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WET & HOT NEWS ! > Russia
Traces of Kolchak’s gold found ?
The 08 Sep. 2010 at 18:54Treasure Hunting / recovery
By Elena Kovachich - The English.ruvr.ru
Baikal, the deep-diving manned vehicle Mir-2 has discovered a strange metal thing resembling a bar of gold. Unfortunately, the mini-submarine failed to reach it.
Using only video recordings, experts will now try to determine whether it can really be the legendary gold of the Russian Empire.
Since the first stage of the international research expedition at Lake Baikal which started in 2008, its participants have hoped to find the treasure.
In the autumn of 1919, during the Civil War in Russia, Tsarist Admiral Alexander Kolchak of the White Army was entrusted to transport 500 tons of gold away from Russia. Guarded by the Czech legion, the gold was loaded aboard a train that went along the Trans Siberian Railroad.
But Kolchak was removed from his post, captured by the Bolsheviks and executed. The fate of the Russian gold remains unknown to this day. Someone believes it was conveyed abroad under the control of the Czech legion. According to another version, the railway was blown up and the gold plunged into Lake Baikal.
Indeed, the expedition of 2008 discovered carriages dating back to the Civil War period, although they had no gold inside. On August 30th the same year, manned bathyscaphes submerged into the lake’s southern part, near the village of Listvyanka to search for any archaeological artifacts related to the so-called Kolchak’s gold, according to deputy director of the Foundation for maintaining Lake Baikal Inna Krylova.
Found on the collapsed slope of the Circum-Baikal Railway, the artifacts were out of reach due to the area’s moving ground. The Mir-2 vehicle therefore failed to approach the discoveries sufficiently close and its manipulator arm couldn’t reach the crevice, where the alleged gold bars were noticed.Treasure hunters comb world’s deepest lake
The 31 Aug. 2010 at 06:56Treasure Hunting / recovery
By RT - Prime Time Russia
The Russian Empire's lost gold may be buried at the bottom of Lake Baikal. That is the guess of an underwater research expedition, after it caught sight of something shiny.
Expedition members think they may have found the gold that admiral Kolchak seized during the Civil War almost a century ago. This was part of the country's gold reserve and amounted to more than 180 tonnes of gold.
All trace of the hoard was lost after a train crash in the region of Lake Baikal. Last year, researchers found the remains of a train carriage. Currently, the deep-water sub "Mir" is exploring the site.
It is still unclear if the find is the real thing or not. Some believe the gold reserve is being kept in Japanese and British banks. Scientists say there is no evidence that any treasures are hidden in the lake.
"This would be totally unscientific to comb the whole lake without any proof or documents hinting that the treasure was buried there,” Anatoly Sagalevich, head of the Baikal expedition, was quoted as saying by Izvestia newspaper. “In fact, we have found much more than Kolchak’s gold – the giant solid gas hydrate deposits. In the future, these could be used as alternative fuel – without any harm to the lake.”Shipwreck removal to become documentary
The 07 Aug. 2010 at 04:45Miscellaneous
From Barents Observer.com
The unique operation on removal of the wreck of the Russian cruiser Murmansk in Sørøya, Northern Norway, will be made into a documentary. A webcam has been put up by the wreck, giving people the opportunity to follow the operation on-line.
Since this is a unique project on world basis the contractor Norwegian company AF Gruppen Norge AS and the Norwegian Coastal Administration want to document the operation through a documentary, NRK reports. The two parties have concluded an agreement with a film production company.
The web camera that has been put up near the shipwreck will provide possibilities for time-laps sequences in the film. This is the first time the new camera system Roundshot livecam is being used in Norway, which on three seconds can take 360° freeze-frames. The on-line pictures will have a 24 hour delay, the Norwegian Coastal Administration’s web site reads.
Removal of the wreck of the Russian cruiser “Murmansk” started last summer, as BarentsObserver reported. The vessel ended its days in Sørøya in the rocks outside Sørvær on the coast of Finnmark in December 1994. The cruiser was being tugged southwards for scrapping when it tore away during a storm and has since been to a lot of nuisance to the local population.
The plan is to drain the sea bottom around the wreck by using jetties and then cut the vessel in pieces on the dry bottom. The operation should be completed in 2011.
