Armenian shipwreck. The death of "Armenia"

What is hidden by the expedition, which can shed light on one of the main military tragedies of the Black Sea?

The search for the site of the tragic accident of the motor ship "Armenia" with supposedly seven thousand people on board has been going on for more than 10 years. Why is the next expedition completely classified, what did scuba divers discover in 2005 when they announced the discovery of “Armenia”, and could the organizers of the expeditions, partially financed by the US Navy, pursue more than just scientific goals?

Was the find hidden because of the gold?

The first expedition to search for the motor ship "Armenia" took place back in 2005. Then the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine received three coordinate points from various sources, including from the Central Naval Archive in Moscow, and also took as a basis the testimony of eyewitnesses of the tragedy and survivors. But the most important thing on which the search was based was a secret report presented by a certain Crimean organization that had already discovered “Armenia” using the Poisk geological complex.

“A vessel with dimensions similar in characteristics to the dimensions of the vessel “Armenia” has been identified. The results of remote holographic identification prove that in this place at a depth of 520 m there is a torpedoed bow ship "Armenia"... The ambulance ship "Armenia" was identified by the following parameters: the location of the sunken ship with its bow to the southeast (coincidence with the general course of the ship after leaving the port of Yalta); the length of the sunken vessel coincides (about 100 meters), a fragment of the torn off bow (about 10 meters) is located at a distance of about 40 meters from the ship’s hull; fixation of a large number of human remains (bones) throughout the ship along a characteristic resonant information-energy spectrum; recording characteristic resonance spectra from precious metals located in the following places: platinum and diamonds - under the upper deck in the area of ​​​​the central part of the ship (where special mail and luggage rooms are located); gold and silver - in many rooms of the superstructure where the cabins are located increased comfort", etc.

The deep-sea submersible "Langust" was lowered to the site of the death, the crew of which confirmed the find. The news immediately spread across all media with loud headlines like “The legendary “Armenia” has been found!” The archaeological season was already closed, but next summer promised to be rich in artifacts, photos and video footage from the ship...

However, the next year the search for “Armenia” resumed in other areas. This was explained as follows: they say, the find was not confirmed, and what the crew of the Lobster saw was a completely different ship, completely uninteresting. By the way, the report taken as a basis was made public after Ukrainian archaeologists examined the supposed site of the death of the “Armenia” from American scientific vessels in 2006-2007.

According to the most daring conspiracy theory, the cargo that was mentioned in the geological survey report, and which, according to legend, was loaded by NKVD officers in Yalta, became the reason for withholding information about the discovery of the ship.

Although, perhaps, all this is nothing more than speculation...

History and tragedy

The passenger and cargo ship "Armenia" was built at the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad in 1928. Displacement 5770 tons, length 107.7 m, width 15.5 m, side height 7.84 m, crew - 96 people. The ship belonged to the class of double-deckers, six of the same type “Krymchaks”, which worked on the Crimean-Caucasian cruise line in the pre-war period (“Armenia”, “Adjaristan”, “Crimea”, “Abkhazia”, “Ukraine”, “Georgia”). Soon after the start of the war, all six ships were converted into ambulance transport ships and transferred to the medical service Black Sea Fleet.

The tragedy of “Armenia” occurred on November 7, 1941 and in terms of the number of victims it is one of the largest in world history. The death toll was, according to various estimates, from 3 thousand to 10 thousand people.

The chronology of the disaster is briefly as follows. At about 17:00 on November 6, 1941, the ship under the sign of the Red Cross left Sevastopol. There were several thousand wounded soldiers and evacuated citizens on board. The ship also loaded the personnel of the main hospital of the Black Sea Fleet and a number of other military and civilian hospitals (23 hospitals in total), as well as the leadership and employees of the Artek pioneer camp, members of their families and part of the party leadership of Crimea. The loading of evacuees was in a hurry; their exact number is unknown. Captain Vladimir Plaushevsky led the “Armenia” on its last voyage. The ship was accompanied by two armed boats and two I-153 fighters. At 2:00, November 7, the ship arrived in Yalta, where it took on board several hundred more people (the loading of evacuees was also in a hurry, so their exact number is unknown) and some valuable cargo - it is possible that, in addition to documents, there was gold and valuables from Crimean museums. At 8:00 the ship left the port, and at 11:25 am it was attacked by the German torpedo bomber Heinkel He-111, which belonged to the 1st squadron of air group I/KG28. The plane came in from the shore and dropped two torpedoes from a distance of 600 m. One of them hit the bow of the ship. Four minutes later, "Armenia" sank. Only eight people were saved, who were picked up by a patrol boat.

There is a version that the cause of the disaster was mistakes by the command of the Black Sea Fleet. The overcrowded ship, instead of making the transition to the Caucasian coast in the dark in relative safety, was sent by the command to Yalta, although there were dozens of other ships in Sevastopol that could evacuate this city. As a result, the loading dragged on all night and the captain was forced to set out to sea from Yalta in the morning. But what was Captain Plaushevsky guided by when he put the ship out to sea during daylight hours - in violation of the order of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Philip Oktyabrsky? According to some, he saw no point in staying in the port of Yalta for a day, since the stationary ship was an excellent target (Yalta did not have air defense systems, in addition, at any moment it could be captured by advancing German units, because the Germans had already broken into the neighboring Gurzuf). Others believe that the captain obeyed the NKVD officers on board, who sought to leave Crimea as quickly as possible.

Secrecy and conspiracy theories

A few days ago, a new stage of the search for “Armenia” started. This time under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Among the expedition participants are specialists from the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and Crimean professionals. Although the mission of the expedition does not focus only on “Armenia”: the search for submarines, ships and aircraft that sank during the First and Second World Wars. The task is carried out by a detachment of ships of the Black Sea Fleet, which includes a fleet vessel KIL-158, designed to lift objects from the bottom. For example, in Kutch it is planned to find submarines from the First World War, in Evpatoria - the A. Serov", in the area of ​​​​Cape Aya - the destroyer "Impeccable", from Feodosia to Anapa - search for the destroyer "Smyshleny". Search activities are also planned in the areas of capes Khersones, Opuk, Fonar and in the Kerch Strait.

