Qualla: Soviet Cruiser Chervona Ukraina

Soviet Cruiser Chervona Ukraina: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The ship was launched into a country that no longer existed by the time she was finished. Begun under one empire, renamed for a Ukrainian statesman, run aground by her own builders, raised from the mud, and finally rechristened Chervona Ukraina, or Red Ukraine, this light cruiser carried the turbulence of her age in her very name. She spent the peaceful years showing the Soviet flag in the ports of the Mediterranean. She spent her war years under fire off the Crimean coast. And she met her end where so much Black Sea history has ended, in the harbor of Sevastopol.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Soviet Cruiser Chervona Ukraina: A Hull With Three Names

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Her story is a chronicle of Ukraine's chaotic early twentieth century, told through a single steel hull. Laid down before the First World War, she was still unfinished when revolution swept the Russian Empire away. In late 1918 the government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi, briefly...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Soviet Cruiser Chervona Ukraina: The Shape of a Warship

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. By the time she entered service she was a proper light cruiser, more than 160 meters long, driven by steam turbines to nearly thirty knots. She bristled with fifteen 130-millimeter guns and banks of torpedo tubes, and in an experiment that never quite worked, she was even fitted ...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Soviet Cruiser Chervona Ukraina: Three Bombs at Sevastopol

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. When war came to the Black Sea in 1941, Chervona Ukraina went straight into the fight. She helped lay a defensive minefield off Sevastopol, then poured gunfire onto the enemy during the siege of Odessa and escorted the convoys carrying reinforcements in and evacuees out. She ferr...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain