1955, October 29 - a mysterious disaster on the battleship "Novorossiysk" claimed the lives of 609 sailors. Even after so many years, the sinking of the battleship "Novorossiysk" remains, perhaps, the darkest page in the chronicle of the USSR Navy. According to the official version, an old bottom German mine exploded under the bottom of the battleship, which had lain at the bottom since the war for more than a decade.
However, there are other versions of what happened - allegedly Italian, British or even Soviet saboteurs are responsible for the loss of the ship. To this day, maritime experts have not come to the same opinion about the cause of the sinking of the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet …
The XX century was marked by the death of the largest ships of the Russian fleet - the battleships Empress Maria, Novorossiysk and the nuclear submarines Komsomolets and Kursk. Probably, the least of all the modern reader knows about the "Novorossiysk", which in 1955 after an explosion on board sank in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol. By a mysterious coincidence, "Novorossiysk" died in the same place where in 1916 the battleship "Empress Maria" exploded and then capsized - history seemed to repeat itself again 49 years later!
The fact that the tragedy happened in 1955 made information about it completely closed for many years.
Before the tragedy, on the evening of October 28, "Novorossiysk" returned to Sevastopol from a sea voyage and took a place half a mile from the Grafskaya pier, where, as a rule, all the solemn and festive events of the Black Sea Fleet took place. But the mooring of the ship was unsuccessful: the battleship, piloted by a not very experienced chief officer, slipped the desired position by a good half of the hull. The sailors decided to rectify the situation in the morning - later this circumstance will play a very important role.
Then no one could even imagine that something could happen to the ship, anchored in the depths of a perfectly protected bay. After mooring on the battleship Novorossiysk, normal life continued in accordance with the ship's schedule. The crew members were allowed shore leave. After part of the crew left the ship, more than one and a half thousand people remained on board: crew members and a new replenishment (200 people), cadets of naval schools and soldiers who had arrived on the ship the day before.
At 0130 hours a deafening explosion thundered in the bow of the battleship Novorossiysk filled with people. As it turned out later, it was so powerful that it pierced through the multi-deck armored hull of the battleship. According to experts, the force of the explosion was equivalent to an explosion of 1000–1200 kilograms of TNT. If an explosion of such force could hit one of the artillery cellars of the Novorossiysk, 5 more cruisers located nearby could go to the bottom. Streams of water mixed with fuel oil poured into the huge (160 sq.m.) hole.
The fight for the battleship and preparations for towing the ship to the sandbank began. The drama unfolded in full view of the whole of Sevastopol, which celebrated the centenary of the first defense of 1854-1855 (K. Voroshilov and N. Khrushchev, who was resting near Yalta, arrived to present the Order of the Red Banner to Sevastopol). The commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice-Admiral V. Parkhomenko, who arrived on the dying battleship, suspended the started towing. This decision was fatal.
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The admiral now and then demanded reports on the condition of the battleship, while the ship was sinking in the meantime. Parkhomenko's belated order to resume towing turned out to be meaningless: the bow of the ship had already settled on the ground. It was not immediately possible to persuade the admiral to evacuate the sailors who were not engaged in rescue work - by this time, about 1000 people had accumulated in the poop.
When the decision to evacuate was finally made, the list of the battleship began to rapidly increase. The sailors, lined up on the poop in anticipation of the launches, began to slide overboard into the darkness. On them, crippling and killing, anti-aircraft installations and mechanisms that had fallen from their places flew. Only a few dozen people were able to get into the boats and neighboring ships. At 4 hours 14 minutes, the battleship lay down on the port side and after a moment all this steel bulk 168 meters long and weighing 24,600 tons turned up keel. When the steel masts of the ship, describing an arc, began to submerge in the water, a powerful whirlpool formed. One of the rescued, a rookie sailor, later said:
“I jumped into the water when the ship began to lurch slowly to starboard. As soon as I emerged, I saw that I was covered with deck buildings, after which I was sucked into a great depth in the terribly seething water, and I lost consciousness. I came to myself while still in the water, inside a large air bubble, and managed to take a few breaths … The same bubble threw me to the surface from the other side, where they picked up the rescue boats …"
In the interior, tightly battened down rooms of the dying battleship Novorossiysk, there were hundreds of sailors who could still be saved. But this chance was not used either. As Admiral Parkhomenko later explained, he "did not consider it possible to order the personnel to leave the battleship in advance, because until the last minutes he hoped that the ship would be saved, and there was no thought that it would die." This hope has cost hundreds of lives.
