Home > Soviet battleship Novorossiysk

Novorossiysk was originally the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare and on 3 February 1949 at Vlorë she was ceded to the Soviet Union as war reparations. The ship was commissioned into the Soviet Navy as Novorossiysk, and from July 1949 was based at Sevastopol, serving as flagship of the Black Sea Fleet and later as a gunnery training vessel.

On 1955- 10-29 , the Novorossiysk was moored in Sevastopol Bay, 300 meters (1000 feet) from shore and opposite a hospital. At 1:30am, an explosion estimated to be the equivalent of 1,200 kilograms of TNT under the bow of the ship pierced all decks from the bottom plating to the forecastle deck. In the forecastle deck there was one hole which measured 14×4 meters in size. The damage extended from the bow aft 22 meters.

The ship sank slowly from the bow, capsizing at 4:15am, 2 hours 45 minutes after the explosion, and 18 hours later became fully submerged. The capsizing resulted in the death of 608 sailors, most of whom were staying in the ship's compartments -- the greatest disaster in Russian naval history.

Because of the politics of the Cold War, the fate of the Novorossiysk remained clouded in mystery until the late 1980s.

The cause of the explosion is still unclear, but seems likely to have resulted from a ground mine that had been left behind since the Nazi occupation of Sevastopol. During the next two years divers found 19 German ground mines on the bottom of Sevastopol Bay. Eleven of the mines had the same TNT equivalent as the blast under Novorossiysk.

A more theatrical explanation was that Italian frogmen were avenging the transfer of the formerly-Italian battleship to the USSR. Covert action by the Italian special operations unit Decima Flottiglia MAS has often been surmised, and there are reports that not long thereafter a small group of Italian Navy frogmen received high military awards. However, no firm evience exists for this hypothesis. No real traces of other types of sabotage have been found, though Soviet enquiries did not rule out this possibility because of the poor safeguarding of the fleet base on the night when the explosion happened.

The enorous loss of life was directly blamed on the incompetent actions of her captain, Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Victor Parkhomenko . Among other underestimates of the danger to his ship, he did not know the conditions of the sea bottom, believing that the ratio between the sea depth (17 meters) and the ship's beam (28 meters) would prevent capsizing. However, the bottom was soft ooze, 15 meters deep, which offered no resistance. It was also reported that the commander displayed conceit and groundless calmness during this critical situation, and had even expressed the wish to "go have some tea."

Because of the loss of Novorossiysk, the First Deputy Minister of Defence and the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov was fired from his post in November 1955, and in FebruaryFebruary is the second month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 28 days in regular years. In leap years February has 29 days. Three times in history a February 30 did occur. February was named for the Roman god Februus, the god of purification. 19561956 is a leap year starting on Sunday. see link for calendar) Events January January 1 End of Anglo- Egyptian Condominium in Sudan. January 16 President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine January 26 1956 Winter Olympic Games open in he was demoted to the rank of vice admiral and sent to retirement without the right to return to active service in the Navy.