The Battleship Novorossisk
The ex-Italian Battleship Guilio Cesare in
Soviet Service
The Guilio Cesare, like Italy's other First
World War battleships, was extensively reconstructed
in the mid 1930s. She was active in the early
years of the war, suffering a 15-inch shell
hit at the Battle of Punto Stilo, but escaping
damage during the British carrier air raid
at Taranto. She was damaged by high level
bombers at Naples, and was present at the
First Battle of Sirte. By January of 1942
fuel shortages and the obsolescence of the
class caused the Italian Navy to leave Guilio
Cesare inactive at Taranto for the rest of
the year. On December 30 she sailed for Pola,
where she was laid up and used as a barracks
ship and stationary training vessel.
The Italian Navy was caught completely by
surprise when the armistice with the Allies
was announced September 9, 1943. Cesare was
ordered to sail, with her greatly reduced
crew, to Malta and internment. After a brief
stop at Taranto, the ship was proceeding
south when a mutiny broke out on September
9. Led by members of the crew who wanted
to scuttle the ship rather than turn it over
to the Allies, the rebellion was soon controlled
by officers who convinced those on board
that it was in Italy's best interest to carry
out the provisions of the armistice.
While smaller units of the Italian fleet
joined the Allies against the Germans, the
battleships sat out the war. Cesare remained
at Malta until June 1944, when she returned
to Taranto and was laid up.
The Russians had demanded that one third
of the Italian fleet be turned over to them
in 1944, but the British and Americans placated
them by lend-leasing several of their own
ships to the Soviets. But the Soviets renewed
their demands as soon as the fighting stopped,
and despite Italy's best efforts their fleet
was divided between the Russians, French,
British, and Americans. According to the
peace agreement signed in Paris on Feb 10,
1947, Guilio Cesare was allocated to the
Soviets, and was scheduled to be delivered
to the Russian Navy in seagoing condition
within two years.
Cesare was given very quick and minimum repairs
to electrical and mechanical systems to make
her ready for sea, and then decommissioned.
Given the number Z-11, she sailed with a
civilian crew, under the flag of the Italian
Merchant Marine, Feb 5, 1949. A few crew
members made an attempt to sabotage the ship
and interrupt the transfer, but they were
unsuccessful. The next day she was transferred
to a Soviet crew at Valone, Albania, as the
Montreux Convention prohibited her passage
into the Black Sea while still owned by Italy.
Two weeks were spent familiarizing the new
crew with the ship, and then the old battleship
sailed for Sevastopol.
The Russians named their new battleship Novorossisk
(sometimes spelled Novorossiysk) March 5,
1949, but perhaps did not get what they expected.
The ship was in very poor material condition,
having sat for nearly 5 years without maintenance.
At the waterline she was caked with barnacles,
the ship was rusty, and many systems simply
did not work. The neglected machinery, combined
with the poor crew training and the fact
that all controls and manuals were in Italian,
meant that the Russians could barely keep
the ship running. In addition to the understandable
neglect, the ship itself was not designed
for the general way the Soviets operated
their ships. For example, the Soviets were
quite surprised to find that only the officer's
mess was equipped with a full galley; the
main galley was equipped only with large
pasta boilers, and those did not work. The
Italian Navy did not make the seamen live
on the ship, housing them instead on shore
in barracks with full kitchens. Italian Navy
operations rarely put the battleship to sea
for more than one or two days, and the day's
hot meal at sea always consisted of pasta
with olive oil, and red wine. The Russians
set up portable Army kitchens on the ships
deck to feed the crew until the ship could
be refitted to Soviet standards.
Designed for the warm Mediterranean, the
ship proved to be unsuited for cold weather
operations also, as the crew quarters were
not insulated. In the sub-freezing temperatures
of the Black Sea in winter, the ship's steam
heated air against the cold steel exterior
caused tremendous amounts of condensation
in the crew quarter of the forecastle, much
like an old refrigerator. To escape the constant
indoor rain, the crew often slept in the
ship's internal passageways. Clearly a lot
of work would need to be done if the vessel
was to serve in the Soviet fleet. The value
of such a ship was questionable, considering
the age of the vessel, and the rapid advances
in naval warfare since the ship was rebuilt
in the 1930s. However, Stalin was a big fan
of big ships with big guns, and the old battleship
carried the largest guns in the Soviet fleet,
so serve she would.
In May 1949 the ship went into the Northern
drydock at Sevastopol. Russian naval experts
were surprised at the condition of the underwater
hull: while the waterline was completely
overgrown with barnacles, the underwater
hull was free of growth, thanks to an advanced
anti-fouling coating used by the Italians.
