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The mystery of the death of the battleship "Novorossiysk" in Sevastopol: the confession of an Italian combat swimmer. The death of the battleship "Novorossiysk": five versions of the Battleship Julius Caesar

Strange story. Believe it or not? The Italian swimmer finally admitted to blowing up a battleship in Sevastopol... But doubts arise about the veracity of this version.

Veteran of the Italian unit of combat swimmers "Gamma" Hugo D'Esposito admitted that the Italian military was involved in the sinking of the Soviet battleship Novorossiysk. 4Arts writes about this, noting that the words of Hugo d'Esposito are the first admission of involvement in the destruction of Novorossiysk by the Italian military, who previously categorically denied such a version. The Italian publication calls d'Esposito's confession of sabotage against Novorossiysk the most sensational in the veteran's interview : "It directly confirms the probable hypothesis about the cause of the explosion on the ship."
According to Ugo D’Esposito, the Italians did not want the ship to fall to the “Russians”, so they took care of sinking it: “They did everything possible.” But he did not specify how exactly the sabotage was carried out.
Previously, the version that the Novorossiysk sank as a result of sabotage organized by the Italians was not officially confirmed.

In the ancient fraternal cemetery in Sevastopol, there is a monument: a 12-meter tall figure of a grieving sailor with the inscription: “Motherland to sons.” The stele reads: “To the courageous sailors of the battleship Novorossiysk, who died in the line of military duty on October 29, 1955. Loyalty to the military oath was stronger than death for you.” The figure of a sailor is cast from bronze propellers of a battleship...
Few people knew about this ship and its mysterious death until the late 80s, when they were allowed to write about it.

"Novorossiysk" is a Soviet warship, battleship of the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR Navy. Until 1948, the ship was part of the Italian Navy under the name Giulio Cesare ( Giulio Caesar, in honor of Gaius Julius Caesar).
Dreadnought " Giulio Caesar" - one of five ships of the Conte di Cavour type ( Giulio Cesare, Leonardo da Vinci, Conte di Cavour, Caio Duilio, Andrea Doria), built according to the design of engineer-general Edoardo Masdea and launched in 1910-1917.
Being the main force of the Italian fleet in two world wars, they did not bring him glory without causing the enemy, and at different times they were the Austrians, Germans, Turks, French, British, Greeks, Americans and Russians - not the slightest damage. "Cavour" and "Da Vinci" died not in battle, but in their bases.
And the “Julius Caesar” was destined to become the only battleship that the victorious country did not scrap, did not use for experiments, but commissioned the active fleet, and even as a flagship ship, despite the fact that it was clearly technically and morally outdated .

Giulio Caesar was the second in the series, it was built by the Ansaldo company (Genoa). The ship was laid down on June 24, 1910, launched on October 15, 1911, and entered service on May 14, 1914. It received the motto “To withstand any blow.”
The armament consisted of guns of 305, 120 and 76 mm caliber. The ship's displacement was 25 thousand tons.

Battleship Giulio Cesare after modernization in 1940

"Giulio Cesare" was involved in the battles of the First and Second World Wars. After the end of World War II, it went to the Soviet Union as reparations. At the Tehran Conference, it was decided to divide the Italian fleet between the USSR, USA, Great Britain and countries that suffered from fascist aggression. By lot, the British received the latest Italian battleships of the Littorio class. The USSR, to whose share the Cesare fell, was able to transfer it to Sevastopol only in 1949. By order of the Black Sea Fleet dated March 5, 1949, the battleship was given the name Novorossiysk.

The battleship was in an extremely neglected state - it was mothballed in the port of Taranto for 5 years. Immediately before the transfer to the USSR, it underwent minor repairs (mainly the electromechanical part). They couldn't translate the documentation, and the ship's machinery needed replacing. Experts noted the battleship's shortcomings - the antediluvian level of intra-ship communications, poor survivability systems, damp cockpits with three-tier bunks, a tiny faulty galley.
In mid-May 1949, the battleship was delivered to the Northern Dock and a few months later it went to sea for the first time as part of the Black Sea Fleet. In subsequent years, it was constantly repaired and retrofitted, and was in service, not meeting the requirements for a warship in many technical condition indicators. Due to everyday difficulties, the priority repair and restoration work on the battleship included equipping a galley for the crew, insulating living and service spaces under the forecastle deck with expansite, as well as re-equipping some of the bathrooms, washbasins and showers.
At the same time, experts were amazed by both the grace of the contours of the underwater part and the nature of its fouling. Only the area of the variable waterline was intensively overgrown with shells, while the rest of the area, covered with a paste of unknown composition, was almost not overgrown. But the bottom-outboard fittings were in unsatisfactory condition. Moreover, as the last commander of the warhead-5 battleship, I. I. Reznikov, wrote, during the next repair it was discovered that the pipelines of the fire system were almost completely overgrown with shells, the throughput of which had decreased several times.
From 1950 to 1955, the battleship was undergoing factory repairs 7 times. However, some shortcomings were not eliminated until October 1955. Modernization work caused a small increase in ship mass(approximately 130 t) and deterioration of stability(transverse metacentric height decreased by 0.03 m).

In May 1955, Novorossiysk entered service with the Black Sea Fleet and until the end of October went to sea several times, practicing combat training tasks.
On October 28, 1955, “Novorossiysk” returned from its last voyage and took its place on the “battleship barrel” in the area of the Naval Hospital, where the “Empress Maria” once stood for the last time...

Before dinner, reinforcements arrived on the ship - infantry soldiers transferred to the fleet. At night they were placed in the bow quarters. For most of them it was the first and last day of naval service.
On October 29 at 01.31 a powerful explosion was heard under the hull of the bow of the ship. An emergency combat alert was declared on the ship, and an alarm was also announced on the nearby ships. Emergency and medical groups began to arrive at Novorossiysk.
After the explosion, the bow of the ship sank into the water, and the released anchor held the battleship tightly, preventing it from being towed to the shallows. Despite all the measures taken, water continued to flow into the ship's hull. Seeing that the flow of water could not be stopped, acting commander Khorshudov turned to the fleet commander, Vice Admiral Parkhomenko, with a proposal to evacuate part of the team, but was refused. The evacuation order was given too late. More than 1,000 sailors gathered at the stern. Boats began to approach the battleship, but only a small part of the crew managed to disembark. At 4.14 the ship's hull suddenly jerked and began to list to port and a moment later turned upside down with its keel. According to one version, Admiral Parkhomenko, not realizing the size of the hole, gave the command to tow it to the dock, and this destroyed the ship.

“Novorossiysk” turned over as quickly as “Empress Maria” almost half a century before it. Hundreds of sailors found themselves in the water. Many, especially former infantrymen, quickly sank under the water under the weight of wet clothes and boots. Some of the crew managed to climb to the bottom of the ship, others were picked up on boats, and some managed to swim to the shore. The stress from the experience was such that some of the sailors who swam to the shore could not stand it, and they immediately fell dead. Many people heard frequent knocking inside the hull of the overturned ship - this was signaled by sailors who did not have time to get out of the compartments.
One of the divers recalled: “At night, for a long time, I dreamed of the faces of people whom I saw under water in the portholes that they tried to open. With gestures I made it clear that we would save them. People nodded, they said, they understood... I sank deeper, I heard them knocking in Morse code, the knocking in the floor was clearly audible: “Rescue quickly, we are suffocating...” I also tapped them: “Be strong, everyone will be saved.” And then it started! They started knocking in all the compartments so that those above would know that the people trapped under water were alive! I moved closer to the bow of the ship and couldn’t believe my ears - they were singing “Varyag”!”
It was possible to pull out 7 people through a hole cut in the aft part of the bottom. Divers rescued two more. But air began to escape from the cut hole with increasing force, and the overturned ship began to slowly sink. In the last minutes before the death of the battleship, the sailors, walled up in the compartments, could be heard singing “Varyag”. In total, 604 people died during the explosion and sinking of the battleship, including emergency shipments from other ships of the squadron.

In the summer of 1956, the special-purpose expedition EON-35 began raising the Novorossiysk. The operation began on the morning of May 4 and the recovery was completed on the same day. The news of the upcoming ascent of the battleship spread throughout Sevastopol, and, despite the heavy rain, all the shores of the bay and the nearby hills were dotted with people. The ship floated upside down, and was taken to Cossack Bay, where it was turned over and hastily dismantled for scrap.

As the fleet order stated then, the cause of the explosion of the battleship was a German magnetic mine, which allegedly had lain on the bottom since the war for more than 10 years, which for some reason unexpectedly came into action. Many sailors were surprised, because in this place of the bay, immediately after the war, careful trawling was carried out and, finally, mechanical destruction of mines in the most critical places. On the barrel itself, ships anchored hundreds of times...

After the battleship was raised, the commission carefully examined the hole. It was monstrous in size: more than 160 square meters. The force of the explosion was so incredible that it was enough to break through eight decks - including three armored ones! Even the upper deck was twisted from the right to the left side... It is not difficult to calculate that this would have required several more than a ton of TNT. Even the largest German mines did not have such power.

The death of Novorosiysk gave rise to many legends. The most popular of them is the sabotage of Italian naval saboteurs. This version was also supported by the experienced naval commander Admiral Kuznetsov.

Valerio Borghese

During the war, Italian submariners were stationed in captured Sevastopol, so some of Borghese's comrades were familiar in the Sevastopol Bay. But how could the penetration of an Italian submarine to the entrance to the main fleet base 10 years after the end of the war go unnoticed? How many trips from the submarine to the battleship did the saboteurs have to make in order to place several thousand tons of TNT on it? Maybe the charge was small and served only as a detonator for a huge mine, which the Italians placed in a secret compartment at the bottom of the battleship? Such a tightly certified compartment was discovered in 1949 by Captain 2nd Rank Lepekhov, but there was no reaction from the command to his report.

Some historians argue that members of the commission, with the support of Khrushchev, distorted many of the facts of the tragedy, after which only the acting commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral V.A., was punished. Parkhomenko and Fleet Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, removed from the leadership of the Navy and demoted by two levels. There is a version that Khrushchev in this way took revenge on the admiral for his harsh comment about the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR.
Soon after the death of Novorosisysk, the head of intelligence of the Black Sea Fleet, Major General Namgaladze, and the commander of the OVR (water area security), Rear Admiral Galitsky, left their posts.

