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Photo: Training ship Perekop.
The tragedy happened to training ship Perekop on July 31 can not be explained by the desire to take spectacular pictures for a sailor's discharge album, an eyewitness of the accident told . According to him, during the gun firing drill one of the suffered sailors was keeping watch on the afterdeck, and the others were nearby, just because no one ordered them to get off the deck. None of the sufferers was taking pictures then.
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Accident on Perekop: Theory of Discharge Album Contrived
08/22/2012 |
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Recall that 5 crewmembers of training ship Perekop suffered by explosion of a 30-mm shell during the gun firing drill held on July 31 in the Gulf of Finland. As was reported then by RIA Novosti referring to a source in Leningrad Naval Base, the young men "decided to take pictures for discharge album and got on the top deck, having violated the shipboard chart. If they had obeyed the regulations, the tragedy wouldn't happen".
One of them, a 20-year old sailor Nikita Mitrofanov who had been drafted in the spring and served in the engineering department soon died fr om the head wound despite appropriate first medical aid. He died in Kronshtadt hospital wh ere he was promptly brought by a motorboat along with other sufferers.
The rest wounded sailors were then transferred to the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg; they are still there passing appropriate medical treatment. According to the academy's inquiry office, health status of the sailors fr om Perekop is satisfactory.
However, there were some other exercises onboard Perekop prior to the firing drills that day, the eyewitness told . In particular, inflatable corner reflectors were prepared on the afterdeck; before that, the smokescreen was laid and smoke pots were ignited. After overboard discharge of a floating dummy mine, the ship turned and apparently got too close to it.
That made gunners open fire at almost lim it depression angle. One of the last shells in the burst hit portside boat davit and exploded. Five sailors standing on the top deck next to the gun mount were wounded by fragments. According to the source of , more crewmembers could suffer then, since there were some other men on the deck. Some of them tried to capture the firing drill on his cellphone camera, recalled the eyewitness. But none of them was making any "group shots".