“Found ships and submarines will be declared military graves, the places of their destruction will be marked on all nautical charts, and from now on, all ships and vessels of the Russian Navy, passing in this area, will lower their flags and give military honors to the fallen defenders of the Fatherland,” said Deputy Head of the Military Department Dmitry Bulgakov.

But official comments on the progress of search work have so far been limited to reports that at the southern entrance to Kerch Strait German detected torpedo boat S-102 (on June 8, 1943, the boat was blown up by a mine), from which a 40-mm Flak 28 anti-aircraft gun, fragments of the boat’s hull and propellers were recovered. And they also pulled out an Il-2 attack aircraft from the bottom (shot down on November 8, 1943, the plane was flown by Hero Soviet Union Yusup Akayev).

Not a word about “Armenia”. Although Crimean Telegraph knows from its own sources that the search for the ship is planned in at least two points of the Black Sea. Moreover, information about underwater work abruptly stopped and, as it became known, even journalists working for the Russian Ministry of Defense were denied access to the ships involved in the work. But why? As a Crimean Telegraph source associated with this expedition explained: “Nobody wants to prematurely give even a reason for news. If “Armenia” is found, then yes, it will be a sensation, but for now we need to remain silent. Anyone associated with the expedition is prohibited from disclosing information. Everything is classified."

Along with this, another assumption appeared true goal expeditions. Allegedly, it is connected with clearing the Black Sea of ​​certain tracking sensors or interception of information. The fact is that journalists noticed: the expedition requires very large expenses, and it is unlikely that the military will invest huge amounts of money on simply discovering sunken objects. And I remembered that in 2006, from Cape Khersones to Cape Meganom, an expedition of the American scientist Robert Ballard, who was subsequently accused by the Crimean media of collaborating with US intelligence, worked on the research vessel Endeavor. Allegedly, it is known that this work cost the American side $2.5 million, and in 2007 Ballard involved the oceanographic vessel Pathfinder, owned by the US Naval Sealift Center, in the research, and the costs increased even more. And the secret goal of the Americans was to study the topography of the bottom and coast for military purposes, as well as to install special listening devices and special technical tracking equipment on the underwater cable communication lines of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which now need to be gotten rid of. So they equipped an expedition from the Ministry of Defense... However, commenting on this assumption, the representative of the Black Sea Fleet sincerely laughed.

Vyacheslav Trukhachev, head of the information support department of the Russian Black Sea Fleet:

“I know about this version. She's so...unexpected. And not serious. To comment on it, it’s best to turn to conspiracy theorists, this is their topic.”

But another version of the true goal of the Americans does not sound so fantastic - this is to conduct geological and hydrographic reconnaissance near Crimean shores under the legend of archaeological research. This was required to update the seabed maps, which is, of course, invaluable information for the owners of the oceanographic vessel kindly provided to Ballard.

Igor SHILOV
Maxim RUSINOV
The material was published in the Crimean Telegraph newspaper No. 391 dated August 12, 2016

On November 7, 1941, the Soviet motor ship Armenia, with over 5,000 people on board, perished in the Black Sea.

"White spot" of war

Symbol large-scale disasters at sea was the death of the passenger liner Titanic, which in April 1912 claimed the lives of about 1,500 people. In fact, the Titanic is not even among the top thirty maritime disasters with the largest number of casualties. The most terrible tragedies of this kind occurred during the Second World War, when transports with thousands of people, not only military personnel, but also women, old people and children, sank to the bottom. On November 7, 1941, the Soviet motor ship Armenia, with several thousand people on board, perished in the Black Sea. The tragedy of “Armenia” to this day remains one of the “blank spots” of the Great Patriotic War, since many questions in this story have not been answered.

In the mid-1920s, when the country had recovered a little from the shock Civil War, the government began to think about the development of civil shipbuilding. In 1927, at the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad, the construction of the motor ship "Adzharia", the lead ship of the series of the first Soviet passenger airliners. In 1928, at the same Baltic plant, work was completed on five more ships of this project: “Crimea”, “Georgia”, “Abkhazia”, “Ukraine” and “Armenia”.
“Armenia” was a vessel 107.7 meters long, 15.5 meters wide, with a side height of 7.84 meters and a displacement of 5,770 tons. The ship was served by a crew of 96 people. The motor ship could simultaneously take on board up to 950 passengers. “Armenia”, like other vessels of the project, was intended for transportation between the ports of Crimea and the Caucasus. The ships coped with their task perfectly, having a very decent speed of 14.5 knots for their size.

floating hospital

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, “Armenia” was “called up” for military service. At the Odessa shipyard, she was urgently converted into a floating hospital, designed to transport and provide emergency care to 400 wounded. On August 10, 1941, “Armenia” began to fulfill its new duties. The captain of the ship was Vladimir Plaushevsky, and military doctor 2nd rank Pyotr Dmitrievsky was appointed chief physician of the floating hospital. Until recently, the head doctor was a civilian and worked in one of the hospitals in Odessa. The situation at the front was depressing. Five days before the Armenia officially became a medical ship, the enemy came close to Odessa. The ship had to evacuate not only the wounded from the besieged city, but also civilian refugees. Then “Armenia” began transporting the wounded from Sevastopol. By the beginning of October the ship had transported to Mainland about 15 thousand people.

By the end of October 1941, a catastrophic situation had developed in Crimea. Manstein's Eleventh Army, sweeping away Soviet defense lines, occupied one city after another. The threat of the fall of Sevastopol within a few days was more than real.
Under these conditions, on November 4, 1941, “Armenia” left the port of Tuapse in the direction of Sevastopol. On board there were reinforcements for the garrison of the main fleet base. "Armenia" reached Sevastopol safely. On November 5, Captain Plaushevsky received an order: to take on board not only the wounded, but also the personnel of all hospitals and medical institutions of the Black Sea Fleet, as well as part of the medical staff of the Primorsky Army.

Thousands of refugees and secret cargo

Considering that at that moment the battles for Sevastopol were just unfolding, the order looked somewhat strange. Who will save the lives of the wounded? Historians who studied this issue believe that the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Philip Oktyabrsky, considered the fate of the city a foregone conclusion and decided to begin evacuation. But on November 7, 1941, Oktyabrsky received a directive from Headquarters, which said: “Do not surrender Sevastopol in no case should we defend it with all our might.” However, before November 7 there were no orders from Moscow, so “Armenia” took on board evacuated doctors and not only them. Actors of the local theater named after Lunacharsky, management and staff of the Artek pioneer camp and many others boarded the ship. There were no exact lists of those who boarded the Armenia. Captain Plaushevsky received another order: after loading in Sevastopol, go to Yalta, where to take refugees and local party activists on board. After leaving Sevastopol, an additional order came: to go to Balaklava and pick up a special cargo. The boxes were brought on board accompanied by NKVD officers. Perhaps it was gold or valuables from Crimean museums.

