A veteran of the special division of combat swimmers of the 10th flotilla of the Italian Navy reported that the battleship of the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR Navy "Novorossiysk", which died under mysterious circumstances on October 29, 1955, was blown up by Italian combat swimmers. Hugo de Esposito made this confession in an interview with the Italian publication 4Arts.
Hugo de Esposito is a former member of the Italian Military Intelligence Service and an expert in secure (encrypted) communications. According to him, the Italians did not want the battleship, the former Italian dreadnought "Giulio Cesare", to go to the "Russians", so they made sure to destroy it. This is the first direct admission from the Italian military that they were involved in the explosion and death of the battleship. Prior to that, Admiral Gino Birindelli and other veterans of the Italian special forces denied the involvement of the Italians in the death of the ship.
In 2005, the Itogi magazine published a similar article on the sinking of the battleship Novorossiysk. The magazine contained the story of a former Soviet naval officer who emigrated to the United States, who met with the last of the surviving performers of the "Nikolo" sabotage. The Italian said that when the transfer of Italian ships to the USSR took place, the former commander of the 10th flotilla, Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese (1906 - 1974), nicknamed "The Black Prince", swore an oath to avenge Italy's dishonor and blow up the battleship at any cost. The aristocrat Borghese did not throw words to the wind.
In the post-war period, the vigilance of Soviet sailors was dulled. The Italians knew the water area well - during the Great Patriotic War, the "10th flotilla of the MAS" (from Italian Mezzi d'Assalto - assault weapons, or Italian Motoscafo Armato Silurante - armed torpedo boats) operated on the Black Sea. During the year, preparations were underway, the executors were eight saboteurs. On October 21, 1955, a cargo ship left Italy and went to one of the Dnieper ports to load grain. At midnight on October 26, 15 miles traverse of the Chersonesus lighthouse, a cargo ship launched a mini-submarine from a special hatch in the bottom. Submarine "Picollo" passed to the area of the Sevastopol Bay Omega, where a temporary base was set up. With the help of seaplane tugs, the sabotage group reached the Novorossiysk, work began on laying the charges. Twice Italian divers returned to Omega for explosives, which were in magnetic cylinders. They successfully docked to the cargo ship and leave.
Strategic trophy
The battleship Giulio Cesare is one of five ships of the Conte di Cavour class. The project was developed by Rear Admiral Edoardo Masdea. He proposed a ship with five main-caliber gun turrets: on the bow and stern, the lower turrets were three-gun, the upper two-gun turrets. Another three-gun turret was placed amidships - between the pipes. The caliber of the guns was 305 mm. Julius Caesar was founded in 1910 and commissioned in 1914. In the 1920s, the ship underwent the first modernizations, received a catapult for launching a seaplane and a crane for lifting the aircraft from the water and onto a catapult, and the artillery fire control system was replaced. The battleship became an artillery training ship. In 1933-1937. "Julius Caesar" underwent a major overhaul according to the project of engineer-general Francesco Rotundi. The power of the main caliber guns was increased to 320 mm (their number was reduced to 10), the firing range was increased, the armor and anti-torpedo protection were increased, boilers and other mechanisms were replaced. The guns could fire up to 32 km with more than half a ton of shells. The ship's displacement increased to 24 thousand tons.
During World War II, the ship took part in a number of military operations. In 1941, due to lack of fuel, the combat activity of old ships was reduced. In 1942, "Julius Caesar" was withdrawn from the active fleet. In addition to the lack of fuel, there was a high risk of death of the battleship from a torpedo attack in the conditions of the enemy's air superiority. The ship was turned into a floating barracks until the end of the war. After the conclusion of the armistice, the Allied command initially wanted to keep the Italian battleships under their control, but then three old ships, including Caesar, were allowed to be transferred to the Italian Navy for training purposes.