Having turned upside down, the ship was afloat for a very long time, rising above the water level by 2-3 meters. The sailors who remained inside the battleship's hull were kept in the air cushions of the compartments for a long time, but only nine people were rescued: 7 exited through the hole cut by the autogen in the aft part of the bottom 5 hours after capsizing, two more were saved 50 hours later. According to the recollections of rescuers, the seamen, walled up and doomed to death, behaved very courageously. One of the divers who took part in the work to save people, I. P. Prokhorov, said:
I and several other divers were summoned to Novorossiysk on the second day after the tragedy, and we immediately started underwater work. The picture was terrible under the water … At night, then for a long time I dreamed of the faces of people whom I saw under water in the windows, which they tried to open it. With gestures I made it clear that we would save. People nodded, they say, they understood …
I plunged deeper, I can hear the Morse code knocking, - the knocking in the water is clearly audible: "Save quickly, we suffocate …" I also tapped them: "Be strong, everyone will be saved" And then it began! They started knocking in all the compartments so that they would know above that the people who were under the water were alive! He moved closer to the bow of the battleship and could not believe his ears - they are singing "Varyag"!"
In total, 609 people died in the crash of the battleship "Novorossiysk", including sailors who arrived from other ships of the squadron. Directly as a result of the explosion and flooding of the bow compartments, from 100 to 150 people died - the destruction fell on the most populated part of the ship. The rest died during the capsizing of the battleship and after it.
The explosion of the ship's ammunition - this was the first version of what happened. But she did not find confirmation, because immediately after examining the hull, it was concluded that "the nature of the destruction indicates that the explosion was external." In addition, it was precisely established that the battleship's 320-mm shells remained intact. According to the official version put forward by the government commission, the ship was blown up by a bottom magnetic mine.
It was established that mines of this type were exposed by the Germans in 1944 when leaving Sevastopol in its bays. But critics of the mine version say that by 1955 the power supplies of all bottom mines were discharged, and almost all fuses were inoperative. In addition, before the tragedy, the Novorossiysk (10 times) and the battleship Sevastopol (134 times) moored at the explosion site many times at different times of the year - and nothing exploded. In addition, they found out that in reality there were two explosions, with such a force that two large deep craters formed at the bottom, which the explosion of one mine cannot leave.
It is not surprising that the official version had many opponents, many of whom did not exclude possible sabotage. The fact is that the battleship "Novorossiysk" for most of its life bore a different name - "Giulio Caesare" ("Julius Caesar"), flying the flag of the Italian Navy. After the end of the Second World War, along with other captured ships, he went to the USSR as reparations. On the eve of its transfer to the Soviet Union, calls were openly voiced in the Apennines to prevent the pride of the Italian fleet from falling under the Soviet flag - right up to its sinking.
At the time of its sinking, the "Novorossiysk" was 44 years old - a venerable time for a ship. It was laid down in Genoa in the summer of 1910 and launched in 1915. In the First World War, the battleship did not take part, in the 1920s it was used as a training ship for training naval gunners. During the Second World War, the ship was usually engaged in escorting convoys, but in 1942 the naval command recognized it as obsolete and transferred it to the category of training ships.
Until 1948, the Giulio Caesare was parked, but it was not mothballed. After Italy's surrender, by the decision of the Triple Commission in 1948, it was transferred to the USSR Navy. In February 1948, the battleship, already under the naval flag of the USSR, sailed to Sevastopol. Soon after its arrival, by order of the Black Sea Fleet, it was given the name "Novorossiysk".
Although the version of the Italian saboteurs has not found official confirmation, many are still convinced that the death of the battleship Novorossiysk is on their conscience. Diver I. Prokhorov, who carefully examined the hole in the battleship, said: “I did not have the slightest doubt that the battleship was blown up by naval saboteurs, Italian, of course. And they brought a relatively small charge under the bottom, attaching it not to the "cellars", but to powerful landmines walled up in advance from the inside and carefully camouflaged during the preparation of the ship for transfer to us, with this "surprise" he walked for the time being in our waters …"
Some researchers believe that the charge was not installed before the transfer of the battleship, but immediately before the explosion, in the bay of Sevastopol. There were adequate forces and means to carry out such a sabotage in post-war Italy. During the war in the Black and Mediterranean Seas, Italian submarine saboteurs from the famous "Decima MAS" - the 10th flotilla of assault weapons, under the command of a staunch anti-communist, "black prince" DV Borghese, operated with great success.
In a semi-underground form, this detachment did not cease to exist even after Italy's surrender. In any case, everything shows that the sabotage, if any, was carried out by those who were well acquainted with the water area of the bay (during the war, the 10th IAS flotilla was based in the ports of the Crimea) and the structure of the ship: the saboteurs chose one of the most vulnerable places the bottom, not covered by mine protection, is near the bow artillery cellars of the main caliber.
The minimum inaccuracy can be explained by the fact that the day before, upon returning to base, the ship, as mentioned above, moored unsuccessfully and its hull was displaced by several tens of meters. If the charge went off exactly under the artillery cellar, no one would have survived.