“The brave climbed onto the ship using the shrouds”

“Armenia” left Sevastopol at 17:00 on November 6, and arrived in Yalta at 2:00 on November 7. Crowds of refugees were waiting for the ship here. This is what Vera Chistova, who was 9 years old in 1941, recalled about this: “Dad bought tickets, and my grandmother and I had to leave Yalta on the ship “Armenia.” On the night of November 6, the pier was full of people. First they loaded the wounded, then they let in the civilians. No one checked the tickets, and a stampede began on the ramp. The brave ones climbed onto the ship using the shrouds. In the bustle, suitcases and things were thrown off the board. By dawn the loading was completed. But we never got to “Armenia”. Hundreds of people remained on the pier. My grandmother and I went to my father’s workshop on the embankment. I fell asleep there.” At that moment, those remaining on board the “Armenia” seemed lucky. In fact, everything was exactly the opposite.
How many people were on “Armenia” by that time? According to the most conservative estimates, about 3,000 people. The upper limit is 10,000 people. Most likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and there were between 5,500 and 7,000 people on board. And this despite the fact that even in its “passenger” version the ship was designed for only 950 people.

In fact, “Armenia” could have successfully evacuated a similar number of people if it had departed from Yalta in the dark. But the loading was completed around 7 o'clock in the morning. Going to sea during the day without virtually any cover was tantamount to suicide. Admiral Oktyabrsky later wrote that the captain of the Armenia received a strict order to remain in the port until the evening, but violated it. But captain Plaushevsky, in fact, had no choice. The port of Yalta, unlike Sevastopol, did not have a powerful air defense system, which means that ships here became an excellent target for aviation. In addition, German motorized units were already approaching the city and occupied it in just a few hours. Therefore, at 8 o’clock in the morning on November 7, “Armenia” went to sea. The ship sank in 4 minutes

Before talking about what happened next, it should be noted that historians still have not decided whether “Armenia” can be considered a legitimate military target. According to the laws of war, a medical ship bearing the appropriate identification marks is not one of them. Some argue that “Armenia” was marked with a red cross, which means that the attack on the ship was another crime of the Nazis. Others object: “Armenia” violated its status by having four 45-mm anti-aircraft guns on board. Still others are completely sure that the ship, which was engaged not only in transporting the wounded and refugees, but also military cargo, did not have the signs of a medical ship. As cover, the “Armenia” was accompanied by two patrol boats, and two Soviet I-153 fighters were in the sky.

The circumstances of the fatal attack on the ship are also contradictory. For a long time it was believed that “Armenia” was the victim of an attack by several dozen bombers. One of the surviving passengers, Yalta resident Anastasia Popova, spoke about this: “Having gone out to sea, the ship was attacked by enemy aircraft. All hell broke loose. Bomb explosions, panic, people's screams - everything mixed up in an indescribable nightmare. People rushed around the deck, not knowing where to hide from the fire. I jumped into the sea and swam to the shore, losing consciousness. I don’t even remember how I ended up on the shore.” However, today the version that there was only one plane seems more reliable: the German torpedo bomber He-111, which belonged to the first squadron of air group I/KG28. This was not a targeted attack on “Armenia”: the torpedo bomber was looking for any of the Soviet transport ships on the Crimea-Caucasus line. Entering from the shore, the Non-111 dropped two torpedoes. One passed by, and the second hit the bow of the ship at 11:25 a.m. “Armenia” sank in just four minutes. Only eight people on board were saved. The bottom of the Black Sea became the grave for thousands.

Could not find

The mysteries of “Armenia” do not end there. 75 years after the tragedy, the exact location of the ship’s death has not been discovered. The official report on the death of the “Armenia” reads: “At 11:25 a.m. (November 7, 1941) TR “Armenia”, guarded by two patrol boats from Yalta in Tuapse with wounded and passengers, was attacked by an enemy torpedo plane. One of the two dropped torpedoes hit the bow of the ship and at 11:29 am it sank at w = 44 deg. 15 min. 5 sec., d = 34 deg. 17 min. Eight people were saved, about 5,000 people died.” The supposed site of the ship’s sinking was studied several times. In 2006, Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic, joined the search. In Ukraine it was reported that “Armenia” was about to be found, but this did not happen. No traces of the lost ship were found. There is an assumption that the real place of death of the “Armenia” is not where indicated in the documents. According to this version, Captain Plaushevsky sent the ship not to Tuapse, but to Sevastopol, under the protection of the air defense of the fleet base, but along the way he was attacked by a torpedo bomber.

This, however, is only an assumption, like much else in the history of the death of “Armenia”.
It will be possible to reveal all the secrets only when last refuge the ship will still be found.
The crash, which surpassed the number of victims of the Armenia, occurred at the end of the war. On the night of April 16, 1945, the Soviet submarine L-3 under the command of Vladimir Konovalov torpedoed the fascist transport Goya at the exit from Danzig Bay. Of the more than 7,000 people on board, less than 200 survived.

Andrey Sidorchik

I read the message of the respected blogger Adam dated 07/01/2018 “Epronovets 17” - “In the wake of the disaster” that on 05/06/2018 the site of the sinking of the submarine “Kambala”, which sank on May 30, 1909, was found and localized, about the planned study of the place of its death with with the help of underwater robots, and the presentation of the book by V. Boyko “Submarine “Flounder”
It is gratifying that they finally found this submarine, which tragically died during a night training attack by a squadron of the Black Sea Fleet, when the boat was on the course of the attacked ships of the squadron and was cut in half by the battleship Rostislav - “...near Sevastopol, on the range of the Inkerman lighthouses... ”, as it is written on a marble plaque installed in St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

In my article “About the Black Sea submariners of the First World War, and how they towed the Turkish ships they captured in tow to Sevastopol,” posted on the blog on August 27, 2016, I talked a little about the fate of this submarine, its crew, and provided photographs of the monument erected on 29 May 1912 at the burial site of sailors at the Quarantine Cemetery in Sevastopol.
Then, above their grave in the form of a monument, on a stone plinth, they installed an authentic cabin of the “Flounder”, in which they hung an image with an unquenchable lamp glowing in front of it.
The cabin of the "Flounder" was crowned with a figure of the Mourning Mother made of white marble. During the War of 1941-1945, the monument was seriously damaged, and the marble figure of the Mourner was lost.

