On the last Sunday in October, veterans of the battleship Novorossiysk and the public of Sevastopol celebrated the mournful 60th anniversary of the sinking of the flagship of the USSR Black Sea Fleet. As a result of this tragedy, played out on the internal roadstead, over 800 people died in one night. The battleship capsized, and in its hull, like in a steel grave, there were hundreds of sailors who were fighting for the ship …
At the end of the 1980s, I began to collect materials about the destruction of the battleship "Novorossiysk" with the light hand of the head of the Emergency Rescue Service of the USSR Navy, Rear Admiral-Engineer Nikolai Petrovich Chiker. He was a legendary man, a shipbuilding engineer, a real epone soldier, godson of Academician A. N. Krylova, friend and deputy of Yves Cousteau for the International Federation of Underwater Activities. Finally, the most important thing in this context - Nikolai Petrovich was the commander of the special mission EON-35 to raise the battleship "Novorossiysk". He also developed a master plan for lifting the ship. He also supervised all lifting operations on the battleship, including his transfer from the Sevastopol Bay to the Kazachya Bay. Hardly anyone else knew more about the ill-fated battleship than he did. I was shocked by his story about the tragedy that took place on the inner roadstead of Sevastopol, about the heroism of the sailors who stood at their combat posts to the end, about the martyrdom of those who remained inside the capsized corps …
Having found myself in Sevastopol that year, I began to look for the participants in this bitter epic, rescuers, and witnesses. There were a lot of them. To this day, alas, more than half have passed away. And then the chief boatswain of the battleship, the commander of the main caliber division, and many officers, warrant officers, and sailors of the Novorossiysk were still alive. I walked along the chain - from address to address …
Fortunately, I was introduced to the widow of the commander of the electrotechnical division, Olga Vasilievna Matusevich. She has collected an extensive photo archive in which you can see the faces of all sailors who died on the ship.
The then head of the technical department of the Black Sea Fleet, Rear Admiral-Engineer Yuri Mikhailovich Khaliulin, helped a lot.
I learned the grains of the truth about the death of the battleship from first hand and documents, alas, still classified at that time.
I even managed to talk with the former commander of the Black Sea Fleet in that fateful year - Vice Admiral Viktor Parkhomenko. The information range was extremely wide - from the fleet commander and the commander of the rescue expedition to the sailors who managed to get out of the steel coffin …
The folder of "special importance" contained a record of a conversation with the commander of a detachment of combat swimmers of the Black Sea Fleet, Captain 1st Rank Yuri Plechenko, with the Black Sea Fleet counterintelligence officer Yevgeny Melnichuk, as well as with Admiral Gordey Levchenko, who in 1949 overtook the battleship Novorossiysk from Albania to Sevastopol.
And I sat down to work. The main thing was not to drown in the material, to build a chronicle of the event and give each episode an objective commentary. Quite a voluminous essay (in two newspaper pages), I titled the title of Aivazovsky's painting "Explosion of the ship." When everything was ready, he took the essay to the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda. I really hoped that this authoritative publication would be allowed to tell the truth about the death of Novorossiysk. But even in the "era" of Gorbachev's glasnost, this turned out to be impossible without the permission of the censor. The "Pravdinsky" censor sent me to the military censor. And that one - even further, more precisely, higher - to the Main Headquarters of the USSR Navy:
- Now, if the chief of the General Staff signs, then print it.
The Chief of the Main Staff of the USSR Navy, Admiral of the Fleet Nikolai Ivanovich Smirnov, was in the hospital. He underwent examination before retirement and agreed to meet with me in the ward. I am going to see him in Serebryany Lane. A chamber with the comfort of a good two-room apartment. The admiral carefully read the proofs that were brought in, and remembered that he, then still a captain of the 1st rank, took part in the rescue of the "Novorossiysk" who were trapped in the deadly trap of the steel corps.
- I suggested using the underwater communications installation to communicate with them. And they heard my voice under the water. I urged them to be calm. He asked to indicate with a knock - who is where. And they heard. The body of the capsized battleship responded with blows to the iron. They knocked from everywhere - from the stern and bow. But only nine people were rescued …
Nikolai Ivanovich Smirnov signed the proofs for me - "I authorize for publication," but warned that his visa was only valid for the next day, because tomorrow there would be an order to dismiss him in the reserve.
- Will you have time to print in a day?
I made it. On the morning of May 14, 1988, the Pravda newspaper came out with my essay - Explosion. Thus, a breach was made in the veil of silence over the battleship Novorossiysk.
