Author: Rainbow Kursk
In the history of the Soviet Red Navy, battleships have always been the strongest surface warships in the minds of leaders, but in fact only have some old battleships of the Tsarist era, which made Stalin very dissatisfied, and after World War II, he launched a huge "Soviet" class battleship design and construction plan. However, due to the huge cost of battleships and the complexity of technology, it was extremely difficult for the Soviet Union, which lacked construction experience.
At this time, the world naval battlefield had become the era of aircraft carriers, and the Soviet Navy was not very interested in building new types of battleships, and the project was stopped after Stalin's death in 1953.
But does this mean that the Soviet Navy did not have battleships during the Cold War? Non-nor non-also! Even at the time of Stalin's death, the Soviet Navy's Black Sea Fleet had a battleship with great combat power, the Novorossiysk!
Photo: Soviet-class battleship 23 design, known as the "Red Empire Yamato".
The battleship Novorossiysk was the last battleship of the Soviet Union, and during the cold war peak of the 1950s, the ship was one of the main forces deployed in the Black Sea against NATO's maritime forces in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions!
But in fact, the battleship "Novorossiysk" was not a Soviet-built battleship, its predecessor was the Italian battleship "Giulio Caesar", which was completed in 1914, belonging to the "Count of Cavour" class battleships. In 1949, it was delivered to the Soviet Union as war reparations for World War II, and sailed from the port of Taranto in Italy to the Sevastopol military port of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, where it was hung with the Red Star Flag and became a Soviet battleship.
Image: Giulio Caesar before the refit.
Image: The modified Giulio Caesar.
Although the ship is already an old ship, it is already a treasure for the Soviet Red Navy, which has only 2 ancient Gangut-class dreadnoughts. Italy modified the ship in the 1930s, with a maximum speed of 27 knots.
After the modification, 12 305 mm main guns were cancelled and replaced with 2 triple and 2 twins, a total of 10 320 mm/43.8 caliber main guns, in addition to 12 120 mm/50 caliber auxiliary guns, 8 100 mm/47 caliber anti-aircraft guns, 16 37 mm anti-aircraft guns, and 12 20 mm anti-aircraft guns. These firepowers definitely made this battleship the king of the Black Sea in the 50s of the last century!
However, the battleship did not last long in the Black Sea after arriving in the Soviet Union.
On October 29, 1955, a large explosion occurred at the military port of Sevastopol, the battleship "Novorossiysk", which had about 2,000 officers and men on board at the time, and the explosion took the lives of 608 people, making it one of the worst events in the history of the Soviet Navy.
After the explosion, a large hole was blown out of the bow, and it floated on the surface of the sea for 2 hours and 44 minutes before sinking.
Originally, the battleship was able to save itself after the explosion, but the captain and first deputy commander of the battleship were not in the position at that time, but the chief of staff of the squadron, Rear Admiral Nikolsky, was on the ship. However, Rear Admiral Nikolisky and The Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Balhmiko, and The Deputy Commander, Vice Admiral Kurakov, both erroneously and rashly estimated the condition of the battleship after the explosion and failed to take effective measures quickly!
Photo: The Novorossiysk is the most important flagship of the Black Sea battleship.
If, at this time, the battleship that was ordered to be seriously injured but was still able to sail sailed to a shallow water area of only 11-12 meters in the water depth, then the battleship could still be saved, and the boiler was already preheated, and the sailors in the engine room were waiting for orders.
But Commander Balhmiko gave a layman's and belated order: tow the anchored battleship to shore with a low-powered tugboat!
But it should be known that the modified battleship has a full load displacement of 29,000 tons, a length of 186.4 meters, a width of 28 meters, is an absolute behemoth, plus the anchored warship is even more immobile, and the order to cut the anchor chain was not issued in the chaos, so in the past 2 hours, the tugboat can only drag the battleship around.
After that, the battleship turned left, and the tugboat could do nothing but watch as the battleship Novorossiysk slowly sank into the sea.
Image: The bombed battleship Novorossiysk.
Photo: The Black Sea Fleet's slow rescue led to the unjust death of 608 sailors!
What is even more absurd is that when some sailors in the ship knocked on the hull and called for help, the commander was not able to make the correct decision to cut the hull for rescue, completely wasting rescue time and leading to a major fatal accident.
After the investigation, the direct cause of the sinking of the battleship was caused by the explosion of the German RMH or LMB sunken mines left over from the Great Patriotic War at the bow bottom. Experts believe that although the port of Sevastopol was cleared of mines in 1944-1946, when the Black Sea Fleet discovered a total of 26 non-trigger mines during local minesweeping at the port, this did not fully guarantee the safety of the harbor, and eventually led to the sinking of the last battleship of the Soviet Navy by the mines of Nazi Germany, a record that seems to be recorded in the credit book of the destroyed German Navy!
Photo: Sailors of the battleship Novorossiysk, who were unjustly killed, note that the main guns are arranged in the first three and two rear.
Photo: Sailors of the Black Sea Fleet guarding the grave of the sacrificial sailors of the battleship Novorossiysk.