Notes: Originally a WWI dreadnaught of the Italian navy, Giulio Cesare was completely rebuilt between 1933 - 1937, emerging essentially as an unrecognizable, entirely new modern battleship. Perhaps her biggest claim to fame during WWII came on 9 July 1940, when she was on the receiving end of the longest (14.8NM) ever documented hit between two moving ships, from a 15” round of HMS Warspite. After 1942 lack of fuel kept her in port and in 1945, she was ceded to the USSR as war reparations. The USSR renamed the ship Novorossiysk and assigned her as the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet’s training squadron at Sevastopol.
Loss of Novorossiysk :
On 29 October 1955, Novorossiysk was anchored about 1000 yards offshore near the Black Sea Fleet Naval Hospital in Sevastopol. At 01:30 local, a massive underwater explosion occurred underneath the starboard bow. The explosion opened a hole 41’ long by 12’ wide in the ship’s underside and warped all the frames in the forward 66’ of the ship. Traveling vertically, the blast destroyed every deck from the keelplate right on through the weather deck.
The ship settled surprisingly slowly bow-down for the first two hours. Novorossiysk’s captain displayed ineptitude, believing first that the flooding could be controlled, then that Novorossiysk would gently settle into the seabed rather than roll over. He was unaware of the water depth and at one point he insisted that a daily tea service go on as scheduled. Around 02:00 the ship began to list to starboard and the list accelerated rapidly. At 02:45 Novorossiysk capsized. The seafloor was in fact soft mud and did not stop the ship from rolling. By the following afternoon the upside-down Novorossiysk had completely settled into the mud and was submerged. A total of 608 sailors died.
Besides the obvious human tragedy, the military loss was not minute. Novorossiysk itself was a worthless relic but the men onboard were in their final stages of training and slated for hundreds of vacant billets in the Black Sea Fleet. Also lost were skilled instructors, instructors-in-training, and a specialist rescue/repair team from Sevastopol naval base not assigned to the ship.
The USSR immediately tried to silence the event but obviously the simultaneous loss of hundreds and hundreds of men could not be contained, even with the USSR’s censorship. Word spread first through WWII veterans’ clubs and then through the general media. In a rare instance for the Soviet-era press, newspapers were flooded with angry letters denouncing perceived bumbling by the military. To quell the anger, both Novorossiysk’s captain and then later the C-in-C of the Soviet navy were relieved by the USSR’s government.
To date, the loss remains the single largest peacetime disaster of the Soviet/Russian navy.
Causes: The exact cause of the explosion has never been determined. Several theories have emerged:
1) Seabed mine: The most common theory, and the official Soviet one, was that Novorossiysk detonated a magnetic mine leftover from WWII. A crater found on the seafloor after the wreck was raised supports a seafloor explosion. After the sinking, every inch of Sevastopol Bay was swept and nineteen WWII mines were found, eleven of them being German Type RMH’s which had a yield of the size of the Novorossiysk explosion.
There are numerous flaws in this theory however. The Type RMH’s battery lasts an average of 7 ½ and a maximum of 9 years; the sinking occurred 11 years after the last mine was laid in the Black Sea. The anchorage where Novorossiysk was had been used my many ships hundreds of times before, and Novorossiysk herself had been there for many hours before the explosion. The blast pattern suggests that Novorossiysk would have to have been (quite literally) exactly-center above the mine which is possible but statistically doubtful in the vast expanse of Sevastopol Bay.
2) Internal explosion: This has also been suggested however no explosives were stored in the lower bow of a Conte di Cavour-class battleship and in any case, the cylindrical, rather than spherical, blast pattern means that it was a rising rather than radial explosion.
3) Sabotage: A post-sinking investigation found shocking security lapses at Sevastopol naval base. However it would seem difficult for a disgruntled person in the Soviet era to successfully obtain such a massive (estimated 2,648lbs of TNT) quantity of explosives and in any case, there were more valuable warships anchored at Sevastopol that night.
4) Italian frogmen: This is a favorite amongst conspiracy theorists, mainly due to Novorossiysk’s past and the fact that elite demolition divers of the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS team quietly received medals for an undisclosed reason some time after the sinking. It is obviously inconceivable that Italy would risk destruction by a nuclear superpower just to settle a petty, decade-old sentimental slight (which could never be revealed to Italian voters anyways). Moreover the logistics of secretly planning and executing such an operation in the heart of the Black Sea Fleet’s base are mind-boggling.
5) False-Flag: Some have suggested that the USSR was considering an invasion of Turkey and the sinking was to frame that country as a public pretext for war. Even for the KGB, the murder of hundreds of Soviet sailors seems beyond the pale and the fact that the USSR immediately censored the event does not support this public pretext theory.
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The truth will likely never be known. Soviet records of the post-sinking investigation were so falsified and re-falsified during the cover-up that they are basically useless to historians. Sevastopol Bay has been dredged many times since, and all naval investigators of that era are now dead.
Displacement: 28,800t standard, 29,032t full Dimensions: 611’5”x91’8”x34’ Machinery: Steam-reduction: 8 Babcock & Wilcox boilers, 2 Yarrow geared steam turbines, 2 shafts w/3-bladed non-CP props Max speed: 28kts Range: 3100NM @ 25kts Complement: 1236 (36 officers, 1200 enlisted - includes instructors and trainees)
WEAPONS-Guns
x10 (2 triple/2 twin) OTO M1934 12.6” 15 ¼ NM surface (100 rounds per barrel ammo)
x12 OTO M1933 4.7” 9NM surface (182 rounds per gun ammo)
x8 OTO M1931 100mm 4NM surface
x8 (4 twin) 70K 37mm 2NM AA/surface
x12 84KM 25mm 1NM AA/surface
WEAPONS-Misc:
(Italian torpedo tubes deactivated.)
SENSORS-Radar
Zarnista (“Skin Head”) (I) 14NM surface search, 8NM air (low-altitude) search
SENSORS-EW
“Dead Duck” IFF
ARMOUR SCHEME:
Belt (upper): 11” - 9 ¾” with 9 ¼” tapers Belt (lower): 5 ¾” with 4 ¾” tapers Conning tower: 9 ¼” Turrets: 9 ¼” faces/ 8 ½” sides and roofs/2” rears Magazines: 10 ¼” Main deck: 6 ½” Second deck: 5 ¼” Bulkheads: 1 ½”