Motor ship Adjara. Worse than "Titanic": the collapse of the ship "Armenia" became the main secret of the Second World War
November 7, 1941, on the day of the traditional parade on Red Square, at south coast Crimea broke out a new terrible tragedy. It was strictly forbidden to report anything about the catastrophe of "Armenia". It is difficult for the present generation to comprehend the meaning of concealing the truth of the war from the people, which undoubtedly played into the hands of the enemy, but such were the "laws" of those years.
The book "Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union on the Black Sea", published by the historical department of the People's Commissariat of the Navy of the USSR back in 1946, was removed from the "top secret" stamp only in 1989. It sparingly, in just a few lines, reported the time of death and the coordinates of the warships and ships that ended up on the bottom of the sea, including the ship "Armenia". We bring to the attention of readers an investigation of the catastrophe at sea, conducted by Captain 2nd Rank Sergei Alekseevich Solovyov, Scientific Secretary of the Military Scientific Society of Sevastopol, who was one of the first to study in detail the documents and eyewitness accounts of that terrible event.
"Armenia" was designed by marine engineers of the Leningrad Central Bureau of Marine Shipbuilding under the leadership of the chief designer Y. Koperzhinsky, launched in November 1928 and entered the top six passenger ships Black Sea, consisting of "Abkhazia", "Adzharia", "Ukraine", "Armenia", "Crimea" and "Georgia".
As for the "Armenia", it had a cruising range of 4600 miles, could carry 518 passengers, 125 "seated" and 317 deck passengers in class cabins, as well as up to 1000 tons of cargo, while developing a maximum speed of 14.5 knots (about 27 kilometers per hour). All these ships began to serve the "express line" Odessa - Batumi - Odessa, regularly carrying thousands of passengers until 1941.
With the outbreak of the war, "Armenia" was urgently converted into a medical transport vessel: the 1st and 2nd class restaurants were turned into operating rooms and dressing rooms, the smoking room into a pharmacy, and additional hanging beds were installed in the cabins. 39-year-old Vladimir Yakovlevich Plaushevsky was appointed the captain of "Armenia", Nikolai Fadeevich Znayunenko was appointed the first mate. The crew of the ship consisted of 96 people, plus 9 doctors, 29 nurses and 75 orderlies. The head physician of the Odessa railway hospital, whom many in the city knew well, Pyotr Andreevich Dmitrievsky, was appointed head of the medical staff with the rank of military doctor of the 2nd rank. On the sides and on the deck, huge crosses were painted in bright red paint, clearly visible from the air. A large white flag was hoisted on the main mast, also bearing the image of the International Red Cross.
But this did not save the hospital ships. From the first days of the war, Goering's aviation made raids on them. In July 1941, the Kotovsky and Anton Chekhov ambulance transports were damaged, and the Adzharia attacked by dive bombers, completely engulfed in flames, in full view of the whole of Odessa, ran aground near Dofinovka. In August, the same fate befell the ship "Kuban".
Pressed by the enemy, the Red Army suffered heavy losses in heavy battles. There were a lot of wounded. Day and night, in any bad weather, the medical staff worked to exhaustion on board the "Armenia". The ship made fifteen incredibly difficult and dangerous flights with the wounded defenders of Odessa and transported about 16 thousand people, not counting women, children and the elderly, whom the crew members placed in their cabins.
There is a lot of mystery in the circumstances of the death of "Armenia". The already mentioned "Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War ..." states that "Armenia", as well as "Kuban" and the training ship "Dnepr" made their voyages from Odessa, accompanied by the destroyer "Merciless", which, undoubtedly, saved these ships from the daring attacks of the German aviation.
The offensive of the 2nd Army of Manstein on the Crimea was swift, for which the command of the Black Sea Fleet, including Vice Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky, were not ready. All the exercises of the fleet before the war were reduced to the "destruction" of large amphibious assault forces and military campaigns of Cherno navy. It never occurred to anyone that Sevastopol would have to be defended from the side of the land.
In October and November 1941, confusion reigned everywhere. Everything that was needed and not needed was hastily evacuated from Sevastopol. The hospitals, equipped in the adits and the city itself, were packed with the wounded, but someone gave the order to urgently evacuate the entire medical staff. And now, already in our time, approaching Sevastopol, from the window of a car or bus in the Inkerman area you can see huge boulders and heaps of stones blown up located in the adits of hospitals. By order of Stalin, only the lightly wounded were evacuated from there to the ships. As the nurse of this hospital E. Nikolaeva testifies, “so that the wounded do not get to the enemy”, the adit was blown up along with the “non-transportable”. Explosive work was led by a representative of SMERSH. Two doctors refused to leave the wounded and died along with everyone else.
Vice-Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky himself constantly kept the fast destroyer Boiky with him and almost always “fought off” the tasks of forming convoys and guarding passenger and hospital ships when crossing by sea, believing that this should be done by the leaders of the civilian fleet. The self-elimination of Oktyabrsky from such an important and responsible task was one of the reasons that so many of the best passenger ships with people were sent to the bottom of the Black Sea.
According to the documents found and the testimonies of eyewitnesses, it was possible to restore many of the events preceding the release of "Armenia" into the sea from the Sevastopol Bay on November 6, 1941.
The ship stood on the inner roads and hastily took on board numerous wounded and evacuated citizens. The situation was extremely nervous. At any moment, an enemy air raid could begin. The bulk of the warships of the fleet, on the orders of Oktyabrsky, went to sea, including the Molotov cruiser, which had the only Redut-K ship radar station in the fleet.
In addition to "Armenia", another former "trotter", the motor ship "Bialystok", was loaded in the Quarantine Bay, and at the pier of the Morzavod, equipment and people were loaded onto the transport "Crimea". Loading went on continuously. Captain Plaushevsky received an order to leave Sevastopol on November 6 at 19:00 and proceed to Tuapse. For escort, only a small sea hunter with tail number 041 was allocated under the command of Senior Lieutenant P. A. Kulashov.
