Odessa had its own passenger flotilla. Secrets of history: “The tragedy on the Soviet ship was a terrorist attack on a global scale”  On the main deck

Which ship actually starred in one of Leonid Gaidai’s most beloved comedies

"Victory"

In fact, it was the motor ship "Pobeda", which was used for passenger transportation on the Odessa - New York - Odessa line. And it belonged to the Black Sea Shipping Company.

The ship was built by order of a German shipping company at the Schichau Werft shipyard in the city of Danzig (Polish Gdansk) in 1928 for operation on the line Europe - Central America - West Indies. The first voyage took place on December 29, 1928.

Twin-shaft power plant consisting of two 8-cylinder Sulzer diesel engines of the 8SM68 brand with a power of 3,500 hp each. With. each at 105 rpm. allowed the ship to reach a speed of about 15.5 knots, powered by two 4-blade propellers.

On February 8, 1934, off the island of Curacao, the ship ran aground, from which it was removed only on August 25. After six months of repairs and re-equipment in Hamburg at the Blohm & Voss shipyard, the Magdalena liner left the factory as a single-tube motor ship with the new name Iberia (German: Iberia).

During wartime, the Iberia served as a mother ship for the German Navy in Kiel. Initially, after the war on June 9, 1945, it was received by the British Navy. On February 18, 1946, the Iberia, which was not damaged in hostilities, was transferred by the USSR to the Black Sea Shipping Company for reparation. Here the liner received a new name - “Victory”.

The ship was placed on the line Odessa - New York - Odessa, the crew was headed by sea captain Nikolai Adamovich Pakholok - an experienced sailor, a native of Skadovsk, the engine crew was senior mechanic A. Zvorono.

On July 31, 1948, the motor ship Pobeda with 323 passengers and 277 tons of cargo on board left the port of New York for Odessa. The passengers included mainly employees of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade with their families, as well as several representatives of other departments, as well as the family of Chinese Marshal Feng Yuxiang, who were traveling to China through the Soviet Union.

On the approach to Gibraltar, instructions were received: to call at Alexandria and take on board about 2,000 more Armenian repatriates from Egypt returning to Armenia. An additional 1,500 tons of cargo were also loaded. Thus, all passenger capacity standards were exceeded. However, all repatriates were safely delivered at the end of August to the port of destination - Batumi.

On August 31, the ship headed for Odessa. There were 310 passengers and crew members left on board. On September 1, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the radio station of the Black Sea Shipping Company in Odessa received a scheduled report from the ship that they had passed Novorossiysk and were expected to arrive in Odessa by two o'clock on September 2. After this, radio communication with the ship stopped.

On the morning of September 2, the Black Sea Shipping Company began to take measures to find out the reasons for the silence of the ship, asking for ships at sea and ports along the liner’s route: no one had contact with the Pobeda and did not hear SOS signals. The leadership turned to the command of the Black Sea Fleet for help, and search aircraft of naval aviation were sent to the sea. At 21.00 one of the pilots reported that he had discovered the burnt-out motor ship Pobeda 70 miles southeast of Yalta, with five boats with people near it. Help was sent to the emergency ship from Feodosia, Sevastopol and other places. Cadets and teachers of the Odessa Higher Naval School were sent from Odessa to help.

According to the investigation, on September 1, 1948, at about 1 p.m., the liner passed the Novorossiysk port. At this time, the acting ship projectionist, radio technician Kovalenko, decided to prepare a batch of films taken on the voyage for delivery to the cultural base, and asked sailor Skripnikov to rewind the films after viewing. The films were stored in a small storage room in the central part of the ship. Some were packed in tin boxes, and the part intended for rewinding lay open on the table. About 2 thousand gramophone records were stored in the same storeroom. At about 15 o'clock, while rewinding on a manual machine, the film began to sparkle and flash. It set the nearby skeins on fire. A few seconds later, the flames engulfed the pantry and the clothes on the sailor caught fire. Skripnikov jumped out of the storeroom, slammed the door and, screaming for help, ran down the corridor. The door in the pantry was knocked out by hot air, and the erupting fiery tornado engulfed the carpet runners and plywood bulkheads of the cabins. The flame, drawn along the corridor by a powerful stream of air, reached the ladder leading to the lobby of the overlying deck, and from there along two vertical stair shafts it reached the upper bridge, igniting everything in its path. In a matter of minutes, the fire engulfed the central part of the ship, including the navigation, steering and radio rooms, the captain's and navigators' cabins. The fire began to spread through the living quarters, bow and stern, onto the boat deck, and approached the holds and engine room. The watch radio operator Vedeneev, caught by the fire, jumped out of the cabin through the porthole, without having time to transmit either a distress signal or a message that he was forced to leave his watch. The captain ordered an SOS signal via the spare radio, but it had already burned out in the chart room. The general fire alarm was announced only a few minutes later by the ship's bell.

