After the end of World War II, the USSR put the creation of a powerful surface fleet "on the agenda". It was possible to feed its own forces through claims to captured ships - the division of the fleets of the defeated enemy was provided for by the decisions of the Tehran Conference of 1943. The British and Americans received more sophisticated ships, while the Soviet sailors acquired an "elderly Italian" - the battleship Giulio Caesare.
"Julio Caesar" ("Julius Caesar") at that time became the third battleship in the ranks of the Soviet Navy after the "Paris Commune" and "October Revolution" (both launched in 1911). Another one - "Petropavlovsk" (before that "Marat") has long been turned into a floating artillery battery.
In February 1949, the Italian battleship arrived in Sevastopol and at the beginning of March joined the Black Sea Fleet under the name Novorossiysk.
From 1943 to 1948, the battleship was not properly serviced, so initially they wanted to make a training ship out of it in order to train teams of newly built battleships. However, it was later decided to upgrade the ship. In May 1949, the Novorossiysk docked at the Northern Dock of the Sevmorzavod. Improvement works on Novorossiysk were carried out intermittently until 1955.
The ship received anti-aircraft systems and a radar station, a new foremast, radio communications and intra-ship communications, improved fire control devices for the main caliber, and new turbines.
Moreover, in July 1949, "Novorossiysk" went to sea for the first time as the flagship of a squadron of the Black Sea Fleet. Perhaps this was done in order to prove to the West that the ship is "in shape."
In 1955, "Novorossiysk" several times went out on maneuvers, the last time - on the eve of its death. The number of the ship's crew at that time was 1577 people.
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The first life of "Giulio Cesare"
At the beginning of the 20th century, the largest ship at that time was launched in England. Dreadnought with a displacement of 18,120 tons and a speed of 21 knots, armed with artillery on the principle of all-big-gun ("only big guns"), became the flagship of the Royal Navy and made a kind of revolution in naval affairs.
Until the middle of the 20th century, battleships occupied leading positions at sea, only eventually giving way to submarines and aircraft carriers.
Italy began building dreadnoughts one of the last among the major maritime powers.
The first battleship of the Italian fleet, Dante Alighieri, was laid down in June 1909, launched in August 1910 and commissioned in January 1913. His twin brother "Giulio Cesare" was laid down a year later than the flagship, and it was his fate that turned out to be the most interesting and tragic. The ship finished its life later than others, under strange and mysterious circumstances.
Italy entered World War I in 1915. During the entire period of hostilities, "Giulio Cesare" spent only 31 hours on combat missions and another 387 hours on exercises.
In the interwar period, the ship underwent three modernizations: in 1922, 1925 and in 1933-1937. In 1923, the battleship participated in the bombardment of the Greek island of Corfu and the subsequent attack on it.
By the beginning of World War II, "Giulio Cesare" approached more or less prepared. In July 1940, as a result of a clash with the enemy, a British shell hit the Caesar's corps, causing a fire. The loss of the crew in killed and wounded amounted to over a hundred people. The battleship was also in Taranto when it was bombed by British aircraft, but was able to escape to Naples, where it was overtaken by British bombs a year later.
In January 1942, the repaired battleship embarked on its last military campaign. A catastrophic shortage of fuel forced the Italian command to turn the Caesar into a floating barracks, and write off most of the crew to other ships. In total, during the war, the ship made 38 combat exits, of which 8 - to search for the enemy and 2 - to escort the convoy, covering a total of 16,947 nautical miles.
The death of "Novorossiysk"
But fast forward to 1955. The former "Caesar", which became "Novorossiysk", just returned from maneuvers to participate in the celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. On the night of October 29, a powerful explosion occurred under the hull of the ship - on the starboard side in the bow - the power of which was later estimated at a ton of TNT. An emergency alert was immediately declared, and the battleship had a nose trim and a roll of 1-2 degrees. The area of the hole, according to various estimates, ranged from 120 to 150 square meters. More than a hundred sailors were the first victims of the explosion.
Emergency brigades from neighboring ships and medical teams arrived on the ship, pumping out of the rapidly flowing water and evacuation of the wounded began.
