The death of the "Armenia" transport. Search for the place of death
It was this negative experience that became the reason for my subsequent personal registration and work in the archive. But my initial failure in the archives of Freiburg faded in the light of the file found in the archives of Simferopol in the All-Union Communist Party of Belarus sector of the Crimean Regional Committee - “Lists of communists evacuated and killed by the bombing in the Yalta port (motor ship "Armenia", ship "Massandra"), begun on October 5, 1941, in in which about 154 people can be attributed to our event.
As it turned out later, these were lists of people who could board the Armenia, but far from actual data. The example of Maltsev, who was listed as the head of the Aeroflot sanatorium and had to be evacuated on the Armenia, clearly illustrated this.
At the beginning of 2012, Alexey Markov finds on the Internet Zoya Khabarova’s memory of her pre-war and wartime childhood in Yalta and Crimea. Her parents were friends with Maltsev, the director of the Aeroflot sanatorium.
From these memories it emerged that this Maltsev was none other than Viktor Ivanovich Maltsev, who not only remained in Yalta, but later very actively and meaningfully served the Nazis. He was the mayor of Yalta and rose to the rank of Commander of the Air Force of the Russian Liberation Army. And he ended his life in August 1946 in the courtyard of Butyrka prison, being hanged along with Vlasov and his henchmen.
Then, based on numerous testimonies of “eyewitnesses”, supported by a German archival document, we had complete confidence that “Armenia” lay at the bottom not far from the coast in the Gurzuf region - southeast of Yalta.
Apparently, other authoritative researchers have established themselves in this version, such as the Department of Underwater Heritage of Ukraine of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences, an expedition led by S. Voronov and the State Oceanarium of the Armed Forces of Ukraine led by V. Kulagin. They did a lot of painstaking work in these areas to a depth of 700 meters.
In 2006 and 2007, the American department on the ship Endeavor, at the invitation of the Ukrainian side, conducts large underwater research (according to its task) of the coastal part of the Black Sea, starting from Sevastopol (the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet), and along the way on the topic of “Armenia”.
On board the ship was Robert Duane Ballard, an American explorer, professor of oceanology, retired captain of the second rank of the US Navy, famous for the discovery in 1985 of the remains of the Titanic, on which between 1 and 495 people died.
In 2008, an American expedition on the Pathfinder ship with the search team of R. Ballarad, but without him, again made attempts to find “Armenia”.
Material by V. Vakhoneev
From the certificate of work results provided by V.V. Vakhoneev:
“The depth isobaths in this area are located very close to each other. 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 conditions it is very difficult to search for even a large object. Due to the difficult terrain, hydroacoustic search was ineffective.”
In the summer of 2012, Viktor Vakhoneev in Feodosia, together with the Crimean authorities, organizes the International Scientific Forum “The Black Sea in the XNUMXst Century,” to which A. Markov and I were invited. At the forum, Aivar Vladimirovich Stepanov, a researcher at the Center for Underwater Archaeological Heritage of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a leading specialist, made a substantive report stories ancient Novgorod, who has extensive experience in the practical work of underwater research, including on the tasks of the RF Ministry of Defense.
On the sidelines of the forum, he and I had a very informative conversation on the topic of the death of the Armenia transport. This is how an event occurred that would later play a fundamental role in the discovery of the Armenia ambulance transport. But this will not happen soon.
In November 2011, I entered into correspondence with Mr. Tom Kracker (most likely a pseudonym), one of the authors on an Internet forum regarding German torpedo bombers, a German Luftwaffe history enthusiast living in the USA.
To my direct question about the availability of any information about “Armenia”, he replied that he had not heard anything about it and advised me to familiarize myself with the two books already mentioned above: A. Steenbeck “Trace of the Lion” (Die Spur des Löwen) and R. Schmidt “Attention – torpedo attack” (Achtung – Torpedos Los), as with the most complete description of the history of torpedo attack aviation Hitler's Germany. He also promised to talk about this topic with his colleagues, and a little later he said that no one had heard of the Armenia ship.
It was possible to receive the recommended books in person at the beginning of 2012. Since these authors examined not only combat logs, but also flight books (related to personal data in Germany) and the memories of direct participants, their material, of course, was full of details: photographs, descriptions certain events, the names of sunken ships, a description of the features of the operation of equipment and weapons. For example, the most popular wreck among divers in the Red Sea is Thistlegorm, built by the same 6./KG 26.