In addition, according to the declassified reports of the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, by a very strange coincidence, it was at the very end of October that several Italian merchant ships were located in the Black Sea, which by October 29 amicably left its borders, and Prince Borghese soon after the explosion of Novorossiysk urgently left for Spain. At the same time, the foreign press reported that an anonymous group of Italian soldiers had been awarded the highest military awards for completing a certain special assignment. However, to this day, no one has published a single photocopy of this message.
Not only Italians, but also the British were suspected of blowing up the battleship "Novorossiysk": after Italy's withdrawal from the war, the British for a long time held the "Giulio Caesare" in Malta and conducted training on it together with the Italians. Another argument is put forward in favor of this version - allegedly the Soviet command wanted to equip Novorossiysk with nuclear weapons. The USSR possessed an atomic bomb since 1949, but then there were no naval means of using nuclear weapons.
The solution could only be large-caliber naval cannons firing heavy shells over long distances. The battleship was perfect for this purpose. Great Britain, which is an island, in this case turned out to be the most vulnerable target for the Soviet Navy. This turn of events did not suit either the British or their allies.
The journal "Slovo" published the memoirs of Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov "Sharp turns". Until his death, he had no doubts that the death of the battleship Novorossiysk was a carefully prepared operation. Here's what he wrote about it:
“It is still a mystery to me: how could an old German mine stay and go off, explode at night and in such a place most vulnerable to the ship? It's a very incredible coincidence. What could have happened then? Sabotage". There are other confirmations of the "sabotage" version, which the Soviet authorities tried not to comment on. Immediately after the disaster in the Sevastopol Bay, the head of the noise-finding station that controlled the entrance to the harbor came under investigation, the commander of the ship formation, who was responsible for guarding the raids of the main base, was removed from his post and demoted in military rank.
At the time of the explosion, the ships of the water area guard division, whose duties include guarding the entrance to the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, were in fact in a completely different place. On the night of the disaster, the outer raid was not guarded by anyone; the network gates were thrown open and the direction-finders were inactive. Thus, Sevastopol was without protection. Apparently, therefore, the version of torpedoing the ship by an unknown submarine was also actively discussed.
And although, when studying the nature of the damage received by the battleship, the commission did not find characteristic signs corresponding to a torpedo strike, theoretically a foreign submarine could well enter the bay and deliver a torpedo strike. Moreover, the Soviet military knew that some western fleets were already armed with small or dwarf submarines. So, theoretically, a dwarf submarine could penetrate the inner raid of the main base of the Black Sea Fleet.
O. Sergeev, candidate of technical sciences, put forward another version, according to which the battleship "Novorossiysk" was blown up by two charges installed on the ground in the area of the bow artillery cellars. The bombing, according to Sergeev, was prepared and carried out by the domestic special services with the knowledge of the country's leadership exclusively for domestic political purposes. In 1993, the perpetrators of this action allegedly became known: a senior lieutenant of special forces and two warrant officers - a support group. Against whom was this provocation directed?
According to Sergeev, primarily against the leadership of the Navy. As you know, the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov, was removed from his post in 1956. The ten-year shipbuilding plan, which does not reflect in the future the priority of the development of the most capital-intensive and profitable for the military-industrial complex, naval strategic nuclear forces, objectively could not be supported by the country's military-political leadership, which decided the fate of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy N. Kuznetsov.
The death of the battleship "Novorossiysk" was the beginning of a large-scale reduction of the Soviet Navy. Outdated battleships Sevastopol and October Revolution, captured cruisers Kerch and Admiral Makarov, many captured submarines, destroyers and ships of other classes of pre-war construction were used for scrap metal. The battleship Novorossiysk itself was raised from the bottom of the Northern Bay only in May 1957. In an inverted form, it was towed to the Cossack Bay, where it was disarmed and dismantled for metal.
Until now, no one knows what was done with the remains of the sailors that remained inside the battleship. And this is another mystery. Only in the 1990s did the names of the dead sailors of the battleship Novorossiysk appear on two previously unmarked mass graves. 1999 - according to the decree of the President of Russia, 716 sailors were awarded the Order of Courage, with more than 600 posthumously. But this document, published for some reason under the heading "For official use", did not put an end to the tragic history of the battleship …
Will the answer to the question of what exactly killed Novorossiysk be finally found? Most likely not already. If the lifted battleship, together with the specialists who determined the degree of its further suitability, were properly examined by competent specialists, they could find certain traces of an unknown "charge" to this day. But the battleship, cut into metal, was quickly sent to the Zaporizhstal plant, and the case of the Novorossiysk disaster was closed.
I. Rudycheva
Recommended for viewing: The wreck of the battleship "Novorossiysk". Classified secret