By order of the fleet, the families of the deceased were given one-time benefits - 10 thousand rubles each. for the dead sailors and 30 thousand each for the officers. After which they tried to forget about Novorossiysk...
Only in May 1988, the Pravda newspaper published for the first time a short article dedicated to the death of the battleship Novorossiysk with the memories of eyewitnesses of the tragedy, which described the heroic behavior of the sailors and officers who found themselves inside the overturned ship.
(from here)

After the death of Novorossiysk, various versions were put forward.

Versions about the causes of the explosion
Official version. According to the official version put forward by a government commission, the battleship was blown up by a bottom magnetic mine installed by the Germans in 1944 when leaving Sevastopol. On November 17, the commission’s conclusion was presented to the CPSU Central Committee, which accepted and approved the conclusions. The cause of the disaster was called “an external underwater explosion (non-contact, bottom) of a charge with a TNT equivalent of 1000-1200 kg.” The most probable was the explosion of a German magnetic mine left on the ground after the Great Patriotic War.
However, the power sources removed in the 50s. bottom mines turned out to be discharged, and the fuses were inoperative.

Professor, engineer-captain 1st rank N. P. Muru in his book “Disaster on the Inner Roadstead” he proves that the most likely cause of the death of the ship is the explosion of a bottom mine (two mines). N.P. Muru considers the direct confirmation of the version of the mine explosion to be that after the disaster, 17 similar mines were discovered by trawling the bottom silt, of which 3 were located within a radius of 100 m from the site of the death of the battleship.

Opinion Yu. Lepekhova, lieutenant engineer of the battleship Novorossiysk: the cause of the explosion was German magnetic underwater mines. But at the same time, due to the nature of the destruction of the battleship’s hull (the ship was pierced through by the explosion, and the hole in the bottom does not coincide with the hole on the deck), it is believed that the mine explosion caused the detonation of a charge that was placed on the ship by the Italians even before its transfer to the Soviet side. Lepekhov claims that when, during acceptance, he and other members of the commission inspected the ship, they ran into a blank bulkhead in the bow of the battleship. They did not attach any importance to this then, but now Lepekhov believes that behind this bulkhead there was a powerful explosive charge. This charge was supposed to be activated some time after the transfer of the ship, but for some reason this did not happen. But already in 1955 this charge detonated, serving as the main cause of the death of the ship.

A number of later studies of the death of the battleship showed that to cause the destruction that Novorossiysk suffered - through penetration of the hull from the keel to the upper deck - would have required about 2-5 tons of TNT, when placing charges directly at the bottom of the hull, or 12, 5 tons of TNT, when placing charges at the bottom, under the battleship, at a depth of 17.5 m. It has been proven that the German RMH bottom mine, having a hexonite charge weighing 907.18 kg (in TNT equivalent 1250-1330 kg), could not inflict such damage to the battleship when it explodes on the ground. In this case, only the first and second bottoms of the battleship would have been pierced, which is confirmed by experimental data. In the area of the explosion, a search was undertaken for mine fragments and the sludge was washed, but nothing was found.

Explosion of ship ammunition. This version was dropped after an examination of the hull: the nature of the destruction indicated that an explosion had occurred outside.

Meeting in Sevastopol in September 1955. There is a version that the ship was deliberately blown up during a discussion about the directions of development of the fleet. We'll come back to this version later...

Sabotage. The commission's conclusions did not rule out the possibility of sabotage. On the eve of the transfer of the battleship to the USSR, calls were openly made in Italy to prevent the pride of the Italian fleet from ending up under the Soviet flag. Some bloggers claim that it was planned to prepare the 320-mm main caliber of the Novorossiysk to fire nuclear-filled shells. As if, just the day before, the battleship, after many failures, allegedly fired experimental special shells (without a nuclear charge) at training targets.

In the mid-2000s, the Itogi magazine published a story by a certain submarine officer Nikolo, allegedly involved in sabotage. According to him, the operation was organized by the former commander of a flotilla of underwater saboteurs, V. Borghese, who, after handing over the ship, vowed “to take revenge on the Russians and blow it up at all costs.” The sabotage group arrived on a mini-submarine, which in turn was secretly delivered by a cargo ship arriving from Italy. The Italians allegedly set up a secret base in the area of Sevastopol Omega Bay, mined the battleship, and then went out on a submarine into the open sea and waited to be picked up by “their” steamer.

Reference:

Prince Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese(Italian Junio Valerio Scipione Ghezzo Marcantonio Maria dei principi Borghese; June 6, 1906, Rome - August 26, 1974, Cadiz) - Italian military and political figure, captain 2nd rank (Italian. capitano di fregata).
Born into the aristocratic Borghese family. In 1928, Borghese graduated from the Naval Academy in Livorno and entered service in the submarine fleet.
Interesting detail: in 1931 Borghese married a Russian countess Daria Vasilievna Olsufieva(1909-1963), with whom he had four children and who died tragically in a car accident in 1962. An award for connoisseurs of Rome bears her name.

Since 1933, Borghese has been the commander of the submarine, carried out a number of successful operations, sank Allied ships with a total displacement of 75 thousand tons. He received the nickname “Black Prince”. He initiated the creation of a unit within the X Flotilla that used combat swimmers. Since 1941, as acting, since 1943 he officially commanded the X flotilla, which became the most successful unit of the Italian Navy.

10th flotilla of assault weapons ( Decima Flottiglia MAS) - a detachment of naval saboteurs as part of the Italian Navy, created in 1941. It consisted of a surface unit (boats with explosives) and an underwater unit (guided torpedoes). He also had a special unit "Gamma", which included combat swimmers. The unit was originally part of the 1st MAS Flotilla, then received the name "Tenth MAS Flotilla". MAS is an abbreviation for Italian. Mezzi d'Assalto- assault weapons; or Italian Motoscafo Armato Silurante- armed torpedo boats.

The SLC guided torpedo, which was called the “piglet” in the tenth flotilla, was essentially a small boat capable of diving to shallow depths. Dimensions: 6.7 m long and 53 cm wide. Thanks to tanks for ballast and compressed air, the torpedo could dive to a depth of 30 m. Two propellers were driven by an electric motor powered by a battery. The torpedo reached a speed of three knots (5.5 km/h) and had a range of 10 nautical miles (18.5 km).

The torpedo was delivered to the scene of hostilities on a conventional submarine. Then two saboteurs mounted her one after another, like a horse. The pilot and the torpedo commander sat on it. They were protected from wave impacts by a glass shield, and at the base of the shield there were on-board instruments: a magnetic compass, a depth meter, a roll meter, a steering lever, engine and pump switches that kept the torpedo at the desired depth.
Behind the pilot sat a diver-mechanic. He leaned his back against a container with tools (a cutter for locking networks, a spare oxygen device, ropes and clamps for fixing the explosive charge). The crew was dressed in light spacesuits and used an oxygen breathing device. Oxygen cylinders lasted for 6 hours.
Having approached the enemy ship as close as possible, the torpedo was submerged, and the diver attached the 300-kilogram explosive charge he had brought with him to the hull of the ship. Having installed the clock mechanism, the swimmers boarded the torpedo and returned to base.

At first there were failures: the “pigs” drowned, were destroyed, caught in nets, the crew was poisoned and suffocated due to the imperfection of the air supply system, torpedoes were simply lost at sea, etc. But then the “pigs” began to make progress: on the night of November 18-19, 1941, “live torpedoes” sank two British ships - Queen Elizabeth and Valiant: “The Italians won one of the most brilliant victories in the history of naval wars. 6 people were seriously injured 2 battleships in a strictly guarded port."
(from here)

A nuance: the practice of underwater saboteurs, both English and Italian, during the Second World War did not involve hanging such large charges under the ship’s hull as in Sevastopol.
Italian underwater saboteurs on guided torpedoes (“Maiale”) suspended a charge weighing only about 300 kg. This is how they acted, carrying out sabotage in Alexandria on December 19, 1941, damaging 2 British battleships (Queen Elizabeth and Valiant) and in Gibraltar in 1941-1943.
The charges were suspended from lateral keels ships using special clamps called “sergeants”.
Note that the side keels on the battleship Novorossiysk in the area of the explosion (frames 30-50) were missing...

Another sabotage version: installation under the bottom of a battleship magnetic mines. But it was necessary to have about hundreds underwater saboteurs-swimmers carrying a magnetic mine underwater in order to create a charge under the bottom about 2 t.. For example, Italian submariners from the “Gamma squad”, part of the 10th MAS flotilla, when carrying out sabotage during the Second World War, transported charges of the “Mignatta” or “Bauletti” type with a total weight no more than 12 kg.

Should Signor Ugo D'Esposito be believed? It still doesn’t seem entirely clear to me, How Did the Italian swimmers manage to penetrate the Sevastopol Bay, and most importantly, deliver a bunch of explosives to the site of sabotage? Maybe the former saboteur was lying after all?

From the “Report on the regime in the area of the Main Base dated October 29, 1955,” it follows that during October 27-28, 1955, the following foreign ships were at the crossing in the Black Sea:
- Italian “Gerosi” and “Ferdinando” from Odessa to the Bosphorus;
- Italian “Esmeraldo” and French “Sanche Condo” from Novorossiysk to the Bosphorus;
- French “Roland” from Poti to the Bosphorus;
- Turkish “Demirkalla” from the Bosphorus to Sulina.
All the ships were located at a considerable distance from the main base...

The underwater saboteurs also had to have full information about the security regime of the Main Base of the Black Sea Fleet, the places where ships were moored and exited. They should have known that the boom gates to the Sevastopol Bay would be open, that the battleship, returning from the sea on October 28, 1955, would stand on barrels No. 3, and not in its regular place - barrels No. 14 in the very depths of the bay.
Such information could only be collected by an intelligence resident located in Sevastopol, and the “signal” could only be transmitted to the saboteurs on the submarine via radio communication. But the presence of such a resident in closed (1939-1959) Sevastopol and his possible actions specifically in the interests of Prince Borghese seem unrealistic.
And he couldn’t get information about what kind of barrels the battleship would be installed on, because... it was transferred to Novorossiysk when it was already at the Inkerman sites immediately before entering the base.