“On November 5, the head of the Main Base department received an order ... to close hospitals and infirmaries. About 300 wounded were loaded onto the "Armenia", the medical and economic personnel of the Sevastopol naval hospital (the largest in the fleet), led by its chief physician, military doctor of the 1st rank S. M. Kagan. The heads of departments (with medical staff), X-ray technicians were also here ... The 2nd naval and Nikolaev base hospitals, sanitary warehouse No. 280, a sanitary and epidemiological laboratory, the 5th medical detachment, a hospital from the Yalta sanatorium . Part of the medical staff of the Primorsky and 51st armies, as well as evacuated residents of Sevastopol, were taken on board the ship ... "
Captain Plaushevsky knew that in the absence of security, only a dark night could ensure stealth navigation and prevent enemy aircraft from attacking Armenia. What were his surprise and annoyance when he was given the order of the Military Council of the Fleet to leave Sevastopol not at evening twilight, but two hours earlier, that is, at 5 pm, during daylight hours. Such an order promised doom, and some historians were inclined to believe that it came from the depths of the Abwehr Admiral Canaris, from his special services engaged in "disinformation".
"Armenia", leaving Sevastopol at 17:00, moored in Yalta only after 9:00, that is, about 2:00 in the morning. It turns out that a new order followed on the way: make a stop at Balaklava and pick up the NKVD workers, the wounded and the medical staff there, because the Germans continue to advance.
Captain Plaushevsky was informed that in Yalta, the "Party activists", NKVD workers and eleven more hospitals with the wounded were waiting to be loaded.
From the notes of Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky: “When it became known to me that the “Armenia” transport was going to leave Yalta during the day, I myself personally gave the order to the commander not to leave Yalta in any case until 19.00, that is, until dark. We did not have the means to provide good air and sea cover for transport. Communication worked reliably, the commander received the order and, despite this, left Yalta. At 1100 she was attacked by torpedo bombers and sunk. After being hit by a torpedo, “Armenia” was afloat for four minutes.”
The absence of documents destroyed in 1949 and later casts a shadow on Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky, because any historian can suspect that the admiral is looking for an excuse in hindsight, years after the terrible tragedy. However, it must be admitted that he, as the commander of the fleet, knew the operational situation in the theater, knew where the "Armenia" was located, he also knew the time when she rolled away from the pier, crowded with people, he also knew that with the dominance of German aviation in the air "Armenia", devoid of protection, is an ideal target for torpedo bombers and dive bombers. Therefore, it is very likely that he really conveyed the order and even the very strict "wait for the night" to Captain Plaushevsky, but some ominous event occurred on the "Armenia" that forced the captain to violate Oktyabrsky's order. This is another mystery of the death of the ship.
We investigate the events and return back. It is authentically known that the initial order to Captain Plaushevsky was clearly formulated: to pick up the wounded and the medical staff and follow from Sevastopol to Tuapse at night. Then an urgent order followed: to go to Yalta to rescue the party activists and the wounded. The departure time of the ship from Sevastopol was changed to two hours. The third order, transmitted to Captain Plaushevsky, forced him, without entering Balaklava Bay, to also pick up representatives of local authorities and the wounded. The fourth order, transmitted to the captain of "Armenia" early in the morning by F. S. Oktyabrsky on November 7, ordered to leave Yalta no earlier than 19 hours, was strangely violated, and the captain set sail without security to meet his death.
There is no doubt that Captain Plaushevsky did not obey the order of the fleet commander only because he was forced to obey another authority that was on board, which was the NKVD and SMERSH officers taken on board the "Armenia". The people who remained on the pier saw how the captain, before giving the command to give up the mooring lines, was furious, like a hunted animal, and thunderously swore at what the world was worth. And it was Captain Plaushevsky, whom all colleagues described as an exceptionally cold-blooded and self-possessed person. Undoubtedly, he was threatened by those who were in a hurry to leave Yalta, and threatened with reprisals for refusing to obey.
“Armenia”, which left Yalta early in the morning, accompanied by a sea hunter, did not go even thirty miles, as it was attacked by two torpedo bombers.
Let us turn to the following testimony of a skiff from the sea hunter MO-04 M. M. Yakovlev: “November 7, at about 10 a.m., in the area of Cape Sarych, a German reconnaissance aircraft flew over us, and after a short time over the water, at low level flight, almost touching crests of waves (the weather was stormy and we chatted thoroughly), two enemy torpedo bombers entered our area. One of them began to make a U-turn for a torpedo attack, and the second went towards Yalta. We could not open fire, as the roll of the boat reached 45 degrees. The torpedo bomber dropped two torpedoes, but missed and they exploded in the coastal rocks of Cape Aya. We were struck by the force of the explosion - we had not seen a more powerful one before, and almost everyone said at once that if the second torpedo bomber got the "Armenia", then she would not do well.
After the torpedoing "Armenia" was afloat for four minutes. Only a few people survived, including foreman Bocharov and serviceman I. A. Burmistrov. I saw the death of the ship and the commander of the sea hunter, Senior Lieutenant P. A. Kulashov, who, upon his return to Sevastopol, was interrogated by the NKVD for a whole month, after which he was released.
Through German veterans, they tried to find the crew of the torpedo bomber that attacked the "Armenia" in order to clarify the details and coordinates of the death of the ship, since the German archives are famous for the high safety of documents. The answer came unexpectedly: "the archive of the Luftwaffe was taken to the USSR."
75 years ago, on November 7, 1941, Nazi pilots dropped two torpedoes on the ship "Armenia". As a result, according to some sources, up to 7 thousand people died. About how the path of "Armenia" began, what happened during the voyage and why the ship has not yet been found - in the RT material.
Once upon a time in Crimea
At the end of September 1941, Nazi troops under the command of Erich von Manstein captured the Perekop Isthmus and penetrated deep into the Crimea. The capture of the peninsula was of great importance to Adolf Hitler - this would have allowed the Soviet army to be deprived of air bases and would have opened the Germans unhindered access to the oil fields of the Caucasus. By the end of October, Nazi troops had strengthened their positions on the peninsula and forced the Soviet army to retreat to Sevastopol, the main Black Sea base. In early November, the siege of the city began. The Soviet command decided to evacuate the civilian population by sea along the Sevastopol-Tuapse route.
