Shipwreck

9
In March 2014 for all news the news slipped through the tapes that in the Donuzlav bay, the largest lake in the Crimea, two decommissioned ships were sank for strategic purposes - BPC Ochakov and the tug boat Shakhtar. We decided to analyze this history and at the same time look into the past, since the technique of scuttling ships for military purposes has been known since ancient times.

Shipwreck

BOD "Ochakov" was in the Russian Navy from 1973 to 2011 year, but the most interesting mission fulfilled its after the cancellation. In the picture, he, rolling to the side, blocks the exit from Donuzlav.



Until 1961, Donuzlav was a full-fledged lake, separated from the waters of the Black Sea by an earthen isthmus. But as a result of the construction of a naval base in the isthmus, an 200-meter wide channel was dug, therefore Lake Donuzlav turned into a technical reservoir, although it retained its name. Today, the lake is separated from the “big water” by a scythe, and an artificial canal allows ships of the Navy to go into the open sea. Until recently, the Southern Naval Base of Ukraine functioned here - it was precisely this that the Russian military sought to block in order to avoid armed conflict.

However, the sinking of ships as a strategic maneuver was known a long time ago. As early as the 11th century, six Viking ships were flooded in the Peberrend Strait of the Skaldelev Fjord (Denmark) in order to block the fjord from an attack from the sea. The ships were found in the 1962 year and are now kept in the museum, artificial flooding is confirmed by their ideal condition and unusual location on the bottom.

Sevastopol bay

Of course, Donuzlav is not the first case of strategic shipwrecking of ships in the Crimea. One of these operations took place in Sevastopol in 1855, at the very height of the Crimean War. For Russia, the war from the very beginning did not work: the reasons were both in the outdated technical equipment of the Russian troops and in the uncertain actions of the command. Russia sought to strengthen its influence in the Balkans and gain control over the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, Great Britain - to weaken Russia and divide the spheres of influence at the expense of the alliance with the Ottoman Empire.

The Coalition forces undoubtedly prevailed, and as a result, by the year of 1854, Russia was on the verge of losing the Crimea. A superior Allied fleet blocked Russian ships in the Sevastopol Bay, which allowed the Coalition to control the Black Sea and land assault forces on the shores of Crimea. The most important strategic point was, of course, Sevastopol, and in September 1854 of the year began its sequential assault. The heroic defense of the city has gone down in history, but we are only interested in one episode of it. Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, commander of the defense of Sevastopol, understood perfectly well that if enemy ships entered the bay, the city would be lost, and on September 11, even before the start of active hostilities, seven sailing 1830 — 1840 sailing ships were built across the fairway to create an underwater chain Alexandrovskaya and Konstantinovskaya batteries. Interestingly, among them was the famous frigate Flora, a year earlier surprisingly emerged victorious from an unequal battle with three Turkish steamer frigates - despite the fact that the commander, the young captain Skorobogatov, had no combat experience at that time, and the steam ships exceeded three times "Flora" by the total power of the guns, were more maneuverable and managed by more experienced commanders. Most of the submerged ships were standard 84-gun battleships built in Nikolaev from 1833 to 1840 a year; The first ship of the series "Silistria" was also scuttled on the Sevastopol roadstead.

Over the next few months, the barrier was destroyed several times due to storms and natural decay - it was “repaired” by flooding of new ships. In December, the ship “Gabriel” and the corvette “Pilad” were added to the first seven, and in February 1855, the second line appeared - six more ships. In total, 75 combat and 16 auxiliary ships were scuttled by the end of the raid’s defense! Ships were flooded in different ways - undermining, shelling from the shore, etc. It is interesting that after the war, in 1857 — 1859, about 20 ships (in particular, several steamboats) were lifted from the bottom, repaired and re-commissioned.

The Sevastopol raid is the largest strategic shipwreck, and successful: the barrier from the masts really did not allow the enemy to enter the bay and begin a massive shelling of the city, which saved Sevastopol from capture. The event is dedicated to the most famous monument of the city - the Monument to Scuttled Ships delivered in 1905.

Orkney Labyrinth

The second most famous incident with the flooding of ships occurred much later - in the XX century. The harbor of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands throughout both world wars was the main base of the Royal Navy of Great Britain and, accordingly, an attractive target for the German troops.

True, the most famous flooding occurred in Scapa Flow in peacetime. After the truce that ended World War I, the German High Sea Fleet (the official name was worn by the German Navy) was escorted to the Orkney Islands, where it waited for its fate - most likely, the transfer to the Allies. On the ships were German sailors and commanders, although all weapon It was confiscated, the guns were dismantled, communications were eliminated. For six months the fleet was kept in Scapa Flow under the supervision of the British, and on June 21, 1919, suddenly (!) Synchronously began to sink. The fact is that the commander fleet Ludwig von Reuter, despite the lost war, remained a German patriot and could not allow his ships to go to the Entente. Having hardly established a connection between the ships, the Germans agreed that they would simultaneously launch the boats, raise German flags on the ships and open the kingstones - which happened. The British grabbed their heads and did not have time to do anything (although they shot from the shore at captured ships, demanding to close the Kingstones) - von Reuter flooded 52 ships: battleships, cruisers, destroyers. The British managed to drag 22 ships aground. Upon returning to Germany from captivity, von Reuter became a national hero. It is interesting that many representatives of the allies took the admiral's act as a blessing - he removed all disputes regarding the division of the German fleet between the countries of the Entente.


