One of the world’s oldest active-duty naval ships has been damaged by a modern guided missile. The ship is the Russian Navy’s Kommuna, an innovative submarine salvage ship in service since 1915, US Naval Institute News reports
The Kommuna was built as the Volkhov with a twin-hull (catamaran) configuration and four 250-ton-capacity lifting devices that straddled the hulls. The salvage concept was to lower cables and lift a stricken submarine between the hulls and transport her to port.
The ship also was provided with salvage pumps, repair shops, and medical facilities. When not employed in the salvage role, the ship could provide support for submarines, including torpedoes and fuel and berths for 60 submarine crewmen.
The Volkhov supported Russian and British submarines in the Baltic during World War I and salvaged two stricken Russian submarines.
In 1922, the ship was renamed the Kommuna (Commune), a popular name among the Bolsheviks in revolutionary Russia.
Her most notable salvage operation was raising the new British submarine L-55, which sank in the Gulf of Finland in 1919. The Kommuna raised the L-55 from a depth of 200 feet on 11 August 1928.
After being examined by Russian engineers, the L-55 was refitted in the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and was commissioned in the Soviet Navy in 1931. The submarine provided the Soviets with extensive data on Western submarine construction practices and contributed to the design of subsequent Soviet undersea craft.
From the beginning of World War II in the Soviet Union in June 1941—called the Great Patriotic War—the Kommunacontinued to serve as a support and salvage ship at Leningrad. Although damaged in German bombings of the city, she continued to provide valuable service throughout the war.
Between 1950 and 1953 the Kommuna was refitted with Dutch diesel engines and was extensively modernized in a Dutch shipyard. In October 1957, she raised the Soviet submarine M-256 (Project 615/Quebec), which had suffered a devastating fire and sank in the Baltic.
A decade later the Kommuna sailed for the Black Sea and was based in Crimea. She was refitted to support search-and-rescue submersibles. In 1974 she supported a dive by the submersible Poisk-2 to a record depth of 6,647 feet. Later she served as a floating base for the submersible that searched for a downed Sukhoi Su-24 (NATO Fencer) aircraft that had crashed in water 5,600 feet deep.
The Kommuna was laid up in 1984 for transfer to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The transfer was canceled, with the abandoned ship being stripped and looted. Completely rehabilitated, she was returned to service with the Black Sea Fleet. In 2009 she was fitted to support more advanced rescue submersibles and was reclassified as a rescue ship (instead of salvage ship).
Remaining operational, the Kommuna was based at Sevastopol in Crimea—part of Ukraine—when Russia forcibly occupied the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. During the fighting that began with the subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there were intensive efforts by Ukraine to attack Russian ships in the Black Sea area with missiles and explosive drones. Among the several Russian ships sunk was the guided missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The Kommuna reportedly was struck by missile fragments on 21 April, during an attack on ships in Sevastopol by Ukraine-launched Neptune guided missiles. The Russian governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail V. Razvozhayev, was reported to have said: “Falling fragments caused a small fire, which was quickly extinguished.”
Apparently, the Kommuna has so far survived another conflict—as she has two world wars and more than a century of active service.
