"Armenia" (motor ship). The tragedy of the 20th century

"Armenia" is a motor ship whose death was for a long time hidden by the authorities. About a thousand people died on board during the German offensive against Sevastopol. November 7, 1941, the day of the parade on Red Square, this terrible tragedy occurred. Near the southern coast of Crimea, the "Armenia" - the ship, which was considered one of the best ships of the Black Sea Fleet, sank to the bottom. About this disaster it was forbidden to report anything. Only in 1989 the stamp "top secret" was removed from the book published by the People's Commissariat of the Soviet Navy, which referred to this tragedy. There were no details in it-only the coordinates and the time of the death of combat ships and ships, including the vessel of interest, were sparingly reported.

Characteristics of the motor ship "Armenia"

The ship was designed by engineers under the guidance of J. Koperzhinsky, chief designer. In November 1928, it was launched. This ship was one of the six best passenger ships that plowed the Black Sea. The range of navigation of "Armenia" was 4,600 miles. "Armenia" is a motor ship that could carry 518 passengers in class cabins, 317 deck passengers and 125 "seating", as well as cargo weighing up to 1 thousand tons. At the same time, the vessel could reach speeds of up to 27 km / h. Six of the best ships (except for Armenia, including Abkhazia, Ukraine, Adzharia, Georgia and Crimea) began to service the Odessa-Batumi-Odessa line. These vessels transported thousands of passengers before 1941.

The motor ship becomes a sanitary transport vessel

With the beginning of the war, "Armenia" was hastily transformed into an ambulance ship. The smoking room was converted into a pharmacy, the restaurants were turned into dressing rooms and operating rooms, additional hanging cots were made in the cabins. Plaushevsky Vladimir Yakovlevich, who at that time was 39 years old, was appointed captain. Staropom became Znayunenko Nikolai Fadeevich. The crew of "Armenia" consisted of 96 people, as well as 75 paramedics, 29 nurses and 9 doctors. Dmitrievsky Petr Andreevich, the chief doctor of the Odessa city railway hospital, well known to many in this city, became the head of the medical staff. On the deck and on the sides there were bright red crosses, clearly visible from the air. A large white flag with a picture of the Red Cross was raised on the mainmast.

However, these measures were not saved by hospital ships. Göring's aviation carried out raids on them from the very first days of the war. Sanitary transport "Anton Chekhov" and "Kotovsky" were damaged in July 1941. A "Adzharia", attacked by dive bombers and embraced by flames, ran aground in front of the whole of Odessa. The same fate in August befell and "Kuban".

Merit of "Armenia"

The Red Army, squeezed by the enemy, suffered heavy losses in heavy fighting. There were a lot of wounded. On board the "Armenia" in any weather day and night worked medical staff. The vessel made 15 incredibly dangerous and heavy flights with the wounded. "Armenia" transported about 16 thousand soldiers, not counting the elderly, children and women, who were accommodated in the cabins of the crew members.

This is in brief the history of the motor ship "Armenia".

Ship protection

There is still a lot of mystery in the circumstances of the death of this ship. In the "Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War ...", declassified in 1989, it is said that the motor ship "Armenia" (the photo is shown above), "Kuban", and the training vessel "Dnepr" carried out flights from Odessa together with the destroyer "Ruthless". Of course, this saved the court from attacks by German aviation.

Manstein with the 2nd Army was advancing rapidly to the Crimea. The command of the Black Sea Fleet was not ready for this attack. Before the war, the fleet exercises were limited to military campaigns and the "destruction" of amphibious assault forces. Nobody could have thought that Sevastopol would have to be defended from the land.

Transport of wounded and evacuation of residents

The Germans quickly took control of all overland routes. Peaceful residents of the peninsula (about 1 million people) were trapped. The prepared troops of Hitler were opposed by scattered units of the Red Army. They did not give the Russians a great chance to win. Inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula by the beginning of November 1941 began to leave it massively. Panic struck in the cities as the Nazi troops approached. People led a real struggle to land on any transport.

On the streets of Sevastopol in October and November 1941, there was confusion. All that is possible was evacuated from the city. The hospitals, equipped in Sevastopol and in galleries, were full of wounded, but someone ordered to immediately evacuate the entire medical staff. Already in our days, approaching the city, from the window of a bus or a car in the area of Inkerman you can see boulders and huge piles of stones. These are the blown up hospitals that were in the galleries. Only the wounded were evacuated from there to the ships on the orders of Stalin. E. Nikolaeva, a nurse of this hospital, testifies that the tunnel, together with "non-transportable" detonated, so that the wounded did not get to the enemy. A representative of SMERSH was in charge of the blasting operations. Two doctors refused to be evacuated. They were killed along with the wounded.

FS Oktyabrsky, vice-admiral of the Black Sea Fleet, constantly carried a destroyer "Boykiy" with him. He shied away from solving problems related to the protection of hospital and passenger ships and the formation of convoys during the passage by sea. Oktyabrsky believed that these issues should be decided by the leaders of the civilian fleet. This was one of the reasons why there were many best passenger ships on the bottom of the Black Sea along with the people who were there.

Circumstances that preceded the tragedy

According to eyewitness testimony and the documents found, it was possible to restore the events that preceded the entry into the sea of the motor vessel "Armenia" on November 6, 1941. The vessel was in the internal roadstead. "Armenia" hastily accepted many evacuated and wounded citizens. The situation on the ship was very nervous. The raid of German aviation could begin at any moment. The bulk of the warships of the Black Sea Fleet went to sea on the orders of October, including the Molotov cruiser, where the only radar shipborne Redut-K station was in the navy.