Chief Engineer of the Special Purpose Expedition, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Nikolai Petrovich Muru signed for me his brochure "Instructive lessons from the accident and destruction of the battleship" Novorossiysk ":" To Nikolai Cherkashin, who laid the foundation for publicity about the tragedy. " For me, this inscription was the highest award, as well as the commemorative medal "Battleship Novorossiysk", which was presented to me by the chairman of the council of the ship's veterans, Captain 1st Rank Yuri Lepekhov.
A lot has been written about how the battleship died, with what courage the sailors fought for its survivability and how they were later rescued. More has been written about the cause of the explosion. There are simply tours on wheels, dozens of versions for every taste. The best way to hide the truth is to bury it under speculation.
Of all the versions, the State Commission chose the most obvious and safest for the naval authorities: an old German mine, which, under the confluence of several fatal circumstances, took and worked under the bottom of the battleship.
Bottom mines, which the Germans threw in the Main Harbor during the war, are still found today, more than 70 years later, in one corner of the bay or in another. Everything is clear and convincing here: they trawled, trawled the Northern Bay, but not very carefully. Who is the demand now?
Another thing is sabotage. There is a whole line of responsible persons lining up.
From this fan of versions, I personally choose the one that was expressed by the sailors, highly respected by me (and not only by me), authoritative experts. I will name just a few. This is the commander-in-chief of the USSR Navy during the war and in the fifties, Admiral of the Soviet Union Fleet N. G. Kuznetsov, deputy commander-in-chief for combat training in the 50s, Admiral G. I. Levchenko, Rear Admiral Engineer N. P. Chiker, a remarkable ship historian, Captain 1st Rank N. A. Zalessky. The fact that the explosion of "Novorossiysk" was the work of combat swimmers was also convinced by the acting commander of the battleship Captain 2nd Rank G. A. Khurshudov, as well as many officers of "Novorossiysk", employees of the special department, combat swimmers of the Black Sea Fleet. But even like-minded people have different opinions, not only in details. Without going into consideration of all the "sabotage versions", I will focus on one - the "version of Leibovich-Lepekhov", as the most convincing. Moreover, today it is very much supported by the book "The Mystery of the Russian Battleship" by the Roman journalist Luca Ribustini, recently published in Italy. But more about it later.
"The ship shuddered from a double explosion …"
“It may have been an echo, but I heard two explosions, the second, though quieter. But there were two explosions,”writes the reserve midshipman V. S. Sporynin from Zaporozhye.
"At 30 o'clock there was a strange sound of a strong double hydraulic shock …" Filippovich.
Former foreman of the 1st class Dmitry Alexandrov from Chuvashia on the night of October 29, 1955, was the chief of the guard on the cruiser "Mikhail Kutuzov". “Suddenly our ship trembled from a double explosion, precisely from a double explosion,” Aleksandrov emphasizes.
Midshipman Konstantin Ivanovich Petrov, the former understudy of the main boatswain of the Novorossiysk, also speaks about the double explosion, and other sailors, both "Novorossiysk" and from ships stationed not far from the battleship, also write about it. Yes, and on the seismogram tape, the marks of double shaking of the soil are easily visible.
What's the matter? Perhaps, it is in this "duality" that the solution to the cause of the explosion lies?
“A bunch of mines that went into the ground would not have been able to penetrate the battleship from the keel to the“lunar sky”. Most likely, the explosive device was mounted inside the ship, somewhere in the holds. This is the assumption of the former foreman of the 2nd article A. P. Andreev, once a Black Sea resident and now a Petersburger, seemed to me absurd at first. Has the battleship Novorossiysk been carrying its death for six years ?!
But when the retired engineer-colonel E. E. Leibovich not only made the same assumption, but also drew on the battleship's diagram, where, in his opinion, such a charge could be located, I began to work out this, at first glance, an unlikely version.
Elizariy Efimovich Leibovich is a professional and authoritative shipbuilding engineer. He was the chief engineer of the special expedition that raised the battleship, the right hand of the Patriarch of EPRON Nikolai Petrovich Chiker.
- The battleship was built with a ram-type nose. During the modernization in 1933-1937, the Italians built up the nose by 10 meters, equipping it with a double-streamlined boule to reduce the hydrodynamic resistance and thereby increase the speed. At the junction of the old and new nose there was a certain damping volume in the form of a tightly welded tank, in which an explosive device could be placed, taking into account, firstly, the structural vulnerability, secondly, the proximity to the main caliber artillery cellars and, in- third, inaccessibility for inspection.
"What if it really was?" - I thought more than once, looking at the diagram sketched by Leibovich. The battleship could be mined with the expectation that upon arrival in Sevastopol with a part of the Italian team on board, launch an explosive device, setting on it, if possible, the most distant date of the explosion: a month, six months, a year, But, contrary to the initial conditions, all Italian sailors, without exception, were removed from the ship in Valona, in Albania.