The question is:
- where did the saboteurs install mines in “magnetic cylinders” if the battleship was at sea all day on October 28?
- how could they finish all the work by “sunset” on October 28 and even “sail” back to Omega, if the sun on October 28, 1955 in the Sevastopol area set at 17.17 (it got dark at 18.47), and the battleship “Novorossiysk” by the time of sunset sun hasn't finished mooring yet"? He anchored and barreled on October 28, 1955 only in 17.30 !

Let's say the saboteurs managed to plant mines. Taking into account their double return and the possible weight of demolition charges (for example, the “Mignatta” type - 2 kg, “Bauletti” - 4.5 kg, which were used by Italian saboteurs, and each swimmer wore 4-5 such mines on his belt), they could install a charge weighing a maximum of 540 kg under the bottom of the battleship. This is clearly not enough to cause the damage that the battleship received. Note also that the Minyatta type mine was attached to the underwater part of the ship by suction, and the Bauletti mine was attached to the side keel of the ship with two clamps, i.e. These were not magnetic mines. There were no side keels on the Novorossiysk in the area of the explosion. Suppose that magnetic mines were specially made? But why, if the Italians already had mines that had been tested in real life?

Opinion of former Italian underwater saboteurs.
A.N. Norchenko met with these people in 1995 in Italy, and described these meetings in his book “The Damned Secret”:
- Luigi Ferraro, an underwater saboteur who served in a detachment of underwater swimmers (“Gamma detachment”), who blew up several ships during the war, a national hero of Italy, recipient of the Great Gold Medal for military valor.
- Evelino Marcolini, a former torpedo saboteur, during the war he participated in the operation against the English aircraft carrier Aquila, for which he was awarded the Large Gold Medal for military valor.
- Emilio Legnani, began his service as a young officer on the battleship Giulio Cesare, after the war he sailed on it to Malta, a former boat saboteur who served in a detachment of assault and torpedo boats of the 10th MAS flotilla. During the war he visited Gurzuf, Balaklava, and Sevastopol. After the war in 1949, he commanded a detachment of ships, ensuring the safety of a group of ships that were destined for reparations to the USSR and went to Albania, where their transfer took place. This detachment of ships was responsible for the safety of the group of transferred ships up to the Albanian coast.
All of them were closely acquainted with Prince Borghese. All of them were awarded, but for their military actions during the war.

Answers to questions about the involvement of Italian saboteurs in the bombing of the battleship Novorossiysk:
L. Ferrari:
“This issue is not new for us. This has already been asked to us in various letters. Everyone asked if we blew up “Giulio Cesare” in Sevastopol? I say responsibly and definitely: this is all fiction. At that time, our country was in ruins, there were enough problems of our own!.. And why do we need all this? This is already distant history. I would have no problem admitting my participation, but I don’t want to invent something that didn’t happen.
...I have 95 percent no idea who, other than the Italians, could have done this. But I am 100 percent sure that these are not Italians. We had both equipment and trained people. It seems like there is no one else but us, many people think this way. But we have nothing to do with this act. This is absolutely accurate. He was of no use to us. And in general, you know, Senor Alessandro, if I had blown up the Giulio Cesare in combat conditions, I would have reported it to you with pride. But I don’t want to take credit for it.”.

E.Marcolini:
“We are all aware of the fact that more than a ton of explosives exploded under the battleship. With my "Maial" (a guided torpedo, whose driver was E. Marcolini during the war), I could deliver no more than 280 kilograms. To deliver our charge to the battleship, support means would be required: either a submarine or something like the Olterra. And so that they are not far away. Because there would be practically no power reserve for returning: the torpedo would then have to be sunk, and we would have to get out just like that.
But this is physically impossible in a little-known place. And in a matter of minutes...
There is nothing to say about the swimmers from Gamma. They wouldn't last long in your water at all.(water temperature on October 28, 1955 in the Sevastopol area was 12-14 degrees). So I have a hard time imagining how I would do it myself. And why did we need this?..
If we had actually participated in the bombing of Giulio Cesare, it would have immediately become known to everyone, and then we would have been dealt with very quickly, torn into pieces. And above all, our left, they had great strength in Italy at that time.”

E. Legnani answers questions, including about Prince Borghese’s oath on his golden sword to sink the battleship, but not to let it serve with the Bolsheviks:
“It’s all fantasy. The prince, as far as I knew him, did not give any such oaths to anyone. And we all had the same swords. And in general, why did we, Italians, take the risk of blowing up this rusty box that barely floated and could hardly shoot?! I personally know this better than others. Because of him, there was nothing to risk, let him sail and ruin your treasury... And if there was anyone to take revenge on, it was England and America - they took away from us the completely new battleships “Vittorio Veneto” and “Italy”, and the Germans Roma was bombed on Armistice Day. So, from any side, this action with “Giulio Cesare” in Italy was absolutely unnecessary... The culprits and those interested must be looked for elsewhere.”

The answer is at least somewhat cynical, but apparently frank.
All these interlocutors advised: determine who needed and benefited from all this?.
Hmmm. It seems that Hugo D'Esposito simply decided to show off in his old age.

As for the version about the involvement of English underwater saboteurs in the blasting of the Novorossiysk, their problems would be the same as those pointed out when analyzing information about a possible “Italian trace”. Besides, no English ships or vessels, which could deliver underwater saboteurs or a midget submarine, were not observed in the Black Sea at that time.

But if not sabotage by combat swimmers, then what caused the death of the battleship?
The analysis of versions was carried out in his research by A.D. Sanin ( Once again about the “damned secret” and various versions of the death of the battleship Novorossiysk).
Interestingly, in the area of the explosion it was discovered “a torn part of a barge with a winch 8-9 m long, 4 m wide, protruding from the ground by 2.5-4 m.”, i.e. to the bottom of the battleship. It was quite possible to place explosive charges on the barge with a total mass of 2-2.5 tons or more. In this case, the explosion no longer becomes bottom-based, but near-bottom and almost under the very bottom of the battleship (3-5 m remains to the bottom). An “iron sheet without fouling” measuring 4x2 m, 20 mm thick could be used to better shield charges from the bottom and give the explosion an upward direction. As you can easily calculate, the weight of this sheet is about 1.2 t.
Delivering such a quantity of explosives (more than 2 tons) to a barge under water and dragging a sheet of iron of such size and weight to it is clearly beyond the power of underwater saboteurs... Hence the conclusion follows that such an operation, if carried out, was carried out surface way with the subsequent flooding of this rusty barge in the area of anchorage No. 3.
A.N. Norchenko, having compared documents on the explosion of the battleship and various objects found at the bottom of the crater in the area of its parking on barrels No. 3, gives a possible scheme for installing charges under the battleship Novorossiysk: the first charge detonation occurred closer to the left side of the battleship. The cavity he created in the water accumulated the energy of the explosion of the second charge and gave it a more directed character. The insignificant depth and smoothness of the craters indicate that the explosions occurred at a certain distance from the ground, equal to the height of the submerged barge, i.e., near-bottom directed explosions were carried out.

Proposed scheme (reconstruction) of installing the Novorossiysk LC charge using a submerged barge

Fragment of the parking lot map of LC "Novorossiysk" on barrels No. 3

The second sabotage version (O. Sergeev) of the explosion may be associated with the disappearance without a trace after the explosion of the standard battleship longboat No. 319 and command boat No. 1475, which were under fire, from the starboard side of the battleship at a distance of 10-15 m from the side.
From the explanatory note of the assistant commander of the battleship, captain 3rd rank Serbulov, dated 10.30.55:
“... Hearing the explosion, after 2-3 minutes I went to the poop deck. Following to the place of the explosion, from the waist I saw people swimming... and there I discovered that under the right shot there was neither boat No. 1475 nor longboat No. 319.”
The commission also did not attach any importance to the fact that the boat and longboat disappeared, although all the first reports of the explosion were related to the fact that some gasoline containers had exploded.
From the explanatory note of Fleet Commander Parkhomenko, presented to the commission: “...At approximately 01.40, captain 3rd rank Ksenofontov called me at the apartment of the fleet OD and reported that at 01.30 gasoline tanks exploded on the battleship Novorossiysk.”
But there was no gasoline in the bow of the battleship; gasoline was in boat No. 1475. A completely logical conclusion arises that the complete destruction of the boat and longboat could have occurred due to underwater explosions of charges and the resulting explosion of the gas-air mixture. This led to the smell of gasoline and the first report of a gasoline tank explosion.

Explosive charges could possibly be placed on longboat No. 319, whose displacement is about 12 tons, length - 12 m, width - 3.4 m, side height - 1.27 m. Charges weighing up to 2.5 tons or more (for example, 2 FAB-1000 aerial bombs), as well as a “fouling-free iron sheet” weighing 1.2 tons to give explosions an upward direction.
If longboat No. 319, when the battleship went to sea on October 28, 1955, did not board it, but remained at the battleship’s boat base in Sevastopol Bay, then it could well have been “charged” with so many explosives in advance, and then simply sunk alongside battleship

O. Sergeev believes that the battleship was blown up by two charges with a total TNT equivalent of within 1800 kg, installed on the ground in the area of the bow artillery magazines, at a small distance from the centerline of the ship and from each other. The explosions occurred with a short time interval, causing a cumulative effect and causing damage, as a result of which the ship sank. The bombing was prepared and carried out by domestic special services with the knowledge of the country's leadership for internal political purposes. Who was this provocation directed against? According to Sergeev, against the leadership of the Navy. The death of the Novorossiysk was the beginning of a large-scale reduction of the USSR Navy. The obsolete battleships "Sevastopol", "October Revolution", captured cruisers "Kerch", "Admiral Makarov", many captured submarines, destroyers and ships of other classes of pre-war construction were used for scrap metal.

Hmmm. It turns out that they did explode their? For the GRU or the KGB it was clearly easier than for foreign swimmers who simply did not physically have the opportunity.

It is strange that over decades, experts have not been able to establish the cause of the death of the battleship.
And another mystery: 40 years before the explosion of the flagship battleship of the Soviet fleet on the same Sevastopol roadstead and under the same unclear circumstances, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the dreadnought Empress Maria, perished...

Eternal memory to the fallen sailors.

The question about the lifespan of an airplane, ship or car, of course, does not have an exact answer. Some people have been driving their beloved Buick Roadmaster for three decades, others change cars every four years. This is a story about a warship with a complicated history, its two lives and its unexpected death.