Several independent, randomly formed groups in different parts of the ship were engaged in extinguishing the fire. On the night of September 3, when rescuers approached the ship, the main fire had already been extinguished. The ship was towed, but then it turned out that it could sail on its own. On September 5, “Victory” arrived in Odessa, the rescued passengers arrived on the turbo ship “Vyacheslav Molotov”.

The fire killed two crew members - barmaid G. Gunyan and sailor V. Skripnikov and 40 passengers, including 19 women and 15 children, among them were Chinese Marshal Feng Yuxiang and his daughter and the widow of the writer A. N. Afinogenova Evgenia Bernardovna (Jenny Schwartz) .

The fire on the motor ship Pobeda and the death of the Chinese marshal were immediately reported to Stalin. There is an opinion that sabotage was initially suspected in the incident. The resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of September 14 completely and immediately canceled the repatriation of foreign Armenians to the USSR and prohibited the admission of Armenian immigrants to Armenia.

Exactly 63 years ago, on September 1, 1948, the radio station of the Black Sea Shipping Company received a report from the Pobeda motor ship: “We passed Novorossiysk and by 14:00 on September 2 we expect to arrive in Odessa”. The ship did not make contact again, but this did not alarm anyone at first. Only on the morning of September 2, the Black Sea Shipping Company asked for ships and ports along the liner’s route, but it turned out that none of them had contact with the Pobeda and had not heard SOS signals on the air. The command of the Black Sea Fleet immediately sent out search planes, and at 9 o'clock in the evening one of the pilots reported that 70 miles southeast of Yalta he had discovered a burnt ship and around it - five boats with people.

REFERENCE: After the end of the Great Patriotic War, a number of German ships restored at German shipyards entered the USSR merchant fleet. Among them was the liner “Iberia” (once the “Magdalena”), which received the name “Victory” in the Soviet fleet. It was a luxury cruise liner (it was on the deck of the “Victory” that Andrei Mironov sings about the “island of Bad Luck” - 20 years after the events described, this ship was filmed in “The Diamond Arm” as “Mikhail Svetlov”).
On July 31, 1948, the motor ship Pobeda with 323 passengers and 277 tons of cargo on board left the port of New York for Odessa.

On September 5, a terse TASS message appeared on the last page of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper: “In early August, the motor ship Pobeda left New York, heading to Odessa... On the way, a fire broke out on the ship due to careless handling of film films, which caught fire. There are casualties. Among the dead were Marshal Feng Yuxiang and his daughter. The ship was delivered to Odessa. An investigation is underway".
The fire killed two crew members (sailor Skripnikov and barmaid Gunyan, who was wearing a new thing - a nylon dress) and about 40 passengers (data on the number of victims varies), some of whom memoirists still remember. For example, Jenny Afinogenova, the widow of a famous Soviet playwright, an American who sailed to the USSR. And Anatoly Gromyko, the son of the long-time head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, will later write about the girl Klava - his school love. But the biggest name among those who died in that fire was Chinese Marshal Feng Yuxiang, who was traveling to the USSR on an important mission (it was believed that, in contrast to the rising Mao, whom Stalin did not really like, Feng could take one of the key posts in the government of the new China).

Today no one remembers this Marshal Feng, but then his death became news No. 1 in Europe and America. In the 1920s, Feng was one of the “militarists” - major military leaders who divided the Celestial Empire. In October 1924, already a general, Feng and his troops captured Beijing, carrying out a coup d'etat, and in 1926 he joined the Kuomintang party. In the summer of 1927, he supported the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, who broke off relations with the Chinese Communist Party. During the war with Japan, Feng was a supporter of cooperation with the communists, and in 1926 he handed over to the Bolsheviks their sworn enemy, the former white ataman Annenkov. He simply invited him to visit, and then handed him over to the security officers. Feng was also interesting because it was his guns that destroyed the famous Shaolin Monastery in 1928.
They say that when the fire started, the marshal made his way through the maddened crowd to the cabins to save his daughter (she was left to take a bath). But either he suffocated in the smoke (he was a hero from a young age, he became obese over the years), or his heart could not stand it. His daughter also died (by the way, her mother, the widow of Marshal Feng Yuxiang, later joined the Chinese government as Minister of Health).

Marshal Feng was the most famous passenger of the Pobeda, but not the only one - there was another group of people on board, exotic from the Soviet point of view: Armenian repatriates from the Armenian diaspora scattered around the world. In 1946, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a decision “On measures regarding the return of foreign Armenians to Soviet Armenia.” The idea was actively supported by the then Catholicos Gevork VI and in 1946-48. “along the Armenian line” more than 100 thousand people moved to the Union, and more than 350 thousand Armenians from 12 countries of the world declared their desire to return. But after the fire on the Pobeda, repatriation was stopped: a resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of September 14, 1948 prohibited the reception of Armenians - they say that the Soviet authorities suspected that among the Armenian settlers there were American intelligence officers who carried out sabotage.

However, the investigation, which continued behind closed doors for several months, showed that Armenian saboteurs had nothing to do with it. As the investigation found out, on the evening of September 1, 1948, some of the passengers gathered in the ship’s cinema hall to watch a film. At this time, non-staff projectionist Kovalenko asked sailor Skripnikov to rewind the films after viewing. The films were stored in a small storage room in the central part of the ship. Some were packed in tin boxes, and the part intended for rewinding lay open on the table. At about 15 o'clock, while rewinding on a manual machine, the tape sparkled and flared up. It set gramophone records on fire, a few seconds later the flames engulfed the entire storeroom, and a few minutes later the fire, escaping from the storeroom, engulfed the central part of the ship, including the navigation, steering and radio rooms, the captain's and navigators' cabins. The fire began to spread through the living quarters, bow and stern, onto the boat deck, and approached the holds and engine room.
The captain ordered an SOS signal via the spare radio, but it had already burned out in the chart room. The general fire alarm was announced only a few minutes later by the ship's bell. Several independent, randomly formed groups in different parts of the ship were engaged in extinguishing and quite successfully - when rescuers approached the ship on the night of September 3, the main fire had already been extinguished. The ship was towed, but then it turned out that it could sail on its own. On September 5, the Pobeda arrived in Odessa, the rescued passengers arrived on the Vyacheslav Molotov turbo ship.

But the main cause of this fire was declared to be nitrocellulose-based film, which was then used by the entire global film industry. Nitrofilm suited everyone in all respects: it was flexible, plastic, provided a clean and clear image and had only one drawback - flammability. Already at a temperature of plus 40, it could flare up like gunpowder (in principle, it was almost gunpowder - the chemical composition is very close). On the Internet you can find memories of old projectionists about how fires occurred. Then there is a break during the session, the mechanic hesitated, did not turn off the device, and the film lights up simply from the light flow. They were transporting yaufs (iron boxes for film) in a car, there was an undischarged battery on the floor, and the shaking of the yaufa threw it at it, shorted the terminals, and sparked. Moreover, the nitro film burned with the release of deadly poisonous compounds of hydrocyanic acid. Therefore, there were the strictest fire safety instructions regarding film equipment and the organization of film screenings. But strict instructions exist in any area - only for some reason planes crash, trains derail and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes.