So along with them came the one who was supposed to cock the long-term clockwork in Sevastopol.
So “Novorossiysk” walked with a “bullet under the heart” for all six years, until the SX-506 sabotage submarine was built in Livorno. Probably, the temptation was too great to activate the powerful mine already laid in the bowels of the ship.
There was only one way for this - an initiating explosion at the side, more precisely, at the 42nd frame.
Small (only 23 meters in length), with a sharp nose characteristic of surface ships, it was easy to disguise the submarine as a seiner or self-propelled tanker barge. And then it could be so.
Whether in tow, or on its own, a certain "seiner" under a false flag passes the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, and in the open sea, throwing off false superstructures, plunges and heads for Sevastopol. For a week (as long as the autonomy allowed, taking into account the return return to the Bosphorus), the SX-506 could monitor the exit from the Northern Bay. And finally, when the return of the Novorossiysk to the base was noticed through the periscope, or according to the testimony of hydroacoustic instruments, the underwater saboteur lay down on the ground and released four combat swimmers from the airlock. They removed seven-meter plastic "cigars" from the outer suspensions, took their places under the transparent fairings of the two-seater cabins and silently moved towards the unprotected, open network gates of the harbor. The masts and pipes of the Novorossiysk (its silhouette was unmistakable) loomed against the background of the moonlit sky.
It is unlikely that the drivers of underwater transporters had to maneuver for a long time: the direct route from the gate to the battleship's anchor barrels could not take long. The depths at the side of the battleship are ideal for light divers - 18 meters. Everything else was a matter of a long time ago and well-developed technique …
A double explosion - delivered and laid earlier - of the charges shook the battleship's hull in the dead of night, when the SX-506, taking on board underwater saboteurs, was heading for the Bosphorus …
The interaction of these two charges can also explain the L-shaped wound in the body of "Novorossiysk".
Captain 2nd Rank Yuri Lepekhov served as the commander of a hold group on the Novorossiysk when he was a lieutenant. He was in charge of all the bottoms of this huge ship, double bottom space, holds, cofferdams, cisterns …
He testified: “In March 1949, being the commander of the hold group of the battleship Julius Caesar, which became part of the Black Sea Fleet under the name Novorossiysk, a month after the ship arrived in Sevastopol, I inspected the holds of the battleship. On the 23rd frame, I found a bulkhead, in which the floor cutouts (the transverse link of the bottom floor, consisting of vertical steel sheets, bounded from above by the flooring of the second bottom, and from the bottom by the bottom plating) were welded. The welding seemed to me rather fresh compared to the welds on the bulkheads. I thought - how to find out what is behind this bulkhead?
Autogenous cut can cause a fire or even an explosion. I decided to check what was behind the bulkhead by drilling with a pneumatic machine. There was no such machine on the ship. On the same day I reported this to the commander of the survivability division. Did he report this to the command? I do not know. This is how this issue remained forgotten. Let us remind the reader who is not familiar with the intricacies of maritime rules and laws that, according to the Naval Regulations, on all warships of the fleet, without exception, all premises, including hard-to-reach ones, must be inspected several times a year by a special permanent corps commission chaired by the senior officer. The condition of the hull and all hull structures is examined. After that, an act is written on the results of the inspection under the supervision of the persons of the operational department of the technical management of the fleet to make a decision, if necessary, to carry out preventive work or in an emergency.
How Vice-Admiral Parkhomenko and his staff admitted that there was a “secret pocket” on the Italian battleship Julius Caesar, inaccessible and never examined, is a mystery!
An analysis of the events preceding the transfer of the battleship to the Black Sea Fleet leaves no doubt that after the war was lost by them, the "militare italiano" had enough time for such an action.
And Captain 2nd Rank Engineer Y. Lepekhov is right - there was plenty of time for such an action: six years. Here are just "militare italiano", the official Italian fleet, was on the sidelines of the planned sabotage. As Luca Ribustini writes, "the fragile post-war Italian democracy" could not authorize such a large-scale sabotage, the young Italian state had enough internal problems to get involved in international conflicts. But it is fully responsible for the fact that the 10th flotilla of the IAU, the most effective unit of submarine saboteurs during the Second World War, was not disbanded. They did not dissolve, despite the fact that the international tribunal unambiguously identified the 10th flotilla of the IAS as a criminal organization. The flotilla survived as if by itself, as a veteran association, scattered across the port cities: Genoa, Taranto, Brindisi, Venice, Bari … These thirty-year-old "veterans" have retained their subordination, discipline, and most importantly their combat experience and the spirit of underwater special forces - "we can do everything ". Of course, in Rome they knew about them, but the government did not take any action to stop the public speeches of the ultra-right phalangists. Perhaps because, the Italian researcher claims, these people were in the area of special attention of the CIA and British intelligence services. They were needed in the conditions of the growing Cold War with the USSR. The people of the "black prince" Borghese actively protested against the transfer of part of the Italian fleet to the Soviet Union. And the "part" was considerable. In addition to the pride of the Italian fleet - the battleship Giulio Cesare - more than 30 ships departed for us: a cruiser, several destroyers, submarines, torpedo boats, landing ships, auxiliary ships - from tankers to tugs, as well as the handsome sailing ship Christopher Columbus. Of course, passions were seething among the military sailors of the "militare marinare".
