An unidentified submarine in the city of Severomorsk
 

Many articles used this photo to illustrate the recent Russian submarine accident:



https://cna-sg-res.cloudinary.com/im...82107615-2.jpg

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news...ecret-11688968


Caption says: "An unidentified submarine in the city of Severomorsk. [...] (Photo: AFP/Kseniya GAPONKO)"


At first I was smiling (they were perhaps just too lazy to identify it...), but then I also got stuck. The submarine seem to have a diving plane (fairwater plane) on its sail, and I'm aware of only three classes that are in active service at the Russian Navy to have such diving plane: Delta-III/Delta-IV (out of question, doesn't even barely resemble this one) and Lada (is much smaller).


So what do we have here...?

welcome aboard!
 

Delta-III and Delta-IV went through refits to carry special purpose cargoes. The missile compartment (the "hump") has been removed as part of that refit. Current carrier is the post refit Delta-IV Podmoskovie.

@Aktungbby : Haha! Oh, those times... Anyway, not completely silent, not at all, but it seems that posts before 2004 got lost (along with their counts in my post counter!).



@ikalugin : Wow, that was fast. Awesome, thank you very much! (I don't think it was an accident that it was there at that time... So the funny thing is, I thought they sent in the photographer with the instruction "make a photo of a submarine to illustrate the news about the recent accident" and it seems he managed to take a photo of that very mother-submarine that was carrying the victim of the accident...)

Fontanka and RBK newspapers report that their anon sources allege that the fire began while the deep diving submersible was docked at the mothersub and only quick actions by the crew stoped the fire from spreading to the mothersub and creating more casualties.