Watch the removal operation on-line here !!A Treasure Trove in the Baltic Sea
The 17 Jul. 2010 at 06:03Parks & Protected SitesBy Frank Thadeusz - Strategy Page/Spiegel
In the early 1940s, engineers of the Third Reich conducted a series of tests that involving firing Henschel HS 293 glider bombs into the Baltic Sea. They were disheartened when the tests failed, because the steering systems of the massive projectile didn't work properly.
Now, almost 70 years later, one of the bombs -- weighing in at about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lbs) -- has been found in the path of the 1,220-kilometer (763-mile) pipeline that will link Germany to Russia's natural gas network. Early last week, specialists used a crane to hoist the obstacle out of the Baltic Sea near Lubmin, a coastal town in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Officials at Nord Stream, the company that will operate the pipeline, seemed relieved when the Nazi bomb had been removed. In recent weeks and months they had learned about the unpredictable side of the Baltic, as pipeline construction crews stumbled across debris from centuries gone by.
The remains of a thousand years of maritime trade, as well as the products of dozens of wars, are crumbling in the mud and silt at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. In addition to items with great cultural and historical value, the depths conceal the rusting remains of poison gas grenades, high explosive shells and aircraft bombs, all of which represent obstacles to pipeline construction. "It was not an easy situation," says Nord Stream spokesman Steffen Ebert. "We were under considerable time pressure."
For experts, salvaging war material at sea is a delicate operation, and one that is far more difficult than recovering similar objects on land. Divers use handheld probes to pinpoint suspicious objects in the water, which they then carefully expose. Only then do they face the anxious question of whether the objects are dangerous.
That question isn't always easy to answer, because the lumps have often been corroded into a hard-to-identify mass. "It looks like a placenta," says one of the divers.
The salvage teams are most fearful of gas grenades from World War II. A filled grenade shell, its structural integrity compromised by rust, can be a deadly hazard for a diver. In these cases, Eckhard Zschiesche and his team from the ordnance disposal service of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania use special containers to retrieve the hazardous waste.
The team usually detonates unexploded high-explosive shells and depth charges underwater. Other munitions remains are disassembled on the island of Usedom.
To rule out all hazards, Ebert says reassuringly, his team has employed far more complex procedures than usual. To avoid complications, the pipeline consortium has collected everything that could be found in the sediments, including rusty anchor chains.
While environmentalists are sharply opposed to the construction of the new Baltic Sea pipeline, archaeologists are delighted. The massive Nord Stream project to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany has uncovered dozens of shipwrecks and other historic artifacts.'Polar Odyssey' hoists sail
The 12 Jun. 2010 at 11:05Miscellaneous
By Olga Pshenitsyna - The Voice of Russia
“Polar Odyssey” brigantine, a replica of 18th century historic ships, has been launched in Karelia. Reconstructed from old drawings, the vessel will hoist its sails in the harbor town of Petrozavodsk on the western shore of Lake Onega, in northwestern Russia.
Together with a team of his associates, engineer Victor Dmitriev has been engaged in designing and building ships for 30 years already. He said it took them quite a long time to design and build “Polar Odyssey".
"Unlike building boats to order, which takes approximately a year, the brigantine has been under construction for a total of 10 years. Our hard work eventually resulted in a well-wrought vessel, mature like cognac in casks," says Dmitriev.
16 meters in length and 4.6 in width, “Polar Odyssey” is a replica of high-performance serviceable 18th century warships, used to conduct patrol and surveillance missions. Such vessels used to enjoy increased demand by sea pirates.
The brigantine has six cannons on board, which will serve a dual purpose, Victor Dmitriev says: "Above all, these are guns for saluting. Besides, we developed a tutorial program in the form of a role-playing game “Treasure Island” or “Pirates of Lake Onega”. This is a kind of sea paintball, with cannons firing paint-filled capsules."Warplane, M.I.A. For 60 Years, Comes Home to WNY
The 25 May. 2010 at 17:49Airplane stories
By Pete Gallivan - WGRZ.com
It was a journey that began christmas morning, 1943 in Wheatfield. A P-39 Airacobra, one of the 30,000 planes produced here in Western New York for the war effort, rolls from the hanger and takes off, headed west.
She was one of 10,000 planes, many from here in Western New York, that were sent to Russia. It was also a bit of WNY technology turned the tide against the Nazi's.
The P-39 was known as the "flying cannon". She was a force in the air. It was equipped with 2 machine guns in the wings, two more in the nose, a 37 mm cannon in the nose and a state of the art radio system.