However, the allies were unforgiving, and international agreements entered into force. The Giulio Cesare cruised between Taranto and Genoa, where the local shipyards carried out very superficial repairs, mainly of electrical equipment. A kind of tuning before transferring to the new owners of the ship. As the Italian researcher notes, no one seriously engaged in the protection of the battleship. It was a courtyard, not only workers climbed aboard the alienated battleship, but everyone who wanted to. The security was minimal and very symbolic. Of course, among the workers there were also "patriots" in the spirit of Borghese. They knew the underwater part of the ship well, since the battleship was undergoing major modernization at these shipyards at the end of the 30s. What did they have to show the "activists" of the 10th flotilla a secluded place to place the charge or place it themselves in the double bottom space, in the damping compartment?
It was at this very time, in October 1949, that unknown persons stole 3800 kg of TNT in the military harbor of Taranto. An investigation began on this extraordinary incident.
Police and agents returned 1,700 kg. Five kidnappers were identified, three of them were arrested. 2100 kg of explosives disappeared without a trace. The carabinieri were told that they had gone to illegal fishing. Despite all the absurdity of such an explanation - thousands of kilograms of explosives are not needed for poaching fish jamming - the carabinieri did not conduct further investigation. However, the Navy Disciplinary Commission concluded that naval officials were not involved in it, and the case was soon hushed up. It is logical to assume that the disappeared 2100 kilograms of explosives just fell into the steel bowels of the battleship's bow.
Another important detail. If all other ships were transferred without ammunition, then the battleship went with full artillery cellars - both charge and shell. 900 tons of ammunition plus 1100 powder charges for main guns, 32 torpedoes (533 mm).
Why? Was this stipulated in the terms of the transfer of the battleship to the Soviet side? After all, the Italian authorities knew about the close attention of the fighters of the 10th flotilla to the battleship, they could place this entire arsenal on other ships, minimizing the possibilities for sabotage.
True, in January 1949, just a few weeks before the transfer of part of the Italian fleet to the USSR, in Rome, Taranto and Lecce, the most rabid fighters of the 10th flotilla were arrested, who were preparing deadly surprises for the reparation ships. Perhaps that is why the sabotage action, developed by Prince Borghese and his associates, failed. And the plan was as follows: to blow up the battleship on the way from Taranto to Sevastopol with a night strike from a self-exploding fire-ship boat. At night, on the high seas, the battleship overtakes a speedboat and rams it with a load of explosives in its bow. The driver of the boat, having directed the fire-ship at the target, is thrown overboard in a life jacket and is picked up by another boat. All this was practiced more than once during the war years. There was experience, there was explosives, there were people ready to do it, and it was not difficult to steal a couple of high-speed boats, get them, buy them for the thugs from the 10th flotilla. The explosion of the boat would detonate the charge cellars, as well as the TNT embedded in the bowels of the hull. And all this could easily be attributed to a mine that had not been removed in the Adriatic Sea. Nobody would ever know anything.
But the militants' cards were also confused by the fact that the Soviet side refused to accept the battleship in the Italian port, and offered to overtake it to the Albanian port of Vlora. The people of Borghese did not dare to drown their sailors. "Giulio Cesare" went first to Vlora, and then to Sevastopol, carrying a ton of TNT in its belly. You can't hide an awl in a sack, and you can't hide a charge in a ship's hold. Among the workers were the communists, who warned the sailors about the mining of the battleship. Rumors about this reached our command.
The ferry of Italian ships to Sevastopol was headed by Rear Admiral G. I. Levchenko. By the way, it was in his cap that the drawing of lots for the division of the Italian fleet was carried out. This is what Gordey Ivanovich said.
“At the beginning of 1947, an agreement was reached in the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Allied Powers on the distribution of the transferred Italian ships between the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and other countries that suffered from the Italian aggression. For example, France was allocated four cruisers, four destroyers and two submarines, and Greece - one cruiser. The battleships became part of the "A", "B" and "C" groups intended for the three main powers.