At one time, the thesis that the Germans were allegedly deliberately hunting for “Armenia” was very actively discussed. At my request, the author of the book, Mr. A. Steenbeck, addressed this question to his English colleague, who studied British archival documents for this time period relating to the interception of German radio communications by British intelligence.
Later, I received a short email from him, from which it followed that British radio intelligence had not recorded any particular Luftwaffe activity in the Black Sea at the beginning of November 1941. And the only mention in radio intercepts of the activities of 6./KG26 and 1./KG 28 (Salu 279) in this period of time is for November 8–9.
These radio intercepts speak of planned German attacks on railways, road transport, artillery locations in the Crimea and one damaged cargo ship near Kerch.
Thus, the result of my work with English archives can be considered that British radio intelligence did not record any particular Luftwaffe activity in early November 1941.
Having finished working in the Crimean Archive in mid-2012, I turned to the Central Naval Archive of the Russian Defense Ministry with a request to give me, a Russian citizen by birth and in fact, the opportunity to work in the reading room. But then Crimea was the territory of Ukraine, I was refused and recommended to apply through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
My appeals there were followed by recommendations to contact the Ministry of Defense, since the archive belongs to them. The circle was closed, which did not upset me much at the time, since work was going on in the German archive, which turned out to be easier to get into.
Somewhere in the winter of 2012, Alexey Markov, while in Odessa, did work in the archives of the Black Sea Shipping Company. The result was excerpts from the memoirs of the captain of the steamship “Voroshilov”, given above, and “Diagram of traffic routes fleet Black Sea Shipping Company during operations during the defense of Sevastopol."
Of course, they did not seem to have a direct relation to the “Armenia”, but the weather conditions described in these memoirs gave me the idea that when constructing versions of the reasons for the death of the motor ship “Armenia”, it is necessary to take into account the actual weather conditions of November 1941.
This is how the history of transport “Armenia” was formed bit by bit from sometimes completely irrelevant insignificant facts.
At the beginning of August 2013, on the recommendation of Aivar Stepanov, I sent a brief information on “Armenia” to Evgeniy Pal.
The very next day I received a response: “Thank you for the information. I’m ready to take part in search work.”
Events begin to develop in the same military manner, briefly but effectively. E. Pal, as the head of the Engineering and Technical Center for Special Works, had extensive experience in hydrographic research, including providing the construction of Nord Stream 1 with equipment and specialists.
But most importantly, having close practical cooperation with the Search Movement of Russia, he understood the historical and patriotic significance of the discovery of the Armenia transport. After a detailed discussion with him, it was decided to begin field work to survey a square in the Gurzuf region already in 2013 with a duration as long as autumn weather allows.
A. Markov and I had to provide the watercraft, and E. Pal - equipment and specialists. Partially aware of the interstate formalities, we entered into an agreement on joint activities between Russian and Ukrainian legal entities for the purpose of customs clearance of the import of equipment under the “temporary import” regime.
We were already absolutely confident that search work would soon begin, but at the stage of preparing the preliminary customs declaration, local customs officers, with whom I had good relations in my main activity, in a private conversation recommended that I think very carefully. Since a professional side-scan sonar, magnetometer and GPS receiver with the accuracy required for determining coordinates were classified as equipment for civil-military purposes, we could import it to Ukraine, but it was unlikely to export it back to Russia. And this was equipment worth several hundred thousand dollars.
Interstate relations were already strained, so we decided not to rush, to prepare all possible documents that would guarantee the return export of the equipment. Taking into account the approaching autumn-winter period, the research was postponed to the beginning of summer 2014.
And then the epoch-making events of the spring of 2014, and customs barriers fell of their own accord. But the main work, in light of entering the Russian legal field, took a lot of time.
And the research in the German archive was coming to an end, with its scanty information, so field work did not take place in the summer of 2014. The work in the archives of Simferopol and Freiburg was completed, or rather, it had hit a wall.
And already hoping for little, in mid-December 2014 I wrote a letter directly to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin with a request to facilitate access to work with documents in the Central Naval Archive.
And a month later, taking into account the New Year holidays, I received permission from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to work in the branch of the Central Archives of the Navy in the city of Gatchina!
My joy and optimism overflowed.
On April 14, 2015, I started working at the Gatchina branch of the Central Naval Archives. And I immediately realized that a cavalry charge could not solve anything.