It should be noted that this monument is now the only monument in Russia to the submariners of the Imperial Russian Navy, except for the marble plaque installed in St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral. St. Petersburg.
I would like to wish good luck to the further search engines of “Kambala”.

Today I would like to raise the topic of the tragic death of the motor ship “Armenia”.

Over the entire history of navigation in the Black Sea, according to various estimates, more than 50,000 various ships, vessels, and other watercraft perished or sank, of which more than 10,000 were sailing ships.
During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. The Black Sea Fleet lost 1,151 warships and auxiliary vessels.

The largest naval tragedy in the Black Sea Fleet during the war occurred on November 7, 1941. , when the German torpedo bomber Heinkel-111 at 11:29 a.m. sunk the ambulance transport motor ship Armenia, which only left Yalta at eight in the morning on November 7, guarded by only one patrol boat SKA-041 (according to some sources, two boats) .

Motor ship "Armenia"

This was one of the largest maritime disasters not only of the Great Patriotic War, but also in maritime history in general, but which, according to the traditions of Soviet times, was hushed up for many years.

On November 6, 1941, in Sevastopol, about 300 wounded were loaded onto the "Armenia", medical and economic personnel of the Sevastopol naval hospital, the 2nd naval and Nikolaev base hospitals, medical warehouse No. 280, sanitary-epidemiological laboratory, 5- th medical and sanitary detachment, part of the medical personnel of the Primorsky and 51st armies, as well as evacuated residents of Sevastopol, were accepted onto the ship.

(After the death of “Armenia”, the Black Sea Fleet was practically left without medical support; it was necessary to create a new hospital, base hospitals, etc.
At the end of December 1941 - beginning of January 1942, a decision was made to restore the previous organization of the medical service. Two naval hospitals were again transferred to Sevastopol, a group of surgeons and the restoration of the medical service of the Sevastopol defensive region continued until May 1942.
Why all the fleet's medical personnel were evacuated from Sevastopol, the defense of which had just begun, is a separate question for the Black Sea Fleet Commander.
Sevastopol heroically defended itself for another eight months).

At 19.00 on November 6, the motor ship "Armenia" left Sevastopol for Tuapse. On the way, an order was received to go to Balaklava and pick up the wounded and medical personnel there. Then the ship went to Yalta, where the wounded, Soviet and party activists were taken on board Big Yalta, the city's civilian population.

In Yalta, several dozen boxes were also loaded onto the ship. There is an assumption that some of them contained valuables from Crimean museums, in particular part of the exhibits of a traveling exhibition from the Russian State Museum, which the war found in Alupka.
I decided to test this assumption, and in 2015 I contacted Russian state museum in St. Petersburg, received an official response:
“...The State Russian Museum sent in 1941 to the Alupka Palace Museum a traveling exhibition “The main stages in the development of Russian painting of the 18th-19th centuries.” By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the exhibition had not been removed from Alupka...
Subsequently, it was established that some of the works were stolen, some were returned from Germany and returned to the Russian Museum.
All the works in the exhibition never returned to the Russian Museum.”
As we see, the assumption turned out to be correct, there was an exhibition and quite a part of it could have been evacuated on the “Armenia”.
In total, there were, according to various estimates, from 4,500 to 7,000 people on board the Armenia. Only 8 people were saved!

Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky recalled:
“When I learned that the transport was going to leave Yalta during the day, I myself personally conveyed the order to the commander, under no circumstances leave Yalta until 19.00, that is, until dark. We did not have the means to provide good air and sea cover for the transport. The communication worked reliably, the commander received the order and, despite this, left Yalta at 08.00.
At 11.00, she was attacked by torpedo planes and sunk. After the torpedo hit, "Armenia" was afloat for four minutes."

Why the captain of the "Armenia" (Plaushevsky) violated the order and went out to sea early in the morning is another mystery of the death of the ship.

But let us take into account that the Yalta port was by this time completely defenseless against aviation.
In Yalta, two destroyers “Boikiy” and “Impeccable” were moored to the piers, and “Armenia” was forced to anchor while awaiting loading. The destroyers were loaded with guns of the 17th anti-boat battery and all the anti-aircraft guns covering Yalta.

Staying in the port was tantamount to suicide. There were already German troops on the approaches to the port (the first German units entered Yalta in the evening of the same day.)

In addition, there are a number of assumptions: the captain was pressured by high ranks of the NKVD and party officials who found themselves on board the ship in Yalta and even threatened with violence.

The death of "Armenia" for a long time was a secret behind seven seals, and documents about the death of the ship, located in the Central Naval Archives, were destroyed in 1949.

It should be noted that during the period when Crimea was part of Ukraine, attempts were made to find the motor ship "Armenia".

The American side, led by Robert Ballard, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Oceanography, who found the Titanic, the battleship Bismarck and the aircraft carrier Yorktown, also took part in this search in 2006.
The American scientist entered into an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The Endever research vessel has arrived, equipped with modern sonars and remote-controlled robots.
A huge area of ​​the sea, approximately 20 by 20 miles, was surveyed, more than 400 objects were found, but the sunken ship was not discovered.
The coordinates available in the Museum of the Black Sea Fleet for the place of death of the "Armenia" (44 ° 17 "N, 34 ° 10" E) are apparently very approximate.

As a memory of this ship, there are stills from the 1935 film “Treasure of the Sunken Ship,” in which it was filmed.

In turn, during 2015-2016. I officially contacted the Russian Geographical Society three times with a proposal to organize a search for the motor ship “Armenia” within the framework of the “Underwater Research” project.
I received kind replies that my proposal had been sent to the Underwater Research Center of the Russian Geographical Society for consideration and response.
But no response was received from this Center.