Until 1941, recreational and tourist Crimean-Caucasian ships sailed the Black Sea. The first ships - "Abkhazia", "Georgia", "Ukraine", "Adzharia", "Crimea" and "Armenia" - appeared in the mid-1920s. Some of them were built in Germany, and some were built in Leningrad at the Baltic Shipyard. After the outbreak of the war, the "Krymchaks", as they were called by the people, were converted into sanitary transport ships and given to the medical service of the Black Sea Fleet. They carried the wounded, children, women and medical personnel. The ship "Armenia" was the largest among the converted ships. Its displacement was about 6 thousand tons, length - 112 meters, and capacity - about a thousand passengers. Under the leadership of an experienced captain Vladimir Plaushevsky, during August-September, "Armenia" transported about 15 thousand wounded soldiers from Odessa to mainland. In early November, Manstein's troops shelled Sevastopol from land, air and water. There was a real threat of surrendering the city to the enemy. The leaders of the defense of Sevastopol decided to evacuate hospitals, infirmaries and part of the civilian population in Tuapse on the ship "Armenia".
Mysterious cargo in Balaclava
The evacuation began on November 6, according to the order received from the high command the day before. Member of the defense of Sevastopol, colonel of the medical service Alexander Vlasov recalled the first days of the evacuation:
“On November 5, the head of the Main Base department received an order ... to close hospitals and infirmaries. About 300 wounded were loaded onto the "Armenia", the medical and economic personnel of the Sevastopol naval hospital (the largest in the fleet), led by its chief physician, military doctor of the 1st rank S. M. Kagan. Here were the heads of departments (with medical staff), X-ray technicians ... The 2nd naval and Nikolaev base hospitals, sanitary warehouse No. 280, the sanitary and epidemiological laboratory, the 5th medical detachment, the hospital from the Yalta sanatorium were also located here. Part of the medical staff of the Primorsky and 51st armies, as well as evacuated residents of Sevastopol, were taken on board the ship ... ".
As soon as it became known that the ship was preparing to depart for Tuapse, panic began in the city. Everyone wanted to escape, to get out from under the endless shelling, but the small capacity of the ship did not allow to take everyone on board. According to various estimates, from 4.5 thousand to 7 thousand people ended up on the "Armenia", which significantly exceeded the allowable number of passengers. On the Sevastopol-Tuapse route, one planned stop was supposed to be in Yalta, but immediately after sailing, at 17:00, the captain of the "Armenia" Vladimir Plaushevsky received an order to stop in Balaklava on the way. There, the boat was waiting for the NKVD boats to load secret boxes onto it, which, according to one version, contained gold and valuables from the Crimean museums, in particular, paintings by famous Russian artists.
“We never got to Armenia”
On November 7, at 2 am, the ship "Armenia" arrived in Yalta. Nazi troops continuously attacked the city. E. S. Nikulin, a man who did not get on the ship, recalled the arrival of "Armenia" in Yalta:
“Since the evening, we still did not know anything about the ship “Armenia”. At night, about two o'clock, they woke us up and led us almost in formation along the middle of the street to the port. There was a huge ship in the port. The whole marina and pier are filled with people. We joined this crowd. Boarding the ship was slow; in two hours we moved from the pier to the pier. The pressure is incredible! Loading went from about two o'clock until seven in the morning. NKVD soldiers with rifles stood across the pier and only women with children were let through. Sometimes men broke through the cordon.”
Together with the wounded, employees of the Artek pioneer camp, the staff of the main hospital of the Black Sea Fleet, representatives of the party leadership of the Crimea were on board. While waiting for the authorities to arrive at the landing site, the ship stood in the port for several hours longer than planned. Vera Chistova, who failed to get on "Armenia" that day, recalled:
“Dad bought tickets, and my grandmother and I had to leave Yalta on the ship Armenia. On the night of November 6, the pier was full of people. First, the wounded were loaded, then the civilians were let in. Nobody checked the tickets, and a stampede began on the gangway. The brave climbed onto the ship along the shrouds. In the bustle, suitcases and things were thrown off the board. By dawn, the loading was completed. But we didn’t get to “Armenia”.
After everyone was on a crowded deck, the ship was ready to continue its journey along the Sevastopol-Tuapse route. But Admiral Philip Oktyabrsky gave the order to leave after 19:00, with the onset of darkness. During daylight hours, the ship could be subjected to air strikes. But the captain of the "Armenia" Plaushevsky dared not follow the order, as he perfectly understood that being in a port unprotected from the air was mortally dangerous. At any moment, the Wehrmacht pilots could strike. According to another version, pressure on the captain from the NKVD officers on board could also be the reason for such an early departure. Party leaders wanted to leave the peninsula as soon as possible in order to save themselves and not allow the Nazis to seize the secret precious cargo. On November 7 at 8 o'clock in the morning, accompanied by two armed boats and two I-153 "Chaika" fighters, the ship "Armenia" sailed from Yalta.
"Hell has begun"
In July 1941, Wehrmacht air forces bombed hospital ships on the Black Sea. Then the sanitary ships "Kotovsky" and "Anton Chekhov" were fired upon, and later, in August, as a result of air raids, the ships "Adzharia" and "Kuban" sank. To prevent possible attacks from the air, a distinctive sign of a hospital ship - a huge red cross - was placed on board the "Armenia". Hospital ships, on which such a cross is depicted, according to the norms of international law, should not have been fired upon. But this did not stop the Nazis. To protect the ship from possible raids, four 21-K anti-aircraft guns were placed on the deck of the "Armenia", but they did not save him from death. Three and a half hours after sailing, at 11:25 am, a few kilometers from Yalta, the ship was overtaken by the Nazi Heinkel He-111 torpedo bomber, which dropped two torpedoes on Armenia from a height of 600 m. One hit the water, and the second landed right in the bow of the ship. A few minutes later the ship sank.