Almost 60 years ago, on October 29, 1955, a disaster occurred, ending the long and difficult journey of one of the most famous ships in history. In the Northern Bay of Sevastopol, the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) sank due to an explosion, which, however, by the time of its death had long since become the flagship of the Black Sea squadron of the Soviet Navy and was sailing under the new name Novorossiysk. More than six hundred sailors died. For a long time, the details of these events were not disclosed, versions of the tragedy were kept secret - not at all surprising, because the extremely strange events in the Sevastopol Bay led to reshuffles in the command of the USSR Navy.

"Giulio Cesare"

The battleship Novorossiysk was forty-four years old at the time of the disaster - a very respectable age for a warship. For most of his life he was known as "Giulio Cesare" - and for a long time sailed under the flag of the Italian Navy.

Dreadnought "Giulio Cesare" on the slipway, 1911.

The history of the Julius Caesar began on June 27, 1909, when Italy decided to modernize its battle fleet and approved a large-scale project to build three cruisers, twelve submarines, as well as a dozen destroyers, thirty-four destroyers and, finally, three dreadnought battleships according to the 1908 project of the year. So in 1910, the future “Leonardo da Vinci”, “Conte di Cavour” and “Giulio Cesare”, which was originally intended as the flagship, were laid down in Genoa.

The British loved to joke about the Italian fleet, saying that the Italians were much better at building ships than they were at fighting on them. Jokes aside, Italy seriously counted on its new battleships in the coming European conflict, and by the beginning of the First World War, Giulio Cesare was located at the main naval base of Taranto, constantly conducting exercises and firing. The doctrine of linear artillery combat meant that battleships should engage only with enemy battleships, and the most serious artillery training of the crew was carried out. In 1916, the ship was transferred to the shores of Corfu, in December 1917 - to the southern part of the Adriatic, and by the end of the war she returned to Taranto. The entire experience of "Caesar" during the First World War consisted of 31 hours on combat missions and 387 hours on exercises, without a single collision with the enemy.

Launching in Genoa, Ansaldo shipyard. October 15, 1911.
Source: Aizenberg B. A., Kostrichenko V. V., Talamanov P. N. “Epitaph to a great dream.” Kharkov, 2007

During the interwar period, Giulio Cesare, remaining the pride of the Italian fleet, was actively improved and refined. In 1922, the foremast was changed, in 1925, the fire control system was changed, and a catapult for seaplanes was installed. The ship underwent the greatest transformations in the 30s during a major overhaul - at that time it was already more than twenty years old! The battleship's displacement reached 24,000 tons, and its maximum speed was 22 knots. The initial armament included 13 305 mm guns, 18 120 mm guns, 13 76 mm guns, three torpedo tubes, anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns; as a result of modernization, the main caliber was drilled to 320 mm.

The Italian battleship fought its first serious battle after the start of World War II. On July 6, 1940, off Cape Punta Stilo, the Cesare entered into a firefight with the flagship of the British squadron, the battleship Warspite, but, unfortunately, could not show its best side: it was hit (most historians agree that it was accidental) 381 -mm shell caused a fire on the Cesare, killing 115 crew members, destroying the light guns and damaging four boilers. The ship had to retreat.

"Giulio Cesare" in 1917

In November 1940, British aircraft attacked Italian battleships in the harbor of Taranto, as a result of which the Cesare was transferred first to Naples, then to Sicily. The battleship had its second serious battle with an English convoy to Malta on November 27. The ships of the opposing sides received minor damage, the Italians retreated as enemy aircraft approached. In 1941, the Cesare was again unlucky: the ship was damaged by another British air raid and was sent for lengthy repairs. By 1942, it became clear that the 30-year-old ship was hopelessly outdated. Due to design flaws, it could have died from one torpedo hit, and was also unable to seriously resist enemy aircraft.

Until the end of hostilities, the battleship remained in the harbor, serving as a floating barracks.

"Giulio Cesare" in the battle of Punta Stilo. Photo taken from the battleship Conte di Cavour

"Novorossiysk"

Italy surrendered in 1943. According to the terms of the Allies, the Italian fleet was to be divided among the victorious countries. The USSR laid claim to new battleships, since only the pre-revolutionary dreadnoughts “Sevastopol” and “October Revolution” remained of the battleships in the Soviet Navy, but in the conditions of the brewing Cold War, neither the United States nor Britain sought to strengthen the fleet of a potential enemy, and instead of a battleship of the “ Littorio" built in the second half of the 30s of the USSR, only the old "Giulio Cesare" was transferred. Considering the age of the ship, the Soviet command decided to use it for crew training. As for the newer Italian battleships, they were returned to Italy as part of the NATO partnership.

On December 9, 1948, the former pride of the Italian fleet, the battleship Giulio Cesare left Taranto and 6 days later arrived at the Albanian port of Vlora. In February 1949, it was handed over to a Soviet commission under the command of Rear Admiral Levchenko. On February 26, the battleship moored in Sevastopol, and by order of March 5, 1949, it was renamed Novorossiysk. A new life for “Giulio Cesare” has begun.

Taranto, 1948. One of the last photographs of the battleship flying the Italian flag.
Source: Aizenberg B. A., Kostrichenko V. V., Talamanov P. N. “Epitaph to a great dream.” Kharkov, 2007

As the researchers note, the ship was received in extremely disrepair. Pipelines, fittings, service mechanisms, that is, everything that had not undergone a major overhaul in the 1930s, required serious repairs or replacement. Before handing over the ship, the Italians only repaired the electrical system so that the ship would at least reach its new home port. At the same time, the restoration of the Novorossiysk in Sevastopol was complicated by the fact that in the USSR there were practically no specialists who spoke Italian, in which all the documentation on the ship was compiled. Moreover, the technical documents were not provided in full, which further complicated the repair work.

Despite the difficulties with operating the ship, already in August 1949, Novorossiysk took part in squadron maneuvers as a flagship. It had not yet become a full-fledged combat unit, and was far from complete restoration, but the Soviet command wanted to demonstrate success in mastering the Italian ship. NATO intelligence was convinced that Novorossiysk entered service with the USSR Black Sea Fleet, and this was already a sufficient result.

Battleship "Novorossiysk" in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol, 1949

The battleship spent the next six years undergoing constant repairs. During this time, 24 37-mm anti-aircraft guns, new radar stations, communications equipment were installed on it, and Italian turbines were replaced. However, the operation of the ship was complicated by extremely uncomfortable conditions for the crew, constant breakdowns and worn-out systems.

October disaster

On October 28, 1955, the ship returned to the harbor and took place in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol, approximately 110 meters from the shore. The depth was 17 meters, plus about 30 meters of viscous silt.

The tragedy occurred a day later. There were more than one and a half thousand people on board the Novorossiysk: part of the crew (who were not on leave), new recruits, cadets and soldiers. A minute-by-minute reconstruction of what happened was subsequently created based on the testimony of surviving eyewitnesses.

On October 29 at 01:31 Moscow time, a powerful explosion occurred under the hull of the ship on the starboard side in the bow. A hole with an area of more than 150 square meters was formed in the underwater part of the hull, and a dent of more than two meters was formed on the left side and along the keel. The total area of damage to the underwater part was approximately 340 square meters in an area of 22 meters. Water immediately poured into the hole, causing a list to starboard.

At 01:40 the fleet commander was informed about the explosion, and at 02:00 the order was given to tow the ship aground. 02:32 – a strong list to the left side was recorded, by 03:30 unoccupied sailors lined up on the deck, rescue ships stood alongside the battleship, but the evacuation did not begin. As Admiral Parkhomenko later explained, he “did not consider it possible to order the personnel to abandon the ship in advance, since until the last minutes he hoped that the ship would be saved, and there was no thought that it would die.” The Novorossiysk began to capsize, the sailors escaped on boats, or simply jumped into the water, many remained inside the battleship.

By 04:14, the ship lay on the port side, and by 22:00 on October 29, it completely disappeared under water. Within a few hours, 609 people died: from the explosion, covered by the ship’s hull in the water, in flooded compartments. According to the recollections of divers, only by November 1, the walled up and doomed sailors stopped giving signals.

In May 1957, the ship was raised, taken to Cossack Bay, studied and dismantled for metal.

Not everything is so clear

To determine the causes of the explosion, a special government commission was created, headed by Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Vyacheslav Malyshev. Contemporaries spoke of him as an engineer of the highest erudition, a highly qualified specialist in shipbuilding, who, characteristically, back in 1946 recommended against purchasing the Giulio Cesare. In accordance with the strict deadlines assigned, the commission issued its conclusion in two and a half weeks. The official version was that the explosion was caused by a German magnetic mine left over from World War II, with a force charge of 1000–1200 kg of TNT. The direct culprits of the deaths were declared to be Parkhomenko, acting. battleship commander Captain Khurshudov and member of the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral Kulakov.

On October 29, 1955, the flagship of the Black Sea squadron of the Soviet Navy, the battleship Novorossiysk, sank in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol.

Few people knew about this ship and its mysterious death until the late 80s, when they were allowed to write about it. But to this day, the mystery of the death of the battleship Novorossiysk remains a mystery...

"Novorossiysk" is a Soviet warship, battleship of the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR Navy. Until 1948, the ship was part of the Italian Navy under the name Giulio Cesare ( Giulio Caesar, in honor of Gaius Julius Caesar).
Dreadnought " Giulio Caesar" - one of five ships of the Conte di Cavour type ( Giulio Cesare, Leonardo da Vinci, Conte di Cavour, Caio Duilio, Andrea Doria), built according to the design of engineer-general Edoardo Masdea and launched in 1910-1917.
Being the main force of the Italian fleet in two world wars, they did not bring him glory, without causing the slightest damage to the enemy. "Cavour" and "Da Vinci" died not in battle, but in their bases.
And the “Julius Caesar” was destined to become the only battleship that the victorious country did not scrap, did not use for experiments, but commissioned the active fleet, and even as a flagship ship, despite the fact that it was clearly technically and morally outdated .

Battleship Giulio Cesare after modernization in 1940

From 1950 to 1955, the battleship was undergoing factory repairs 7 times. However, some shortcomings were not eliminated until October 1955. Modernization work caused a small increase in ship mass(approximately 130 t) and deterioration of stability(transverse metacentric height decreased by 0.03 m).