The Soviet side laid claim to one of the two new battleships, superior in power even to the German ships of the Bismarck class. But since by this time a cold war had already begun between the recent allies, neither the United States nor Britain sought to strengthen the Soviet Navy with powerful ships. I had to throw lots, and the USSR got the group "C". The new battleships went to the United States and England (later these battleships were returned to Italy as part of the NATO partnership). By decision of the Triple Commission in 1948, the USSR received the battleship Giulio Cesare, the light cruiser Emmanuele Filiberto Duca D'Aosta, the destroyers Artilieri, Fuchillera, the destroyers Animoso, Ardimentozo, Fortunale and submarines. Marea and Nicelio.
On December 9, 1948, the Giulio Cesare left the port of Taranto and arrived at the Albanian port of Vlora on December 15. On February 3, 1949, the transfer of the battleship to Soviet sailors took place in this port. On February 6, the USSR naval flag was raised over the ship.
On the battleship and submarines, all premises, boules were inspected, oil was pumped, oil storage facilities, ammunition storage facilities, storerooms and all auxiliary premises were inspected. Nothing suspicious was found. Moscow warned us that there were reports in Italian newspapers that the Russians would not bring the reparation ships to Sevastopol, that they would explode on the crossing, and therefore the Italian team did not go with the Russians to Sevastopol. I don’t know what it was - bluff, intimidation, but only on February 9 I received a message from Moscow that a special group of three sapper officers with mine detectors was flying towards us to help us find the mines hidden on the battleship.
Army specialists arrived on February 10. But when we showed them the premises of the battleship, when they saw that a portable lamp could be easily ignited from the hull of the ship, the army men refused to search for mines. Their mine detectors were good in the field … So they left with nothing. And then the whole trip from Vlora to Sevastopol we saw the ticking of a "hellish machine"."
… I looked through a lot of folders in the archive, when my tired eyes did not stumble upon a telegram from the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs dated January 26, 1949. It was addressed to all the prefects of the Italian provinces.
It reported that, according to a reliable source, attacks were being prepared on ships leaving for Russia. These attacks will involve former submarine saboteurs from the 10th Flotilla. They have all the means to carry out this military operation. Some of them are even ready to sacrifice their lives.
From the General Staff of the Navy there was a leak of information about the routes of the reparation ships. The point of attack was chosen outside Italian territorial waters, presumably 17 miles from the port of Vlore.
This telegram confirms the recent very loud testimony of the veteran of the 10th flotilla of the IAU, Hugo D'Esposito, strengthens our hypothesis about the real reasons for the death of "Giulio Cesare". And if someone still does not believe in the conspiracy around the battleship, in the existence of an organized military force directed against it, then this telegram, like other documents from the archive folder I found, should dispel these doubts. From these police papers, it becomes clear that in Italy there was a very effective ramified neo-fascist organization in the person of former submarine special forces. And the state authorities knew about it. Why was not a radical investigation carried out into the activities of these people, whose social danger was striking? Indeed, in the naval department itself there were many officers who sympathized with them. Why did the Ministry of the Interior, being well aware of the relationship between Valerio Borghese and the CIA, and the interest of American intelligence in reorganizing the 10th MAS flotilla, did not stop the Black Prince in time?"
Who needed it and why?
So, the battleship Giulio Cesare arrived safely in Sevastopol on 26 February. By order of the Black Sea Fleet of March 5, 1949, the battleship was named Novorossiysk. But he has not yet become a full-fledged combat ship. To bring it into line, repairs were needed, and modernization was also needed. And only by the mid-50s, when the reparation ship began to go out to sea for live firing, it became a real force in the Cold War, a force that threatened the interests not of Italy at all, but of England.
In the early 1950s, England followed with great concern the events in Egypt, where in July 1952, after a military coup, Colonel Gamal Nasser came to power. It was a landmark event, and this sign heralded the end of the undivided British rule in the Middle East. But London was not going to give up. Prime Minister Anthony Eden, commenting on the nationalization of the Suez Canal, said: "Nasser's thumb is pressed to our windpipe." By the mid-50s, war was brewing in the Strait of Suez - the second "road of life" for Britain after Gibraltar. Egypt had almost no navy. But Egypt had an ally with an impressive Black Sea fleet - the Soviet Union.
And the combat core of the Black Sea Fleet consisted of two battleships - "Novorossiysk", the flagship, and "Sevastopol". To weaken this core, to decapitate it - the task for British intelligence was very urgent.
And quite feasible. But England, according to historians, has always dragged chestnuts out of the fire with someone else's hands. In this situation, alien and very comfortable hands were Italian combat swimmers, who had both the drawings of the ship and the maps of all Sevastopol bays, since a unit of the 10th MAS flotilla - the Ursa Major division - was actively operating during the war years off the coast of Crimea, in the Sevastopol harbor.