According to another version, "Armenia" was bombed by eight Nazi "Junkers Ju 87" at once. Of all those on board (recall, this is about 4.5 thousand - 7 thousand people), only eight managed to survive. Among them was Anastasia Popova. Despite the terrible cold, she, pregnant, independently swam to the shore. Anastasia recalled the terrible minutes of the tragedy as follows:
“On November 6, 1941, on the advice of friends, I decided to evacuate from Yalta. It was with great difficulty that I was taken on board, since the "Armenia" was already overcrowded with wounded and refugees. Having gone out to sea, the ship was attacked by enemy aircraft. A living hell has begun. Explosions of bombs, panic, screams of people - everything was mixed up in an indescribable nightmare. People rushed about the deck, not knowing where to hide from the fire. I jumped into the sea and swam to the shore, losing consciousness. I don't remember how I ended up on the beach.
"The death toll is about 7,000 people"
On the day of the tragedy, November 7, a parade was held on Red Square in Moscow in honor of the celebration of the 24th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution. During the war and after it, the fact of the tragedy was hushed up, so there was no reliable information about the place of death of "Armenia" and the number of dead for a long time.
Pyotr Morgunov - one of the organizers of the defense of Sevastopol - in the 1970s in his memoirs "Heroic Sevastopol" mentioned the tragedy in passing:
“On November 6, an ambulance transport left Sevastopol - the ship “Armenia” with wounded soldiers, employees of the main hospital and evacuated citizens. He went to Yalta, where he also took away part of the evacuees from Simferopol, and on the morning of November 7 he headed for the Caucasus. At 11:25, not far from Yalta, the transport, although it had the hallmarks of a sanitary vessel, was torpedoed by a fascist aircraft and sank four minutes later. Many residents, doctors and wounded died.”
At the end of the above passage there is a footnote to case No. 19, stored in the Central Naval Archive. Recently, historians have learned that in 1949 (according to other sources - in 1947) it was classified and destroyed. Some information about the tragedy is contained in the third volume of the “Final Report on the Combat Activities of the Black Sea Fleet during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945”, published in 1956. The essay reported that on November 7, 1941, 7 thousand people died on the "Armenia", 8 people were saved.
Finally, in the book "Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union on the Black Sea", published by the historical department of the People's Commissariat of the Navy of the USSR back in 1946, but deprived of the stamp "top secret" only in 1989, information is provided on the time and coordinates of the vessel during the shelling . The only clue for future searches of the vessel appeared in 1991. It was an extract from a document stored in the materials of the Museum of the Medical Service of the Black Sea Fleet. It dealt with 7,000 dead on the ship "Armenia" who were attacked from the air near the village of Gurzuf in the Bear Mountain (Ayu-Daga) area.
A special investigation dedicated to the search for the place of death of the ship "Armenia" was conducted in the Soviet years by the captain of the 2nd rank, scientific secretary of the Military Scientific Society of Sevastopol Sergey Solovyov. He managed to get acquainted with partially preserved archival documents and eyewitness accounts, among which was the testimony of a boatman from the sea hunter "MO-04" M. M. Yakovlev, who accompanied the "Armenia":
“On November 7, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, in the area of \u200b\u200bCape Sarych, a German reconnaissance aircraft flew over us, and after a short time over the water, at low level flight, almost touching the crests of the waves (the weather was stormy and we chatted thoroughly), two enemy torpedo bombers. One of them began to make a U-turn for a torpedo attack, and the second went towards Yalta. We could not open fire, as the roll of the boat reached 45 degrees. The torpedo bomber dropped two torpedoes, but missed, and they exploded in the coastal rocks of Cape Aya. We were struck by the force of the explosion - we had not seen a more powerful one before, and almost everyone said at once that if the second torpedo bomber got "Armenia", then she would not do well.
It follows from this story that the ship "Armenia" on that very morning, November 7, may have been on its way from Yalta not to Tuapse, but back to Sevastopol, because Capes Sarych and Aya are located west of Yalta, towards Sevastopol. Thus, written evidence made it possible to determine several alleged places of the ship's death, but one way or another they are all located in the area of the Yalta coast.
“Perhaps, on one of the expeditions, we passed by “Armenia”
In 2005, a group of Ukrainian archaeologists led by Sergei Voronov began underwater research in the Yalta region in order to locate the sunken ship "Armenia". In 2006, the famous American explorer Robert Ballard began the search, who in 1985 discovered the Titanic, and in 1989, the wreckage of the German battleship Bismarck. Despite the expensive equipment and technology, he never managed to find "Armenia".
According to media reports, the last attempt to search for the vessel was made at the end of July 2016 by specialists from the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Search results are still unknown.
For details about the underwater search for the ship, RT turned to Viktor Vakhoneev, head of the underwater archeology department of the Black Sea Center for Underwater Research. He himself was a participant in the very first searches for the ship, which have been carried out since 2005 by Ukrainian, Russian and American specialists. In an interview with RT, Viktor Vakhoneev noted that the work was carried out at different depths:
“The main reason why the vessel could not be found in 2005-2006 is the collapse of the depths. The Black Sea bottom has a very mountainous relief. It is possible that on one of the expeditions we passed by "Armenia", but it is extremely difficult to identify it among the underwater rocks. When scanning the bottom, shadow zones are formed, where the ship can theoretically be. But because of the existing stall, the scanning process becomes more complicated.”
Viktor Vakhoneev explained that the expeditions did not have accurate data on the location of the vessel. This is due to the fact that the case of the death of "Armenia" in 1947 was withdrawn from the archives, and now it is classified as "top secret" in the archives of the FSB. Vakhoneev noted:
“We proceeded from the time when “Armenia” left the port, adding three hours to it until it was flooded. Then multiplied by the minimum, average and maximum travel speed. Based on the data obtained, they drew a radius where the ship could go. It is most logical that "Armenia" went towards Gurzuf (east of Yalta), the Ayu-Dag mountain along the coast. But we also scanned the bottom not only in this area, but also in central area Yalta".