After a good cleaning, inspection, paint,
and some repairs Novorossisk returned to
service, acting as flag ship for maneuvers
in July 1949.
Plans were made to refit the ship with Russian
305mm, 52 caliber guns, but in the end it
was decided to keep the Italian weapons and
manufacture ammo specifically for the ship.
She had been delivered with only a sample
of shells, due to concerns about the age
and stability of the left over WWII shells,
and Soviet expectations that the ship would
be re-gunned. But production lines were set
up, and soon new AP and HE rounds filled
the ship's magazines.
Over the next six years the ship's combat,
technical, and mechanical systems were slowly
but surely repaired, upgraded, and converted
to Soviet standards. A lot of work was done,
but on eight occasions the ship had to receive
repairs to her propulsion plant, which the
Soviets never quite were able to master.
Finally the frustrated Soviets replaced the
turbines with ones their engineers were familiar
with, brand new ones manufactured at the
Kharkov plant. After this change, the ship
made 27 knots on machinery trials, good for
a ship of her age but short of her best in
Italian service.
Despite Stalin's death, work on the battleship
continued: carrying the largest guns then
afloat for the Soviet Navy, and freshly modernized,
she was more than a match for the only other
large surface vessel in the Black Sea, the
old Turkish battlecruiser Yavus. Her guns
would also be powerful support for any amphibious
operation. By May 1955 the ship was ready
to begin working her crew up for front line
service, commanded by Fleet Commander Vice
Admiral Victor Parkhomenko.
She went to sea several times over the next
five months, for training and combat exercises
to train her crew, and for fleet maneuvers.
On October 28, 1955, Novorossisk returned
from sea for the last time and moored 1000
feet off shore in Sevastopol Bay, across
from the hospital, and took on board a number
of Army personnel. These soldiers had been
temporarily assigned to the battleship for
gunnery training, as they would be manning
coast defense guns removed from old Soviet
battleships. The anchorage at Sevastopol
was poorly protected and not in a high state
of readiness, with the outer harbor unguarded
and underwater listening devices that were
not functional.
At 0131 on the 29th, a large underwater explosion
was heard, and the ship shook from the force
of the explosion. Alarms sounded, and the
ship immediately took on a list to starboard
and went down by the bow, slowly settling
as the list slowly increased. Panic set in
among the newer recruits and Army personnel,
and officers did a slow job restoring discipline,
so it was some time before damage control
began. But calm was restored, and damage
control reports started coming in.
Damage reports were grim: a huge explosion
had ruptured the ship's hull, extending back
from the bow over 72 feet. The force of the
explosion pierced all the decks, blowing
a hole in the forecastle deck that measured
46 feet by 14 feet. Parkhomenko remained
calm- too calm, refusing to abandon ship
and sending everyone back to their battle
stations. He assured everyone that the ship
was in no danger, as he felt the ship would
not sink by the bow, and the list was irrelevant:
the water was only 55 feet deep, and the
ship drew 34 feet and water and was 92 feet
wide, so she could not roll over. He reluctantly
agreed to let volunteers from other ships,
experienced damage control personnel, to
report on board Novorossisk to assist. Parkhomenko
conceitedly reported to his superiors that
he had the situation under control. He reportedly
sat in a chair looking completely unconcerned,
and lamenting that he wished he could "go
get a cup of tea".
But Parkhomenko was wrong. While the water
was shallow, the harbor bottom was exceptionally
soft mud for a depth of over 50 feet before
reaching a hard bottom. Novorossisk sank
slowly by the head for over two hours, until
her bow hit bottom. At 0415 she lurched over
to starboard, rolling rapidly until her mast
struck the hard bottom below the mud. Dozens
of men were throw overboard as the ship capsized,
many being struck by the spinning ship, or
trapped and drowned between the overturned
ship and the muddy bottom. Several hundred
more were trapped inside the ship, still
at their battle stations.
Small craft and rescue workers rushed to
the scene, pulling survivors out of the cold
water. Divers rescued 2 men trapped in an
air pocket between the quarter deck and the
mud, and 7 more were saved by cutting a hole
in the bottom of the stern. But the ship
continued to take on water, and by 2200 Novorossisk
had slipped beneath the waves. 604 men lost
their lives, the worst disaster in the history
of the Soviet Navy.
The Soviets decided to hide the disaster.
No mention of it was made in the domestic
press, the victims were buried in a common
grave at a local military cemetery, and the
survivors were reassigned with warnings not
to speak of the incident. Rumors of her loss
leaked out to the West, but details were
not uncovered until the collapse of the Soviet
Union in the 1980s.