At the beginning of 1949, a closed trial was held of the perpetrators of the incident, who received long sentences (the death penalty had been abolished in the USSR by that time). They were announced: projectionist, it’s clear why; first mate responsible for fire safety; the radio operator who failed to transmit SOS on time, the captain responsible for everything on the ship; and the dispatcher of the shipping company, for the company.
Feng's body was cremated in Moscow (farewell was held with full military honors) and later the urn was solemnly reburied in China. In 1961, Armenian repatriation was resumed. And most importantly, the transfer of film production to film with a non-flammable acetate base began.
But life is life, and the old tapes were in use for a long time. In November 1957, a moving film arrived in the Western Belarusian village of Bussa. The village school hall was packed - they brought the pre-war “Guy from the Taiga”. The mechanic sat with his installation not in a separate booth, but in the doorway; he laid out reels of nitro film on the floor, refueling them by the light of a kerosene lamp standing on the table. The lamp overturned - 65 dead. The tragedy was reported to Khrushchev, but then they did not look for saboteurs, but simply classified any information about the incident and, with a categorical order, accelerated the introduction of acetate film.

These are the consequences simultaneously for China, and for foreign Armenians, and for the Soviet film industry (seemingly non-overlapping things) that a fire on board one ship had. And it is never possible for us to predict how a seemingly simple matter will respond on the other side of the Earth - a sailor rewinding a film on a ship sailing from Yalta to Odessa.
And the motor ship “Pobeda” itself continued to operate as part of the Black Sea Shipping Company on domestic and foreign lines until the mid-70s. In the 50-60s, the ship was still listed among the best ships of the shipping company; during the Caribbean crisis in 1962, it was used to transport Soviet troops to Cuba, and only at the end of the 1970s was it withdrawn from the fleet and disposed of.

In the fall of 1948, on the Soviet motor ship Pobeda, traveling on a special flight from the USA to Odessa, there was a fire. 42 people died, among them Chinese Marshal Feng Yuxiang and his daughter.“An accident,” stated Soviet newspapers

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, a number of German ships, restored at German shipyards, entered the USSR merchant fleet. Among them was the liner Iberia, which received the name Pobeda in the Soviet fleet. It was a large ship, designed to carry 340 passengers and 4,000 tons of cargo. During the restoration, its capacity was increased to 600 passenger seats.
On July 31, 1948, the motor ship Pobeda with 323 passengers and 277 tons of cargo on board left the port of New York.

