The Soviet ship Armenia began its life in 1928, initially transporting passengers and cargo. It was huge, having a capacity of 4,727 tons and a speed of 14 knots. Due to World War II, it was taken over by the Black Sea Navy as a hospital ship on August 8, 1941.
On November 6, 1941, Armenia's Captain V. Playshevsky sailed the ship from Sevastopol to Tuapse, and later to Yalta. It was in Yalta that the Russian Naval Command ordered the ship to remain at port until 7PM - basically darkness - or until escort vessels were available.
On November 7, at 8AM in the morning, the captain ignored the given orders and left Yalta with over 5,000-5,500 refugees and wounded soldiers. At 11:25AM, somewhere between Yalta and Gurzuf, German Luftwaffe's Heinkel He-111H bombers commenced attack and dropped two torpedoes on the helpless ship; one hit the fore section and sealed its fate. The ship sank at 11:29AM.
Only 3 to 8 of the men were rescued by an escort vessel. This incident became the U.S.S.R.'s greatest naval disaster in the Black Sea during the war. Armenia now lies at 44°15'N 34°17'E, some 472 meters (thanks, Doug!) below the sea.
The above picture, taken before its launching on November 1928 in Leningrad's Baltic Shipyard, is the only one available of the ship.
Sources: Armenia Ship, WikiPedia, and McFadzien
3 comments:
Fascinating, and great to stumble upon your blog. Keep up the great work.
Yes, great blog.
But I doubt the ship is really resting 12,000 meters below the surface of the sea, since that would put it several kilometers into the Earth's crust...
I've found a couple of sources who put the ship at 472 meters depth:
http://members.iinet.com.au/~gduncan/maritime-1.html
http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/15419_armenia.html
Just quibbling... really, this is great stuff. Please keep it up!
cheers,
Doug M.
Doug,
To be honest, I questioned that mentallly, as well, because I know that the Marianas Trench is roughly that same depth, if not less.
I will update the blog!
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