As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Russian Black Sea Fleet has suffered massive losses, most notably the sinking of its flagship missile cruiser, the Moskva, on April 14, 2022. However, amidst these modern challenges, the fleet quietly commemorated the 69th anniversary of one of the biggest tragedies in Soviet Naval history.
Around 69 years ago, on October 29, 1955, the fleet lost its flagship battleship, the Novorossiysk—formerly the Italian Giulio Cesare—in what remains the deadliest peacetime naval disaster in Soviet or Russian history.
Following World War II, the victorious Allied countries divided the surrendered Italian fleet among themselves, and the Soviet Union was awarded the battleship Giulio Cesare—a vessel initially built in the 1910s.
On February 9, 1949, the ship arrived at the port of Vlore in Albania, marking the beginning of its Soviet chapter. Renamed Novorossiysk on March 5, 1949, the battleship was formally recommissioned in Sevastopol, where it joined the Soviet Black Sea Fleet.
The Novorossiysk was, by sheer displacement and gun caliber, the most powerful ship in the Black Sea at the time of its transfer.
Despite its symbolic stature, the Novorossiysk was a logistical and operational challenge. The Italian Navy neglected the ship during the five years between the armistice and its transfer, leaving many of its electrical systems faulty and various internal components rusted or malfunctioning.
With no spare parts from Italy, Soviet engineers were forced to improvise, reverse-engineer, and modify parts.
From 1949 to 1955, the Novorossiysk underwent an astonishing eight refits in just six years, a costly endeavor for a WWII-era ship with diminishing combat relevance. During these refits, the Soviet Navy removed the Italian guns and replaced them with Soviet guns, seeking to streamline its armaments.
However, the shipyard responsible for the last refit reported the vessel was now overloaded by 130 tons above its maximum displacement, shifting its center of gravity dangerously close to operational limits.
The Soviets ignored these warnings, believing Novorossiysk was unlikely to see active combat. They relegated it more to training and gunnery exercises.
Originally, the Soviets envisioned the battleship as a frontline combat asset, intending to incorporate it as a symbol of power and a deterrent against NATO forces.
However, Josef Stalin miscalculated. His outdated vision for the Soviet Navy centered on massive, all-gun warships, battlecruisers, and medium cruisers—ships he believed could confront the US Navy in large-scale gunnery battles reminiscent of World War I.
By contrast, the US Navy had moved on to aircraft carriers and submarines, leaning into more modern and adaptable forms of naval warfare. Despite Stalin’s misplaced vision, few within the USSR were willing or brave enough to challenge his preferences, even as the world advanced toward a new era of naval tactics and technology.
The Loss Of Novorossiysk
On the afternoon of October 28, 1955, the battleship Novorossiysk returned to Sevastopol after conducting a gunnery drill in the Black Sea.
The ship anchored at mooring buoy 3, about 1,000 feet off the beach and adjacent to the Soviet Naval Hospital, in waters approximately 60 feet deep.
At the time, there were 1,542 sailors on board—a number significantly higher than its intended strength but typical for a warship used for training purposes.
That evening, Captain Second Rank Khurshudov was on duty aboard the Novorossiysk, as Captain First Rank Kukhta was on leave along with about half the crew. The battleship normally housed 70 officers, 240 petty officers, and 1,200 sailors.
However, the deceptive calm of that night was shattered at 01:31 on October 29, 1955, when a massive explosion erupted directly beneath the Novorossiysk’s starboard bow.
The explosion was estimated to be equivalent to 2,648 pounds of TNT, resulting in a catastrophic hole measuring 1,614 square feet in area—68 feet long and 12 feet wide. The force of the blast was so intense that it caused the hull plates to fold inward by as much as nine feet.
The explosion’s core force traveled upward, penetrating every internal deck up to the weather deck. It was estimated that the entire bow area of the ship momentarily bent five degrees upwards from the rest of the vessel, severing all starboard longitudinal frames in the forward 66-foot section.
Several transverse bulkheads warped so severely that watertight doors could not close properly, allowing a significant influx of seawater. As a result, the Novorossiysk heaved down at the bow, taking a three-degree trim and a one-degree list toward starboard.
The sound of the explosion awakened personnel at the Sevastopol naval base, and nine minutes later, at 01:40, the base commander began organizing a response to the unfolding disaster.
Tragically, two and three-quarter hours after the explosion, the Novorossiysk, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, rolled over and sank even as her crew and nearby rescue parties were still desperately attempting to save her.