No SOS signal
On September 1, the radio station of the Black Sea Shipping Company received a report from the ship: “Pobeda” has passed Novorossiysk and expects to arrive in Odessa by 2 p.m. on September 2. The ship never made contact again. However, at first this did not alarm anyone. Only on the morning of September 2, the Black Sea Shipping Company asked for ships and ports along the liner’s route, but it turned out that none of them had contact with the Pobeda and had not heard SOS signals on the air. The command of the Black Sea Fleet sent search planes, and at 21:00 one of the pilots reported that he had discovered a charred ship in
70 miles southeast of Yalta; Near it were five boats with people.
On September 5, a terse TASS message appeared on the last page of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper: “In early August, the motor ship Pobeda left New York, heading to Odessa... On the way, a fire broke out on the ship due to careless handling of film films, which caught fire. There are casualties. Among the dead were Marshal Feng Yuxiang and his daughter. The ship was delivered to Odessa. An investigation is underway."
The investigation continued behind closed doors for several months. As the investigation found out, on September 1, at about 1 p.m., the liner passed the Novorossiysk port. At this time, the acting ship projectionist, radio technician Kovalenko, decided to prepare a batch of films taken on the voyage for delivery to the cultural base, and asked sailor Skripnikov to rewind the films after viewing. The films were stored in a small storage room in the central part of the ship. Some were packed in tin boxes, and the part intended for rewinding lay open on the table. About 2 thousand gramophone records were stored in the same storeroom. At about 15 o'clock, while rewinding on a manual machine, the tape sparkled and flared up. It set the nearby skeins on fire. A few seconds later, the flames engulfed the pantry and the clothes on the sailor caught fire.
Skripnikov jumped out of the storeroom, slammed the door and, screaming for help, ran down the corridor. The hot air in the pantry knocked out the door, and the erupting fiery tornado engulfed the carpet runners and plywood bulkheads of the cabins. The flame, drawn along the corridor by a powerful stream of air, reached the ladder leading to the lobby of the overlying deck, and from there along two vertical stair shafts it reached the upper bridge, igniting everything in its path. In a matter of minutes, the fire engulfed the central part of the ship, including the navigation, steering and radio rooms, the captain's and navigators' cabins. The fire began to spread through the living quarters, bow and stern, onto the boat deck, and approached the holds and engine room.
The watch radio operator Vedeneev, caught by fire, jumped out of the cabin through the porthole, without having time to transmit either a distress signal or a message that he was forced to leave his watch. The captain ordered an SOS signal via the spare radio, but it had already burned out in the chart room. The general fire alarm was announced only a few minutes later by the ship's bell.
In principle, the liner was provided with life-saving equipment (about a dozen large lifeboats, life belts and rings), but the fire-fighting equipment on the ship was clearly not enough. A pump installed in the engine room with a flow rate of up to 70 m3/h was only able to help with a local fire; it was unable to extinguish a large fire. Several independent, randomly formed groups in different parts of the ship were engaged in extinguishing the fire.
On the night of September 3, when rescuers approached the ship, the main fire had already been extinguished. The ship was towed, but then it turned out that it could sail on its own. On September 5, the Pobeda arrived in Odessa, the rescued passengers arrived on the Vyacheslav Molotov turbo ship.
The fire killed two crew members (sailor Skripnikov and barmaid Gunyang, whose new outfit, a nylon dress, caught fire) and 40 passengers, among whom were Chinese Marshal Feng Yuxiang and his daughter. At the time of the fire, Feng was watching a movie with his wife and son, and his daughter was taking a bath in her cabin. When the fire spread throughout the ship, the marshal - an elderly man, overweight, but brave - helped put out the fire and tried to get into his daughter’s cabin himself. But apparently he inhaled carbon monoxide and smoke, lost consciousness and died. The marshal's daughter also died; she was found lying in the bathtub.