Regarding the version that the ship was heading from Yalta back to Sevastopol, Vakhoneev explained that confusion had crept into it. Katernik, testifying that he saw "Armenia" in the area of Cape Sarych, confused it with another ship - "Lenin". He was blown up in this area by a mine in July 1941. According to Viktor Vakhoneev, the waters of Sarych are well studied, and no traces of "Armenia" were found there.
According to one version, the ship may be under a layer of silt. The interlocutor of RT expressed doubts about this:
"It's impossible. The ship's height was too high. Silt of such a height that would exceed the parameters of the vessel simply does not exist. The only difficulty preventing the search for the vessel is the mountainous bottom relief.
In conclusion, Viktor Vakhoneev noted that the history of the death of the ship "Armenia" is covered in riddles and secrets. So, he expressed doubt about the testimony of the surviving Anastasia Popova, who managed to swim in cold water to the shore.
It is still not known whether the wreckage of the "Armenia" was found during the last searches in the summer of 2016. It remains to be hoped that one day this story will come to an end.
November 7, 1941, in the Yalta region, the Germans sank the ship "Armenia". “Armenia” is called differently: military transport, ambulance transport and ambulance ship, cargo-passenger ship. The cargo-passenger motor ship with this name was built at the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad in 1930. The vessel had a length of 107.72 meters, a width of 15.5, a side height of 7.7 m, a minimum draft of 5.96 m, a gross register capacity of 4727 tons with a displacement of 5805 tons. Crew - 96 people. There were five such vessels in total. They cruised on the Crimean-Caucasian line and all died during the war.
The captain of the "Armenia" was Vladimir Yakovlevich Plaushevsky, who died during this disaster. In terms of the number of deaths, it was biggest disaster not only the Second World War, but almost the entire history of navigation!
If on the Titanic (April 14, 1912) 1503 people died, then on the "Armenia" - about 6000 people. The fact is that there is no exact number of those who died on the “Armenia”.
These figures are not in the museum of the Black Sea Fleet, nor in the museum of the heroic defense and liberation of Sevastopol, where I applied. In the museum of the Black Sea Fleet, it says: “Ambulance transport of the Black Sea Fleet “Armenia”. Date and place of death - November 7, 1941, south of Yalta, 44° 17′ N. sh., 34° 10′ in. etc. (These data are also in the reference book “Ships of the Ministry of the Navy, who died during the Great Patriotic War in 1941 - 1945 Moscow). Went from Yalta to Tuapse with the wounded and cargo. Sunk by enemy aircraft. The death toll is unknown. 8 people were saved. (TsVMA, f. 10, d. 9096, l. 8)”.
On the ship were the wounded, the staff of the Sevastopol Naval Hospital, the sanitary and epidemiological laboratory of the Black Sea Fleet, the 5th medical detachment of the Black Sea Fleet, the 280th medical warehouse. property, the medical staff of the Nikolaev naval infirmary, a branch of the Sevastopol hospital in Yalta.
The researchers of this tragedy, including the Sevastopol historian, writer Yevgeny Venikeev, the scientific secretary of the military-scientific society of the Black Sea Fleet, captain of the second rank, retired Sergei Solovyov (unfortunately, both are deceased), give a figure of 5,000 to 7,000 people. S. Solovyov believes that in terms of the number of dead, “only the German liner Wilhelm Gustloff, sunk in January 1945 in the Baltic by the S-13 submarine under the command of A. I. Marinesko, is ahead. There were 6535 people on the liner. 988 people were saved. The death toll was 5547.
According to Sergei Solovyov, there could have been more dead on the "Armenia". Thus, this is one of the largest maritime tragedies. There are many insinuations associated with it. Solovyov debunks one of them, which wandered through the pages of newspapers, as if "Armenia" was bombed by 40 aircraft. Transport at 11 hours 25 minutes on November 7, 1941, which was guarding two patrol boats from Yalta to Tuapse with the wounded and passengers, was attacked by an enemy torpedo bomber. One of the dropped torpedoes hit the bow of the ship, and at 11:29 she sank.
There was no sign of the Red Cross on the “Armenia”, since, along with other transports, except for sea evacuation, it was engaged in the delivery of weapons, ammunition, manpower from the rear areas to the battlefields. "Armenia" was painted in military color with ball paint and even had machine guns. All this deprived transport of the right of inviolability.
True, there is another point of view. One of the organizers of the defense of Sevastopol, Lieutenant General of Artillery P. A. Morgunov, who at that time was the commandant of the coastal defense of the Crimea and the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, wrote in the book “Heroic Sevastopol”:
“On November 6, an ambulance transport left Sevastopol - the ship “Armenia” with wounded soldiers, employees of the main hospital and evacuated citizens. He went to Yalta, where he also took away part of the evacuees from Simferopol, and on the morning of November 7 he headed for the Caucasus. At 11 o'clock. 25 min. not far from Yalta, the transport, although it had the distinctive marks of a medical ship, was torpedoed by a fascist aircraft and sank four minutes later. Many residents, doctors and wounded died.” “At this point in the text,” Yevgeny Venikeev wrote in his research “The Death of Armenia: the number of dead is unknown,” there is a footnote: “Department of the Central Naval Archive (TsVMA), fund 10, file 19, sheet 221.”
There is a certain secret of the death of "Armenia", because the case N 19, concerning this tragedy, was destroyed in 1949. This was announced by the head of the department of the Central Naval Archive L. Kirsanov. “Who did it interfere with, why was it destroyed?” - asked researcher E. Venikeev. There are a number of other mysterious moments associated with the death of "Armenia". According to one version, the ship was sunk not by a torpedo bomber, but by bombers that dropped bombs.
Much would be revealed if "Armenia" could be discovered. Almost 64 years have passed since that terrible tragedy, but only recently have they begun to seriously search for the lost ship. The initiative here belongs to the head of the expedition, head of the underwater heritage department of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Sergey Voronov. She was supported by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
The search is carried out directly by the specialists of the research center "State Oceanarium of the Armed Forces of Ukraine", whose team has been headed by Captain 1st Rank Valeriy Kulagin for many years now. By the way, Valery Vladimirovich personally took part in the expeditionary search for "Armenia" and, together with hydronauts, crew commander Igor Avrashov and Gennady Belnikov, dived on the universal multi-purpose manned underwater vehicle "Langust".