Construction of "Churchill barriers" between the two islands of the Orkney archipelago. Block shives are not yet cleaned.


A bridge built by blockades from one island to another on Orkney.


The modern look of Churchill's barriers.

But it was not a strategy, but rather an extreme measure to prevent the ships from getting to the enemy. There have been hundreds of cases like this - to recall at least the legendary cruiser Varyag or the flooding of the French fleet in Toulon in 1942. During the First World War, strategic flooding took place in the Orkney Islands, precisely to stop the enemy fleet. Narrow passages between the islands needed to be blocked in order to complicate the maneuvering of enemy submarines as much as possible: the British had maps of the modified fairway, while the Germans did not. In total, during the First World War, in the narrow aisles, the 50 order of obsolete blockhead vessels was flooded, essentially making the archipelago a labyrinth. From the very beginning of the Second World War, it was clear that the base of the British Navy, as a quarter of a century earlier, would become one of the main targets of the German submarines - and the barriers were “updated”, flooding several more blockhouses. But on October 14 1939, the British battleship HMS Royal Oak was sunk by a German U-47 submarine right on the Scapa Flow roadstead - the sailor's 833 died, and the submarine that penetrated the heart of the British fleet went unpunished. This incident forced Churchill to order the urgent construction between the islands of concrete dams (known as "Churchill barriers"), permanently restricting navigation between the islands. However, they were only completed by the 1944 year, when their strategic value dropped dramatically. And the flooded blockhouts to this day are the tourist and diving attractions of the islands.
History, history


The flooding of the Stone Fleet in Charleston Harbor hit the front pages of local and federal newspapers. A total of 1861 block shields were flooded in 1862 — 24, mostly whaling ships, which made it possible to slow supplies of supplies by the Confederation army.

History has known more than fifty cases of strategic blockage flooding. In 1861 — 1862, more than 40 ships were flooded in the harbor town of Charleston (South Carolina, USA) by order of Admiral Chalz Davis. Basically, these were old fishing vessels, bought on the cheap for this very purpose and loaded with sand and stones, for which they received the nickname “Stone Fleet”. The purpose of the flooding was to stop the blockade-breakers who supplied ammunition for the Confederation. In November, the squadron battleship HMS Hood was submerged in Portland, Great Britain, in November, in order to block the passage to the naval base for German submarines. In April, the blockhives 1914 even took part in the attack: three old British armored cruisers were loaded with concrete and flooded at the entrance to the shipping channel of the Belgian port Zeebrugge, used by the Germans as a submarine base. Two of them, under enemy fire, successfully reached a narrow spot and sank, blocking the exit from the port for the submarines - only three days later the Germans destroyed the western bank of the canal, making way for the locked boats to freedom. Even later, in April 1918, Mario Bonetti, the commander of the Italian flotilla based in Massawa (Eritrea) in the Red Sea, realizing that soon the Allied fleet would attack, and he did not have enough forces to defend, he decided to devalue the seizure of the port as much as possible. He ordered the destruction of most of the buildings, and in the fairway 1941 flooded major transports, both Italian and German.

In general, the list of cases of strategic flooding can be infinite. But back to the Crimea.

Crimea again

Anti-submarine ship "Ochakov" was launched on April 30 1971, as part of the 1134-B project (or Bercut-B). A total of seven such ships were built in 1960 — 1970-ies - six of them in the 2011 year were declared completely obsolete and scrapped, only BOD Kerch, after going through a scheduled repair, continued service in the Russian Navy. “Ochakov” was removed from the fleet and for the last three years with dismantled armament stood on the eternal joke in Sevastopol. On the night of 5 on 6 of March 2014, he was towed to the exit from the Donuzlav Lake bay and flooded; its huge, 162-meter hull blocked the narrow navigable canal by half.


The location of the submerged antisubmarine ship "Ochakov" in the fairway of Lake Donuzlav. The coastal sections of the channel are blocked by two smaller vessels.

The ship was flooded with an explosion — first, the hull was destabilized by filling it with water using a fireboat and then undermined, thanks to which the ship landed across the canal in the smallest part (9 − 11 depth). “Ochakov” is half above water, nevertheless, its evacuation is a most complicated engineering operation.