The great political game that was tied up around the Suez Canal zone was like devilish chess. If England declares "Shah" to Nasser, then Moscow can cover its ally with such a powerful piece as "rook", that is, the battleship "Novorossiysk", which had the free right to pass the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles and which could be transferred to Suez in two in a threatened period days. But the "rook" was under attack by an inconspicuous "pawn". It was quite possible to remove the "boat", because, firstly, it was not protected by anything - the entrance to the Main Bay of Sevastopol was guarded very badly, and, secondly, the battleship carried its death in its womb - explosives planted by the people of Borghese in Taranto.
The problem was how to ignite the hidden charge. The most optimal is to cause its detonation with an auxiliary - external - explosion. To do this, combat swimmers transport the mine to the side and install it in the right place. How to deliver a sabotage group to the bay? In the same way as Borghese delivered his people during the war years on the submarine "Shire" - under water. But Italy no longer had a submarine fleet. But the private shipbuilding company "Kosmos" produced ultra-small submarines and sold them to different countries. To purchase such a boat through a figurehead cost exactly as much as the SX-506 itself. The underwater "dwarf" has a small power reserve. To transfer the combat swimmers' transporter to the area of operation, a surface cargo ship is needed, from which two deck cranes would lower it into the water. This problem was solved by the private freight of this or that "merchant" who would not arouse suspicion in anyone. And such a "merchant" was found …
The Mystery of the Acilia Flight
After the destruction of Novorossiysk, military intelligence of the Black Sea Fleet began to work with double activity. Of course, the "Italian version" was also being worked out. But for the sake of the authors of the main version, "an accidental detonation on an untouched German mine," intelligence reported that there were no or almost no Italian ships on the Black Sea in the period preceding the explosion of "Novorossiysk", or almost none. There, somewhere very far, a foreign ship passed.
Ribustini's book, the facts published in it, say something completely different! Italian shipping in the Black Sea in October 1955 was very busy. At least 21 merchant ships under the Italian tricolor have sailed the Black Sea from ports in southern Italy. “From the documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which are classified as 'secret', it is clear that from the ports of Brindisi, Taranto, Naples, Palermo, merchant ships, tankers, passing the Dardanelles, headed to various Black Sea ports - and to Odessa, and to Sevastopol, and even in the heart of Ukraine - along the Dnieper to Kiev. This "Cassia", "Cyclops", "Camillo", "Penelope", "Massawa", "Zhentianella", "Alcantara", "Sicula", "Frulio" loaded and unloaded from their holds grain, citrus fruits, metals.
The breakthrough, which opens a new scenario, is related to the release of some documents from the offices of the police and the prefecture of the port of Brindisi. From this city overlooking the Adriatic Sea on January 26, 1955 left the cargo ship "Acilia", which belonged to the Neapolitan merchant Raffaele Romano. Of course, such intense traffic did not go unnoticed by SIFAR (Italian military intelligence). This is a worldwide practice - there are always people in the crews of civilian ships who monitor all the warships and other military objects encountered, and, if possible, also conduct radio-technical reconnaissance. However, SIFAR does not mark "any traces of military activities in the framework of the movement of merchant ships in the direction of the Black Sea ports." It would be surprising if the Sifarites confirmed the presence of such traces.
So, on board "Acilia", according to the crew list, there are 13 sailors plus six more.
Luca Ribustini: “Officially, the ship was supposed to come to the Soviet port to load zinc scrap, but its real mission, which continued for at least two more months, remains a mystery. The captain of the port of Brindisi sent a report to the Public Security Directorate that six people from the Acilia's crew are on board freelance, and that they all belong to a confidential service of the Italian Navy, that is, to the security service of the Navy (SIOS)."
The Italian researcher notes that among these non-staff members of the crew were highly qualified radio specialists in the field of radio intelligence and encryption services, as well as the most modern equipment for intercepting Soviet radio communications.
The harbor master's document states that the steamship Acilia was being prepared for this voyage by naval officers. Similar information was transmitted on the same day to the prefecture of the city of Bari. In March 1956 "Acilia" made another flight to Odessa. But this is after the death of the battleship.
Of course, these documents, comments Ribustini, do not say anything about the fact that the flights of "Acilia" were made to prepare a sabotage against "Novorossiysk"
“Nevertheless, we can safely say that at least two voyages made by the ship's owner, the Neapolitan Raffaele Roman, pursued military intelligence purposes, with highly qualified naval personnel on board. These flights were made several months before and after the sinking of the battleship Novorossiysk. And these freelance specialists did not take part in the loading work along with other sailors of the steamer, who filled the holds with wheat, oranges, scrap metal. All of this raises certain suspicions in the context of this story.
