How did the Russian Ship Moskva Sink?

The War in Ukraine

On the surface, may appear that the war between Ukraine and Russia is a territorial dispute. However, this war is a complicated war that involves many more aspects than a simple territorial dispute between the two Slavic nations. Ukraine and Russia both have demonstrated their resolve in this conflict and have been willing to use their military (and other means at their disposal) to conduct warfare. With regards to Ukraine specifically, the apparently unlimited supply of munitions and support from the Western nations, most notably the United States and other NATO countries, has allowed them to continue to fight a protracted war which otherwise would probably have been over rather quickly. From the looks of it, Ukraine has been putting up a hell of a fight against the Russians.

Ukrainian War Supposed Heroic Actions

During the first few months of this war, there were all types of stories coming out in the news media regarding heroic actions of the Ukrainian war effort. A few of the notable stories that came out at that time are listed below in case you don’t remember:

Snake Island – Where a group of Ukrainians supposedly refused to surrender and laid down their lives protecting Snake Island while the Russian ships killed them and took the island.
The ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ – Where a Ukrainian Ace fighter pilot supposedly shot down a bunch of Russian aircraft. It’s a tragedy that these stories (and a few others) turned out to be hoaxes and all part of the psychological operations effort concocted by entities in support of Ukraine. However, the Ukrainians did, in fact, score a major victory when it came to the sinking of the Russian ship, the Moskva.

The Moskva was the Flag Ship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – Here are some facts

What is a Flag Ship?

A flag ship is a ship (in a particular group of ships or area) that carries the command authority for that particular group of ships or Area of Responsibility (AOR). Therefore, if the Moskva was the flag ship for Russia’s Black Sea fleet, that means that the Moskva served as the command post for the Russian Admiral that was responsible for Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

The name ‘Flag Ship’ in particular comes from the fact that the entity that carries the command authority (whether it be a land-based military base or a ship) typically will raise a flag representing that authority in whatever location that authority is located. In simple terms, the fact that the Moskva was the Flag Ship means that it was the highest profile ship in the Black Sea for the Russian Navy at the time.

Some facts about the Moskva

Slightly larger than a U.S. Navy Ticonderoga-Class Cruiser
Built in the 1970’s
Decommissioned in 1990 after fall of Soviet Union
Recommissioned in 2000
Carried roughly 400-500 crewmembers

The Moskva’s role in the Ukrainian-Russian War

The Moskva’s role in the current war was that it provided air and naval cover with its compliment of Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM) and Anti-Ship Missiles for other Russian forces during the initial invasion of Ukraine. It also particularly, provided cover for the forces that compelled the surrender of Ukrainian forces at Snake Island.

Why Sink the Moskva?

To state the obvious, the sinking of the Moskva was important to the Ukrainian war effort because the Moskva was an active warship, a Flag Ship at that, that was providing cover for the ships that were conducting operations directly against the Ukrainian state. By sinking the Moskva, the Ukrainians not only have one less enemy ship to deal with, but the Russian ships also have one less ship that is providing cover for them.

A secondary impact that the sinking of the Moskva would have been the psychological impact on the Russia’s military via demoralization of Russian troops. The Moskva (translated to Moscow, Russia’s capital city) being sank is symbolic of the Russian’s taking a huge loss in the war.

Naval Ships are designed for missile impacts, how did the Moskva Sink?

Now for the meat of this article…

First of all, let’s talk about what made the Moskva float in the first place. In General, the inside of every ship, below the waterline, there are very voluminous spaces such as birthing’s (where crewmembers sleep), Engineering Spaces (Main and Auxiliary engine rooms and rooms for other engineering equipment), storage holds, as well as Fuel, Water, and Lube Oil tanks…etc. With large portions of these spaces are essentially empty, the cumulative affect is that these empty spaces create buoyancy when the ship sits in the ocean. The larger the volume within the ship underneath the waterline, the more water it displaces which results in more upward force (buoyancy) the water will have on the ship. One good way to picture this is to image trying to hold a deflated balloon under water vs. trying to hold an inflated balloon under water. The more inflated the balloon, the harder it is to hold it underwater, right? This is the exact same force that causes a ship to float. For more information on this, feel free to research ‘Archimedes Principle’ which describes how buoyancy works.

