The Russian Black Sea Fleet still has one relic of the World War II German navy: the fleet oiler Istra, launched in 1942 and shown here berthed at Sevastopol in 2012.Īs it happens, one World War II-era German navy ship is still in service in the Black Sea: the fleet oiler Istra, commissioned in 1942, transferred to the USSR as part of reparations after World War II, and currently serving in the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
The RFE/RL photo essay shows several of these hulks and the hazards they cause. Serbia estimates a cost of $30 million to remove the part of the sunken fleet that resides in the part of the Danube that borders Serbia. RFE/RL reports that drought in Europe has lowered the waters of the Danube, bringing more than twenty of these hulks back to the surface, where they are a hazard to navigation and fishing. Zieb decided to scuttle the whole flotilla rather than let the Soviets capture it, and on September 6 and 7, 1944, Kampfgruppe Zieb was sent to the bottom of the Danube where most of it still rests, some hulks with ammunition still on board. The photos of RFE/RL’s “ Wrecked Nazi Warships Of The Danube”, published yesterday, show the aftermath of what happened next. Retreating to the west, Kampfgruppe Zieb sailed up the Danube River, but found the Iron Gates held against it by the Red Army.
During the 1944 Nazi retreat from eastern Europe near the end of World War II, the Danube and Black Sea Fleets of the Axis combined into a 200-ship flotilla called Kampfgruppe Zieb, named for their German commander, Rear Admiral Paul-Willy Zieb.
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