The Black Sea Fleet Fights Again

Posted by Christopher Eger Aug 20, 2008

With the Russian incursion into disputed South Ossetia, the Russian Black Sea sailed forth again into combat. Born into battle in 1771 the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been wrapped in history. The Battles of Battle of Cape Kaliakra, Sinope and others carved the Sea into a Russian lake from the Ottoman Empire. The Crimean war and the defense of Sevastopol 1854-1855 was an epic in modern warfare that has tragically been forgotten. The first Ironclad combat was in the Black Sea in 1854, almost a generation before the Monitor and Merrimack. The Tsar's naval mutiny on board the Potemkin was in the Black Sea. Even wrought with revolutionaries the Russian fleet fought a combined Turko-German force alone in World War one and only lost by technicality. More than two hundred Black Sea Fleet sailors were made Heroes of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War.

On August 9, 2008 a force of Black Sea fleets lead by their flagship the 11,400 ton Slava class cruiser RFS Moskova, sailed across the sea and landed a regiment of some 4,000 paratroopers ashore. The Fleet engaged in brief combat with a number of Georgian vessels sinking at least one with a "Malakhit" (SS-N-9) anti-surface missile and bottling up the remainder in the harbor. Georgian sources stated that "saboteur' possibly Russian naval Spetsnaz teams, mined and destroyed another six of their Coast guard and Border Patrols ships while at anchor on the night of August 12th.

And the beat goes on……