There is no separate case regarding the fate of the Armenia transport. The archival reference (produced at the request of a third party) is scanty and does not provide any substance at all. I had to roll up my sleeves, be patient and work commutes from Crimea, making time for my main job.
At the same time, during these short visits, I was forced to limit myself in the length of time I worked, because already on the third day of working with documents, attention and a certain thirst for searching became dulled, and I began to catch myself simply turning the pages.
The first trouble that I encountered in working with documents was the inappropriate discipline of keeping logbooks on ships and ships of the Black Sea Fleet, which I already mentioned above. Sometimes the same event in the Logbook and in the Combat Log have different times. In this regard, and due to the absence of any single file on “Armenia”, I was forced to work with absolutely all the documents of the Black Sea Fleet for the time period from September to December 1941, painstakingly looking for the slightest mention of both the event and “Armenia” itself. , which greatly complicated and delayed the work.
In any case, I believe that my time was not wasted, since the reports of the heads of naval services, written in 1944–1946, are of great interest, where the situation was analyzed and assessed for the entire period of the Great Patriotic War in the Black Sea theater of war actions. Considering the conclusions made in these documents to be extremely important for understanding the general causes of the death of the Armenia transport, I began my story with these descriptions.
Being absolutely confident, based on the recollections of “eyewitnesses”, in the coastal flooding of the motor ship “Armenia”, in the middle of summer Alexey Markov and I will organize a “survey” of the area of the Adalary rocks in the village of Gurzuf. I put the word survey in quotation marks because it was most likely a child’s adventure using the echo sounder of a pleasure boat. But the desire to find something overshadowed my mind.
Nevertheless, this walk with an echo sounder identified a couple of “drawings” at a depth of about 70 meters, for a visual examination of which we engaged our technical diver friend, who has experience working at such depths, and a like-minded person, as I thought at the time.
Further events developed as follows. We went to the place and dropped the running line. This technodiver put on a dry suit and, having weighed himself down with equipment, asked me: “Alexey, how are we going to divide the gold crowns?” I, not understanding anything, stood with my mouth open. He clarified: “After all, there are thousands of dead there, can you imagine how many gold crowns they have?”
I was in shock! But since we were on his boat, and I hoped that this was his reaction to the release of adrenaline (after all, there was indeed a considerable depth of immersion). Yes, there were such temporary travel companions.
Digression: I think it’s important. This fellow traveler's name was Igor Zorin; in the spring of 2023, he was detained by FSB officers as an active member of a Ukrainian sabotage group. So if there is a wormhole in a person - a thirst for gold crowns, then it will still come out. And often on a larger scale. This is me addressing a certain and currently active naval officer, who then justified his action by the need to finance the large expenses of technodivers and a good table from this Zorin.
This was my first encounter with pure monetization of the search for the crash site of the Armenia transport. Later, entire groups of people appeared for whom such searches came down to pure income. For them, the most important thing is to find some topic, preferably a resonant one, under which they can extract money from private investors or the state. And then, pouring all sorts of fables onto the customer’s head, amaze with scientific terms, flaunt the professorial titles of institutions that exist only on paper, and feed on this topic for several years.
And long live these charlatans! In Crimea there is still a group of such “professors”, who have been active since the times of Ukraine, who have “mastered” budget funds to search for burials of chemical warfare agents in the sea using “spin-twisted torsion fields”, satellite photographs in the visible range of depth waves at several hundred meters (in fact, this is possible at depths of up to 20 meters, and then in rare areas of the world’s oceans, and at certain times of the year). These “professors” did not ignore the topic of the death of “Armenia” transport. But more on that below.
Work in the archive in 2015 brought nothing except general references to “Armenia”, but did not in any way clarify not only the place of death, but also the event as such. I began to lean more and more towards the statement of the archive workers - there is nothing about “Armenia”.
At the beginning of the summer of 2016, Evgeny Pal, who had previously received an official certificate from the Gatchina archive, contacted me with a proposal to begin field work to search for “Armenia”. The certificate itself did not contain any new data for me, except for another pair of coordinates of the supposed flooding.
It should be noted that in archival documents there are two pairs of coordinates: one pair is of unknown origin, and there is nothing in this area, the second is a derivative of the indicated commander SK 0122 course 160° and range. But they pointed to an area south of Yalta and very seaward. That is, they absolutely did not fit into the then existing opinion - “Armenia” lies in the Gurzuf region and not so far from the coast.