One of the divers recalled: “At night, for a long time, I dreamed of the faces of people whom I saw under water in the portholes that they tried to open. With gestures I made it clear that we would save them. People nodded, they said, they understood... I sank deeper, I heard them knocking in Morse code, the knocking in the floor was clearly audible: “Rescue quickly, we are suffocating...” I also tapped them: “Be strong, everyone will be saved.” And then it started! They started knocking in all the compartments so that those above would know that the people trapped under water were alive! I moved closer to the bow of the ship and couldn’t believe my ears - they were singing “Varyag”!”
It was possible to pull out 7 people through a hole cut in the aft part of the bottom. Divers rescued two more. But air began to escape from the cut hole with increasing force, and the overturned ship began to slowly sink. In the last minutes before the death of the battleship, the sailors, walled up in the compartments, could be heard singing “Varyag”. In total, 604 people died during the explosion and sinking of the battleship, including emergency shipments from other ships of the squadron.

After the battleship was raised, the commission carefully examined the hole. It was monstrous in size: more than 160 square meters. m. The force of the explosion was so enormous that it was enough to break through 8 decks - including 3 armored ones! Even the upper deck was mangled from starboard to port. It is not difficult to calculate that this would require several more than a ton of TNT. Even the largest German mines did not have such power.

Valerio Borghese

Some historians argue that members of the commission, with the support of Khrushchev, distorted many of the facts of the tragedy, after which only the acting commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral V.A., was punished. Parkhomenko and Fleet Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, removed from the leadership of the Navy and demoted by two levels.
Soon after the death of Novorosisysk, the head of intelligence of the Black Sea Fleet, Major General Namgaladze, and the commander of the OVR (water area security), Rear Admiral Galitsky, left their posts.

By order of the fleet, the families of the deceased were given one-time benefits - 10 thousand rubles each. for the dead sailors and 30 thousand each for the officers. After which they tried to forget about Novorossiysk...
Only in May 1988 did the Pravda newspaper publish for the first time a short article dedicated to the death of the battleship Novorossiysk with recollections of eyewitnesses of the tragedy, which described the heroic behavior of sailors and officers who found themselves inside the overturned ship.
(from here)

After the death of Novorossiysk, various versions were put forward.

Explosion of ship ammunition. This version was dropped after an examination of the hull: the nature of the destruction indicated that an explosion had occurred outside.

In the mid-2000s. Itogi magazine published a story by a certain submarine officer Nikolo, allegedly involved in sabotage. According to him, the operation was organized by the former commander of a flotilla of underwater saboteurs, V. Borghese, who, after handing over the ship, vowed “to take revenge on the Russians and blow it up at all costs.” The sabotage group arrived on a mini-submarine, which was secretly delivered by a cargo ship arriving from Italy. The Italians allegedly set up a secret base in the area of Sevastopol Omega Bay, mined the battleship, and then went out on a submarine into the open sea and waited to be picked up by “their” steamer.

And in 2013, a veteran of the Italian unit of combat swimmers “Gamma” Hugo D'Esposito stated that the Italian military was involved in the sinking of the Soviet battleship Novorossiysk. 4Arts writes about this, noting that the words of Hugo d'Esposito are the first admission of involvement in the destruction of Novorossiysk by the Italian military, who previously categorically denied such a version. The Italian publication calls d'Esposito's confession of sabotage against Novorossiysk the most sensational in the veteran's interview : "It directly confirms the probable hypothesis about the cause of the explosion on the ship."
According to Ugo D’Esposito, the Italians did not want the ship to fall to the “Russians”, so they took care of sinking it: “They did everything possible.” But he did not specify how exactly the sabotage was carried out.

Strange story. Believe it or not?

Previously, the version that the Novorossiysk sank as a result of sabotage organized by the Italians was not officially confirmed.

Reference:

Prince Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese(Italian Junio Valerio Scipione Ghezzo Marcantonio Maria dei principi Borghese; 06/06/1906, Rome - 08/26/1974, Cadiz) - Italian military and political figure, captain 2nd rank (Italian. capitano di fregata).
Born into the aristocratic Borghese family. In 1928, Borghese graduated from the Naval Academy in Livorno and entered service in the submarine fleet.
Interesting detail: in 1931 Borghese married a Russian countess Daria Vasilievna Olsufieva(1909-1963), with whom he had four children and who died tragically in a car accident in 1962. An award for connoisseurs of Rome bears her name.

The torpedo was delivered to the scene of hostilities on a conventional submarine. Then two saboteurs mounted her one after another, like a horse. The pilot and the torpedo commander sat on it. They were protected from wave impacts by a glass shield, and at the base of the shield there were on-board instruments: a magnetic compass, a depth meter, a roll meter, a steering lever, engine and pump switches that kept the torpedo at the desired depth.
Behind the pilot sat a diver-mechanic. He leaned his back against a container with tools (a cutter for locking networks, a spare oxygen device, ropes and clamps for fixing the explosive charge). The crew was dressed in light spacesuits and used an oxygen breathing device. Oxygen cylinders lasted for 6 hours.
Having approached the enemy ship as close as possible, the torpedo was submerged, and the diver attached the 300 kg explosive charge he had brought with him to the hull of the ship. Having installed the clock mechanism, the swimmers boarded the torpedo and returned to base.

A nuance: the practice of underwater saboteurs, both English and Italian, during the Second World War did not involve hanging such large charges under the ship’s hull as in Sevastopol.
Italian underwater saboteurs on guided torpedoes (“Maiale”) suspended a charge weighing only about 300 kg. This is how they acted, carrying out sabotage in Alexandria on December 19, 1941, damaging 2 British battleships (Queen Elizabeth and Valiant) and in Gibraltar in 1941-1943.
The charges were suspended from lateral keels ships using special clamps called “sergeants”.
Note that there were no side keels on the battleship Novorossiysk in the area of the explosion (frames 30-50).

The question is:
- Where Did saboteurs install mines in “magnetic cylinders” if the battleship was at sea all day on October 28?
- How they could finish all the work by “sunset” on October 28 and even “sail” back to Omega, if the sun set at 17.17 in the Sevastopol area on October 28, 1955 (it got dark at 18.47), and the battleship Novorossiysk was still didn’t finish mooring”? He anchored and barreled on October 28, 1955 only in 17.30 !

The answer is somewhat cynical, but frank.
All these interlocutors advised: determine who needed and benefited from all this?.
Hmmm. It seems that Hugo D'Esposito simply decided to show off in his old age.

As for the version about the involvement of English underwater saboteurs in the bombing of the Novorossiysk, their problems would be the same as those pointed out when analyzing the version about the “Italian trace”. Besides, no English ships, which could deliver underwater saboteurs or a midget submarine, were not observed in the Black Sea at that time.

Proposed scheme (reconstruction) of installing the Novorossiysk LC charge using a submerged barge

Fragment of the parking lot map of LC "Novorossiysk" on barrels No. 3

Hmmm. It turns out that they did explode their? For the GRU or the KGB this was clearly easier than for foreign swimmers who simply did not physically have such an opportunity.

It is strange that over decades, experts have not been able to establish the cause of the death of the battleship.

And another mystery: 40 years before the explosion of the flagship battleship of the Soviet fleet on the same Sevastopol roadstead and under the same unclear circumstances, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the dreadnought Empress Maria, perished...

Eternal memory to the fallen sailors.

On October 29, 1955, the flagship of the Black Sea squadron of the Soviet Navy, the battleship Novorossiysk, sank in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol. More than 600 sailors died. According to the official version, an old German bottom mine exploded under the bottom of the ship. But there are other versions, unofficial, but very popular - supposedly Italian, English and even Soviet saboteurs are responsible for the death of Novorossiysk.

Giulio Cesare

At the time of its death, the battleship Novorossiysk was 44 years old - a venerable period for a ship. For most of her life, the battleship bore a different name - "Giulio Cesare" ("Julius Caesar"), sailing under the flag of the Italian Navy. It was laid down in Genoa in the summer of 1910 and launched in 1915. The battleship did not take part in the First World War; in the 1920s it was used as a training ship for training naval gunners.

In the mid-1930s, Giulio Cesare underwent a major renovation. The ship's displacement reached 24,000 tons; it could reach a fairly high speed of 22 knots. The battleship was well armed: two three-barreled and three turret guns, three torpedo tubes, anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns. During World War II, the battleship was mainly engaged in escorting convoys, but in 1942, the Navy command declared it obsolete and transferred it to the category of training ships.

In 1943, Italy capitulated. Until 1948, Giulio Cesare was parked without being mothballed, with a minimum number of crew and without proper maintenance.

According to a special agreement, the Italian fleet was to be divided among the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition. The USSR had a battleship, a light cruiser, 9 destroyers and 4 submarines, not counting small ships. On January 10, 1947, an agreement was reached in the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Allied Powers on the distribution of transferred Italian ships between the USSR, USA, Great Britain and other countries affected by Italian aggression. For example, France was allocated four cruisers, four destroyers and two submarines, and Greece - one cruiser. The battleships were included in groups "A", "B" and "C", intended for the three main powers.

The Soviet side laid claim to one of the two new battleships, which were even more powerful than the German Bismarck-class ships. But since by this time the Cold War had already begun between the recent allies, neither the USA nor England sought to strengthen the USSR Navy with powerful ships. We had to cast lots, and the USSR received group "C". New battleships went to the USA and England (these battleships were later returned to Italy as part of the NATO partnership). By decision of the Triple Commission of 1948, the USSR received the battleship "Giulio Cesare", the light cruiser "Emmanuele Filiberto Duca D'Aosta", the destroyers "Artilleri", "Fuciliere", the destroyers "Animoso", "Ardimentoso", "Fortunale" and submarines " Marea" and "Nicelio".

On December 9, 1948, Giulio Cesare left the port of Taranto and on December 15 arrived at the Albanian port of Vlora. On February 3, 1949, the transfer of the battleship to the Soviet commission headed by Rear Admiral Levchenko took place in this port. On February 6, the naval flag of the USSR was raised over the ship, and two weeks later it left for Sevastopol, arriving at its new base on February 26. By order of the Black Sea Fleet of March 5, 1949, the battleship was given the name "Novorossiysk".