The command of the Black Sea Fleet, despite the losses, refused to remove all personnel from the ship. Fleet Commander Vice-Admiral Viktor Parkhomenko later explained his decision by the fact that he "did not consider it possible to order the personnel to leave the ship in advance, because until the last minutes he hoped that the ship would be saved, and there was no thought that it would die."
For the same reasons, the started towing in shallow water was suspended (the battleship was sinking in the area of the Naval Hospital, about 110 meters from the coast). Later, when the decision was made to tow the ship, it was already too late - the nose of "Novorossiysk" was tightly stuck in the silt.
When the water began to flood the decks of the ship above the engine rooms and boiler rooms, the commander of the fleet and a member of the Military Council was again asked to remove the personnel built on the poop from the battleship, but the authorities again refused. And yet, several dozen people got into tow.
After three hours of struggle, "Novorossiysk" capsized, turning up keel over the port side. Together with the ship, 614 people died (according to other estimates, more than 670), including emergency parties from other ships of the squadron. Many sailors found themselves in air cushions in the interior of the ship - their knocking from the outside of the hull was heard until November 1. However, only nine of them were saved. Rescuers said that the sailors, immured inside the compartments, sang "Varyag".
The cause of the catastrophe was called an "external underwater explosion", the commander of the Black Sea Fleet Parkhomenko was accused of the death of people and the battleship itself. squadron commander, acting battleship commander (at the time of the explosion, the battleship commander himself, Captain 1st Rank Alexander Kukhta, was on vacation). They were reprimanded, someone was demoted, only Parkhomenko was removed from office. No judicial action was taken against the perpetrators.
Versions of the disaster
One of the reasons for the explosion was called a German mine left over from the Second World War, but in this case it remained incomprehensible how a charge, which had been in the water for more than ten years, could penetrate eight battleship decks, three of which were armored.
The commission investigating the reasons for the death of the battleship also admitted the possibility of detonating the ammunition, but when the ship was raised to the surface, it became clear that the explosion was made outside the hull.
Decades later, a different version was put forward by the chief of the battleship, who took part in the transfer of the ship from the Italian side to the Soviet. In his opinion, there was more than one mine, and the explosion outside provoked the detonation of the sabotage charge, which was originally inside the battleship. According to him, during the acceptance of the ship, three welded cutouts were found in the most distant compartment. The welding was recent. However, the command did not take any action on this information.
Or maybe the former owners of the battleship - the Italians - were involved in the explosion? Moreover, they had a similar experience since the Second World War.
In 1941, the British battleships Valiant and Queen Elizabeth, located in Alexandria, went out of action thanks to Italian saboteurs. The divers were caught on board the Vzliant. Only shallow water saved the battleship from death - it just sat down on the bottom. Following this, a torpedo, set by saboteurs under the bottom of the Queen Elizabeth, exploded - the ship lost a substantial part of the skin. The third victim of the Italians was an oil tanker.
The ideologist and leader of the sabotage war in Italy was a descendant of the princely family of Borghese - Lieutenant Commander Junio Valerio Scipione.
Subordinate to Borghese, whose unit was called Decima Flottiglia MAS, were, in particular, the so-called "people-frogs" (in Italian - uomo rana), who with the help of human-controlled torpedoes and blew up the ships in Alexandria. In May 1943, they sank three British transports in Algeciras Bay (on one side of which British Gibraltar is located), and three months later sank several tankers there. In total, from 1941 to 1943, 23 ships became victims of saboteurs.
The Germans also used Italian saboteurs - in particular on the Black Sea, where they sank two Soviet submarines and three cargo ships, as well as during the blockade of Leningrad.
In the early 90s of the last century, the commander-in-chief of the Italian Navy, Admiral Guido Venturioni, rejected the possibility of the involvement of Borghese's saboteurs in what happened in Sevastopol. Although he did not rule out that this could be the work of the Italian special services.
Conjectures about the reasons for the death of "Novorossiysk" do not stop now. Since then, whatever versions have been voiced: as if the ship was blown up by the Israelis, since Moscow decided to sell it to Egypt for a war with Israel, or that the order to flood the battleship was given by Khrushchev, who thus wanted to discredit Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov and all the rest of the leadership of the Navy. It was also said that the ship was let down by the British, who were afraid that the Soviet leadership would equip Novorossiysk with nuclear warheads. Will the truth emerge?