According to a special agreement, the victorious powers divided the Italian fleet at the expense of reparations. Moscow claimed a new battleship of the Littorio class, but only the outdated Caesar was handed over to the USSR, as well as the light cruiser Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta (Kerch), 9 destroyers, 4 submarines and several auxiliary vessels. The final agreement on the division of the transferred Italian ships between the USSR, the USA, Britain and other states that suffered from the Italian aggression was concluded on January 10, 1947 at the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Allied Powers. In particular, 4 cruisers were handed over to France. 4 destroyers and 2 submarines, Greece - one cruiser. New battleships went to the United States and Great Britain, and later they were returned to Italy as part of the NATO partnership.
Until 1949, "Caesar" was in conservation and was used for training. He was in a very neglected state. The battleship was included in the Black Sea Fleet. On March 5, 1949, the battleship was named Novorossiysk. In the next six years, a significant amount of work was carried out on the "Novorossiysk" to repair and modernize the battleship. It installed short-range anti-aircraft artillery, new radars, radio communications and intra-ship communications, modernized the main caliber fire control devices, replaced emergency diesel generators, changed Italian turbines to Soviet ones (increasing the ship's speed to 28 knots). At the time of its sinking, the Novorossiysk was the most powerful ship in the Soviet fleet. He was armed with ten 320-mm guns, 12 x 120-mm and 8 x 100-mm guns, 30 x 37-mm anti-aircraft guns. The ship's displacement reached 29 thousand tons, with a length of 186 meters and a width of 28 meters.
Despite its advanced age, the battleship was the ideal ship for the "atomic experiment". Its 320mm guns hit targets at a distance of up to 32 km with projectiles weighing 525 kg, which were suitable for placing tactical nuclear warheads in them. Back in 1949, when the Soviet Union received the status of a nuclear power, the battleship was visited by the Minister of War Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky, and in 1953 by the new Minister of Defense, Nikolai Bulganin. In 1955, the next Minister of Defense of the USSR, Georgy Zhukov, extended the service life of Novorossiysk by 10 years. The program for the nuclear modernization of the battleship involved two stages. At the first stage, it was planned to develop and manufacture a batch of special projectiles with atomic charges. The second is to replace the aft towers with cruise missile installations, which can be equipped with nuclear warheads. At the Soviet military factories, as a matter of priority, they worked on the manufacture of a batch of special shells. The ship's gunners, under the command of the most experienced battleship commander, Captain 1st Rank Alexander Pavlovich Kukhta, solved the problem of controlling the fire of the main caliber guns. All 10 main battery guns were now able to fire together at one target.
The tragic death of "Novorossiysk"
On October 28, 1955, "Novorossiysk" was in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol. A. P. Kukhta was on vacation. It is believed that if he were on the ship, the events following the explosion could have developed differently, in a less tragic direction. Acting commander of the ship, Captain 2nd Rank GA Khurshudov left for the shore. The senior officer on the battleship was the ship's assistant commander ZG Serbulov. On October 29, at 01:31, a powerful explosion was heard under the bow of the ship, equivalent to 1-1, 2 tons of TNT. The explosion, to some it seemed to be double, pierced through the multi-storey armored hull of a huge warship from the bottom to the upper deck. Was formed a huge, up to 170 square meters, hole in the bottom from the starboard side. Water poured into it, breaking the duralumin bulkheads of the interior and flooding the ship.
A howl occurred in the most densely populated part of the ship, where hundreds of sailors slept in the bow quarters. At the very beginning, up to 150-175 people died, and about the same number were injured. From the hole could be heard the screams of the wounded, the noise of the incoming water, the remains of the dead floated. There was some confusion, it was even considered that a war had begun, the ship was hit from the air, an emergency, and then a combat alert, was announced on the battleship. The crew took their places according to the combat schedule, shells were sent to the anti-aircraft guns. The sailors used all available energy and drainage facilities. Emergency teams tried to localize the consequences of the disaster. Serbulov organized the rescue of people from the flooded premises and began to prepare the wounded to be sent ashore. The battleship was planned to be towed to the nearest sandbank. From the nearby cruisers, emergency parties and medical teams began to arrive. Rescue ships began to approach.