And it seemed more than logical then - why go far out to sea from a safe shore, against which it was possible to hide from airplanes, and in extreme cases there were chances to escape by reaching the shore. Plus, many “witnesses” claim that they saw the rotating propellers of the “Armenia” going under the water. Yes, everything spoke about this version.
But then we did not yet know the disposition of troops on the southern coast of Crimea.
Having resolved a number of organizational issues with the Yalta port and border services, we began work in July. Over the course of several weeks, using a craft and equipment sent by E. Pal from his permanent place of work in the Azov-Black Sea Strait, a large area was surveyed within the boundaries of the southeastern tip of Gurzuf to the traverse of the village of Bondarenkovo with depths from 50 to 300 meters. The version was partially verified: “Armenia” from Yalta began to return to Sevastopol. Nothing.
Materials of LLC "ITC Special Works"
This put an end to the version - the motor ship "Armenia" sank abeam Gurzuf not far from the shore, and the memories of the "eyewitnesses" automatically went under the knife. There was a very strong disappointment, bordering on disbelief at what your eyes were seeing on the instrument monitors. And most importantly, the statements of “eyewitnesses”: where to put them? How not to believe the written statements of people that begin with the words: “I, being of sober mind and reason, testify...”
Aivar Stepanov, who has extensive experience in search work, gently consoled and told stories from his practice, which also included statements from “witnesses” that in fact turned out to be fiction. The laws of the human psyche and memory are wonderful.
And yet the thought that we had overlooked something in the process of field work still did not let me go until I became acquainted with the logs of combat operations of the Red Army and Wehrmacht units, from which it became clear that it was impossible to carry out with the Gurzuf troops on the morning of November 7, 1941 schoolchildren took military training classes, that it was impossible to just walk along the streets of Yalta on November 7, since all this was already under the Nazis.
2016 ended bleakly. The only thing that consoled me was that a negative result is also a result.
Work in Gatchina in March and April 2017 began with the study of Ship Logs, thanks to which it became possible to build real routes for ships and vessels from Odessa - Sevastopol to the ports of Novorossiysk and the Caucasus. Thus, until mid-October, the main port for cargo transshipment was Novorossiysk, with frequent use of the port facilities of Feodosia and Yalta. Therefore, the routes passed along the Crimean coast without leaving the sea.
Since the end of October, the ports of Tuapse, Poti, and Batumi have become increasingly used. From here, the exit from these southern ports was carried out close to the course of 270 degrees, following somewhere abeam Yalta, approaching the shore and further moving along the coast to Sevastopol. It was this route that “Armenia” followed on November 4–5, guarding the minesweeper “Gruz” from Tuapse to Yalta - Sevastopol.
And this, in light of the already understanding of the deployment of troops on the first days of November, completely shattered the previous confidence that the most reasonable and hence realistic route for “Armenia” from Yalta to Tuapse on November 7 was to move along the coast near Gurzuf to Novorossiysk and further to Tuapse. This version was also supported by the entry found in the journal of the Special Purpose Underwater Expedition (EPRON) “EPRON Operational Ship Lifting Plan” for 1941–1942 about the sinking area of the “Armenia” - 20 miles southeast of Yalta.
Therefore, the “Gatchina coordinates” became not just one of many options, but quite probabilistic working versions. That is, the information obtained in the archive in the spring of 2017 now clearly identified a different search area for “Armenia.”
Now I write about this so easily, but in the middle of 2017 in this opened version I had to convince not only myself, but also my like-minded people - E. Pal, A. Stepanov - through repeated disputes.
But there was one big “but” in developing this new search area - depths beyond 1 meters. Working with objects at such depths is possible for a very small number of specialized vessels around the world. Their exclusivity is justified not only by the presence on board of special equipment and sonar equipment, but also by a dynamic geopositioning system, which allows the ship to move strictly along a previously plotted course at a given low speed, working out the parasitic effects of wind loads and sea currents on it.
At the same time, it is not for nothing that the World Ocean is called hydrospace. On the one hand, all the same earthly laws of physics apply in it, but on the other hand, there are great features. Thus, the density of sea water is more than 850 times higher than the density of air, and this density varies with salinity, which in turn changes with depth, which contributes to the formation of a shock layer at some intermediate depths.
