#Italian Battleship Giulio Cesare

[captain-price-unofficially]

Italian battleship Giulio Cesare after a hit from the HMS Warspite during the Battle of Calabria, 9 Jul 1940. The 15 in shell (381 mm) hit the Italian ship from around 13 NM (24 km) (1270x890)

[topchubashi]

On October 29, 1955, near the Hospital Wall of Sevastopol Bay, after severe damage from an explosion equivalent to 1000-1200 kg of TNT, the cause of which has not yet been officially established (the official version is an explosion on a mine left over from the times of the Patriotic War), the Black Sea Fleet battleship Novorossiysk (Italian Giulio Cesare) sank. 617 people were killed — 557 people of the battleship's crew and 60 people from the personnel of the emergency parties of other ships of the squadron. Later, the ship was disassembled for metal and transferred to the Zaporizhstal plant.

[lonestarbattleship]

Russian Dreadnoughts: Novorossiysk, Part II

"On the evening of October 28, 1955, Novorossiysk dropped anchor in Sevastopol. Following dinner, some 240 crewmen departed for shore, her captain and numerous senior officers included. Additional trainees and civilian workers came aboard, to prepare for the next cruise. All seemed normal. But, at 01:30 in the morning on the 29th, an explosion ripped through the water beneath the ship, blowing a hole directly up through the bow forward of Turret I. Sailors reported two distinct, back-to-back detonations from under the water's surface. The result was a tunnel of force that tore through every deck and vented out through the topside of the ship, bending the entire bow upwards and tearing a 68' long by 12' wide gash. Between 150-175 men were instantly killed.

The ship began to settle immediately. A slight list developed to starboard while the city and harbor came alive with emergency response efforts. Tugs began pushing the wounded ship towards shore, swinging her about by the stern. Other ships sent boats as well. But the situation seemed well in hand at first. Pumping oil to port had helped to correct the list by 02:00, and the ship was in marginally more shallow water. Evacuation was not ordered, and the majority of the roughly 1,600 men aboard were left to mill about on the main deck. The list continued to increase, though it was assumed the ship would settle upright due to the shallow water. This proved to be false; the list increased more and more rapidly until, at 04:14, the ship passed 18°, lost stability, and capsized into the soft mud of the harbor bottom. She had taken on 7,000 tons of water in the 2 hours and 43 minutes since the initial damage occurred. Devoid of reserve stability and overloaded by her 1953 refit, she took an estimated 621 men with her, including rescuers stuck aboard when the rolled over. The ship floated upside down until 22:00 that evening, allowing for the rescue of seven men from a hole cut in the stern. Rescue divers continued to work for another two days, pulling two men from an air bubble in the stern. No more knocking was heard past November 1.

The disaster continues to confound. An immediate Soviet official inquiry determined that an old German sea mine had exploded as a result of the ship's magnetic field. This theory remains the official cause, supported by an immediate dredging effort that turned up additional German mines from the area. However, a variety of factors have prompted questions: the presence of multiple explosions, the ability of a mine to produce such a directed blast, the irregular timing interval between mooring and explosion, and damage that is inconsistent with other mine-damaged large ships. In addition, a missing barge and some suspiciously clean metal debris found in the two shallow craters in the harbor floor sparked serious discussion of sabotage.

Though rather incredulous claims of Italian retribution including the admissions of aging ex combat divers within the past decade - have been mostly dismissed, there remains sufficient question about the cause of the disaster to leave the matter in dispute. Perhaps most relevant is the dismissal of the navy's commander-in-chief, at that point sick for five months, due to falling out of political favor. Nevertheless, since naval history is rife with situations of extreme misfortune based on miraculously slim odds, it also remains possible that mines were the cause.

Novorossiysk herself was salvaged using compressed air. Preparatory work for the salvage operation began in April 1956, and took over a year. On the morning of May 4, 1957, twenty-four compressors worked for four hours to push the sea out of the wreck and the ship finally broke the surface bow first; she is seen here in roughly that state, with the gaping damage to the bow clearly visible. After the installation of a pre-fabricated salvage facility on top of the wreck, she was towed out to Cossack Bay on 28 May. She was cut open to rid her magazines of their explosive contents, and then cut up for scrap, though there is some dispute about the details. X turret, which fell out during the refloating, was salvaged separately. Its guns were retained at the Naval School until the 1970s, when they were cut up as well."

Caption is exclusive to Haze Grey History Facebook page (link) and was shared with the permission of Evan Dwyer. Click this link to read more of his works. Photo is from the public domain.

[judgemark45]

1940, HMS Warspite scored one of the longest range gunnery hits from a moving ship to a moving target in history. During the Battle of Calabria, a 15-inch shell from Warspite hit the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare from a distance of almost 15 miles. The damage from the hit slowed Giulio Cesare, forcing the battleship to withdraw.

[aiiaiiiyo]

Italian Conte di Cavour-class battleship Giulio Cesare under construction on a slipway in Genoa, 1911.[2080 x 1378] Check this blog!