"Novorossiysk"

As almost all researchers note, the ship was handed over by the Italians to Soviet sailors in a disrepair. The main part of the weapons, the main power plant and the main hull structures - plating, frame, main transverse bulkheads below the armored deck - were in relatively satisfactory condition. But the general ship systems: pipelines, fittings, service mechanisms - required serious repairs or replacement. There were no radar equipment on the ship at all, the fleet of radio communications equipment was meager, and there was a complete absence of small-caliber anti-aircraft artillery. It should be noted that immediately before the transfer to the USSR, the battleship underwent minor repairs, which mainly concerned the electromechanical part.

When Novorossiysk settled in Sevastopol, the command of the Black Sea Fleet gave the order to turn the ship into a full-fledged combat unit as soon as possible. The matter was complicated by the fact that some of the documentation was missing, and there were practically no naval specialists who spoke Italian in the USSR.

In August 1949, Novorossiysk took part in squadron maneuvers as a flagship. However, his participation was rather nominal, since in the three months allotted they did not have time to put the battleship in order (and they could not have time). However, the political situation required demonstrating the success of Soviet sailors in mastering Italian ships. As a result, the squadron went to sea, and NATO intelligence became convinced that the Novorossiysk was floating.

From 1949 to 1955, the battleship underwent factory repairs eight times. It was equipped with 24 twin installations of Soviet 37-mm anti-aircraft guns, new radar stations, radio communications and intra-ship communications. The Italian turbines were also replaced with new ones manufactured at the Kharkov plant. In May 1955, Novorossiysk entered service with the Black Sea Fleet and until the end of October went to sea several times, practicing combat training tasks.

On October 28, 1955, the battleship returned from its last voyage and took place in the Northern Bay on a “battleship barrel” in the area of the Naval Hospital, approximately 110 meters from the shore. The water depth there was 17 meters of water and another 30 meters of viscous silt.

Explosion

At the time of the explosion, the commander of the battleship, Captain 1st Rank Kukhta, was on vacation. His duties were performed by senior mate captain 2nd rank Khurshudov. According to the staffing table, there were 68 officers, 243 petty officers, and 1,231 sailors on the battleship. After the Novorossiysk docked, part of the crew went on leave. More than one and a half thousand people remained on board: part of the crew and new reinforcements (200 people), cadets of naval schools and soldiers who had arrived on the battleship the day before.

On October 29 at 01:31 Moscow time, a powerful explosion was heard under the hull of the ship on the starboard side in the bow. According to experts, its force was equivalent to the explosion of 1000-1200 kilograms of trinitrotoluene. A hole with an area of more than 150 square meters appeared on the starboard side in the underwater part of the hull, and on the left side and along the keel there was a dent with a deflection arrow of 2 to 3 meters. The total area of damage to the underwater part of the hull was about 340 square meters over an area of 22 meters long. Sea water poured into the hole that formed, and after 3 minutes a trim of 3-4 degrees and a list of 1-2 degrees to starboard appeared.

At 01:40 the incident was reported to the fleet commander. By 02:00, when the list to starboard had reached 1.5 degrees, the head of the operational department of the fleet, Captain 1st Rank Ovcharov, ordered to “tow the ship to a shallow place,” and the approaching tugs turned it stern to the shore.

By this time, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral V.A. Parkhomenko, the chief of the fleet staff, Vice Admiral S.E. Chursin, a member of the Military Council, Vice Admiral N.M. Kulakov, and the acting squadron commander, Rear Admiral N, had arrived on the battleship. .I.Nikolsky, chief of squadron staff Rear Admiral A.I.Zubkov, commander of the cruiser division Rear Admiral S.M.Lobov, head of the Fleet Political Directorate Rear Admiral B.T. Kalachev and 28 other senior staff officers.

At 02:32 a list to the left side was detected. By 03:30, about 800 unoccupied sailors lined up on the deck, and rescue ships stood alongside the battleship. Nikolsky offered to transfer sailors to them, but received a categorical refusal from Parkhomenko. At 03:50, the list to port reached 10-12 degrees, while the tugs continued to pull the battleship to the left. After 10 minutes, the list increased to 17 degrees, while the critical level was 20. Nikolsky again asked Parkhomenko and Kulakov for permission to evacuate the sailors not engaged in the fight for survivability and was again refused.

"Novorossiysk" began to tip upside down. Several dozen people managed to get into boats and onto neighboring ships, but hundreds of sailors fell from the deck into the water. Many remained inside the dying battleship. As Admiral Parkhomenko later explained, he “did not consider it possible to order the personnel to abandon the ship in advance, since until the last minutes he hoped that the ship would be saved, and there was no thought that it would die.” This hope cost the lives of hundreds of people who, having fallen into the water, were covered by the hull of the battleship.

By 04:14, "Novorossiysk", which had taken in more than 7 thousand tons of water, tilted to a fatal 20 degrees, swung to the right, just as unexpectedly fell to the left and lay on its side. He remained in this position for several hours, resting his masts on the hard ground. At 22:00 on October 29, the hull completely disappeared under water.

A total of 609 people died in the disaster, including emergency shipments from other ships of the squadron. As a direct result of the explosion and flooding of the bow compartments, between 50 and 100 people were killed. The rest died during the capsizing of the battleship and after it. No timely evacuation of personnel was organized. Most of the sailors remained inside the hull. Some of them were kept in the air cushions of the compartments for a long time, but only nine people were saved: seven came out through a neck cut in the aft part of the bottom five hours after capsizing, and two more were taken out 50 hours later by divers. According to the recollections of divers, the walled up and doomed sailors sang “Varyag”. Only by November 1 did divers stop hearing knocking sounds.

In the summer of 1956, the special-purpose expedition "EON-35" began lifting the battleship using the blowing method. Preparations for the ascent were fully completed by the end of April 1957. General purging began on the morning of May 4 and the ascent was completed on the same day. The ship floated up on its keel on May 4, 1957, and on May 14 it was taken to Cossack Bay, where it was capsized. When the ship was being lifted, the third main caliber turret fell out and had to be raised separately. The ship was dismantled for metal and transferred to the Zaporizhstal plant.

Commission conclusions

To find out the causes of the explosion, a government commission was created headed by the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Minister of Shipbuilding Industry, Colonel General of the Engineering and Technical Service Vyacheslav Malyshev. According to the recollections of everyone who knew him, Malyshev was an engineer of the highest erudition. He knew his job perfectly and read theoretical drawings of any complexity, having an excellent understanding of the issues of unsinkability and stability of ships. Back in 1946, having familiarized himself with the drawings of Giulio Cesare, Malyshev recommended abandoning this acquisition. But he failed to convince Stalin.

The commission gave its conclusion two and a half weeks after the disaster. Strict deadlines were set in Moscow. On November 17, the commission’s conclusion was presented to the CPSU Central Committee, which accepted and approved the conclusions.

The cause of the disaster was called “an external underwater explosion (non-contact, bottom) of a charge with a TNT equivalent of 1000-1200 kg.” The most probable was the explosion of a German magnetic mine left on the ground after the Great Patriotic War.

As for responsibility, the direct culprits for the death of a significant number of people and the battleship Novorossiysk were named as the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral Parkhomenko, acting. Squadron Commander Rear Admiral Nikolsky and Acting commander of the battleship, captain 2nd rank Khurshudov. The commission noted that Vice Admiral Kulakov, a member of the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet, also bears direct responsibility for the disaster with the battleship Novorossiysk and especially for the loss of life.

But despite the harsh conclusions, the matter was limited to the fact that the commander of the battleship Kukhta was demoted in rank and sent to the reserve. Also removed from office and demoted in rank: commander of the water district security division, Rear Admiral Galitsky, acting. squadron commander Nikolsky and member of the Kulakov Military Council. A year and a half later they were restored to their ranks. The fleet commander, Vice Admiral Viktor Parkhomenko, was severely reprimanded, and on December 8, 1955, he was removed from his post. No legal action was taken against him. In 1956, the commander of the USSR Navy, Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, was removed from his post.

The commission also noted that “the sailors, foremen and officers, as well as the officers who led the direct fight to save the ship - the acting commander of the warhead-5, Comrade Matusevich, the commander of the survivability division, Comrade Gorodetsky, and the head of the technical department of the fleet, who helped them, Ivanov skillfully and selflessly fought against the water entering the ship, each knew his job well, showed initiative, showed examples of courage and true heroism. But all the efforts of the personnel were devalued and nullified by the criminally frivolous, unqualified and indecisive command.. "

The commission's documents spoke in detail about those who should have, but failed to organize the rescue of the crew and ship. However, none of these documents gave a direct answer to the main question: what caused the disaster?

Version number 1 - mine

The initial versions - the explosion of a gas warehouse or artillery magazines - were swept aside almost immediately. The gasoline storage tanks on the battleship were empty long before the disaster. As for the cellars, if they had exploded, there would have been little left of the battleship at all, and five cruisers standing nearby would also have been blown up into the air. In addition, this version was immediately overturned by the testimony of the sailors, whose place of combat service was the 2nd tower of the main artillery caliber, in the area of which the battleship received a hole. It was definitely established that the 320-mm shells remained intact.

There are still several versions left: a mine explosion, a torpedo attack by a submarine and sabotage. After studying the circumstances, the mine version received the most votes. Which was understandable - mines in the Sevastopol bays were not uncommon since the Civil War. The bays and roadstead were periodically cleared of mines with the help of minesweepers and diving teams. In 1941, during the attack of the German armies on Sevastopol, the German Air Force and Navy mined the water area both from the sea and from the air - they laid several hundred mines of different types and purposes. Some worked during the fighting, others were removed and neutralized after the liberation of Sevastopol in 1944. Later, Sevastopol bays and roadsteads were regularly trawled and inspected by diving teams. The last such comprehensive survey was carried out in 1951-1953. In 1956-1958, after the explosion of the battleship, another 19 German bottom mines were discovered in Sevastopol Bay, including three at a distance of less than 50 meters from the site of the death of the battleship.

The testimony of divers also spoke in favor of the mine version. As the squad leader Kravtsov testified: “The ends of the shell of the hole are bent inward. Due to the nature of the hole, the burrs from the shell, the explosion was from the outside of the ship.”

