MOSKVA icebreaker

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MOSKVA icebreaker

Post by shipstamps » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:07 pm


Built as the first of a 5-icebreaker ships class.
Built by the Wärtsila Koncernen Sandvikens Skepps., at Helsingfors, Finland, for the Russian Government.
10 Feb. 1959 launched under the name MOSKVA.
Tonnage 9.427 gross, 6.300 dwt. Displacment 15.350 tons. Dim. 122.1 x 24.5 x 14.0m., draught 10.5 m.. Length between pp 112.4m.
Powered diesel electric by eight 9-cyl Sulzer engines, manufactured by Wärtsila at Vasa, 22.000 shp., speed 18 knots. Three screws.
Crew 177, and had accommodation for a research group of 9, all were berthed in single of two berth cabins.
Commissioned 11 Jan. 1960.

At that time she was the most powerful diesel-electric ice-breaker in the world. She was built to keep the northeast channel in north Russia longer navigable than has so far been possible.
She has no propellers forward; the Arctic ice is so hard and thick that it only can be broken by sheer force.
The hull was all welded and partly built of special high-impact strength steel. Maximum plate thickness is 2.12 inch.
Due to the vessel being fitted all round with wing tanks the hull is double up to the tweendeck above the waterline.
Was fitted out with an automatic electrical driven towing winch having a pull of 60 tons, which could be used for ships in the ice in trouble.
Fitted out with a helicopter landing deck, and had a hangar to fit two helicopters.
She had two heeling tanks and four ballast pumps capable of pumping 480 tons of water from one side to the other side of the ship in 120 seconds.

1985 She tried and succeeded to rescue a pod of at least 3000 migrating belugas near the Bearing Strait. The belugas were chasing a shoal of cod in the narrow Seyavina Strait. They lingered to long around and a strong wind closed the entrance by a wall of ice. There were only a few holes in the ice through which the whales could breath.
When the local hunters spotted the whales, it was too much for the local population, and together with villagers from a nearby settlement of Yandrakinot they decided to rescue the belugas.
Feb 1985 at least the ice-breaker MOSKVA could be diverted from her regular duty and she came to the rescue and on 22 February the MOSKVA made a channel wide enough to the open sea 10 miles away. But the belugas did not want to follow.
At least by trying out all means of music over the ships loudspeakers, she followed the ship and to their freedom on the tune’s of a classical musical (the full story you can read on http://www.fascinatingearth.com/Ice%20B ... 0Suite.htm )

The MOSKVA was decommissioned by 1997.
1998 Broken up.

Source: Navicula. Merchant Ships World Built 1960. Hazegray web-site. http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz

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