Captain 1st rank Igor Rodin, head of the department of the State Oceanarium National Research Center, Captain 1st rank Igor Rodin, head of the underwater technical operations department Captain 1st rank Vasily Kuts, other officers and specialists of the oceanarium took part in the development and conduct of the search operation.
- The impetus for this expedition was the anniversary date - the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory, - says Igor Rodin. - And the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and, in particular, Sergey Alexandrovich Voronov became the initiator. The government of the country set the task - to determine the exact coordinates of the death of "Armenia". The fact is that in various sources several places of the death of the ship are indicated. With the examination of one of them, the most probable, work began ...
- We made the first dive on the Langust on May 26, 2006, - says Igor Avrashov, the crew captain of the inhabited vehicle. - "Langoust" was towed to a given area, and there we went down under the water. We worked at depths from 465 to 540 meters, and examined a very complex terrain in the area of the Yalta fault. The depth isobaths are close to each other and resemble a kind of five. The distance between the underwater canyons is from 20 to 40 meters wide, and the height of the steep walls reaches 35 meters. In such seamounts-ravines it is very difficult to search, even for a considerable object. Due to the difficult terrain, the hydroacoustic search was ineffective, and we did not find the ship.
How the expedition will end, only time will tell. We must fulfill our filial duty to the older generation - to perpetuate the memory of those who died on the "Armenia".
In 2011, 70 years have passed since one of the largest maritime disasters - the death of the ship "Armenia".
All possible points of coordinates of the place of death of the ambulance were examined. Alas, even with the most modern search equipment of the Americans, “Armenia” could not be found then. In 2006-2008, using the most advanced German and American equipment, we climbed up and down that square. This point was crossed 27 times! Even 20-centimeter shells from artillery shells were found.
There are only two squares left where we have not yet searched: the chances are growing. One of them is outside the territorial waters opposite Ai-Todor. The second one is on the beam of Ayudag. Search depths: from 470 to 1500 meters. Most of all, I fear that in those places the ship slid down the slope to great depths. There will be an expedition! This is our duty to those who died 70 years ago,” Sergey Voronov summed up.
Everyone remembers the global catastrophe with the Titanic? Of course…. But why do we remember and know so many details about this shipwreck, and do not know about more horrific and global disasters that occurred on the waters of the oceans? And because films were not made about these troubles, many books were not written, and because some of them are still under the heading of secrecy.
Motor ship "Armenia"
Armenia…. This is not only a beautiful and friendly little country, not only a city in sunny Colombia, but also the name of one of the motor ships built at the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad in 1928. Together with this ship, the ships Abkhazia, Adzharia and Ukraine also went to the open sea. All ships were designed to carry passengers, goods and mail on the Crimean-Caucasian line.
With the outbreak of World War II, the countries involved in the confrontation with Germany used all possible resources, including passenger and cargo ships. They were rebuilt into ambulances to transport the wounded. During the war, the troika of ships of the Baltic shipyard was sunk, but the biggest secret lies in the loss motor ship "Armenia".
In 1941, the experienced 39-year-old captain Vladimir Yakovlevich Plaushevsky commanded the ship. It was he who received the order from the command of the Black Sea Fleet to save the military hospital and the inhabitants of the city of Sevastopol. For a complete picture of the ship, it is worth writing about the facts that played an important role in the fate of the ship. The ship could take on board 950 people plus a crew of 96 people, but took on board 4.5-7 thousand people, which many times exceeded its capabilities. Eyewitnesses who were in the port of Sevastopol say that every resident of the city was eager to board the ship, everyone was afraid to stay, since the German troops were already nearby. Let us clarify that such an overload threatened the ship with very strong instability on the waves of the Black Sea, it could roll over even with a small storm. The deck and holds of the ship were filled with doctors and residents of the city. After loading people, the ship left the port of Sevastopol at about 17:00 on November 6, 1941 and headed towards the Caucasus, in Tuapse.
But the ship had two more stops along the way. On one of them, in the port of the city of Yalta, the ship was supposed to evacuate political workers and several hundred civilians. But on the second one, take on board the NKVD officers and unknown wooden boxes. The second stop was not far from the shore of Balaklava, where the ship waited for a boat with cargo and NKVD officers. We had to wait about three hours. What was in such valuable boxes, because of which thousands of people were exposed to danger every second, remained unknown, we can only guess about their contents.
There are several guesses about what was transported in wooden boxes. The first is the documents of the NKVD, which could not be left to the advancing enemy. The second, in favor of which many facts speak, are paintings by famous Russian artists. At a distance of one and a half hours by car from Balaklava, there was Alushta, in which in the summer of that year, there was an exhibition of paintings by prominent Russian artists such as Bryullov, Kramskoy, Repin, Levitan and many others.
Upon arrival in Yalta, the ship took on board several hundred more people. The ship, which arrived at the port at 2:00 on November 7, received an order to wait for darkness and go to sea only at 19:00. But, taking responsibility, Captain Plaushevsky put the ship out to sea at 8 am on November 7. For such a violation of the order, the entire crew of the ship could be shot, but this was prevented by a more tragic circumstance.
Motor ship "Armenia" had on the sides the distinctive signs of ambulance transport in the form of red crosses. But the ship was also additionally armed with four 45-mm cannons, which made it possible to consider the ship a military object and, accordingly, attack it.
November 7, 1941 at 8:00 "Armenia" left the port of Yalta and headed straight for Tuapse, with several thousand passengers on board, including a military hospital and NKVD officers with an unknown but valuable cargo. And, presumably, at 11 hours 25 minutes, the ship was attacked by the German Heinkel He-111 aircraft. The ship was hit by dropped torpedoes. The sinking of the ship took a matter of minutes, from which historians conclude that the damage from the torpedo hit was devastating and the ship most likely tore apart.