Passenger number one
At the beginning of 1949, a closed trial of those responsible for the incident took place. They were declared to be the non-staff projectionist Kovalenko, the sailor Skripnikov who was helping him, the captain of the ship Pakholok and his two assistants, as well as the radio operator who did not transmit the SOS signal, and the dispatcher of the shipping company. The ship's captain Nikolai Pakholok and projectionist Kovalenko were sentenced to 15 years in prison, political officer Pershukov - to ten, radio operator Vedeneev - to eight. Coastal service workers indirectly responsible for the tragedy received lighter sentences. And senior mate Alexander Nabokin, who was responsible for fire safety, was punished most severely: he was sentenced to 25 years in prison - the highest punishment at that time. In addition, contraband was found in his cabin - pieces of scarce panvelvet hidden in fire extinguishers.
Without rejecting the version of the film flash from its friction on the rewinding machine, the court came to the conclusion that the most likely cause of the film fire was the sailor Skripnikov smoking in the storeroom. But the possibility of sabotage was also considered. Having already left New York, the captain of the ship received a radiogram from the Black Sea Shipping Company, in which he was ordered to call at Alexandria to receive Armenian repatriates for transportation to Batumi. On August 22, 2020 repatriates boarded the ship, who were disembarked in Batumi in late August. The investigation assumed that in Alexandria, when so many passengers were boarding the ship, saboteurs entered the ship and started a fire. Moreover, pieces of some substance similar to ore were found on the ship in Batumi in different places. According to eyewitnesses, during a test arson they burned with a blue flame with a high temperature.
The author of these lines, who completed his studies at the Caspian Higher Naval School, in the summer of 1948, did an internship on ships in Odessa and Sevastopol. A few months later, having received the rank of naval midshipman, I was again sent to the Black Sea Fleet. There I ended up in Sevastopol, and I had a chance to see “Victory”. She stood on the outer roadstead and waited for space to become available at the quay wall of the ship repair yard.
I had many acquaintances at the plant who interacted with the ship’s crew. From conversations with them, I was able to find out some details of the emergency. The fire, according to my interlocutors, started after the passage of Yalta. In the middle part of the ship, under the captain's bridge, boxes of cargo taken on board caught fire. During the voyage they were moved from place to place more than once. Some witnesses subsequently claimed that boxes with unknown cargo burned like sparklers.
Before leaving New York, the wife of one of the Soviet diplomats leaving the United States did not want to return to her homeland, and the Americans took her under their wing. However, her luggage was loaded onto the Pobeda and was located in the middle part of the ship, where the fire started. In addition, before leaving New York, local authorities began disinfecting the ship. The crew lived in hotels for two days while the Americans restored order on the Pobeda, despite the captain’s protests. As a result, according to various indications, many items - furniture, carpets, curtains and even the surfaces of decks, cabin bulkheads and other premises, impregnated with a “disinfectant” composition - burned especially actively. All this ultimately went unnoticed by the investigation.
But the most intriguing circumstance relates to the Chinese marshal. He was traveling to the USSR on an important mission. It was believed that he could occupy one of the key positions in the government of the new China.
This was a man with a long biography. Feng Yuxiang began military service during the Xinhai Revolution of 1911-1913 and was soon promoted to command positions. In October 1924, already a general, Feng and his troops captured Beijing, carrying out a coup d'etat, and in 1926 he joined the Kuomintang party. In the summer of 1927, he supported the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, who broke off relations with the Chinese Communist Party. However, during the war with Japan (1937-1945), Feng was a supporter of cooperation with the communists.
In 1948, the defeat of the Kuomintang army by the troops of the communist People's Liberation Army of China was completed. The issue of creating a national government was on the agenda. The once all-powerful Feng had already passed the zenith of political glory. But he had just made another political turn, completely going over to the side of the Communist Party.
It is known that Stalin did not really trust Mao, calling him a “radish”: red on the outside, white on the inside. It is also known that, by providing certain military-technical assistance to the Chinese communists, Moscow gave priority to the then legitimate Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek. Perhaps, reflecting on the fate of China, Stalin developed several options with the involvement of “spare” figures. One of them could be Marshal Feng Yuxiang. His return to China was most likely to the detriment of Mao. Feng's mysterious death on a Soviet ship may have disrupted Stalin's strategic plans. And, quite obviously, it cleared the way for Mao to supreme personal power.

History of construction

The ship was built by order of the German shipping company HAPAG at the Schichau Werft shipyard in the city of Danzig (Polish Gdansk) in 1928 for operation on the line Europe - Central America - West Indies. The first voyage took place on December 29, 1928.

Twin-shaft power plant consisting of two 8-cylinder Sulzer diesel engines of the 8SM68 brand with a power of 3,500 hp each. With. each at 105 rpm. allowed the ship to reach a speed of about 15.5 knots, powered by two 4-blade propellers.

On August 31, the ship headed for Odessa. There were 310 passengers and crew members left on board. On September 1, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the radio station of the Black Sea Shipping Company in Odessa received a scheduled report from the ship that they had passed Novorossiysk and were expected to arrive in Odessa by two o'clock on September 2. After this, radio communication with the ship stopped.

On the morning of September 2, the Black Sea Shipping Company began to take measures to find out the reasons for the silence of the ship, asking for ships at sea and ports along the liner’s route: no one had contact with the Pobeda and did not hear SOS signals. The leadership turned to the command of the Black Sea Fleet for help, and search aircraft of naval aviation were sent to the sea. At 21.00 one of the pilots reported that he had discovered the burnt-out motor ship Pobeda 70 miles southeast of Yalta, with five boats with people near it. Help was sent to the emergency ship from Feodosia, Sevastopol and other places. Cadets and teachers of the Odessa Higher Naval School were sent from Odessa to help.