At this time, a tragic mistake was made, when the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice-Admiral V. A. When they tried to resume it, it was too late. The bow of the battleship has already landed on the ground. Khurshudov, seeing that the roll to the left side is increasing, and it is not possible to stop the flow of water, he proposed to evacuate part of the team. He was also supported by Rear Admiral N. I. Nikolsky. People began to gather at the stern. Komflot made a new mistake, under the pretext of keeping calm ("Let's not stir up panic!"), He suspended the evacuation. When the decision to evacuate was made, the ship began to rapidly capsize upside down. Many people stayed inside the ship, others were unable to swim out after capsizing. At 4 hours 14 minutes the battleship "Novorossiysk" lay down on the port side, and a moment later turned up keel. In this state, the ship lasted until 22 hours.
There were many people inside the ship, who fought to the end for its survival. Some of them were still alive, remaining in the "air bags". They knocked on the news about themselves. The sailors, without waiting for instructions from “above”, opened the bottom skin in the stern of the battleship and rescued 7 people. Success inspired, they began to cut in other places, but to no avail. Air was coming out of the ship. They tried to patch up the holes, but it was already useless. The battleship finally sank. In the last minutes, according to a prototype of direct conversational underwater communication, which was brought to the scene of the accident, Soviet sailors could be heard singing "Varyag". Soon everything was quiet. A day later, in one of the stern rooms, they were found alive. The divers were able to pull out two sailors. On November 1, the divers stopped hearing any knocks from the compartments of the battleship. On October 31, the first batch of dead sailors was buried. They were escorted by all the surviving "Novorossiys", dressed in full dress, they marched across the city.
In 1956, work began on lifting the battleship using the blowing method. It was carried out by a special expedition EON-35. Preliminary work was completed in April 1957. On May 4, the ship floated up keel - first the bow, and then the stern. On May 14 (according to other information, May 28), the battleship was towed to the Cossack Bay. Then it was dismantled and transferred to the Zaporizhstal plant.
The opinion of the government commission
The government commission headed by the Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers of the Council, the Minister of the Shipbuilding Industry, Colonel-General of the Engineering and Technical Service Vyacheslav Malyshev, made a conclusion two weeks and a half after the tragedy. On November 17, the report was presented to the Central Committee of the CPSU. The Central Committee of the Communist Party accepted and approved the conclusions reached. The reason for the death of "Novorossiysk" was considered an underwater explosion, apparently, of a German magnetic mine, which remained at the bottom since the Second World War.
Versions of the explosion of a fuel depot or artillery cellars were swept away almost immediately. The fuel storage tanks on the ship were empty long before the tragedy. If the artillery cellar had exploded, the battleship was blown to pieces, and neighboring ships would have been seriously damaged. This version was also refuted by the testimony of the sailors. The shells remained intact.
Responsible for the death of people and the ship were Fleet Commander Parkhomenko, Rear Admiral Nikolsky, a member of the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral Kulakov, and Acting Battleship Commander Captain 2nd Rank Khurshudov. They were demoted in rank and position. Also, the punishment was borne by Rear Admiral Galitsky, the commander of the division for the protection of the water area. The battleship commander A. P. Kukhta also got into the distribution, he was demoted to the rank of captain of the 2nd rank and sent to the reserve. The commission noted that the ship's personnel fought to the end for its survival, showed examples of real courage and heroism. However, all efforts of the crew to save the ship were nullified by the "criminally frivolous, unqualified" command.
In addition, this tragedy was the reason for removing the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Nikolai Kuznetsov from his post. Khrushchev did not like him, since this largest naval commander opposed plans to "optimize" the fleet (Stalin's programs to transform the Soviet Navy into an ocean-going fleet went under the knife).