Version number 2 - torpedo attack

The next version was about the torpedoing of the battleship by an unknown submarine. However, when studying the nature of the damage received by the battleship, the commission did not find characteristic signs corresponding to the torpedo strike. But she discovered something else. At the time of the explosion, the ships of the water area security division, whose duty was to guard the entrance to the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, were in a completely different place. On the night of the disaster, the outer roadstead was not guarded by anyone; the network gates were wide open and the noise direction finders were inactive. Thus, Sevastopol was defenseless. And, theoretically, an alien submarine could easily enter the bay, choose a position and deliver a torpedo strike.

In practice, the boat would hardly have had enough depth for a full-fledged attack. However, the military knew that some Western fleets were already armed with small or dwarf submarines. So, theoretically, a dwarf submarine could penetrate the internal roadstead of the main base of the Black Sea Fleet. This assumption, in turn, gave rise to another - were saboteurs involved in the explosion?

Version number 3 - Italian combat swimmers

This version was supported by the fact that before it flew the red flag, Novorossiysk was an Italian ship. And the most formidable underwater special forces during World War II, the “10th Assault Flotilla,” was owned by the Italians, and was commanded by Prince Giunio Valerio Borghese, a staunch anti-communist, who allegedly publicly vowed after the transfer of the battleship to the USSR to take revenge for such a humiliation to Italy.

A graduate of the Royal Naval College, Valerio Borghese had a brilliant career as a submarine officer, facilitated by his noble origin and excellent academic performance. The first submarine under the command of Borghese was part of the Italian Legion, which, as part of Franco's assistance, acted against the Spanish Republican fleet. After this, the prince received a new submarine under his command. Later, Valerio Borghese underwent special training in Germany on the Baltic Sea.

Upon his return to Italy, Borghese received under his command the most modern submarine "Shire". Thanks to the skillful actions of the commander, the submarine returned back to its base unharmed from each combat campaign. The operations of the Italian submariners aroused genuine interest among King Victor Emmanuel, who honored the submariner prince with a personal audience.

After this, Borghese was asked to create the world's first flotilla of submarine saboteurs. Ultra-small submarines, special guided torpedoes, and manned exploding boats were created for it. On December 18, 1941, the Italians secretly entered Alexandria harbor in midget submarines and attached magnetic explosive devices to the bottoms of the British battleships Valiant and Queen Elizabeth. The death of these ships allowed the Italian fleet to seize the initiative in the fighting in the Mediterranean for a long time. Also, the “10th Assault Flotilla” took part in the siege of Sevastopol, based in the ports of Crimea.

Theoretically, a foreign submarine cruiser could deliver combat swimmers as close as possible to Sevastopol so that they could carry out sabotage. Taking into account the combat potential of first-class Italian scuba divers, pilots of small submarines and guided torpedoes, as well as taking into account the carelessness in guarding the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, the version of underwater saboteurs looks convincing.

Version 4 - English saboteurs

The second unit in the world capable of such sabotage was the 12th Flotilla of the British Navy. It was commanded at that time by Captain 2nd Rank Lionel Crabbe, also a legend. During the Second World War, he led the defense of the British naval base of Gibraltar from Italian combat swimmers and was rightfully considered one of the best underwater saboteurs of the British fleet. Crabb knew many of the Italians from the 10th Flotilla personally. In addition, after the war, captured Italian combat swimmers advised specialists from the 12th flotilla.

The following argument is put forward in favor of this version - that the Soviet command wanted to equip Novorossiysk with nuclear weapons. The USSR had an atomic bomb since 1949, but there were no naval means of using nuclear weapons at that time. The solution could only be naval large-caliber guns, firing heavy projectiles over a long distance. The Italian battleship was ideal for this purpose. Great Britain, being an island, in this case turned out to be the most vulnerable target for the Soviet Navy. If atomic explosive devices were used near the west coast of England, taking into account the wind pattern that blows to the east all year round in those parts, the entire country would be exposed to radiation contamination.

And one more fact - at the end of October 1955, the British Mediterranean squadron conducted maneuvers in the Aegean and Marmara seas.

Version 5 - the work of the KGB

Already in our time, candidate of technical sciences Oleg Sergeev put forward another version. The battleship "Novorossiysk" was blown up by two charges with a total TNT equivalent of within 1800 kg, installed on the ground in the area of the bow artillery magazines, at a small distance from the centerline of the ship and from each other. The explosions occurred with a short time interval, causing a cumulative effect and causing damage, as a result of which the ship sank. The bombing was prepared and carried out by domestic special services with the knowledge of the country's leadership exclusively for internal political purposes. In 1993, the perpetrators of this action became known: a senior lieutenant of special forces and two midshipmen - a support group.

Who was this provocation directed against? According to Sergeev, first of all, against the leadership of the Navy. Nikita Khrushchev answered this question two years after the death of Novorossiysk, at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee on October 29, 1957: “We were offered to invest more than 100 billion rubles in the fleet and build old boats and destroyers armed with classical artillery. We fought a great fight. ", they removed Kuznetsov... he turned out to be incapable of thinking, caring about the fleet, about defense. Everything needs to be assessed in a new way. We need to build a fleet, but first of all, build a submarine fleet armed with missiles."

The ten-year shipbuilding plan, which did not reflect in the future the priority of developing the most capital-intensive and profitable naval strategic nuclear forces for the military-industrial complex, objectively could not be supported by the military-political leadership of the country, which decided the fate of the Navy Commander-in-Chief Nikolai Kuznetsov.

The death of the Novorossiysk marked the beginning of a large-scale reduction of the USSR Navy. The obsolete 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.

Criticism of versions

Critics of the mine version claim that by 1955, the power sources of all bottom mines would inevitably have run out and the fuses would have become completely unusable. Until now, there have not been and are no batteries that can not discharge for ten years or more. It is also noted that the explosion occurred after 8 hours of mooring the battleship, and all German mines had hourly intervals that were multiples of only 6 hours. Before the tragedy, the Novorossiysk (10 times) and the battleship Sevastopol (134 times) moored on barrel No. 3 at different times of the year - and nothing exploded. In addition, it turned out that there were actually two explosions, and such a force that two large deep craters appeared at the bottom, which the explosion of one mine could not leave.

As for the version about the work of saboteurs from Italy or England, in this case a number of questions arise. Firstly, an action of this scale is possible only with the participation of the state. And it would be very difficult to hide preparations for it, given the activity of Soviet intelligence in the Apennine Peninsula and the influence of the Italian Communist Party.

It would be impossible for private individuals to organize such an action - too many resources would be needed to support it, from several tons of explosives to means of transportation (again, let’s not forget about secrecy). This is acceptable in feature films like “Dogs of War,” but in real life it becomes known to the relevant services at the planning stage, as was the case, for example, with the unsuccessful coup in Equatorial Guinea. In addition, as the former Italian combat swimmers themselves admitted, their life after the war was strictly controlled by the state, and any attempt at amateur activity would be suppressed.

In addition, preparations for such an operation had to be kept secret from the allies, primarily from the United States. If the Americans had known about the impending sabotage of the Italian or British Navy, they would certainly have prevented it - if it failed, the United States would not have been able to wash off the accusations of warmongering for a long time. To carry out such an attack against a nuclear-armed country at the height of the Cold War would be madness.

Finally, in order to mine a ship of this class in a guarded harbor, it was necessary to collect complete information about the security regime, parking areas, ships going to sea, and so on. It is impossible to do this without a resident with a radio station in Sevastopol itself or somewhere nearby. All operations of Italian saboteurs during the war were carried out only after thorough reconnaissance and never “blindly”. But even after half a century, there is not a single evidence that in one of the most guarded cities of the USSR, thoroughly filtered by the KGB and counterintelligence, there was an English or Italian resident who regularly supplied information not only to Rome or London, but also to Prince Borghese personally.

Supporters of the Italian version claim that some time after the death of Novorossiysk, a message flashed in the Italian press about awarding orders to a group of Italian Navy officers “for completing a special task.” However, so far no one has published a single photocopy of this message. References to the Italian naval officers themselves, who once told someone about their participation in the sinking of the Novorossiysk, are unsubstantiated. There are a lot of “absolutely reliable” interviews floating around on the Internet with people who allegedly personally led midget submarines to Sevastopol. One problem is that it immediately turns out that these people have either already died or there is still no way to talk to them. And the descriptions of the sabotage attack vary greatly...

Yes, information about the Novorossiysk explosion appeared in the Western press very quickly. But comments from Italian newspapers (with vague hints) are a common journalistic technique when “reliable” evidence emerges after the fact. One should also take into account the fact that the Italians sent their “younger” battleships, received back from NATO allies, to be melted down. And if there had not been a disaster with the Novorossiysk, only Navy historians would have remembered the battleship Giulio Cesare in Italy.

Late rewards

Based on the report of the government commission, the command of the Black Sea Fleet in November 1955 sent proposals to the acting commander-in-chief of the USSR Navy, Admiral Gorshkov, to award orders and medals to all sailors who died along with the battleship. The awards also included 117 people from among those who survived the explosion, sailors from other ships who came to the aid of the Novorossiysk, as well as divers and doctors who distinguished themselves during rescue operations. The required number of awards were delivered to Sevastopol, to the fleet headquarters. But the award ceremony never took place. Only forty years later it turned out that on the presentation there was a note made in the hand of the head of the Navy personnel department at that time: “Admiral Comrade Gorshkov does not consider it possible to come up with such a proposal.”

Only in 1996, after repeated appeals from the ship’s veterans, the Russian government gave appropriate instructions to the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Russian State Maritime Historical and Cultural Center and other departments. The main military prosecutor's office began checking the materials of the investigation conducted in 1955. Classified award lists for the "Novorossiysk" soldiers were kept in the Central Naval Archive all this time. It turned out that 6 sailors were posthumously nominated for the highest award of the USSR - the Order of Lenin, 64 (53 of them posthumously) - for the Order of the Red Banner, 10 (9 posthumously) - for the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degree, 191 ( 143 posthumously) - to the Order of the Red Star, 448 sailors (391 posthumously) - to the medals "For Courage", "For Military Merit", Ushakov and Nakhimov.

Since by that time there was no longer either the state under whose naval flag the Novorossiysk died, or Soviet orders, all the Novorossiysk residents were awarded Orders of Courage.

Afterword

Will the answer to the question of what exactly destroyed Novorossysk ever be finally found? Most likely not anymore. If the raised battleship, along with the specialists who determined the degree of its further suitability, had been properly examined by specialists from the competent authorities and departments, they would have been able to find in the ship’s lower parts certain “traces” of a hitherto unknown “charge”. But the ship was quickly cut into metal, and the case was closed.

