"Flag of the Motherland" is the newspaper of the Black Sea Fleet of Russia. It is one of the oldest newspapers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The publication started back in July 15, 1920, and since then it was called "Red Azov-Black Sea Fleet", "Avral", and "Red Chernomorets". The newspaper received its current name in 1947. It is produced in Sevastopol, and distributed by subscription and retail. With over a century of publicized history, the editorial staff have reported on all important events related to the Black Sea Fleet. The newspaper covered stages of the pre-war construction of the fleet, defense and liberation of Odessa, Sevastopol, Kerch, and Novorossiysk during World War II, followed by the post-war creation of a modern fleet, and its access to the ocean. During my recent customized search of foreign military publications, I stumbled upon an article that described a naval UFO sighting within one issue of "Flag of the Motherland". The intriguing piece was published on March 21, 2013, on page 8. It was written by the sea captain Adil Abdrakhman Tumarov where he describes the 1989 UFO sighting in White Sea observed from the ship “Academic Aleksey Krylov” while sailing towards naval base in Murmansk. Tumarov graduated from the Caspian Higher Naval School, Sevastopol Instrument-Making Institute and the Odessa Higher Naval Engineering School, specializing in navigational engineering. As a lieutenant, he was a commander of the VM-114 diving vessel. He took part in demining the waters of the Black Sea and Baltic. He served on MO-338 for a year, and for thirteen years on diving boats. Subsequently he moved to the flagship of the research fleet of the Marine Hydrophysical Institute. For a quarter of a century, he sailed on the research ships "Academic Vernadsky" and "Academic Aleksey Krylov", where he rose to the position of a sea captain. Adil Abdrakhman Tumarov Unfortunately, Google Translator was not robust enough to properly maintain context and descriptive details from the piece, so I searched for the human translator. Enter researcher and writer Ivan Buchanan-Januskevic who was kind enough to provide a precise translation. I would like to thank him for his time and effort. Here is the outlook of the original piece. Januskevic states he tried to translate the piece literally and accurately as possible, while moving some things around in English for the sake of grammatical differences. He also included notes/suggestions for a more streamlined/understandable translation and context designated by what he wrote in {brackets}. His English translation is enclosed below. UFO Above the White Sea Translated by Ivan Buchanan-Januskevic On the 28th of August 1989, dawn caught us in the Throat of the White Sea {a straight between the Kola Peninsula and the Winter Coast, in the North West of what was then the RSFSR}. Having completed our assignments, we, on the scientific-exploratory vessel, the “Academic Aleksey Krylov”, were returning to Murmansk. From the port side of the vessel, at a distance of 5-7 miles stretched the wooded Terksy Coast of the Kola Peninsula, with its distinctively named villages (Tetrino, Strelna, Chaloma), rivers (Ust-Pyalka, Pyalitsa, Pulonga), and capes (Nikodimskiy, Byeliy Moh {White Moss}, Kinovarskiy). At four o’clock in the morning I came onto navigational watch {duty?}. To the East – clean, clear skies. Dawn is breaking. The sunrise will be at 5:43. The skyline is clear and brightly lit. Our location at 4:20 was: 60° 02’ N , 39° 30’ E, course – 80 degrees, speed of the vessel – 13.5 knots. The north-western wind was blowing at 7-9 cm/sec. A small wave from the port side even slightly urges our vessel on. {Giuliano: It seems there is an error in the article regarding the DMS latitudinal coordinates. Based on the geographical description in the article, approximate location of the ship should be in decimal latitudinal format at 66.043972. Complete decimal coordinates should be at 66.043972, 39.503306}. The firmament {sky} is already light blue, still clear and clean. There’s only the watch{ers?} on the bridge: apart from me, there’s the captain’s helper from the fire department, Alexander Ovsyannikov, and Sergey Barabash, the helmsman. Suddenly Sasha {Alexander} reports: “I see a UFO, 20° to the right, elevation angle of 30°, it’s flying right-to-left, on an intersection with our course!” I look, and there truly is a hitherto unseen by me “phenomenon” flying high up in the sky. Usually, aeroplanes fly at such a height. And this object, which presented itself {seemed to be} a gaseous or otherwise luminous cloud of a relatively small size, is flying with the speed of turboprop airliner. This moving, seemingly steam-gas-like formation of whitish color was similar to a cloud from the detonation of a high-explosive projectile. This “wonder” flew without smoke or plume, and inside it something rhythmically blinked {pulsed}. Having grabbed binoculars, I began to closely observe the UFO. Inside the cloud, a blinker, similar to those that light up the tail of aircraft, flashed rhythmically with neon light. Having thought, what if it is an aeroplane after all, I try to make out its outlines, contours, but did not find anything of the sort, while only one sparkling light is visible from this cloud. It flies in front of me. After that, the blinker separated from the cloud and, without losing altitude, on the same level began to fall behind the UFO. Having retired to a significant distance, it disappeared, as if it were extinguished, while the cloud continued to fly, not losing altitude, nor changing its course. Inside the cloud, I repeat, it was impossible to make out anything: no body of any kind, no blackness {darkness}, but only a sparkling light of a streamlined form. It was like the head of a bolide {fireball} was flying, leaving behind it light “whiskers” {possibly “moustache”}. Afterwards, I read descriptions of bolides in an encyclopaedia, but not one of them matched what was observed. The blinker had a neon light, while the cloud shined not with a reddish, but with some sort of white light, similar to the light from bright electric lightbulbs. When the UFO was right {straight?} on our course, there was an explosion within it: a release of gases or of sparkling steam, and several seconds later – a second explosion, weaker than the first. It seemed to Sasha {Alexander} Ovsyannikov that after the explosion, the object changed direction, while I didn’t think so. The speed and altitude of the flight, likely, remained the same. It’s possible that beams located beyond the horizon could have provided a backlight to this object, but already ready for the sun’s rise, the altitude of flight of the UFO allowed for it to be lit up by the life-giving luminary {Sun?}. The UFO flew from the South to the Northeast, along the Throat of the White Sea towards the Kanin peninsula. This object, still unknown to us, melted away in the eyepiece of the binoculars as a lonely point of light against the paled Eastern sky, reminiscent at the moment of its departure to the light of a star, though whiteish rather than blueish in colour, extinguishing against the background of a brightening sky. This entire event lasted 3-4 minutes, and, as it later turned out, it was also observed from the deck by senior motorist Senyukov. He also confirmed that he had never seen anything like it before. For half a day, the chief officer’s watch walked around the vessel as heroes, having been witnesses to a previously unseen “phenomenon”. Everyone whom we told, gave us the advice: “Write to the places where they’ll investigate this”. I wrote to the newspaper “Moryak” {Seaman} (about Black Sea shipping), “Slava Sevastopolya” {Glory of Sevastopol}, and to the journal “Nauka I zhizin’” {Science and life}. The newspapers responded by publishing, while I still have not received a reply from the journal. Sea Captain Adil Tumarov Provided and arranged by: Giuliano Marinkovic July 31, 2021
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