K-19 III.

This is coolbert:

Novorossysk!

Continuing with extracts with comment from the book: : "K-19, The Widowmaker" by the American author Peter Huchthausen.

That subject once again the major surface warship spontaneously exploding and sinking, all the while in port, moored, not sailing. The Soviet too were not immune to such disaster!

"In 1955 . . . The Novorossysk, a 24,000 ton battleship, flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, exploded, capsized, and sank in the Soviet's primary Black Sea port of Sevastopol with the loss of 608 seamen . . . The battleship, originally an Italian ship named the Giulio Cesare [Julius Caesar], was transferred to the Soviet Navy in February 1949 in accordance with the terms of the Tehran Conference . . . which dismantled the wartime Italian Navy . . . the sinking . . . was the 20th century's largest peacetime naval disaster."

"Shortly after returning from sea . . . the battleship exploded in Sevastopol harbor. A thousand men were able to leap to safety from the decks and superstructure, but two hours and forty-five minutes after the blast, the massive battleship rolled over and settled into the three-meter [10 foot] thick mud . .  . she settled bow down in 50 feet of water [15 meters] with hundreds of crewmen entombed inside the hull . . . rescuers retrieved only nine survivors from her bilges by cutting through the thick armored skin of the ship."

This sounds more or less as with the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor. Ship rolls over and sinks to the bottom with men trapped inside. Fevered efforts to retrieve those "entombed" time-consuming and laborious, few survivors brought to the surface alive.

Warships spontaneously detonating and sinking while at home port, not sailing, moored and at dock a rather surprisingly a more common occurrence than what you might expect.

THIS TOO WAS A SOVIET STATE SECRET FOR ABOUT A THIRTY-THREE YEAR PERIOD.

In the old Soviet Union ships did not sink, automobiles did not collide, trains did not run off the track and planes did not fall out of the sky!!

coolbert.