I understand that this is a very costly operation that requires appropriate organizational and financial support. But I think she's worth it.
After all, the disaster of the “Armenia” is the largest maritime tragedy during the war, and in maritime history in general, which, according to various estimates, claimed about 7,000 human lives
Why is it that Ukraine was able to find the means to organize and ensure these searches in 2006 (unfortunately without results), but Russia cannot do this?!!!

I believe that this is our duty to the memory of the fallen, and we must find the place of death of "Armenia" - this mass grave several thousand people, and in order to perpetuate the memory, declare this place a naval war burial.
I appeal to the Editorial Board of “Epronovets” with a convincing request to support this proposal.

November 7, 1941, on the day of the traditional parade on Red Square, south coast A new terrible tragedy has unfolded in Crimea. It was strictly forbidden to report anything about the “Armenia” disaster. It is difficult for the current generation to comprehend the meaning of hiding the truth of the war from the people, which undoubtedly played into the hands of the enemy, but such were the “laws” of those years.

The book “Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union on the Black Sea,” published by the historical department of the People’s Commissariat of the USSR Navy back in 1946, was removed as “top secret” only in 1989. It sparingly, in just a few lines, reported the time of death and the coordinates of warships and vessels that ended up at the bottom of the sea, including the motor ship "Armenia". We bring to the attention of readers an investigation of the disaster at sea, conducted by Captain 2nd Rank Sergei Alekseevich Solovyov, scientific secretary of the Military Scientific Society of Sevastopol, who was one of the first to study in detail the documents and testimony of eyewitnesses of that terrible event.

"Armenia" was designed by marine engineers of the Leningrad Central Bureau of Marine Shipbuilding under the leadership of chief designer J. Koperzhinsky, launched in November 1928 and entered the top six passenger ships The Black Sea, consisting of “Abkhazia”, “Adjara”, “Ukraine”, “Armenia”, “Crimea” and “Georgia”.

As for the "Armenia", it had a cruising range of 4600 miles, could carry 518 passengers in class cabins, 125 "seated" and 317 deck passengers, as well as up to 1000 tons of cargo, while developing maximum speed- 14.5 knots (about 27 kilometers per hour). All these ships began to serve the “express line” Odessa - Batumi - Odessa, regularly transporting thousands of passengers until 1941.

With the outbreak of the war, the Armenia was urgently converted into a medical transport ship: the 1st and 2nd class restaurants were turned into operating rooms and dressing rooms, the smoking lounge into a pharmacy, and additional hanging bunks were installed in the cabins. 39-year-old Vladimir Yakovlevich Plaushevsky was appointed captain of “Armenia”, and Nikolai Fadeevich Znayunenko as first mate. The ship's crew consisted of 96 people, plus 9 doctors, 29 nurses and 75 orderlies. The head physician of the Odessa railway hospital, whom many in the city knew well, Pyotr Andreevich Dmitrievsky, was appointed head of the medical staff with the rank of military doctor of the 2nd rank. Huge crosses, clearly visible from the air, were painted on the sides and deck with bright red paint. A large white flag, also with the image of the International Red Cross, was raised on the mainmast.

But this did not save the hospital ships. From the first days of the war, Goering aircraft carried out raids on them. In July 1941, the ambulance transports “Kotovsky” and “Anton Chekhov” were damaged, and the “Adzharia”, attacked by dive bombers, completely engulfed in flames, ran aground near Dofinovka in full view of Odessa. In August, the same fate befell the Kuban ship.

Pressed by the enemy, the Red Army suffered heavy losses in heavy battles. There were a lot of wounded. Day and night, in any bad weather, the medical staff worked until exhaustion on board the Armenia. The ship made fifteen incredibly difficult and dangerous voyages with the wounded defenders of Odessa and transported about 16 thousand people, not counting women, children and the elderly, whom the crew members accommodated in their cabins.

There is a lot of mystery in the circumstances of the death of “Armenia”. The already mentioned “Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War...” states that the “Armenia”, as well as the “Kuban” and the training ship “Dnepr” made their voyages from Odessa accompanied by the destroyer “Besposhchadny”, which undoubtedly saved these ships from the daring attacks of the German aviation.

The offensive of Manstein’s 2nd Army on the Crimea was rapid, for which the command of the Black Sea Fleet, including Vice Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky, was not prepared. All fleet exercises before the war boiled down to the “destruction” of large amphibious assault forces and military campaigns of ships of the Black Sea Fleet. It never occurred to anyone that Sevastopol would have to be defended from the land side.

In October and November 1941, confusion reigned everywhere. Everything that was needed and not needed was hastily evacuated from Sevastopol. The hospitals equipped in the adits and the city itself were filled with wounded, but someone gave the order to urgently evacuate all medical staff. And now, already in our time, approaching Sevastopol, from the window of a carriage or bus in the Inkerman area you can see huge blocks and heaps of stones from blown up hospitals located in adits. By order of Stalin, only the lightly wounded were evacuated from there to ships. As the nurse of this hospital, E. Nikolaeva, testifies, “so that the wounded would not fall to the enemy,” the adit was blown up along with the “non-transportable” ones. The blasting work was supervised by a representative of SMERSH. Two doctors refused to leave the wounded and died along with everyone else.

Vice Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky himself constantly kept the high-speed destroyer “Boikiy” with him and almost always “shied away” from the tasks of forming convoys and from guarding passenger and hospital ships during sea passage, believing that this should be done by the leaders of the civilian fleet. Oktyabrsky’s self-removal from such an important and responsible task was one of the reasons that such a person was sent to the bottom of the Black Sea. a large number of the best passenger ships with people.

According to the documents found and the testimony of eyewitnesses, it was possible to reconstruct many of the events preceding the exit of the "Armenia" to sea from Sevastopol Bay November 6, 1941.

The ship was stationed in the inner roadstead and hastily took on board numerous wounded and evacuated citizens. The situation was extremely nervous. An enemy air raid could begin at any moment. The bulk of the fleet's warships, on Oktyabrsky's orders, went to sea, including the cruiser Molotov, which had the only shipborne radar station in the fleet, Redut-K.

In addition to the “Armenia”, another former “trotter”, the motor ship “Bialystok”, was loading in Quarantine Bay, and equipment and people were loaded onto the transport “Crimea” at the Morzavod pier. Loading went on continuously. Captain Plaushevsky received orders to leave Sevastopol on November 6 at 19:00 and proceed to Tuapse. For escort, only a small sea hunter with tail number 041 was allocated under the command of Senior Lieutenant P. A. Kulashov.