Memorial plaque in memory of "Armenia"
The bottom of the Black Sea even on this moment, with modern technology very little has been surveyed. And the remains of the ship "Armenia" have not yet been found. And no one knows what was in these ill-fated boxes, which became one of the reasons for the death of 4.5-7 thousand people, the death of first-class Soviet doctors who could save hundreds of soldiers' lives. The death of the ship "Armenia" remained one of the most mysterious mysteries of the beginning of the Second World War.
"Armenia" is a motor ship, the death of which was concealed by the authorities for a long time. About a thousand people died on board during the German offensive on Sevastopol. On November 7, 1941, on the day of the parade on Red Square, this terrible tragedy occurred. Off the southern coast of Crimea, the "Armenia" - a motor ship, which was considered one of the best ships of the Black Sea Fleet, sank to the bottom. It was forbidden to report anything about this catastrophe. Only in 1989 was the stamp "top secret" removed from a book published by the People's Commissariat of the Navy of the USSR, which spoke about this tragedy. There were no details in it - only the coordinates and time of the death of warships and ships, including the ship of interest to us, were sparingly reported.
Characteristics of the ship "Armenia"
The ship was designed by engineers led by Y. Koperzhinsky, chief designer. In November 1928, he was launched. This ship was one of the six best passenger ships that plied the Black Sea. The cruising range of "Armenia" was 4600 miles. "Armenia" - a ship that could carry 518 passengers in class cabins, 317 deck passengers and 125 "seated", as well as cargo weighing up to 1 thousand tons. At the same time, the ship could reach speeds of up to 27 km / h. The six best ships (except "Armenia", it included "Abkhazia", "Ukraine", "Adzharia", "Georgia" and "Crimea") began to serve the line Odessa - Batumi - Odessa. These ships carried thousands of passengers until 1941.
The motor ship becomes a sanitary transport vessel
"Armenia" with the beginning of the war was hastily converted into a medical transport ship. The smoking room was converted into a pharmacy, the restaurants were turned into dressing rooms and operating rooms, and additional hanging beds were made in the cabins. Plaushevsky Vladimir Yakovlevich, who at that time was 39 years old, was appointed captain. Znayunenko Nikolai Fadeevich became the first mate. The crew of "Armenia" consisted of 96 people, as well as 75 orderlies, 29 nurses and 9 doctors. Dmitrievsky Petr Andreevich, the chief physician of the railway hospital in the city of Odessa, who was well known to many in this city, became the head of the medical staff. Bright red crosses appeared on the deck and on the sides, clearly visible from the air. A large white flag bearing the Red Cross was hoisted from the main mast.
However, these measures did not save the hospital ships. Goering's aviation from the very first days of the war carried out raids on them. The sanitary transports "Anton Chekhov" and "Kotovsky" were damaged in July 1941. And the "Adzharia", attacked by dive bombers and engulfed in flames, ran aground in front of all of Odessa. The same fate in August befell the “Kuban”.
Merits of "Armenia"
The Red Army, pressed by the enemy, suffered heavy losses in heavy battles. There were a lot of wounded. On board the "Armenia" in any weather, the medical staff worked day and night. The ship made 15 incredibly dangerous and difficult voyages with the wounded. "Armenia" transported about 16 thousand fighters, not counting the elderly, children and women, who were accommodated in the cabins of the crew members.
This is a brief history of the ship "Armenia".
Vessel protection
There is still a lot of mystery in the circumstances of the death of this ship. The "Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War ...", declassified in 1989, says that the ship "Armenia" (photo above), "Kuban", as well as the training ship "Dnepr" carried out flights from Odessa together with the destroyer "Merciless". protected ships from German air attacks.
Manstein with the 2nd Army was rapidly advancing on the Crimea. The command of the Black Sea Fleet was not ready for this attack. Before the war, the exercises of the fleet were reduced only to military campaigns and the "destruction" of amphibious assault forces. No one could even think that Sevastopol would have to be defended from land.
Transportation of the wounded and evacuation of residents
The Germans quickly took control of all land routes. The peaceful inhabitants of the peninsula (about 1 million people) were trapped. Hitler's trained troops were opposed by disparate units of the Red Army. They didn't give the Russians much of a chance to win. By the beginning of November 1941, the inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula began to leave it en masse. Panic began in the cities with the approach of the Nazi troops. People fought a real struggle for landing on any transport.
Confusion reigned on the streets of Sevastopol in October and November 1941. Everything possible was evacuated from the city. The hospitals equipped in Sevastopol itself and in the adits were full of the wounded, but someone gave the order to immediately evacuate the entire medical staff. Already today, approaching the city, from the window of a bus or carriage in the Inkerman area, one can notice blocks and huge heaps of stones. These are blown up hospitals located in adits. Only the lightly wounded were evacuated from there to the ships on Stalin's orders. E. Nikolaeva, a nurse at this hospital, testifies that the adit, along with the "non-transportable" ones, was blown up so that the enemy would not get the wounded. The representative of SMERSH supervised the explosive work. Two doctors refused to evacuate. They died along with the wounded.
F. S. Oktyabrsky, Vice-Admiral of the Black Sea Fleet, constantly kept the destroyer Boyky with him. He shied away from solving problems related to the protection of hospital and passenger ships and the formation of convoys when crossing by sea. Oktyabrsky believed that these issues should be decided by the leaders of the civilian fleet. This was one of the reasons why many of the best passenger ships, along with the people who were there, turned out to be at the bottom of the Black Sea.
Circumstances leading up to the tragedy
According to the testimony of eyewitnesses and the documents found, it was possible to restore the events that preceded the release of the ship "Armenia" to the sea on November 6, 1941. The ship was in the inner roadstead. "Armenia" hastily received many evacuated and wounded citizens. The atmosphere on the ship was very tense. A German air raid could begin at any moment. The main part of the warships of the Black Sea Fleet went to sea on the orders of Oktyabrsky, including the cruiser Molotov, where the Redut-K radar station, the only one in the fleet, was located.