The Soviet Navy investigated the disaster,
alarmed at the loss of a powerful if aged
unit. The investigation started with two
possibilities: sabotage or a magazine explosion.
However, the evidence soon took the investigation
in another direction.
Divers examined the wreck, and engineers
determined that the explosion clearly originated
outside the ship, ruling out a magazine explosion.
However, the damage was caused by a blast
of considerable strength, roughly equivalent
2200-2650 pounds of TNT, and did not display
the characteristics of damage caused by an
explosive devise touching the hull. A devise
this large and powerful would have been very
difficult to sneak into the harbor and position
under the ship in just a few hours. They
were unable to rule out sabotage completely
though, due to the lack of security at the
anchorage.
The Navy pushed for a conclusion, and secret
report was delivered in May 1956, saying
that Novorossisk was lost due to an explosion
of unknown origin. It could not lay blame
for the explosion, but it found plenty of
blame to go around. The report cited the
indifference of the commanding officer as
the primary cause of the loss of the ship
and her crew, as even if the ship could not
have been saved the entire crew could have
been evacuated in the 2 hours and 45 minutes
that elapsed between the explosion and the
ship capsizing. Parkhomenko was criticized
for not knowing the conditions of the harbor
bottom, for not appreciating the danger his
ship was in, and for exercising poor judgment.
The report very clearly also blamed the Navy
as a whole, the initial panic and poor training
were symptoms of a larger problem. Improved
damage control training for officers and
crew alike were instituted across the entire
Soviet fleet. The man responsible for the
current state of the fleet, First Deputy
Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief
of the Navy Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov,
was fired from his post in November 1955.
In February 1956 was demoted to the rank
of vice admiral and sent to retirement without
the right to return to active service in
the Navy. He was, however, eventually reinstated.
As for the ship itself, the Russians sealed
what they could, blasted off the superstructure
to lighten the wreck, and in 1956 re-floated
it with compressed air and salvage pontoons.
The wreck was then grounded near shore and
broken up for scrap over the next two years.
Divers then made a remarkable discovery:
a WWII German magnetic mine sitting in the
mud on the harbor bottom. Sevastopol Bay
had been repeatedly swept for mines following
the war, and Soviet ships had been using
it continuously since then, yet there was
the mine all the same. Divers expanded their
search, turning up another mine, and then
another, and then another. Within two years
they had discovered 19 German mines in the
mud, 8 smaller ones and 11 large ones. The
larger ones had an explosive force that fell
within the estimated range of the explosion
that sank the ship.
The circumstantial evidence indicates that
Novorossisk moored close to one of the larger
mines, and somehow triggered it, perhaps
with an anchor chain as she swung at her
mooring. Critics claim the design life of
the battery powering the magnetic trigger
was only nine years, so by 1955 it should
have been dead for well over a year. But
the circumstantial evidence is strong, and
statistically speaking a certain percentage
of batteries should have retained a least
a small amount of charge well past the design
period. A careful examination of the other
mines might have settled the issue by finding
some charge in the other batteries, but such
an examination would have been incredibly
dangerous, and it is standard procedure to
simply detonate rather than recover old mines.
Others theorize that Italian frogmen repeated
their success at Pola, where they attached
limpet mines to the ex-Austro-Hungarian battleship
Viribus Unitis as it was surrendered to Yugoslavia,
in order to deny the ship to their enemy.
But there is absolutely zero evidence to
support this theory, and the Italians would
have absolutely nothing to gain from such
an operation. Conspiracy theorists suggest
that the Soviets sank the ship themselves
so they could blame it on Turkey as an excuse
to invade, only to cancel the invasion at
the last moment. This seems far fetched,
to say the least.
In the end, no one can say with 100% certainty
what cause the loss of the battleship Novorossisk.
But 604 men lost their lives, when many of
them could have been saved if they had been
properly trained and competently led. The
explosion also marked the end of the big
gun era in the Soviet Navy, as the remaining
battleships were removed from service in
this same timeframe, and the new battlecruisers
then under construction were cancelled.
There is an interesting footnote to this
story. In 1996 there was a ceremony in Voronezh
to honor the 300th anniversary of the Russian
Navy. Included in this event was the dedication
of a new memorial to the men lost on Novorossisk,
which culminated with the reading of a list
of names of those killed 41 years before.
One of the names was that of Sergeant-Major
Alexandr Perelygin. Someone in the audience
stood up and said the Alexandr Perelygin
was actually alive and well, working as a
security guard at a nearby aviation plant.
An investigation proved this to be true:
with the cover up of the sinking, Mr Perelygin
and the Army were both apparently unaware
that he was officially on the casualty list.