Versions
1) The mine version gained the most votes. This ammunition has not been uncommon in the Sevastopol Bay since the Civil War. Already during the Great Patriotic War, the German Air Force and Navy mined the water area both from the sea and from the air. The bay was regularly cleaned by diving teams and trawled, mines were found. In 1956-1958. after the sinking of "Novorossiysk" 19 more German bottom mines were found, including at the site of the sinking of the Soviet ship. However, this version has weaknesses. It is believed that by 1955, the power supplies of all the bottom mines should have already been discharged. And the fuses would have fallen into disrepair by this time. Before the tragedy, the Novorossiysk was moored 10 times on barrel No. 3, and the battleship Sevastopol 134 times. Nobody exploded. In addition, it turned out that there were two explosions.
2) Torpedo attack. It was suggested that the battleship was attacked by an unknown submarine. But when clarifying the circumstances of the tragedy, they did not find the characteristic signs remaining from the torpedo attack. But they found out that the ships of the division for the protection of the water area, which were supposed to guard the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, were in a different place at the time of the explosion. On the night of the sinking of the battleship, the outer roadstead was not guarded by Soviet ships; the network gates were open, the sound direction finders did not work. Thus, the Sevastopol naval base was defenseless. In theory, the enemy could penetrate it. An enemy mini-submarine or sabotage detachment could penetrate the internal raid of the main base of the Black Sea Fleet.
3) Sabotage group. "Novorossiysk" could have been destroyed by Italian combat swimmers. The Italian flotilla of naval saboteurs-submariners already had the experience of penetrating a foreign harbor in small submarines. On December 18, 1941, Italian saboteurs under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Borghese secretly infiltrated the harbor of Alexandria and heavily damaged the British battleships Valiant, Queen Elizabeth and the destroyer HMS Jarvis with magnetic explosive devices and destroyed the tanker. In addition, the Italians knew the water area - the 10th flotilla was based in the ports of the Crimea. Taking into account the slovenliness in the field of port security, this version looks quite convincing. In addition, it is believed that specialists from the 12th flotilla of the British Navy participated in the operation (or completely organized and carried out it). Its commander was then another legendary man - Captain 2nd Rank Lionel Crabbe. He was one of the finest submarine saboteurs in the British Navy. In addition, after the war, captured Italian specialists from the 10th Flotilla advised the British. London had a good reason for destroying Novorossiysk - its coming nuclear weapons. England was the most vulnerable target for tactical nuclear weapons. It is also noted that at the end of October 1955, the Mediterranean squadron of the British fleet conducted exercises in the Aegean and Marmara Seas. However, if this is true, the question arises, what were the KGB and counterintelligence doing? Their work during this period was considered very effective. Did you overlook the enemy's operation right under your nose? In addition, there is no iron evidence for this version. All publications in the press are unreliable.
4) Operation KGB. "Novorossiysk" was drowned by the order of the highest political leadership of the USSR. This sabotage was directed against the top leadership of the Soviet fleet. Khrushchev was engaged in "optimization" of the armed forces, relying on missile troops, and in the navy - on a submarine fleet armed with missiles. The death of Novorossiysk made it possible to strike at the leadership of the Navy, which was against the reduction of "obsolete" ships and the curtailment of the program of building up the forces of the surface fleet, increasing its power. From a technical point of view, this version is quite logical. The battleship was blown up by two charges with a total TNT equivalent of 1.8 tons. They were installed on the ground in the area of the bow artillery cellars, at a short distance from the center plane of the ship and from each other. The explosions occurred with a short time interval, which led to the emergence of a cumulative effect and damage, as a result of which the Novorossiysk sank. Taking into account the treacherous policy of Khrushchev, who destroyed the basic systems of the state and tried to arrange "perestroika" back in the 1950s-1960s, this version has a right to exist. The hasty liquidation of the ship, after it was raised, also arouses suspicion. Novorossiysk was quickly cut into scrap metal, and the case was closed.
Will we ever learn the truth about the tragic death of hundreds of Soviet sailors? Most likely no. Unless reliable data appears from the archives of the Western intelligence services or the KGB.
