The Mystery of the Giulio Cesare

[The Balbinater]

So after WWII was completed, the Battleship Giulio Cesare was surrenedered by Italy to the Soviet Union.

Then in 1955 the ship mysteriously exploded with all hands on board.

The "official" cause was an unexploded mine somewhere in the harbor, but other sources say the battleship was destroyed by a more sinister force.... the retired remnants of the X MAS!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_battleship_Giulio_Cesare

If any Italians in Italy have heard any new information or research regarding this, I certainly would like to know!

(yes I know, this is a WWII conspiracy theory, but interesting none the less)

 

[Dr. Frog]

I'm not really sure why anyone would go to so much effort to sink a 40+ year old battleship at a time that battleships were practically mostly obsolete, and don't see any problems with the official version, but that is the kind of thing the Xth M.A.S would do, so who knows??
Beautiful ship; there's something about refitted WWI era ships I really like...

 

[Director]

If it had been sunk by a covert operation it is almost certain that someone would have released the information by now.

On the other hand, if you were a Soviet officer whose navy had just managed to lose its most powerful surface warship and needed something to tell the Kremlin's political leadership... well... blaming it on renegade Italians beats blaming it on flying-saucer-aliens which beats accepting responsibility for it yourself.

The Russian navy hadn't had any experience with operating big ships since at least the start of WW2 if not earlier - their own WW1 retreads were in terrible shape. Occam's razor points to an internal magazine explosion or contact by a drifting mine. Not sure what the forensics say about the direction of the explosion, but that's what I would expect.


The rebuilt Italian WW1-era dreadnoughts were beautiful ships and could have had some operational utility. But by the 1950s they were pretty much obsolete, as Dr. Frog says, except for providing a scratch for Stalin's big-ship itch.

 

[The Balbinater]

thanks for humoring me with the responses guys, even though I have my "tin foil hat" on ... )))

here's the thing though...

the ship is named after JULIUS CAESAR !!!

so what nationalistic Italian in his right mind would allow JULIUS CAESAR to be captured by an enemy force?

 

[Axe99]

Interesting story, but I'd expect Director's explanation to be on point (although noting wrong with sharing a good story, and any post with a WW2 ship in it is good with me ).

 

[Sparrow]

There is no J in Italian. Keep it at Giulio Cesare.

It was just a good story that a present was left in the ship. That it kept the Black Prince's name relevant until his misadventure in 1970 so much the better.

 

[Klausewitz]

Let me say this:
IF they did the Giulio in in a covert operation they did it quite well.
The claimed cause was a German mine.
And then when they swept, they found numerous of those still in the harbor one within 50 metres.
So that would be quite a nice job.
Because often when something is blown up covertly people do what is quite sensible on first glance, namely only bringing as much explosives as needed, leaving one well-timed oddly convenient explosion which seems quite strange and suspicious.