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Snakeeyes

That sail looks to be in really bad shape.

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Maybe sank a ship by accidently ramming it...again

Actually all sails on our subs are left in 'rough shape' so that when another Kursk goes missing catastrophically and we are (always) blamed, we then show off the collateral damage, drop a commemortive wreath to 'fellow sailors' and apologize profusely to the Russians. This has a catastrophic effect on Soviet moral: ie our boats can survive the collision...their's cannot! http://www.pravdareport.com/society/stories/12-08-2016/121163-kursk_submarine-0/

But as the layers of official fabrication were peeled away to reveal the bitter truth, the Russian Navy dreamt up another theory to cover its embarrassment: the Kursk had been struck by a foreign vessel. Firstly, if a smaller, single-hulled foreign submarine had collided with the massive, twin-hulled Kursk, what had happened to the foreign vessel?
Surely the collision, or the shock waves of the two explosions, would have disabled that vessel, too?
Secondly, just supposing that the smaller vessel had been able to get away: why did no vessel which had been in the area show any signs of damage? The US and Britain - which also had submarines in the area of the exercise - are both sufficiently open societies for an event such as a submarine not returning home, or limping back in with significant damage, not to go unnoticed. That torpedo explosion conclusion eliminated all the other versions — the submarine being attacked by foreign naval forces, a World War II-era underwater mine explosion, the submarine colliding with something in the sea — that had been circulating in the media for two years. Not everyone accepted the results of the investigation. Some insisted that the Kursk had been attacked by a U.S. submarine and Putin had deliberately concealed it in order to avoid an international conflict. Russian naval officers in Murmansk expressed embarrassment at the allegations, dismissing reports from defence sources in Moscow that pieces of a British submarine had been found near the wreck. But Marshal Igor Sergeyev, the Russian Defence Minister who is regarded as a possible scapegoat, for the disaster, continued to claim that the Kursk had been hit by a Nato submarine.

So, not sprucing up the sails saves Navy tax dollars and serves as an 'at hand' propaganda hit against the notoriously accident-prone Russian submarine service. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1367318/British-team-hits-at-Russian-Cold-War-deceit.html