Not only "Acilia" left the port of Brindisi for the Black Sea, but probably also the ship that delivered the commandos of the 10th IAS flotilla to the port of Sevastopol.
Of the nineteen crew members, at least three certainly belonged to the naval department: a first mate, a second engineer officer, and a radio operator. The first two boarded the "Alicia" in Venice, the third, a radio operator, arrived on the day of the ship's departure - January 26; left the ship a month later, while all ordinary sailors sign a contract for at least three to six months. There were other suspicious circumstances: on the day of the departure, in a hurry, a new powerful radio equipment was installed, which was immediately tested. The officer of the port of Civitavecchia, who helped me in my investigation, said that at that time radio specialists of this class on merchant ships were very rare and that only the Navy had a few non-commissioned officers specializing in RT."
The crew list, a document that reflects all the data of the crew members and their functional duties, could shed light on a lot. But to Ribustini's request to retrieve the ship's list of the steamer Acelia from the archive, the port official responded with a polite refusal: for sixty years this document has not survived.
Whatever it was, but Luca Ribustini indisputably proves one thing: the military intelligence of Italy, and not only Italy, had a very keen interest in the main military base of the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR. No one can claim that there were no foreign intelligence agents in Sevastopol.
The same Genevieses - the descendants of the ancient Genoese, who lived in the Crimea, in Sevastopol, could very much sympathize with their historical homeland. They sent their children to study in Genoa and other Italian cities. Could CIFAR have missed out on such a wonderful recruiting contingent? And did all the students return to Crimea after their studies completely sinless? The agents on the shore were required to inform the resident about the battleship's exits to the sea and about its return to the base, about the Novorossiysk's anchorage places. This simple and easily accessible information was very important to those who hunted the ship from the sea.
… Today it is no longer so important how exactly the combat swimmers got into the main harbor of Sevastopol. There are many versions on this score. If you deduce something "arithmetic mean" from them, you get the following picture. The ultra-small submarine SF, launched at night from a chartered dry-cargo ship aboard Sevastopol, enters the harbor through the open boom gates and releases saboteurs through a special lock. They deliver the mine to the battleship's parking lot, and attach it to the side in the right place, set the time of the explosion and return to the waiting mini-submarine via an acoustic beacon. Then she leaves the territorial waters to the meeting point with the carrier ship. After the explosion - no traces. And don't let that option seem like a Star Wars episode. The people of Borghese have done similar things more than once in even more difficult conditions …
Here is how the magazine of the FSB of the Russian Federation "Security Service" (No. 3-4 1996) comments on this version:
"10th assault flotilla" took part in the siege of Sevastopol, based in the ports of the Crimea. Theoretically, a foreign submarine could deliver combat swimmers as close as possible to Sevastopol so that they could sabotage. Taking into account the combat potential of first-class Italian scuba divers, pilots of small submarines and guided torpedoes, and also taking into account the slovenliness in matters of guarding the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, the version about underwater saboteurs looks convincing. " Let us remind you once again - this is a magazine of a very serious department, which is not fond of science fiction and detective stories.
The German bottom mine explosion and the Italian trail were the main versions. Until, unexpectedly, in August 2014, Hugo D'Esposito, a veteran of the commando group of the Italian combat group 10 MAC, spoke up. He gave an interview to the Roman journalist Luca Ribustini, in which he rather evasively answers the correspondent's question whether he shares the opinion that the former Italian battleship Giulio Cesare was sunk by Italian special forces on the anniversary of the so-called March on Rome by Benito Mussolini. D'Esposito replied: "Some of the IAS flotilla did not want this ship to be handed over to the Russians, they wanted to destroy it. They did their best to sink it."
He would be a bad commandos if he answered the question directly: "Yes, we did it." But even if he said so, they would still not believe him - you never know what a 90-year-old man can say ?! And even if Valerio Borghese himself were resurrected and said: “Yes, my people did it,” they would not believe him either! They would say that he appropriates for himself other people's laurels - the laurels of His Majesty Chance: he turned to his greater glory the explosion of an untouched German bottom mine.
However, Russian sources also have other evidence of fighters of the 10th flotilla. So, sea captain Mikhail Lander quotes the words of an Italian officer - Nikolo, allegedly one of the perpetrators of the explosion of the Soviet battleship. According to Nicolo, the sabotage involved eight combat swimmers who arrived with a mini-submarine aboard a cargo steamer.
From there "Picollo" (the name of the boat) went to the area of the Omega Bay, where the saboteurs set up an underwater base - they unloaded breathing cylinders, explosives, hydrotugs, etc. Then, during the night, they mined Novorossiysk and blew it up, wrote in 2008 the newspaper Absolutely secret ", very close to the circles of" competent authorities ".