"Department Director Main base On November 5, I received an order... to close hospitals and infirmaries. About 300 wounded, medical and economic personnel of the Sevastopol Naval Hospital (the largest in the fleet), headed by its chief physician, military doctor of the 1st rank S. M. Kagan, were loaded onto the “Armenia”. The heads of departments (with medical staff), X-ray technicians were also located here... The 2nd naval and Nikolaev base hospitals, sanitary warehouse No. 280, sanitary-epidemiological laboratory, 5th medical detachment, hospital from the Yalta sanatorium were also located here . Some of the medical personnel of the Primorsky and 51st armies, as well as evacuated residents of Sevastopol, were accepted onto the ship...”

Captain Plaushevsky knew that in the absence of security, only a dark night could ensure secrecy of navigation and would not allow enemy aircraft to attack the Armenia. Imagine his surprise and annoyance when he was given an order from the Military Council of the Fleet to leave Sevastopol not in the evening twilight, but two hours earlier, that is, at 5 p.m., during daylight hours. Such an order promised death, and some historians were inclined to believe that it came from the depths of the Abwehr of Admiral Canaris, from his special services involved in “misinformation.”

"Armenia", leaving Sevastopol at 17 o'clock, moored in Yalta only 9 hours later, that is, about 2 o'clock in the morning. It turns out that a new order followed on the way: to make a stop at Balaklava and there to pick up NKVD workers, the wounded and medical personnel, because the Germans continued to advance.

Captain Plaushevsky was informed that “party activists”, NKVD workers and eleven more hospitals with the wounded were awaiting loading in Yalta.

From the notes of Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky: “When I learned that the transport “Armenia” was going to leave Yalta during the day, I myself personally conveyed the order to the commander in no case to leave Yalta until 19.00, that is, until dark. We did not have the means to provide good transport cover from the air and sea. The communication worked reliably, the commander received the order and, despite this, left Yalta. At 11.00 she was attacked by torpedo bombers and sunk. After the torpedo hit, “Armenia” was afloat for four minutes.”

The lack of documents destroyed in 1949 and later casts a shadow on Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky, because any historian might suspect that the admiral was looking for an excuse in hindsight, years after the terrible tragedy. However, it must be admitted that he, as the commander of the fleet, knew the operational situation in the theater, knew where the "Armenia" was located, knew the time when she left the pier, crowded with people, he also knew that with the dominance of German aviation in the air "Armenia", deprived of security, is an ideal target for torpedo bombers and dive bombers. Therefore, it is very likely that he actually conveyed the order and even the very strict “wait for night” to Captain Plaushevsky, but some ominous event occurred on the “Armenia” that forced the captain to violate Oktyabrsky’s order. This is another mystery of the ship's death.

Let's explore the events and come back. It is reliably known that the initial order to Captain Plaushevsky was clearly formulated: pick up the wounded and medical personnel and proceed from Sevastopol to Tuapse at night. Then came an urgent order: to go to Yalta to save the party activists and the wounded. The departure time of the ship from Sevastopol was changed to two hours. The third order, transmitted to Captain Plaushevsky, forced him, without entering Balaklava Bay, to also pick up representatives of local authorities and the wounded. The fourth order, transmitted to the captain of the "Armenia" early in the morning by F. S. Oktyabrsky on November 7, ordered to leave Yalta no earlier than 19 hours, turned out to be strangely violated, and the captain set sail without security to meet his death.

There is no doubt that Captain Plaushevsky did not obey the order of the fleet commander only because he was forced to obey another authority that was on board, which were the NKVD and SMERSH officers who were accepted on board the Armenia. The people remaining on the pier saw how the captain, before giving the command to release the mooring lines, was furious, like a hunted animal, and loudly swore at the top of his lungs. And this was Captain Plaushevsky, whom all his colleagues described as an exceptionally cold-blooded and self-possessed person. Undoubtedly, he was threatened by those who were in a hurry to leave Yalta, and for refusal to comply they were threatened with reprisals.

The “Armenia”, which left Yalta early in the morning, accompanied by a sea hunter, did not travel even thirty miles when it was attacked by two torpedo bombers.

Let us turn to the following testimony from the boat from the sea hunter MO-04 M. M. Yakovlev: “On November 7, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, in the area of ​​​​Cape Sarych, a German reconnaissance aircraft flew over us, and after a short time over the water, at low level flight, almost touching crests of waves (the weather was stormy and we were chattered thoroughly), two enemy torpedo bombers came into our area. One of them began to make a U-turn to torpedo attack, and the second went towards Yalta. We could not open fire, since the boat's roll reached 45 degrees. The torpedo bomber dropped two torpedoes, but missed and they exploded in the coastal rocks of Cape Aya. We were amazed by the force of the explosion - we had never seen a more powerful one before, and almost everyone said at once that if the second torpedo bomber hits Armenia, then it will be in trouble.”

After the torpedoing, "Armenia" was afloat for four minutes. Only a few people survived, including foreman Bocharov and serviceman I.A. Burmistrov. The death of the ship was also seen by the commander of the sea hunter, Senior Lieutenant P. A. Kulashov, who, upon returning to Sevastopol, was interrogated by the NKVD for a whole month, after which he was released.

Through German veterans, they tried to find the crew of the torpedo bomber that attacked the Armenia in order to clarify the details and coordinates of the death of the ship, since German archives are famous for the high safety of documents. The answer came unexpected: “the Luftwaffe archive was taken to the USSR.”

At the end of September 1941, Nazi troops under the command of Erich von Manstein captured the Perekop Isthmus and penetrated deep into Crimea. The capture of the peninsula had great importance for Adolf Hitler, this would allow the Soviet army to be deprived of air bases and would give the Germans unhindered access to the oil fields of the Caucasus. By the end of October, Nazi troops had strengthened their positions on the peninsula and forced the Soviet army to retreat to Sevastopol, the main Black Sea base. In early November, the siege of the city began. The Soviet command decided to evacuate the civilian population by sea along the Sevastopol - Tuapse route.