In addition, the water temperature is not only not uniform throughout the entire volume, but also has boundary changes - thermoclines, sometimes the temperature change reaches ten degrees in a layer up to 2 meters thick. All these phenomena greatly influence the dispersion of electromagnetic waves, their absorption, refraction, reflection, and transmission speed in the aquatic environment, which entails not only an increase in the power of the emitted signal, but also more accurate mathematical processing of the reflected signal.
In addition, the laws of physics present us with a choice: what is more important for us - the depth of research, then we use longer waves of the emitted signal, or the spatial resolution of the resulting image, then we need to use shorter waves. Therefore, to survey the bottom and near-bottom volume at great depths, so-called towed side-scan sonars (SSS) are used.
This device is towed on a cable rope by a ship at the required depth from the seabed. It emits and receives a signal reflected from the bottom topography and objects on it, converts it and transmits it via cable to computers located on board the ship, which process the received signal. At the same time, the resulting “picture” is not a pure view from above, as in the photo, it is a shadow from an object, as if we were not looking at the object itself, but its shadow from the light of a flashlight.
Therefore, in sonar it is important not only to see something, but most importantly to examine and understand what you saw.
In addition, to study the bottom at depths of about 1 meters, sometimes it is necessary to etch a cable up to 500 kilometers long, which means weight and volume. Therefore, the coil, drive units and the cable cable itself will measure several meters and weigh several tons.
I described all this in such detail so that the ignorant reader could understand the uniqueness of specialized ships, the required high specialization of personnel and understand the justification for the high cost of their work, which starts at $5 for one hour of work.
Nevertheless, Evgeny Pal, in parallel with my work in the archive, begins work with the Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to perpetuate the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland by assigning a specialized ship to search for “Armenia”.
At the beginning of August 2017, I issued the desired search area based on archived coordinates: Point 1 – 44°17`5“ / 34°10`0”; Point 2 – 44°15`5” / 34°17`00”.
As a result of the titanic efforts of Evgeny Pal and personally the head of the Department Andrei Taranov, on the basis of the Directive of the 1st ZMO - NGSH of the RF Armed Forces dated June 28, 2017, on August 8, 2017, an assignment was issued to conduct search work on the project “Search for the sanitary ship “Armenia” from the experimental ship "Seliger". On August 24, with a delay of several days due to the closure of the Kerch-Yenikalsky Canal for the installation of the navigable arches of the Crimean Bridge, A. Stepanov and I boarded the Seliger, being included in the ship’s role.
Having boarded, reported to the commander and briefly met the officers of the team, I clearly felt that Aivar and I were not particularly welcome here. Of course, I was somewhat confused by such a meeting.
On the same day, a meeting was held in the wardroom chaired by the head of the expedition, this is not the ship's commander. And only at this meeting did I understand the reason for such a cold reception: in addition to the large amount of work the ship does for its main purpose, it is being pulled by all sorts of scoundrels who have gained the trust of their superior commanders, speculating on patriotic feelings - the basis of the foundations of naval officers, from whom orders then follow.
So, A. Stepanov and I were already the third group that was lucky enough to attract such a specialized ship to search for “Armenia”. Before us there were already “professors” working with “spin-twisted torsion fields” and some other group with tambourines.
Of course, the Seliger team really wanted to find the Armenia transport, fully understanding the significance of this, but they also perfectly understood the quackery of these adventurers. Therefore, it would be better for them to stay on the shore with their families for a few extra days before long sea voyages. And here we, another “land specialists,” collapse.
Therefore, at the meeting I had to talk in great detail about the history of work in the archives and document the reason for localizing the search area. It is the area, not a specific point. Moreover, in previous exits, “Seliger” was already working somewhere in this area.
My report somewhat melted the mistrust, but they finally believed us only a couple of days later, when they entered the search area.
Then, when setting up the towed magnetometer, a software failure occurred. And Aivar Stepanov, using his professional knowledge, together with the ship’s specialists, was able to establish proper operation of the magnetometer. So, thanks to A. Stepanov, the expedition continued its work, although it was not possible to use the towed side-scan sonar in the work with somewhat truncated weapons.
And the running watches flowed one after another - hours of intense staring at the monitors, where a soulless device depicted the level of the magnetic field of the near-bottom space with rare bursts of anomalous parameters. These bursts were analyzed according to the parameters of their intensity, extent and deviation from the general value of a particular local area.