The ship settled bow-down in approximately 50 feet of water, with hundreds of men trapped inside. Many of those trapped in the hull managed to survive for days, clinging to the air remaining in the overturned compartments.
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Despite frantic tapping sounds heard from within the hull 36 hours after the sinking, rescuers could retrieve only seven survivors by cutting through the thick armored skin of the ship. Divers, entering the hull through hatches from below, managed to extract two more survivors.
A total of 617 Soviet sailors perished in the incident, which included 61 individuals dispatched from other vessels to provide assistance. This disaster stands as the most devastating peacetime tragedy in the history of the Soviet Navy.
Nonetheless, Novorossiysk was salvaged on May 4, 1957, and scrapped afterward.
Theories Behind The Sinking
The investigation into the Novorossiysk disaster was led by General Vyacheslav Malyshev, a respected engineering expert who also played a key role in advancing the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb project, as well as its rocket and space technology.
Malyshev had previously raised concerns about the ship’s safety when it was still named Giulio Cesare. From the beginning of the inquiry in 1955, Malyshev believed the explosion was external, as no explosives were stored near the blast area. Survivors confirmed that the nearby munitions remained undamaged.
After inspecting the wreck, Malyshev found that the damage pattern indicated an external explosion with inwardly bent hull plates. The inquiry concluded that the explosion originated on or near the seabed, supported by a large crater found after the ship was refloated.
A German WWII mine was blamed for the explosion, the Type RMH, which had a warhead of 1,698 pounds—consistent with the estimated blast force of 2,648 pounds. These mines were heavily laid in the Black Sea and were only partially cleared after the war.
However, many remained unconvinced by the official explanation for the sinking of the Novorossiysk.
However, some three decades after the tragedy, a new conspiracy theory emerged suggesting a much more sinister plot. On May 14, 1988, reports emerged that the battleship may have been sunk by on-board sabotage orchestrated by the KGB to discredit Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov.
Following Stalin’s death in 1953, his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, distanced himself from Stalin’s naval vision, which focused on large battleships.
Instead, Khrushchev prioritized long-range submarines, missiles, and smaller strike vessels, showing little tolerance for the navy’s aging leadership, whom he dubbed “dead wood.”
The Novorossiysk disaster provided Khrushchev with a pretext to purge many Soviet Navy officers, including Admiral Kuznetsov, whom he viewed as a remnant of Stalin’s outdated strategies.
Kuznetsov’s frequent clashes with General Georgy Zhukov, favored by Khrushchev, further sealed his fate. As public outrage grew against the navy, Kuznetsov was quietly replaced by Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, who would shape the modern Russian navy.
Yet Another Theory Emerged – Italian Sabotage
Another theory even stranger than the initial explanations for the sinking of the Novorossiysk suggested that the battleship had been targeted by Italian diversionary swimmers employing human-torpedo chariots.
This theory suggested that the operation was orchestrated by Junio Valerio Borghese, known as “The Black Prince,” a notorious Italian neofascist and World War II commando.
Borghese, angered by the transfer of the famed Italian battleship to the Bolsheviks, allegedly vowed to sink her before his death.
Moreover, Russian naval historians uncovered evidence indicating that two explosions had occurred—one beneath the hull and another adjacent to it—contradicting the initial investigation, which claimed a single explosion.
Mine warfare experts testified that the German bottom mines known to have been present in the Sevastopol area could not have created the large craters discovered beneath the ship.
Divers also reported that these craters were too deep and wide. Furthermore, no mine fragments were found in or around the battleship.
Meanwhile, the watch officer on duty during the explosion believed the blast originated in unused machinery spaces, and suspected explosives had been placed on board before the ship’s transfer from Italy in 1949.
One surviving officer reported hearing a low rumble and scraping sound before the explosion, which might have indicated the presence of an underwater vehicle.
Additionally, several circumstances raised suspicions: the anti-torpedo net guarding the northern bay had been removed for repairs a month before the disaster; the harbor-defense boom and anti-submarine net protecting the Novorossiysk anchorage had been opened the evening before the explosion, on orders from then Black Sea Fleet Commander Sergei Gorshkov; the hydroacoustic anti-submarine warfare listening station “Saturn 12” was down for repairs on the day before the explosion, preventing it from detecting a submerged intruder; and the harbor security patrol, an ASW hunter vessel, was moored instead of patrolling as assigned at the time of the incident.
These facts cast doubt on the original investigation’s findings, suggesting a more complex narrative behind the Novorossiysk disaster.
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