But on a mission in 1944, this plane disappeared
Fast forward 60 years to July 2004. A fisherman on Lake Mart-Yavr in arctic Russia spotted something under the water. A British warbird recovery team was called in and what they found was absolutely astounding. The plane was recovered intact. The pilots remains, and medals were still in the cockpit, so was the plane's logbook.Grounded submarine photographed with sonar
The 10 Apr. 2010 at 05:57High Tech. Research/Salvage
By João Medeiros - Wired.co.uk
This eerie wreck image is not computer generated. It's the sonar image of Russian nuclear submarine B-159 (called K-159 before decommissioning), which has been lying 248m down in the Barents Sea, between Norway and Russia, since 2003. The Russian Federation hired Adus, a Scottish company that specializes in high-resolution sonar surveying, to evaluate if it would be possible to recover the wreck.
"The operation was complicated as the submarine was very deep, so we had to use the sonar equipment mounted on a remotely operated vehicle, (below)" says Martin Dean, the managing director of Adus and a forensic-wreck archaeologist. "We also had a problem with the surveying due to the density of north Atlantic cod attracted to the sound of the sonar and the light of the cameras. So at the beginning we had to turn off the equipment for 40 minutes and wait for the fish to go."
B-159, a November-class sub launched in 1963, was being towed to a shipyard in Snezhnogorsk, 1,000km north of St Petersburg, for scrapping when bad weather caused it to sink, killing nine crew.
"According to the sonar evidence, we can say that it sank stern first, headed down vertically and stuck 12m into the seabed, like a dart," says Dean. "The hull then snapped at the aft end and crashed to the seabed, leaving about 8m of the outer casing, including the propellers, still buried vertically in the seabed. Surprisingly, the submarine is still in good condition for a salvage."Previously undiscovered ancient city found on Caribbean sea floor
The 10 Dec. 2009 at 09:49Scam ?
By Jes Alexander - Herald de Paris
Researchers have revealed the first images from the Caribbean sea floor of what they believe are the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization. Guarding the location’s coordinates carefully, the project’s leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, says the city could be thousands of years old; possibly even pre-dating the ancient Egyptian pyramids, at Giza.
The site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Russian explorers near Cuba in 2001, at a depth of 2300 feet. “To be seen on satellite, our site is much shallower.” The team is currently seeking funding to mount an expedition to confirm and explore what appears to be a vast underwater city.
“You have to be careful working with satellite images in such a location,” the project’s principle researcher said, “The digital matrix sometimes misinterprets its data, and shows ruins as solid masses. The thing is, we’ve found structure - what appears to be a tall, narrow pyramid; large platform structures with small buildings on them; we’ve even found standing parallel post and beam construction in the rubble of what appears to be a fallen building. You can’t have post and beam without human involvement.”Russian Navy UFO records say aliens love oceans
The 29 Jul. 2009 at 16:00Miscellaneous
From Russia Today
The Russian navy has declassified its records of encounters with unidentified objects technologically surpassing anything humanity ever built, reports Svobodnaya Pressa news website.The records dating back to soviet times were compiled by a special navy group collecting reports of unexplained incidents delivered by submarines and military ships. The group was headed by deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov, and the documents reveal numerous cases of possible UFO encounters, the website says.
Vladimir Azhazha, former navy officer and a famous Russian UFO researcher, says the materials are of great value.
“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said.Divers go looking for lost Russian Imperial gold in lake Baikal
The 17 Jun. 2009 at 09:05Treasure Hunting / recovery
From MosNews.com
A deep diving expedition is looking for the legendary gold of the Russian Empire that the counter-revolutionist leader Kolchak allegedly submerged in lake Baikal in the early 20th century.
The operation involving several Mir deep submergence vessels began on Monday, Interfax reports, and continues on Tuesday in spite of heavy rain and wind.
Admiral Kolchak, the leader of the anti-Bolshevik army in Siberia, resisted the Red Army during the civil war that began after the Communist revolution of 1917.
In August 1918 Kolchak's army got possession of half of the Russian Empire's gold reserve, or some 700 million gold rubles. The gold was shipped further to the west on a train, but much of it disappeared on the way. According to some historians, large portions of the treasure were hidden in the taiga.
One of the versions alleges that the gold sank in lake Baikal after a train crash, and this is the version being followed up by the divers.
Lake Baikal is one of the world's largest pure water lakes, with a coastline longer than 2,000 km, and a maximum depth of 1,637 m.