Until 1941, pleasure and tourist “Crimean-Caucasian” motor ships sailed along the Black Sea. The first motor ships - "Abkhazia", ​​"Georgia", "Ukraine", "Adzharia", "Crimea" and "Armenia" - appeared in the mid-1920s. Some of them were built in Germany, and some in Leningrad at the Baltic Shipyard. After the start of the war, the “Krymchaks,” as they were popularly called, were converted into ambulance transport ships and given to the medical service of the Black Sea Fleet. They carried the wounded, children, women and medical personnel. The ship "Armenia" was the largest among the converted ships. Its displacement was about 6 thousand tons, its length was 112 meters, and its capacity was about a thousand passengers. Under the leadership of experienced captain Vladimir Plaushevsky, during August-September, “Armenia” transported about 15 thousand wounded soldiers from Odessa to the mainland. In early November, Manstein's troops shelled Sevastopol from land, air and water. There was a real threat of the city surrendering to the enemy. The leaders of the defense of Sevastopol decided to evacuate hospitals, infirmaries and part of the civilian population in Tuapse on the ship "Armenia".

Mysterious cargo in Balaklava

The evacuation began on November 6, according to orders received from high command the day before. A participant in the defense of Sevastopol, Colonel of the medical service Alexander Vlasov, recalled the first days of evacuation:

“On November 5, the head of the Main Base department received orders... to close hospitals and infirmaries. About 300 wounded were loaded onto the "Armenia", medical and economic personnel of the Sevastopol Naval Hospital (the largest in the fleet), led by its chief physician, military doctor 1st rank S.M. Kagan. The heads of departments (with medical staff), X-ray technicians were also located here... The 2nd naval and Nikolaev base hospitals, sanitary warehouse No. 280, sanitary-epidemiological laboratory, 5th medical-sanitary detachment, hospital from the Yalta sanatorium were also located here . Some of the medical personnel of the Primorsky and 51st armies, as well as evacuated residents of Sevastopol, were accepted onto the ship.”

As soon as it became known that the ship was preparing to depart for Tuapse, panic began in the city. Everyone wanted to escape, to get out from under the endless shelling, but the small capacity of the ship did not allow everyone to be taken on board. According to various estimates, from 4.5 thousand to 7 thousand people ended up on the Armenia, which significantly exceeded the permissible number of passengers. On the route Sevastopol - Tuapse there was supposed to be one planned stop in Yalta, but immediately after departure, at 17:00, the captain of the "Armenia" Vladimir Plaushevsky received an order to stop in Balaklava along the way. There, NKVD boats were waiting for the ship to load secret boxes, which, according to one version, contained gold and valuables from Crimean museums, in particular, paintings by famous Russian artists.

“We never got to “Armenia””

On November 7 at 2 a.m. "Armenia" arrived in Yalta. Nazi troops continuously attacked the city. E.S. Nikulin, a man who did not get on the ship, recalled its arrival:

“Since the evening, we still didn’t know anything about the motor ship “Armenia”. At night, at about two o'clock, they woke us up and led us almost in formation down the middle of the street to the port. There was a huge ship in the port. The entire pier and pier are filled with people. We joined this crowd. Boarding the ship was slow; In two hours we moved from the pier to the pier. The crush is incredible! Loading lasted from about two o'clock until seven in the morning. NKVD soldiers with rifles stood across the pier and only women and children were allowed through. Sometimes men broke through the cordon».

Along with the wounded, employees of the Artek pioneer camp, and staff of the main hospital of the Black Sea Fleet, representatives of the party leadership of Crimea were on board. While waiting for the authorities to arrive at the landing site, the ship remained in the port for several hours longer than planned. Vera Chistova, who was unable to get to “Armenia” that day, recalled:

“Dad bought tickets, and my grandmother and I had to leave Yalta on the Armenia ship. On the night of November 6, the pier was full of people. First they loaded the wounded, then they let in the civilians. No one checked the tickets, and a stampede began on the ramp. The brave ones climbed onto the ship using the shrouds. In the bustle, suitcases and things were thrown off the board. By dawn the loading was completed. But we never got to “Armenia.”

After everyone was on the crowded deck, the ship was ready to continue its journey along the route Sevastopol - Tuapse. But Admiral Philip Oktyabrsky gave the order to leave after 19:00, with the onset of darkness. During daylight hours, the ship could have been subject to air strikes. However, the captain of the “Armenia” Plaushevsky dared not to carry out the order, since he perfectly understood that being in a port unprotected from the air was mortally dangerous. At any moment, the Wehrmacht pilots could strike. According to another version, pressure on the captain from the NKVD officers on board could also have caused an earlier departure. Party leaders wanted to quickly leave the peninsula in order to save themselves and not allow the Nazis to seize the secret precious cargo. On November 7 at 8 a.m., accompanied by two armed boats and two I-153 Chaika fighters, the Armenia sailed from Yalta.

"All hell has broken loose"

In July 1941, the Wehrmacht air force bombed hospital ships in the Black Sea. Then the Kotovsky and Anton Chekhov came under fire, and later, in August, the Adzharia and Kuban sank as a result of air raids. In the hope of preventing possible air attacks, the distinctive sign of a hospital ship - a huge red cross - was placed on board the Armenia. Ships on which such a cross is depicted, according to international law, should not have been subject to fire. But this did not stop the Nazis. To protect against possible raids, four 21-K anti-aircraft guns were placed on the deck of the Armenia, but they did not save her from death. Three and a half hours after departure at 11:25 am, a few kilometers from Yalta, the ship was overtaken by the Nazi torpedo bomber Heinkel He-111, which dropped two torpedoes on the Armenia from a height of 600 meters. One hit the water, and the second landed right in the bow of the ship. A few minutes later the ship sank.

According to another version, “Armenia” was bombed by eight Nazi Junkers Ju 87s at once. Of all those on board (remember, this is about 4.5-7 thousand people), only eight managed to survive. Among them was Anastasia Popova. Despite the terrible cold, she, pregnant, swam to the shore on her own. Anastasia recalled the terrible minutes of the tragedy this way:

“On November 6, 1941, on the advice of friends, I decided to evacuate from Yalta. With great difficulty they took me on board, since the Armenia was already overcrowded with wounded and refugees. Having set out to sea, the ship was attacked by enemy aircraft. All hell broke loose. Bomb explosions, panic, people screaming - everything was mixed up in an indescribable nightmare. People rushed around the deck, not knowing where to hide from the fire. I jumped into the sea and swam to the shore, losing consciousness. I don’t remember how I ended up on the shore.”