In the Quarantine Bay, in addition to the "Armenia", the motor ship "Bialystok" was loaded. "Crimea" received people and equipment at the berth of Morzavod. Loading on these ships was carried out continuously. Plaushevsky, the captain of the "Armenia", was ordered to sail from Sevastopol at 19:00 on November 6. The ship was supposed to follow in Tuapse. Only a small sea hunter under the command of P. A. Kulashov, a senior lieutenant, was allocated for escort.
Departure of "Armenia"
Captain Plaushevsky understood that with such an escort, only a dark night could provide the ship with stealth navigation and protect it from enemy attacks. What were the annoyance and surprise of the captain when he was ordered to leave the city not at evening twilight, but at 17 o'clock, when it was still light. After all, the death of the sanitary ship "Armenia" in this case was inevitable.
Leaving Sevastopol at 5 pm, the ship moored in Yalta only 9 hours later, that is, at about 2 am. Historians have found out that a new order was received on the way: go to Balaklava and pick up NKVD workers, medical staff and the wounded from there, as the Germans continue to advance.
Departure from Yalta and the death of "Armenia"
Plaushevsky was informed that NKVD workers, party activists and 11 hospitals with the wounded were waiting to be loaded in Yalta. When Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky became aware that "Armenia" was to leave Yalta in the afternoon, he gave the commander an order not to sail until 19 o'clock, that is, until dark. At least that's what the admiral's notes say. Oktyabrsky noted that there were no means to provide cover for the vessel from the sea and air. The commander received the order, but nonetheless left Yalta. German torpedo bombers attacked him at 11 o'clock. "Armenia" was sunk. After being hit by a torpedo, she was afloat for 4 minutes.
Did Oktyabrsky really gave the order to sail no earlier than 19 hours
The absence of documents, which were destroyed in 1949 or later, casts a shadow over him. Historians cannot but suspect that Oktyabrsky was trying to find an excuse for himself years after this tragedy. But it must be admitted that, as commander of the fleet, the admiral knew the situation in the theater of operations. He knew where the ship "Armenia" was located and the time when she sailed from the shore. Oktyabrsky also knew that this vessel, deprived of security, with German air supremacy, was an ideal target for dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The death of the ship "Armenia" in 1941 in the event of sailing in the afternoon was easy to foresee. Therefore, it is very likely that he nevertheless gave the order to wait for the night to Plaushevsky. However, some ominous event happened on the ship, which forced the captain to disobey this order. This is another mystery of the death of the ship "Armenia".
To whom did Plaushevsky obey
Let's go back to investigate the events. It is known for certain that the initial order transmitted to Captain Plaushevsky was clearly formulated: it is necessary to pick up the medical staff and the wounded and follow from Sevastopol to Tuapse at night. Then an urgent order was received stating that in order to save the wounded and the party activists, it was necessary to follow to Yalta. The departure time of "Armenia" from Sevastopol was changed - it was supposed to leave 2 hours earlier, at 17:00. The third order, which was given to the captain, forced him to also take away the wounded and representatives of local authorities, without going into the Fourth Order, which Plaushevsky received early in the morning on November 7 from F.S. Oktyabrsky, ordered to sail from Yalta in the evening, not earlier than 19 hours. In a strange way, it was broken. The captain sent the ship "Armenia" to the open sea, the death of which became one of the greatest tragedies of the Great Patriotic War.
Plaushevsky undoubtedly ignored this order only because he had to submit to another authority that was on board. She was the employees of SMERSH and the NKVD, taken on board. The people who remained on the pier saw how Plaushevsky, before commanding the return of the mooring lines, was furious. He swore loudly and looked like a hunted animal. And this is Plaushevsky, about whom his colleagues spoke of him as an exceptionally self-possessed and cold-blooded person. Of course, the captain was threatened by those who were in a hurry to leave Yalta. They promised him punishment for refusing to obey.
Survivors
"Armenia", which left Yalta early in the morning, accompanied by a naval guard, was immediately attacked by two torpedo bombers. She did not manage to go even 30 miles. After the torpedoing, the ship was afloat for 4 minutes, and then the ship "Armenia" sank (1941, November 7). Only eight on board managed to escape. Among them was a serviceman I. A. Burmistrov and foreman Bocharov. Saw the death of "Armenia" and P. A. Kulashov, senior lieutenant and commander of the sea hunter. When he returned to Sevastopol, he was interrogated by the NKVD for a whole month and then released.
Search for "Armenia"
It so happened that the maps did not exactly indicate where the ship "Armenia" sank. The place of his death can only be determined approximately. American and Ukrainian search engines have made joint attempts to find the remains of the ship, including with the help of the Billard deep-sea submersible that found the Titanic. Many have been examined possible places flooding. The most modern search engine was used in 2008. The indicated square was examined 27 times up and down! The cost of the expedition is estimated at $2 million. As a result of it, a sunken longboat, an old sailboat, shell casings were found. However, it was not possible to find the skeleton of "Armenia", the length of which was 110 meters.
It cannot be ruled out that the ship could have slipped down the slope to great depths, where it is very difficult to find it. Perhaps somewhere there is the ship "Armenia" at the bottom. Photos of this area showed that the nature of its relief does not exclude such a possibility. However, it is also possible that experts are simply looking in the wrong place. The captain, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, could at the last moment decide to move back to Sevastopol, under the protection of aviation and anti-aircraft artillery of the main base of the fleet. However, it is most likely that Plaushevsky of the directive, signed at 2 o'clock in the morning by Stalin himself, received an order to return the hospital staff. The first paragraph in this document stated that Sevastopol should not be given to the Germans in any case. This means that it is necessary to look for a ship not near Gurzuf. It is likely that it is located abeam Cape Sarych, to the west of the place where they were looking for it. This area has not yet been explored.
Let's hope that the ship "Armenia" will be found soon. 1941 forever remained one of the most tragic in the history of Sevastopol. The events of the Great Patriotic War should be studied in more detail, and "Armenia" is raised from the bottom. The search for the ship "Armenia" continues.