[thescharnhorsts]

Veni, Vidi, Vici

@abyssal-shenanigans

1032, Tyrrhenian Sea. Primo Squadrone was on its rounds, maintaining the steady patrols pushing the Abyssal presence out of Italian waters. Battleship Giulio Cesare, destroyer Nazario Sauro, and armored cruiser San Marco were operating as an independent unit, the squadron split into many such smaller patrols for picket duty. Everything was going smoothly, from the weather to the contacts; rather, the lack thereof. Not even the hydrophones had picked up contact in the two and a half hours the vessels had been afloat, but the flagship insisted on maintaining vigilance.

An Abyssal threat could appear at any time, and at any strength. Cesare learned that the hard way.

[lordmartiya]

Couple things:

First, it’s an actual thing. There’s also pen holders that look like Caesar’s bust.

Second... To this day, we Italians still admire Gaius Julius Caesar. Giulio and Cesare (Italian for Julius and Caesar) are common personal names, we named a battleship and our first modern post World War II liner after him, a noble family in Rome (the Colonna) claims descendance from him (or at least his clan), and people still depose flowers on his commemorative statue in Via dei Fori Imperiali (a scenic road in Rome). We are simply the descendants of the Ancient Romans, who had triumphant generals parade through Rome while their soldiers sang bawdy songs on them and a slave held a laurel over their head and whispered “remember one day you will die” the entire time.

Roommates AU: Marinette sees Lila's knife block... That is identical to Julius Caesar as drawn in the Asterix comics.

Marinette: And the knifes are in his back… should have seen that coming.

Lila: He deserved it and we would happily do it again.

[historianarratus]

Italian Conte di Cavour-class battleship Giulio Cesare under construction on a slipway in Genoa, 1911.

[adrianomaini]

Italian battleship Giulio Cesare at the First Battle of Sirte, 1941 december 17 #World War II #oldpics

[collasgarba]

♲ Collasgarba (collasgarba@mastodon.bida.im) 2019-02-12 08:54:16:

Italian battleship Giulio Cesare at the First Battle of Sirte , 1941 december 17 #World War II #oldpics

[newbeltane]

Tweeted

I liked a @YouTube video https://t.co/ji4p5KZKAq World of Warships - Giulio Cesare - Beautiful Italian Battleship [DATAMINE]

— Steven Dale (@celtxian) September 5, 2017

[zerokilleroppel]

Italian battleships Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare, Napoli, 1938.

[lonestarbattleship]

Russian Dreadnoughts: Novorossiysk, Part I

"The Battleship Stalin had demanded from Italy came to fruition in 1949. Following WWII, the Allies had drawn 'lots' - groups of Italian ships - in 1948 to determine who got what. Either by design or extremely poor luck, the Soviets drew the lot that contained the aged, but rebuilt, dreadnought Giulio Cesare instead of a Littorio-class. Regardless, the Soviets stood poised to welcome a powerful addition to their Black Sea Fleet post-war.

Obstacles, however, remained. The Soviets wanted Italy to fund a complete refit of the battleship, which had been sitting in Taranto since June 1944. The Soviets also wanted a grandiose handover in Soviet waters. They would get neither. Italy refused to sail the ship to the Black Sea, and in December 1948 Turkey forbade it anyways by invoking a 1936 ban on non-Black Sea power warships greater than 15,000 tons in the Turkish Straits. Instead, Italy moved Cesare to Valona, Albania, in February 1949 after a hasty partial refit in Augusta. On February 6, 1949, the Italians handed her over in a tense exchange.

The Soviets steamed out of Albania on the 20th. The voyage to the Black Sea showed her flaws: none of the gauges had been translated, and many systems barely worked. Worse, the damage control post contained limited documentation, insufficient to actually keep the ship from sinking in case of disaster this last insult would come back to haunt the USSR six years later. The ship reached Sevastopol on the 26th, and in a ceremony on March 5 received the name Novorossiysk.

Novorossiysk's tribulations had just begun. It took the majority of the year to get the ship ready for service, and supply chains had to be built using reverse engineering. The ship had a recurring issue with mold, and no built-in mess space for meals, so habitability was abysmal. By the end of 1950, she was determined to be of more use as a training platform than as a primary combatant, and between exercises was constantly undergoing some sort of work; in six years, she would see the shipyard eight times, including a substantial and expensive modernization in 1953. The work done in 1953 was notable, as it installed radar, replaced the diesel generators, swapped the boilers out for domestic models, and replaced all Italian anti-aircraft guns with Soviet 37mm and 25mm types. That same year, Stalin died, and additional plans for the ship died with him - including a proposed domestic replacement of her main battery.

Two years later, on October 28, 1955, the battleship returned from gunnery exercises and moored at buoy no. 3 in Sevastopol. She had moored there ten times prior, beginning in 1954; the battleship Sevastopol had similarly dropped anchor and shackled to that same mooring buoy no fewer than 130 times in the past decade. But this time would be different."

Caption is exclusive to Haze Grey History Facebook page (link) and was shared with the permission of Evan Dwyer. Click this link to read more of his works. Photo is from the public domain, and depicts Novorossiysk ca. 1953.

[nebris]

Italian Battleship Giulio Cesare after reconstruction between 1933-1937

[collasgarba]

♲ Collasgarba (collasgarba@mastodon.bida.im) 2019-02-12 08:54:16:

Italian battleship Giulio Cesare at the First Battle of Sirte , 1941 december 17 #World War II #oldpics