“The death toll is about 7,000 people”

On the day of the tragedy, November 7, a parade was held in Moscow on Red Square in honor of the 24th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution. During the war and after its end, the fact of the tragedy was hushed up, so there was no reliable information about the location of the death of “Armenia” and the number of victims for a long time.

Pyotr Morgunov, one of the organizers of the defense of Sevastopol, mentioned the tragedy in passing in the 1970s in his memoirs “Heroic Sevastopol”:

« On November 6, an ambulance transport left Sevastopol - the motor ship "Armenia" with wounded soldiers, employees of the main hospital and evacuated citizens. He went to Yalta, where he also picked up some of the evacuees from Simferopol, and on the morning of November 7 he headed for the Caucasus. At 11:25 am, not far from Yalta, the transport, although it had the distinctive signs of a medical ship, was torpedoed by a fascist plane and sank four minutes later. Many residents, doctors and wounded were killed.”

At the end of the above passage there is a footnote to case No. 19, stored in the Central Naval Archives. Recently, historians learned that in 1949 (according to other sources — in 1947) it was classified and destroyed. Some information about the tragedy is contained in the third volume of the “Final Report on the Combat Activities of the Black Sea Fleet during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945,” published in 1956. The essay reported that on November 7, 1941, 7 thousand people died on the “Armenia”, only eight people were saved.

Finally, the book “Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union on the Black Sea,” published by the historical department of the People’s Commissariat of the USSR Navy back in 1946, but declassified as “top secret” only in 1989, provides information about the time and coordinates of the vessel’s location during the shelling . The only clue for future searches appeared in 1991. It was an extract from a document stored in the materials of the Museum of the Medical Service of the Black Sea Fleet. It talked about 7 thousand people who died on the ship “Armenia”, who were attacked from the air near the village of Gurzuf in the area of ​​Bear Mountain (Ayu-Daga).

A special investigation dedicated to the search for the site of the death of “Armenia” was conducted in the Soviet years by captain II rank, scientific secretary of the Military Scientific Society of Sevastopol Sergei Solovyov. He managed to get acquainted with partially preserved archival documents and with the testimony of eyewitnesses, among which was the testimony of the boat from the sea hunter “MO-04” M.M. Yakovlev, who accompanied the ship:

“On November 7, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, in the area of ​​​​Cape Sarych, a German reconnaissance aircraft flew over us, and after a short time, over the water in a low-level flight, almost touching the crests of the waves (the weather was stormy and we were thoroughly chattered), two enemy fighters came into our area torpedo bomber One of them began to make a turn for a torpedo attack, and the second went towards Yalta. We could not open fire, since the boat's roll reached 45 degrees. The torpedo bomber dropped two torpedoes, but missed, and they exploded in the coastal rocks of Cape Aya. We were amazed by the force of the explosion - we had never seen a more powerful one before, and almost everyone said at once that if the second torpedo bomber gets to “Armenia”, then it will be in trouble.”

From this story it follows that the ship "Armenia" on that very morning, November 7, may have been on its way from Yalta not to Tuapse, but back to Sevastopol, because Capes Sarych and Aya are located west of Yalta, towards Sevastopol. Thus, written evidence made it possible to identify several possible places where the ship was lost, but one way or another they are all located in the area of ​​​​the Yalta coast.

“Perhaps on one of the expeditions we passed by “Armenia”

In 2005, a group of Ukrainian archaeologists led by Sergei Voronov began underwater research in the Yalta area with the aim of discovering a sunken ship. In 2006, the famous American explorer Robert Ballard began his search, who discovered the Titanic in 1985, and in 1989 — wreck of the German battleship Bismarck. Despite the presence of expensive equipment and machinery, he was unable to detect “Armenia”.

According to media reports, the last attempt to search for the vessel was made at the end of July 2016 by specialists from the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The search results are still unknown.

For details about the search for “Armenia,” RT turned to Viktor Vakhoneev, head of the underwater archeology department of the Black Sea Center for Underwater Research. He himself was a participant in the very first searches for the vessel, which were carried out since 2005 by Ukrainian, Russian and American specialists. In an interview with RT, Vakhoneev noted that the work was carried out at different depths:

“The main reason why the ship could not be found in 2005-2006 was the collapse of the depths. The Black Sea bottom has a very mountainous terrain. It is quite possible that on one of the expeditions we passed by “Armenia”, but it is extremely difficult to identify it among the underwater rocks. When scanning the bottom, shadow zones are formed where a ship could theoretically be located. But due to the existing stall, the scanning process becomes more complicated.”

Viktor Vakhoneev explained that the expeditions do not have accurate data on the location of the vessel. This is due to the fact that the case of the death of “Armenia” in 1947 was removed from the archives and now it is classified as “top secret” in the archives of the FSB. The specialist noted:

“We proceeded from the time when the Armenia left the port, adding three hours to it until the moment of its sinking. Then multiplied by the minimum, average and maximum speed. Based on the data obtained, a radius was drawn where the ship could go. It is most logical that “Armenia” went towards Gurzuf (east of Yalta), the Ayu-Dag mountain along the coast. But we also scanned the bottom not only in this area, but also in the central region of Yalta.”

Regarding the version that the ship was heading from Yalta back to Sevastopol, Vakhoneev explained that confusion had crept into it. Katernik, testifying that he saw the “Armenia” in the area of ​​Cape Sarych, confused it with another ship, the “Lenin”. He was blown up by a mine in this area in July 1941. According to Viktor Vakhoneev, the waters of Sarych have been well studied and no traces of “Armenia” have been found there.

According to one version, the ship may be under a layer of silt. RT's interlocutor expressed doubts:

"This is impossible. The height of the ship's side was too high. Silt of such a height that would exceed the parameters of the vessel simply does not exist. The only difficulty preventing the search for the ship is mountainous terrain bottom."

In conclusion, Viktor Vakhoneev noted that the history of the death of “Armenia” is full of mysteries. Thus, he expressed doubt about the evidence of Anastasia Popova, who managed to swim to the shore in cold water.

It is still not known whether the wreckage of the Armenia was found during the last search in the summer of 2016. We can only hope that one day this story will come to an end.

Eduard Epstein