In the Quarantine bay, except for "Armenia", the ship "Białystok" was loaded. "Crimea" took people and equipment at the berth of Morzavod. Loading on these ships was carried out continuously. Plaushevsky, captain of "Armenia", received an order to sail from Sevastopol at 7 pm on November 6. The vessel was to follow in Tuapse. Only a small sea hunter under the command of PA Kulashov, a senior lieutenant, was allocated for escort.

Departure of "Armenia"

Captain Plaushevsky understood that with such accompaniment only a dark night is able to provide the ship with the secrecy of sailing and protect it from attack by the enemy. What was the annoyance and surprise of the captain, when he was ordered to leave the city not in the 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 at 17 o'clock from Sevastopol, the ship was moored in Yalta only after 9 o'clock, ie, at about 2 o'clock in the morning. Historians have found out that a new order was received on the way: to go to Balaklava and pick up NKVD, medical personnel and wounded people from there, as the Germans continue to advance.

The way out of Yalta and the death of "Armenia"

Plaushevsky was informed that NKVD workers, partaktiv and 11 hospitals with the wounded are waiting for loading in Yalta. When Admiral F.S. It became known to October that "Armenia" should leave Yalta in the afternoon, he gave the commander the order not to sail until 19 hours, that is, until darkness. At least that's what the admiral's notes say. Oktyabrsky noted that there was no means to provide cover for the ship from the sea and air. The commander received an order, but nevertheless left Yalta. German aircraft torpedo bombers attacked it at 11 o'clock. "Armenia" was sunk. After hitting the torpedo, it was afloat for 4 minutes.

Did Oktyabrsky give the order to sail no earlier than 19 hours

The absence of documents that were destroyed in 1949 or later casts a shadow on him. Historians can not help but suspect that Oktyabrsky tried to find an excuse years after this tragedy. But we must admit that as commander of the fleet the admiral knew the situation in the theater of operations. He knew where the motor ship "Armenia" is located and the time when it sailed from the shore. Knew Octyabrsky and the fact that this ship, which is devoid of protection, with the air superiority of German aviation, is an ideal target for dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The loss of the motor ship "Armenia" in 1941 in case of sailing during the day was easy to foresee. Therefore, it is very likely that he gave the order to wait for the night, to Plaushevsky. However, a sinister event happened on the ship, which caused the captain to disobey this order. This is another mystery of the death of the ship "Armenia".

Who obeyed Plaushevsky

Let's go back to investigate the events. It is known for sure that the initial order given to Captain Plaushevsky was clearly formulated: it is necessary to take the medical staff and the wounded and follow from Sevastopol in Tuapse at night. Then an urgent order was received that in order to save the wounded and the party activist one must follow in Yalta. The time of the release of "Armenia" from Sevastopol was changed - it was to go 2 hours earlier, at 17 o'clock. The third order, which was handed over to the captain, forced him also to take away the wounded and representatives of the local authorities, not entering Balaklava Bay. The fourth order, which Plaushevsky received early in the morning on November 7 from FS. October, ordered to sail from Yalta in the evening, not earlier than 19 hours. Strangely, he was violated. The captain sent a motor ship "Armenia" to the open sea, the death of which became one of the greatest tragedies of the Great Patriotic War.

Plaushevsky, of course, ignored this order only because he had to obey another authority that was on board. She was staffed by SMERSH and the NKVD, taken on board the ship. The people who stayed on the pier saw how Plaushevsky, before he commanded the return of the mooring lines, was furious. He cursed like a thunderbolt and looked like a driven beast. And this is Plaushevsky, about whom his colleagues responded as an exceptionally reserved and cold-blooded man. Certainly, the captain was threatened by those who hastened to leave Yalta. They promised him a reprisal 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 could not get through 30 miles. After the torpedoing, the vessel was afloat for 4 minutes, and then the ship "Armenia" sank (1941, November 7). Only eight of those who were on board managed to escape. Among them was serviceman Burmistrov IA and foreman Bocharov. Seen the death of "Armenia" and PA Kulashov, senior lieutenant and commander of the sea hunter. When he returned to Sevastopol, he was interrogated in the NKVD for a month, and then released.

The 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 made joint attempts to find the remains of the ship, including with the help of Billard, who found the Titanic. A lot of possible places of flooding were examined. The most modern search machine was used in 2008. This square was investigated 27 times along and across! The cost of the expedition is estimated at $ 2 million. As a result, a sunk boat, an old sailboat, shell shells were found. However, it was not possible to detect the skeleton of "Armenia", the length of which was 110 meters.

It is impossible to exclude the possibility that the ship could slip along the slope to great depths, where it is very difficult to find it. Perhaps, somewhere there is a motor ship "Armenia" at the bottom. Photos of this site showed that the nature of its relief does not exclude such a probability. However, it is possible that experts are simply not looking. 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 antiaircraft artillery of the main naval base. However, it is most likely that Plaushevsky, in pursuance of the directive signed at 2 am by Stalin himself, received an order to return the personnel of the hospitals. The first point in this document was written that Sevastopol should not be given to the Germans in any case. This means that one should not look for a ship from Gurzuf. It is likely that it is on the traverse of Cape Sarych, west of the place where it was searched. This site has not yet been investigated.

Let's hope that the motor ship "Armenia" will soon be found. 1941 was forever one of the most tragic in the history of Sevastopol. Events of the times of the Great Patriotic War should be studied in more detail, and "Armenia" raised from the bottom. The search for the motor ship "Armenia" continues.