The following materials were used when writing this article:

Website battleships.spb.ru.
S.V. Suliga. Battleship "Giulio Cesare" ("Novorossiysk").
N.I. Nikolsky, V.N. Nikolsky. “Why did the battleship Novorossiysk die?”
Sergeev O.L. Disaster of the battleship "Novorossiysk". Evidence. Judgments. Data.
Publication of the magazine of the FSB of the Russian Federation "Security Service" No. 3-4, 1996, materials of the investigation into the death of the battleship "Novorossiysk" from the archives of the FSB.

August 22nd, 2013

In 1943, Italy capitulated. Until 1948, Giulio Cesare was parked without being mothballed, with a minimum number of crew and without proper maintenance.

According to a special agreement, the Italian fleet was to be divided among the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition. The USSR had a battleship, a light cruiser, 9 destroyers and 4 submarines, not counting small ships. On January 10, 1947, an agreement was reached in the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Allied Powers on the distribution of transferred Italian ships between the USSR, USA, Great Britain and other countries affected by Italian aggression. For example, France was allocated four cruisers, four destroyers and two submarines, and Greece was allocated one cruiser. The battleships were included in groups "A", "B" and "C", intended for the three main powers.

The Soviet side laid claim to one of two new battleships, which were even more powerful than German Bismarck-class ships. But since by this time the Cold War had already begun between the recent allies, neither the USA nor England sought to strengthen the USSR Navy with powerful ships. We had to cast lots, and the USSR received group “C”. New battleships went to the USA and England (these battleships were later returned to Italy as part of the NATO partnership). By decision of the Triple Commission of 1948, the USSR received the battleship Giulio Cesare, the light cruiser Emmanuele Filiberto Duca D'Aosta, the destroyers Artilleri and Fuciliere, the destroyers Animoso, Ardimentoso, Fortunale and the submarines " Marea" and "Nicelio".

On December 9, 1948, Giulio Cesare left the port of Taranto and arrived in the Albanian port of Vlora on December 15. On February 3, 1949, the transfer of the battleship to the Soviet commission headed by Rear Admiral Levchenko took place in this port. On February 6, the naval flag of the USSR was raised over the ship, and two weeks later it left for Sevastopol, arriving at its new base on February 26. By order of the Black Sea Fleet of March 5, 1949, the battleship was given the name “Novorossiysk”.

"Novorossiysk"

Explosion

"Novorossiysk" began to tip upside down. Several dozen people managed to get into boats and onto neighboring ships, but hundreds of sailors fell from the deck into the water. Many remained inside the dying battleship. As Admiral Parkhomenko later explained, he “did not consider it possible to order the personnel to leave the ship in advance, since until the last minutes he hoped that the ship would be saved, and there was no thought that it would die.” This hope cost the lives of hundreds of people who, having fallen into the water, were covered by the hull of the battleship.

By 04:14, the Novorossiysk, which had taken in more than 7 thousand tons of water, tilted to a fatal 20 degrees, swung to the right, just as unexpectedly fell to the left and lay on its side. He remained in this position for several hours, resting his masts on the hard ground. At 22:00 on October 29, the hull completely disappeared under water.

Commission conclusions

The commission also noted that “the sailors, foremen and officers, as well as the officers who led the direct struggle to save the ship - acting. the commander of the BC-5, Comrade Matusevich, the commander of the survivability division, Comrade Gorodetsky, and the head of the technical department of the fleet, Comrade Ivanov, who helped them, skillfully and selflessly fought against the water entering the ship, each knew their job well, showed initiative, showed examples of courage and true heroism . But all the efforts of the personnel were devalued and nullified by the criminally frivolous, unqualified and indecisive command ... "

Version number 1 - mine

The testimony of divers also spoke in favor of the mine version. As the squad commander Kravtsov testified: “The ends of the hole casing are bent inward. Judging by the nature of the hole, the burrs from the plating, the explosion was from the outside of the ship.”

Version number 2 - torpedo attack

Version number 3 - Italian combat swimmers

This version was supported by the fact that before it flew the red flag, the Novorossiysk was an Italian ship. And the most formidable underwater special forces during World War II, the “10th Assault Flotilla,” was owned by the Italians, and was commanded by Prince Giunio Valerio Borghese, a staunch anti-communist who allegedly publicly vowed after the transfer of the battleship to the USSR to take revenge for such a humiliation to Italy.

Version 4 - English saboteurs

The following argument is put forward in favor of this version: that the Soviet command wanted to equip Novorossiysk with nuclear weapons. The USSR had an atomic bomb since 1949, but there were no naval means of using nuclear weapons at that time. The solution could only be naval large-caliber guns, firing heavy projectiles over a long distance. The Italian battleship was ideal for this purpose. Great Britain, being an island, in this case turned out to be the most vulnerable target for the Soviet Navy. If atomic explosive devices were used near the west coast of England, taking into account the wind pattern that blows to the east all year round in those parts, the entire country would be exposed to radiation contamination.

And one more fact - at the end of October 1955, the British Mediterranean squadron conducted maneuvers in the Aegean and Marmara seas.

Version 5 - the work of the KGB

Who was this provocation directed against? According to Sergeev, first of all, against the leadership of the Navy. Nikita Khrushchev answered this question two years after the death of Novorossiysk, at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee on October 29, 1957: “We were offered to invest more than 100 billion rubles in the fleet and build old boats and destroyers armed with classical artillery. We carried out a big fight, removed Kuznetsov... he turned out to be incapable of thinking, caring about the fleet, about defense. We need to evaluate everything in a new way. We need to build a fleet, but first of all, build a submarine fleet armed with missiles.”

Criticism of versions

It would be impossible for private individuals to organize such an action - too many resources would be needed to provide it, from several tons of explosives to means of transportation (again, let’s not forget about secrecy). This is acceptable in feature films like “Dogs of War,” but in real life it becomes known to the relevant services at the planning stage, as was the case, for example, with the unsuccessful coup in Equatorial Guinea. In addition, as the former Italian combat swimmers themselves admitted, their life after the war was strictly controlled by the state, and any attempt at amateur activity would be suppressed.

In addition, preparations for such an operation had to be kept secret from the allies, primarily from the United States. If the Americans had known about the impending sabotage of the Italian or British navies, they would certainly have prevented this - if it failed, the United States would not have been able to wash off the accusations of inciting war for a long time. To carry out such an attack against a nuclear-armed country at the height of the Cold War would be madness.

Supporters of the Italian version claim that some time after the death of Novorossiysk, a message appeared in the Italian press about awarding orders to a group of Italian Navy officers “for completing a special task.” However, so far no one has published a single photocopy of this message. References to the Italian naval officers themselves, who once told someone about their participation in the sinking of the Novorossiysk, were unsubstantiated for a long time.

Late rewards

Only in 1996, after repeated appeals from the ship’s veterans, the Russian government gave appropriate instructions to the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Russian State Maritime Historical and Cultural Center and other departments. The main military prosecutor's office began checking the materials of the investigation conducted in 1955. Secret award sheets for the “Novorossiysk” soldiers were kept in the Central Naval Archive all this time. It turned out that 6 sailors were posthumously nominated for the highest award of the USSR - the Order of Lenin, 64 (53 of them posthumously) - for the Order of the Red Banner, 10 (9 posthumously) - for the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degree, 191 ( 143 posthumously) - to the Order of the Red Star, 448 sailors (391 posthumously) - to the medals “For Courage”, “For Military Merit”, Ushakov and Nakhimov.

Since by that time there was no longer either the state under whose naval flag the “Novorossiysk” died, or Soviet orders, all “Novorossiysk” people were awarded Orders of Courage.

memorial at the Fraternal Cemetery in the form of a 12-meter figure of the Mourning Sailor, cast from bronze of the propellers of a battleship, installed in 1963

The real reason for the death of the battleship.

Quite recently, news agencies reported that a veteran of the Italian Gamma combat swimmer unit, Ugo D’Esposito, admitted that the Italian military was involved in the sinking of the Soviet battleship Novorossiysk. 4Arts writes about this.

According to Ugo D’Esposito, the Italians did not want the “Russians” to get the ship, so they took care of sinking it.

Previously, the version that the Novorossiysk sank as a result of sabotage organized by the Italians was not officially confirmed.

After the death of the Novorossiysk, various explanations for possible sabotage were put forward (according to one of them, explosives were allegedly hidden in the hull of the ship at the time of its transfer to the Soviet Union).

In the mid-2000s, the magazine “Itogi”, having published material on this topic, included in it the story of a certain submarine officer Nikolo, allegedly involved in sabotage. According to him, the operation was organized by the former commander of underwater saboteurs Valerio Borghese, who, after handing over the ship, vowed “to take revenge on the Russians and blow it up at all costs.” The sabotage group, according to the source, arrived on a mini-submarine, which, in turn, was secretly delivered by a cargo ship arriving from Italy. The Italians, as the publication wrote, set up a secret base in the area of Sevastopol Omega Bay, mined the battleship, and then went out on a submarine into the open sea and waited to be picked up by “their” steamer.

Now I wonder whether the relatives of the victims will sue Italy? Here is the website dedicated to the battleship and sailors.

sources
http://flot.com/history/events/novorosdeath.htm
http://lenta.ru/news/2013/08/21/sink/
http://korabley.net/news/2009-04-05-202

Let me remind you of a few more ship stories: for example, Is it Really. Here's another interesting story - The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -

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The mystery of the death of the battleship "Novorossiysk" in Sevastopol: the confession of an Italian combat swimmer. The death of the battleship "Novorossiysk": five versions of the Battleship Julius Caesar

"Giulio Cesare"

"Novorossiysk"

October disaster

Not everything is so clear

Giulio Cesare

"Novorossiysk"

Explosion

Commission conclusions

Version number 1 - mine

Version number 2 - torpedo attack

Version number 3 - Italian combat swimmers

Version 4 - English saboteurs

Version 5 - the work of the KGB

Criticism of versions

Late rewards

Afterword

"Novorossiysk"

Explosion

Commission conclusions

Version number 1 - mine

Version number 2 - torpedo attack

Version number 3 - Italian combat swimmers

Version 4 - English saboteurs

Version 5 - the work of the KGB

Criticism of versions

Late rewards

What else to read

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