Investigation

According to the investigation, on September 1, 1948, at about 1 p.m., the liner passed the Novorossiysk port. At this time, the acting ship projectionist, radio technician Kovalenko, decided to prepare a batch of films taken on the voyage for delivery to the cultural base, and asked sailor Skripnikov to rewind the films after viewing. The films were stored in a small storage room in the central part of the ship. Some were packed in tin boxes, and the part intended for rewinding lay open on the table. About 2 thousand gramophone records were stored in the same storeroom. At about 15 o'clock, while rewinding on a manual machine, the film began to sparkle and flash. It set the nearby skeins on fire. A few seconds later, the flames engulfed the pantry and the clothes on the sailor caught fire. Skripnikov jumped out of the storeroom, slammed the door and, screaming for help, ran down the corridor. The door in the pantry was knocked out by hot air, and the erupting fiery tornado engulfed the carpet runners and plywood bulkheads of the cabins. The flame, drawn along the corridor by a powerful stream of air, reached the ladder leading to the lobby of the overlying deck, and from there along two vertical stair shafts it reached the upper bridge, igniting everything in its path. In a matter of minutes, the fire engulfed the central part of the ship, including the navigation, steering and radio rooms, the captain's and navigators' cabins. The fire began to spread through the living quarters, bow and stern, onto the boat deck, and approached the holds and engine room. The watch radio operator Vedeneev, caught by the fire, jumped out of the cabin through the porthole, without having time to transmit either a distress signal or a message that he was forced to leave his watch. The captain ordered an SOS signal via the spare radio, but it had already burned out in the chart room. The general fire alarm was announced only a few minutes later by the ship's bell.

Several independent, randomly formed groups in different parts of the ship were engaged in extinguishing the fire. On the night of September 3, when rescuers approached the ship, the main fire had already been extinguished. The ship was towed, but then it turned out that it could sail on its own. On September 5, “Victory” arrived in Odessa, the rescued passengers arrived on the turbo ship “Vyacheslav Molotov”.

The fire killed 42 people: two crew members - barmaid G. Gunyan and sailor V. Skripnikov and 40 passengers, including 19 women and 15 children, among them were Chinese Marshal Feng Yuxiang, a participant in the militaristic era, with his daughter and the widow of the writer A. N. Afinogenov Evgenia Bernardovna (Jenny Schwartz).

The fire on the motor ship Pobeda and the death of the Chinese marshal were immediately reported to Stalin. There is an opinion that sabotage was initially suspected in the incident. By a resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of September 14, the repatriation of foreign Armenians to the USSR was completely and immediately canceled and the admission of Armenian immigrants to Armenia was prohibited.

Consequences

At the beginning of 1949, a closed trial of those responsible for the incident took place. They were recognized as the non-staff projectionist Kovalenko, the sailor Skripnikov who helped him, the captain of the ship Pakholok and his two assistants, as well as the radio operator who did not transmit the SOS signal, and the dispatcher of the shipping company. The ship's captain Nikolai Pakholok and projectionist Kovalenko were sentenced to 15 years in prison, political officer Pershukov - to ten, radio operator Vedeneev - to eight. Coastal service workers indirectly responsible for the tragedy received lighter sentences. And first mate Alexander Nabokin, who was responsible for fire safety, was punished most severely: he was sentenced to 25 years in prison - the highest punishment existing at that time.

Further fate

Pobeda continued to operate as part of the Black Sea Shipping Company on domestic and foreign routes. In the mid-1950s, she was listed among the best ships of the shipping company.

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A remarkable addition to the passenger Black Sea Shipping Company were four German liners, which the USSR also received as part of reparations from Nazi Germany. The first to arrive on the Black Sea liner "Pobeda", which already on April 15, 1947 left Odessa on its first flight on the Crimea-Caucasus line.

The history of this liner began back in 1928 at the shipyard in Danzig. The ship received its first name - "Rio Magdalena". The liner entered service on December 14, 1928, and on December 29, the Magdalena set off on its first voyage from Hamburg to the West Indies. The vessel was painted in the traditional Harag company colors - black hull and white superstructure. For solidity, the liner had two smokers, but during a major overhaul in Hamburg they were replaced with one wide pipe. The full (gross) tonnage of the vessel was 9779 GRT, The hull length reached 148.1 m, width - 18.5 m, draft - 10.5 m. Two eight-cylinder diesel engines from Shihau had a total power of 6800 hp. and provided a full speed of 15 knots, operating on two four-blade propellers. Major repairs and re-equipment lasted from May 28, 1934 to February 1935, and the liner, after leaving repairs, received the name "Iberia". The ship could carry 123 1st class passengers, 102 2nd class passengers, and 106 3rd class passengers. The ship's crew consisted of 177 people.

