The Sinking of the Moskva, Part 2

 The Sinking of the Moskva, Part 2

There is nothing like making a posting and wake up 8 hours later and have new evidence to look at. There are photos of the damaged ship before it sunk. It is showing about a 15 degree list to port, and damage to the port side superstructure.

It does not show damage to the Vertical Launch SAM system midships. Between the stacks and the nippled radar dome. So I was wrong predicting a hit occurred there. I do see a little damage to the hull aft, and under the radar dome. Possibly that is fire water runoff. It looks too intact for a missile strike.

Going to the close up. In the area still smoking you can see flames deeper in the interior. This photo is in the daylight, and sunrise is around 6 am local. So this is at least 5 hours after the strike.

I see two dark circular patches in the smoke, which could be the impact sites. Ukraine said that there were two missiles fired. I do not see any structural damage from those strikes. Which implies the warheads exploded on the surface, and most of their energy was diverted around the superstructure. Ukraine should take note and make the missile semi armor piercing. If it wasn't for the fuel fire, the Moskva would have gotten off light.

Which takes us to the Vulkan, surface to surface missile canisters. They are gone. Their warheads did not explode, or this would be a very different picture. But it does seem like their fuel caught fire and burned, about 24 tons of of it.

Then I see a lot of rectangular spots on the hull which looks like hull plates have been blown out. Many are at the main deck and look too regular to be accidental. They may be blow out plates for some munitions stored there. Oh for some blue prints. But two are larger and below the waterline. This is probably why she is listing to port.

Moskva in pristine condition. Note there are no black rectangles below the main deck.

 

I did see two videos of one impact. One was an obvious forgery. The other looked real, but I couldn't find it again. It looked real because after the impact, the smoke trail upward was a characteristic mushroom cloud, and yes, normal explosions do that, but in addition, the churning upward smoke was bright in spots, evidence of a fuel fire from the Vulkan's jet fuel.