To block the rest of the passage, a rescue tugboat Shakhtar with a length of 69,2 meters was flooded next to Ochakov, and six days later, another decommissioned ship, the 41-meter diving bot VM-416 1976, was built. The flooding allowed to close the fairway and block the ships of the Ukrainian Navy in the bay. To date, they have peacefully transferred to the Black Sea Fleet - the blocking did not allow active combat operations. At the end of July, work began on raising the Ochakov and clearing the passage; presumably the operation will be completed by the end of autumn.

Events in the Crimea showed that the sinking of ships could work as a maneuver in our time, moreover as a peace plan maneuver. It aims primarily at preventing hostilities. However, let's hope that even such maneuvers will never be needed again.

Entertainment strategy



Due to the fact that wrecks are attractive sites for divers, in different countries decommissioned vessels are sometimes deliberately flooded as “amusement parks”. The most famous precedent is the flooding of the former American tracking ship General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, launched in the 1943 year. In various qualities, including in the role of a cinematic vessel, he served until the 2008 year, and in 2009-m was flooded near the city of Key West (Florida) as an entertainment facility for divers. Previously, everything that could damage tourists, from doors that could become traps to wiring, was removed from him, and then he was blown up by evenly distributed charges, which allowed him to be lowered to the bottom in a horizontal position.
Our news channels

Subscribe and stay up to date with the latest news and the most important events of the day.

9 comments
Information
Dear reader, to leave comments on the publication, you must sign in.
  1. +9
    11 September 2016 15: 25
    Even wrecked ships can defend the interests of their homeland ... It would be nice to erect a monument near this place.
  2. PKK
    +12
    11 September 2016 15: 36
    The flooding of our ships always took place without a hitch, but the construction of the fleet did not always succeed clearly.
  3. +10
    11 September 2016 15: 44
    Events in the Crimea showed that the flooding of ships can work as a maneuver in our time, and how peace plan maneuver.
    But they could have vulgarly mined ... But they took pity on the "brothers", instead of gloating over the attempt to "exit" Svidomo's floating craft from the vmb.
    And after that they still have the audacity to silk their beak about Russia's "aggression"! am
    1. avt
      +9
      11 September 2016 16: 53
      Quote: Boa constrictor KAA
      But they could have vulgarly mined ..

      No. This would be the beginning of the war. And so - shallow hooliganism ..... in the sense of shallow water. bully
  4. +5
    11 September 2016 17: 11
    "The commander of the defense of Sevastopol, Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, understood perfectly well that if enemy ships entered the bay, the city would be lost, and on September 11, even before the start of active hostilities, seven sailing ships built in 1830-1840 were sunk across the fairway to create submarine chain between the Aleksandrovskaya and Konstantinovskaya batteries. "

    By the way, he commanded the flooding of Kornilov.
  5. +5
    11 September 2016 17: 27
    Even in such a non-standard way, "Ochakov" continued the glorious history of the Soviet BOD 1143-A / B. He knew these ships well. BOD "Kronstadt" - my first order in the repair of our "clever" equipment of the PLO missile complex ...
  6. +12
    11 September 2016 17: 30
    The Ukrainian Navy was still trying to push the flooded diving vessel as a minesweeper, but it didn’t work out. Although I think the presence of two vessels of the Russian Navy also played a role
  7. The comment was deleted.
  8. 0
    29 October 2016 20: 22
    The monument to the sinking of ships in Sevastopol is good, but it would be fair: to name one of the Black Sea Fleet warships by the name "Flora" (like "Mercury"
    t;) and "Ochakov" should also serve in the Russian Navy
  9. +3
    2 March 2017 22: 38
    BOD Ochakov raise and paint .. and at the price of a new frigate to sell the Ukrainian Armed Forces ...

"Right Sector" (banned in Russia), "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) (banned in Russia), ISIS (banned in Russia), "Jabhat Fatah al-Sham" formerly "Jabhat al-Nusra" (banned in Russia) , Taliban (banned in Russia), Al-Qaeda (banned in Russia), Anti-Corruption Foundation (banned in Russia), Navalny Headquarters (banned in Russia), Facebook (banned in Russia), Instagram (banned in Russia), Meta (banned in Russia), Misanthropic Division (banned in Russia), Azov (banned in Russia), Muslim Brotherhood (banned in Russia), Aum Shinrikyo (banned in Russia), AUE (banned in Russia), UNA-UNSO (banned in Russia), Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People (banned in Russia), Legion “Freedom of Russia” (armed formation, recognized as terrorist in the Russian Federation and banned)

“Non-profit organizations, unregistered public associations or individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent,” as well as media outlets performing the functions of a foreign agent: “Medusa”; "Voice of America"; "Realities"; "Present time"; "Radio Freedom"; Ponomarev; Savitskaya; Markelov; Kamalyagin; Apakhonchich; Makarevich; Dud; Gordon; Zhdanov; Medvedev; Fedorov; "Owl"; "Alliance of Doctors"; "RKK" "Levada Center"; "Memorial"; "Voice"; "Person and law"; "Rain"; "Mediazone"; "Deutsche Welle"; QMS "Caucasian Knot"; "Insider"; "New Newspaper"