Talk:Leningrad-class destroyer

Who sank the Moskva?

The article has

Moskva had a very short career in the Black Sea Fleet as she was sunk on 26 June 1941 by the Romanian destroyer Regina Maria

and that is sourced to Evz.ro. An editor is wanting to change this to

Moskva had a very short career in the Black Sea Fleet as she was sunk on 23 June 1941 by either a mine or the Soviet submarine Shch-206

and is insisting. There are a couple of issues here:\

1. Is Evz.ro reliable?
2. What does it actually say?
3. What is the souce for saying that the Moskva was sunk by a mine or a submarine, and on the 23rd?

As to the first, I dunno, but Evz.ro seems to be a professionaly produced general-audience general-news site. You'd think they have a fact-checking operation. Absent evidence to the contrary, looks like a good site.

As to the third, the editor hasn't offered up a ref for the mine-or-sub-on-June-23 scenario. If there is one, let's see it. If there isn't, we may have to delete the reference to the Queen Mary, but let's not replace it with an assertion that that has no ref at all.

As to the second, I can't read Romanian, so it's difficult, but it looks likes it says something like the Moskva was fired on and sunk by the Queen Mary and Battery Tirpitz -- which I assume must be the name of a shore battery, maybe German -- and that it's impossible to say which of these actually made hits and/or deserves credit for the sinking. It also gives the date of the sinking as June 26.

So fine. We'll change it to

Moskva had a very short career in the Black Sea Fleet as she was sunk on 26 June 1941 by the Romanian destroyer Regina Maria and shore batteries

absent further evidence to the contrary, and hopefully this is satisfactory. Herostratus (talk) 14:20, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Update

Oh, OK, elsewhere in the article there is a source. It looks like we have three different sources giving three different possible causes for the sinking -- shells from the destroyer and shore battery, hitting a mine while evading these, or friendly fire torpedoes from a Soviet sub. June 26 seems to be the date though.

I guess our best path is to say we don't know and offer to the reader all three possibilities, and I'll do that now. Herostratus (talk) 14:31, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Some sources I've found on GBooks:

• World War II in Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by David T. Zabecki, p. 1468 "One, the Moskva, was lost to a Romanian minefield".
• War in the Balkans: An Encyclopedic History from the Fall of the Ottoman ..., edited by Richard C. Hall, p. 38: "the Soviet destroyer leader Moskva was sunk by mines while attempting to dodge incoming rounds from coastal batteries".
• Steel and Ice: The U-boat Battle in the Arctic and Black Sea 1941-45, by Lawrence Paterson: "The Tirpitz battery added 39 shells [...] panicking the crew of Moskva enough with near-misses that she ran onto a minefield and sank"'
• Stalin's Ocean-going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programs by Mikhail Monakov, Jurgen Rohwer, p. 174: "V.V. Kostrichenko states that the destroyer leader Moskva was sunk by the Soviet submarine Shch-206 [...] This view should be considered speculative, due to lack of dependable sources".
• Destine individuale și colective în comunism by Budeancă Cosmin, Olteanu Florentin (in Romanian): "Enemy ships retreated in order to exit the range of the coastal batteries, but during the maneuver Moskva probably hit a mine and sunk".

Russian wiki provides reliable sources pointing to the ship either being sunk by friendly fire from a submarine, or hitting the Romanian minefield.

Anonimu (talk) 20:01, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Greetings. I found 4 English books about WW2 that report Moskva being sunk by Romanian mines, plus one that even says when the mines were laid and by what ships. I found more English books that refer to the cause of sinking simply as "mines" and one even "Axis mines", but would you want to see 10 citations one after another? My point is that mines seem to be the most cited cause in English sources. I admit that there are other claims though, that's why I said "most likely" in my edit, as in leaving some room for doubt. 79.113.133.40 (talk) 11:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes OK but I'm wondering if these other possible causes shouldn't also be mentioned (and I have done so). Apparently the Moskva was under naval gunfire attack at the time she sunk, so why couldn't that have sunk or helped sink the ship? I don't see how your sources can be so sure that the vessel could not have been sunk by enemy shellfire (or, by mistake, by the Soviet sub that was apparently in the area). Herostratus (talk) 14:23, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

It's simple. Have you ever heard of a shell, of 280 mm or not, to literally split in half a ship as large as a destroyer? Several sources state that she was split in half before sinking, which means the blow came from below, in this case, a mine. I admit it might be my fault here for overlooking this detail, but I thought that, well, she sank, that's what matters mainly. Then, the submarine torpedoeing her in friendly fire theory also holds little water. In the sources backing this, it is also stated that the submarine in question, Shch-206, was depth-charged and sunk by a Soviet destroyer in retaliation. Yet the same Shch-206 is stated, in numerous other sources, to have been either sunk by a Romanian torpedo boat or also a mine sometime in July, as in days after this naval action. Thus, the mines remain the most plausible cause. This is how I see it. 79.113.133.40 (talk) 14:45, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

• Comment -- I'm a bit weary of Special:Contributions/79.113.133.40 as this reminds me about the banned user Romanian-and-proud. Apologies if this is not you, but this is brand new IP editing on a specialist topic, so I'm a bit concerned. K.e.coffman (talk) 14:52, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Greetings sir. I was not aware of this and I deeply apologize for concerning you. I am a mere naval enthusiast, specializing mainly on the Black Sea, and I sometimes make Wiki edits in my free time. I simply saw this ambiguity about what sank this certain destroyer, so I checked some books and most point to the (Romanian) mines. 79.113.133.40 (talk) 14:59, 27 September 2016 (UTC)