To sink a ship, an enemy needs to simply create an event that, ultimately, leads to those spaces inside of a ship being filled with water. Once enough of a ship’s inner volume is filled with water (causing losses in buoyancy), the force of gravity will overcome the force of buoyancy, and the ship will sink . To stop this from happening, all ships are designed with watertight compartments, that are sealed with watertight doors (heavy metal doors that seal these compartments shut) to be able to seal off compartments within the ship to help slow or prevent the ship from sinking should there be some catastrophic damage to the ship’s structure.

In the case of the Moskva, the ship was hit with two Neptune Anti-Ship Missiles (shown above) in the dead of night from the Ukrainian military. Anti-Ship missiles tend to skim above the waterline both in order to mitigate, as much as possible, missile defenses, and to have maximum impact and highest likelihood to sink the ship. Should a ship be hit too high above the waterline, it could definitely destroy vital equipment on the ship and kill crew-members, but it wouldn’t necessarily sink the ship, and the remaining crew would have a better chance of mitigating the damages by putting the fires out and sealing off the rest of the ship. However, if a ship get’s hit at or below the waterline, this puts the ship in much greater danger due to the flooding that would occur in conjunction with the fires and whatever other secondary or tertiary damage the explosions would have caused.

Fires and Flooding

As stated before in previous articles, Fires and Flooding are the two most dangerous events that can occur on a ship and can lead to a cascade of all types of other problems for a ship and can spread quickly, causing the ship to ultimately sink if the fire or incoming water is not addressed or contained.

In the Moskva’s case, it appears that one, or both, of the Neptune missile impacts caused fires that were not able to be contained. These fires then must have spread throughout the local area of the ship, eventually reaching an ammunition bay within the ship, and causing the ammunition to explode, leading to the sinking of the ship. It is important to remember that ships, as stated before, are highly compartmentalized. However, ships are made of metal and a lot of compartments are basically cube shaped and surrounded on all 6 sides by other adjacent compartments that share bulkheads (walls). Therefore, a fire in one compartment can heat up the bulkhead, deck, and overhead (walls, floors, ceilings) so much that fires can start in the adjacent compartments as well, especially if there are flammable materials in the adjacent compartments such as oils, rags (for cleaning), or chemicals.

What happened to the crew members?

I’m no expert on the Russian Navy in particular, but typically, all ships’ crews regularly practice all types of emergency scenarios on a regular basis. I would say that most countries’ Navies around the world typically run drills on a daily basis. In the scenario regarding the Moskva they would have practiced ‘Abandon Ship’ drills fairly often, and for this exact reason. In the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, the Abandon Ship signal consists of six short blasts of the ship’s whistle (horn), followed by one long blast of the whistle. This is followed by a message on the loudspeaker by the Captain, 1st Officer, or whoever is in charge to report to Abandon Ship stations. Once the Abandon Ship signal has been called out, all crew-members are to report to their Abandon Ship stations out on deck near their assigned life-raft or life-boat

It is apparent from pictures of the Moskva that they had inflatable life-rafts for the crew-members should the ship sink. These particular rafts can be launched manually if the crew members are able to reach their Abandon Ship stations in time, before the ship starts to sink. However, if the ship sinks too quickly for the rafts to be launched manually, these rafts have a hydrostatic pressure release mechanism, which releases them from their cradles (image of life-rafts secured in a cradle shown above) at a certain depth, where they are subsequently deployed automatically should the ship sink so fast that crew-members are not able to reach them in time. Each one of these life-rafts holds roughly 10-20 crew-members. Fortunately for the crew-members onboard the Moskva, the ship did not sink immediately, and it has been reported that, while there were casualties onboard from the missile strike, over 400 of the sailors were rescued from the Moskva before it sank while being towed into port.

Recap

In this article, we touched briefly on the Ukraine-Russian war and what led up to the sinking of the Russian Navy ship, the Moskva. We also described some of the reasons for the sinking of the ship and the impacts this may have had for the Russian Navy. This is considered a huge win for the Ukrainian Military in this war.

We also went on to describe, in a bit of detail, the mechanics of what would have caused the Moskva to sink, despite being designed to handle a missile attack. Also, we went over the dangers that fires and flooding pose to ships and how they can be mitigated, as well as how it can lead to ship’s sinking eventually even if that does not happen immediately.