The liner spent the Second World War in Gotenhafen (Kiel), and was used by the Kriegsmarine as a base ship for German submarines. The liner was handed over to the USSR as reparation on February 18, 1946 and crossed to the Black Sea under its own power. The ship received a new name - "Victory". In September 1948, after leaving Batumi, a fire broke out on the ship with numerous casualties, and Chinese Marshal Feng Yu Xiang and his family also died. All forty dead passengers and two crew members were buried at the memorial of the 2nd Odessa Christian Cemetery. The coffin with the body of Marshal Feng Yu Xiang was sent by plane to Moscow, where it was cremated. After the accident, the ship was repaired in Wismar (Germany) until 1950, after which the updated Pobeda returned to the Black Sea, to its native Crimean-Caucasian line. The demoted and visa-deprived sailors called the Crimean-Kalym line. And ordinary passengers simply adored the journey from Odessa to Batumi and back. For some little money they plunged into another world - travel and adventures, southern nights and love affairs. Even if you were completely broke, you could buy a deck ticket, one night on a sun lounger on the deck, if you didn’t have enough charm to get better, and you were already in Yalta, or one more night - and you were in Sochi... On the Pobeda there was the most beautiful, among passenger ships, a two-tier restaurant decorated in mahogany.

“Victory” also starred in a feature film. Together with the motor ship "Russia" she starred in Leonid Gaidai’s comedy “The Diamond Arm” as the passenger ship "Mikhail Svetlov", heading on a cruise along the route Leningrad - Odessa - Leningrad, with a stop in Istanbul. It is on the deck of the Pobeda that Andrei Mironov sings a song about the Island of Bad Luck. The liner was in operation until 1977, and then was sold abroad for scrap.

The motor ship "Russia" was considered the flagship of the passenger fleet of the Black Sea Shipping Company. All older generation Odessa residents remember the famous liner. The diesel-electric ship was built in Hamburg (Germany). The ship was launched on January 15, 1938 and was named Patria. Patria was the largest diesel-electric passenger ship in the world at the time.

On August 27, 1938, the liner set out on its first regular voyage from Hamburg through the Panama Canal to the west coast of South America. With the outbreak of World War II, the Patria moved to Stettin, where it remained until 1942 as a floating barracks. Then the ship was moved to the port of Flensburg, where it continued to be used as a naval base. After Hitler's death, in early May 1945, the German imperial government headed by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz was stationed on the liner. Then the British liked the liner, underwent repairs at the Belfast shipyard and, under the name "Empire Welland", was used for military transport. In February 1946, the liner was transferred as reparation to the Soviet Union and in the same year, under the new name "Russia", carried out a flight from Liverpool to New York.

Since 1948, "Russia" joined the Crimean-Caucasian line. The liner had a total capacity of 16,595 GRT.

Hull length - 182.2 m, beam - 22.5 m, draft - 11.1 m. The propulsion system of the ship consisted of six MAN diesel engines (five 8-cylinder and one 6-cylinder), six diesel generators and two electric motors. The total power of the power plant reached 15,000 hp. and full speed - 17 knots.

The liner carried up to 730 passengers (since 1969 - 792), incl. 185 first class and luxury class. The number of crew and service personnel reached 240-260 people.

The diesel-electric ship "Russia" was extremely popular among vacationers and often took on board an additional 200 - 250 (and, if necessary, up to 500) "deck" passengers, who spent the night in sun loungers on the promenade decks, without having their own cabins. Passengers handed over such items to storage rooms.

In addition to cruise and liner flights, residents of Odessa, and not only, are very fond of the 2-3 day excursions Odessa - Yalta, Odessa - Sevastopol. Over time, the venerable liner already looked old-fashioned, compared to younger ships built in the 1960s - 1980s, but still somehow unusual, grandiose and very majestic. "Russia" sailed without incident until the end of 1984, was taken out of service, and in 1985 was sold for scrap to Japan.