One can be ironic about Nikolo-"Picollo", but in 1955 the Omega Bay was located outside the outskirts of the city, and its shores were very deserted. Several years ago, the head of the underwater sabotage center of the Black Sea Fleet and I studied maps of the Sevastopol bays: where, in fact, an operational base of combat swimmers could be located. Several such places were found in the area of the Novorossiysk mooring: a ship cemetery on the Black River, where decommissioned destroyers, minesweepers, and submarines were waiting for their turn to cut metal. The attack could have come from there. And the saboteurs could leave through the territory of the Naval Hospital, opposite which the battleship stood. The hospital is not an arsenal, and it was guarded very frivolously. In general, if an attack on the move, from the sea, could choke, the saboteurs had quite real opportunities to arrange temporary shelters in the Sevastopol bays to wait for an advantageous situation.
Criticism of critics
The positions of the supporters of the accidental mine version are now very shaken. But they don't give up. They ask questions.
1. First, an action of this scale is possible only with the participation of the state. And it would be very difficult to hide the preparations for it, given the activity of Soviet intelligence in the Apennine Peninsula and the influence of the Italian Communist Party. Individuals would not be able to organize such an action - too large resources would be needed to support it, starting with several tons of explosives and ending with means of transportation (again, let's not forget about secrecy).
Counter argument. It is difficult to conceal preparations for a sabotage and terrorist act, but it is possible. Otherwise, the world would not be agitated by the explosions of terrorists on all continents. "The activity of Soviet intelligence on the Apennine Peninsula" is beyond doubt, but intelligence is not omniscient, just like the Italian Communist Party. We can agree that such a large-scale operation is beyond the capacity of individuals, but after all, it was originally about the patronage of the Borghese people of the British intelligence, which means that they were not constrained in money.
2. As the former Italian combat swimmers themselves admitted, their life after the war was tightly controlled by the state, and any attempt at "initiative" would have been thwarted.
Counter argument. It would be strange if former Italian combat swimmers began to brag about their freedom and impunity. Yes, they were controlled to a certain extent. But not to such an extent as to interfere with their contacts with the same British intelligence. The state was unable to control the participation of Prince Borghese in the attempted anti-state coup and his secret departure to Spain. The Italian state, as noted by Luca Ribustini, is directly responsible for the organizational preservation of the 10th IAS flotilla in the post-war years. The control of the Italian state is very illusory. Suffice it to recall how successfully it "controls" the activities of the Sicilian mafia.
3. Preparations for such an operation should be kept secret from the allies, primarily from the United States. Had the Americans found out about the impending sabotage of the Italian or British navies, they would probably have prevented this: in case of failure, the United States would not have been able to cleanse itself of accusations of inciting war for a long time. It would be madness to launch such a sortie against a nuclear-armed country in the midst of the Cold War.
Counter argument. The United States has nothing to do with it. 1955-56 is the last years when Britain tried to solve international problems on its own. But after the Egyptian triple adventure, which London carried out contrary to Washington's opinion, Britain finally entered the channel of America. Therefore, it was not necessary for the British to coordinate the sabotage operation with the CIA in 1955. Themselves with a mustache. At the height of the Cold War, Americans made all kinds of attacks "against a nuclear-armed country." Suffice it to recall the infamous flight of the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.
4. Finally, in order to mine a ship of this class in a protected harbor, it was necessary to collect complete information about the security regime, anchorage places, ships' exits to the 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.
Counter argument. As for foreign agents, in particular, among the Genevieses, this was mentioned above.
In Sevastopol, "thoroughly filtered by the KGB and counterintelligence," alas, there were even remnants of the Abwehr agent network, which was shown by the trials of the 60s. There is nothing to say about the recruiting activity of such the strongest intelligence in the world as the Mi-6.
Even if the saboteurs were discovered and arrested, they would stand on the fact that their action is not a state initiative at all, but a private one (and Italy would confirm this at any level), that it was done by volunteers - veterans of the Second World War, who value honor the flag of the native fleet.
"We are the last romantics, surviving witnesses of the era erased from history, because history remembers only the winners! Nobody ever forced us: we were and remain volunteers. We are" non-partisan ", but not" apolitical ", and we will never support or let us give our voice to those who despise our ideals, insult our honor, forget our sacrifices. The 10th MAS Flotilla has never been royal, republican, fascist, or Badolian (Pietro Badoglio - participant of B. Mussolini's displacement in July 1943 - N. Ch.). But always only and purely Italian! " - announces today the site of the Association of Fighters and Veterans of the IAS 10th Flotilla.