Almost all of these anomalous bursts turned out to be either parasitic readings or natural phenomena - rock outcrops. Everything, but still not everything.
Initially, it was assumed that the area would be explored by successive passages of the ship on tacks along isobaths (parallel to the shore) in the sea. But somewhere on the third day of the search, the head of the expedition announced that, in connection with the received order, “Seliger” would have to curtail the search for “Armenia” in a couple of days.
We had to greatly limit the search area.
Nevertheless, over more than 5 days of work, several very strong magnetic anomalies were discovered, which with a high degree of probability could not be of natural origin. Even off-duty crew members came running to see them, the discovery of “Armenia” was so important for everyone.
According to the rules for surveying these anomalies, at the end of working out the entire search area on tacks, it was necessary to conduct a so-called additional survey - a survey at other heading angles to the anomaly, a survey using instruments operating on other physical principles (SSS, video recording), for which we did not have time.
What was the result of field work in August 2017?
At the time it was seen rather as a failure. Yes, magnetic anomalies have been identified, but they have not been further examined. We reached the search area determined by the “Gatchina coordinates”, but the survey was carried out, deviating from the original plan, inconsistently, with some kind of shuffling around the square.
The head of the expedition informed us that the next morning they would be forced to withdraw from the search area, so Aivar and I had to go ashore in the late afternoon.
The next day there was a call from the head of the expedition. As it turned out, on the orders of the head of the expedition, they decided to further examine one of the areas of the magnetic anomaly with a descent autonomous vehicle.
But at the moment of its descent, the cable frayed, and the device hung in the water column only on the signal cable, and that was thanks to its positive buoyancy for a given depth. That is, an attempt to lift it would definitely lead to a break in the signal cable and the loss of an expensive device - one of the main pieces of equipment that determines the purpose of the ship. In addition, this device, hanging in the water column, slowly but surely drifts towards the Turkish coast. In general, a cheerful fellow.
I won’t lie, I felt a flash of schadenfreude then – why was it necessary to disembark Aivar and I from the ship? Neptune is not a fool, he sees everything. But the problem of the Black Sea Fleet is a common problem.
At the request of the team, I tried to find a seiner with a trawl to “catch” the device. But this option did not work, since the fishing season had already ended, and the Yalta and Sevastopol seiners were standing on the shore before winter storms. They were, of course, ready to take them down. But here's the cost!
Then it was decided to bring a small autonomous underwater vehicle from the Seliger home port in order to hook the towing end to the eye of the fugitive vehicle. I provided a car, and somewhere in the middle of Crimea a small device was taken from the private car of a naval comrade. Then, on a pleasure boat rented from the Yalta embankment, the small device was delivered to the tug of the Black Sea Fleet. And thanks to the skill of the ships’ personnel, this rescue operation ended successfully! So in any serious matter there is a place where you can smile.
In September 2017, with the tenacity of a doomed man, I arrived in Gatchina and continued working in the archive. And he was rewarded!
Indeed, the one who walks will master the road. In one of the journals of the Black Sea Fleet, I found the above report from the commander of Patrol Boat No. 0122, where he says that they left Yalta on a course of 160 degrees and at a distance of 15 miles from Yalta, the transport “Armenia” was attacked by torpedo bombers and sank.
Having superimposed this data on the map, I saw that these were the coordinates of point No. 2 of the previously designated search area, which with a high degree of probability gave the right to claim that these coordinates were more than real.
Of course, taking into account combat and weather circumstances when keeping records of the boat’s movement and the accuracy of the instruments at that time, the true location of the “Armenia” could have been somewhat different.
2018 began on the topic of transport “Armenia” with the scientific archaeological conference “Underwater Archeology in Russia”, which, as before, was superbly organized and conducted by Viktor Vakhoneev under the auspices of the State Committee for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Crimea.
At this conference, I had a detailed report with slides on the transport of “Armenia”, where I once again argued for the prospects of a previously incompletely surveyed area. It was during this speech that I showed extracts from the archival file, which spoke about the actual transportation of more than 6 people and additional cargo by “Armenia” and “Abkhazia”. That is, for the first time it was substantiatedly stated - yes, the motor ship "Armenia" could and did take on board more than 000 people.
The conference was attended by the leader of the 2017 expedition and some members of the Seliger ship crew. In a conversation with them, it turned out that it would be impossible to use Seliger in 2018 to search for “Armenia” - there is work for its intended purpose.
