In 1982 the “Moskva” was launched. The same year the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by a British nuclear submarine. Originally the ship was called “USS Phoenix” and sailed under the US flag.
For two days, the “HMS Conqueror” pursued the Argentine ship in the Falklands War. Until Margaret Thatcher gave the order to attack. The Conqueror’s commander, Captain Chris Wreford-Brown, fired three Mark VIII torpedoes at the General Belgrano. The ship listed heavily to port and began to sink over the bow. Since the pumps were not working due to the damage to the power supply, no effective countermeasures could be taken.
In the case of the “Moskva” there were no torpedoes, but probably two rockets of the “R-360-Neptun” type. And it didn’t take days of crawling. Based on intelligence information, the Ukrainian armed forces knew the fairly exact location of the “Moskva”: TB-2 “Bayraktar” drones are said to have spotted the target even more precisely, while also confusing the guided missile cruiser’s air defenses – presumably so much that the two “R-360 Neptun” rockets approaching at 864 km/h were recognized too late by the weapons control officers on duty.
The “Moskva” is not the first serious loss for the Russian Navy. When the Kursk nuclear submarine exploded in the Barents Sea in 2000, presumably due to a technical defect. Moscow initially claimed that the Kursk had been rammed by an American submarine. But this theory has been refuted. A defective training torpedo ultimately caused the catastrophe, according to the final report.
Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov named the heads of the Northern Fleet and the crew of the Kursk under Captain Gennady Lyachin responsible for serious negligence. Another parallel to the sinking of the “Moskva”: As reported by eXXpress, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Osipov (49), has now been arrested.
Before Putin’s burning “Moscow,” others had to learn that you have to be particularly careful when choosing a name for a warship so as not to fall into a symbolic trap. In 1945 the Japanese flagship sank. The Yamato was the largest and most heavily armed battleship in world history.
She endured 13 US torpedoes and eight heavy bomb hits on her near-empty kamikaze voyage before she capsized and a fire detonated her remaining ammunition supplies. Almost 90 percent of the crew died.