At the same conference, a group of people emerged who, sensing that the discovery of the “Armenia” transport was close, began to show activity bordering on indecency, trying to get from me more detailed data, names and encodings of archival cases in which I discovered this information. And in general, they demonstrated their importance in every possible way, with the goal of leading further work.
It was a representative of this group in 2020, using insider information and guided by purely mercantile interests, who threw the fact of the discovery of the motor ship “Armenia” into the Internet, thereby lowering the significance of this truly epoch-making event to its own level.
Although it was previously planned that this news will be announced by the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And already, in order to give at least some official status to the discovery of “Armenia,” Sergei Fokin, head of the Center for Underwater Research of the Russian Geographical Society, was forced to give an interview. But I got ahead of myself again.
Since the prospect of joint field work with the Ministry of Defense was uncertain due to the busyness of Seliger, in August 2019 Evgeny Pal rented an expedition vessel - the Borey catamaran, having previously upgraded his existing side-scan sonar (side-scan sonar), and we went on a week-long expedition , the purpose of which was to further survey the area a little more than 500 meters deep.
We did this, rather, to put an end to it. More, probably, to clear my conscience.
It was not possible to completely close the planned area due to the weather - storms arrived. But the main work was completed, and with it the understanding was established - we need to go to the square determined by the archival coordinates and work on additional examination of the magnetic anomalies and the entire area.
Congratulating each other on the new year 2020, E. Pal and I remember the approaching 80th anniversary of the death of “Armenia”. And Evgeniy begins working with the Moscow Region with renewed vigor in order to insert an expedition to search for “Armenia” into the Seliger work schedule. He partially succeeds in this.
A general positive decision on the expedition was made. But some officials of the Ministry of Defense, realizing the approach of an epoch-making event - the discovery of the Armenia transport, begin to pull the blanket over themselves in anticipation of rewards.
As a result, the expedition in March 2020 begins without us. Like all the subsequent ones.
For further work, the structural unit of the Russian Geographical Society “Underwater Research Center” was involved, which, with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund, began its work. The time has come for the heavyweights; ordinary enthusiasts are fading into the shadows.
But, despite this, the head of the Center Sergei Fokin, his employees Marina Davydova, Roman Evtyukov, scientific consultants Galina Grebenshchikova, Sergei Bazhenov, with a wide level of access to the archives, and the group of specialists they attracted did a tremendous job. They found documents that I had missed, they examined storage files to which I did not have access.
They have done and continue to do a great, necessary and painstaking job of searching, systematizing and preserving the stories of the relatives of those killed on the ship "Armenia". This served as the basis for the project “Motor ship Armenia. Remember Everyone,” which was developed into a wonderful film, and material was developed to highlight this tragedy among primary and secondary schoolchildren. And what is very important is that they do it not formally, but with soul. Thanks to them.
Of course, what I have presented may not be complete and sometimes misinterpreted. But this is my research, my vision of the history of the sinking of the Armenia ship.
Anyone who would like to get acquainted with a different point of view, or to immerse themselves more fully in the topic, can go to the website of the Center for Underwater Research.
Film L. Listovoy “Black Sea Zugzwang. The sinking of the motor ship "Armenia".
Film TV channel "Yalta TV".
Film from the Chernomorka TV channel.
Film TV channel "Zvezda" series "NOT a fact".
In conclusion, the following must be said.
Any big undertaking, a long journey begins with the first steps. And very often those who commit them remain forgotten in the end. This is wrong, even dishonest.
Therefore, I really want to do at least what is in my power, namely: I am absolutely sure that without the perseverance and resources of Evgeniy Pal, without the professionalism of Aivar Stepanov and their active civic position, all my archival work would have remained just paper . And “Armenia” would have remained at the bottom, undiscovered. I have all the reasons for this statement, including written ones.
Another memorable date for the sinking of the motor ship “Armenia” recently passed. The original bell from “Armenia” was transferred to the Yalta Historical and Literary Museum. A copy was installed on the embankment, and appropriate behind-the-scenes events were held.
Everything is again within the city of Yalta.
The central media is silent. As if one of the largest tragedies at sea in the history of mankind did not happen, with the simultaneous death of about 6 people!
Once again, crazy enthusiasts must take the first steps along the road, at the end of which is the installation of a monument, its scale corresponding to the memory of thousands and thousands of victims.
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