Recently We learned that A former Russian aircraft carrier caught fire near Shanghai over the weekend. The Soviet-era ship was built and called Minsk in reference to the capital of Belarus, was owned by a Chinese company that was looking to turn it into a new amusement park.
We are talking about a ship that has had a rather peculiar history. It was launched in 1975 as the second aircraft carrier of the innovative kyiv class, but was operational for around 16 years. The rest of the time it has been used as a leisure place in the Asian giant, although it has always had a bad streak.
Minsk has more history as an amusement park than as an aircraft carrier
After starring in several deployments in its first decade of operation under the Soviet Navy’s Pacific Fleet, the ship entered the orbit of the Russian Navy after 1991. As TWZ collectsthe resources to keep the aircraft carrier operational were limited and the shipyard where it had been built was in Ukraine.
So the decision was made to sell them “for scrap.” A South Korean company bought the Minsk together with another ship in the same condition, the Novorossiysk, in 1995. The firm managed to begin scrapping the latter, but a series of proposals prevented it from continuing with the former, and it was resold.
Minsk in 1986
Guangdong Ship Dismantling Company purchased it with the intention of completely dismantling it. The Washington Post señala that another firm ended up buying it to turn it into the centerpiece of a amusement parkIn this way, the Soviet war machine ended up becoming a part of the so-called Minsk World.
The owners of Minsk World, however, went bankrupt in 2006 and the ship changed hands several times until it found a new destination in 2016. It was towed to different locations in order to turn it into a renovated amusement park. The new park was supposed to open in 2017, but everything was delayed.
The aircraft carrier caught fire on August 16.
The Fire Department of Nantong, a port city in Jiangsu Province, announced that the aircraft carrier caught fire on August 16 at 4:00 p.m. (local time). Firefighters worked on the scene to control the situation and fortunately no one was injured, but the cause of the incident is unclear.
Social networks echoed the episode and Many users posted images y Videos of the old Soviet-era ship engulfed in flamesAs the investigation progresses, questions arise about the fate of this ship after the fire.
Some photographs show significant damage on the aircraft carrier island, the part where it is located the bridge. In time we will know if it will finally be revived as an amusement park or if it will end up meeting its original fate from 1995: becoming a pile of rubble.
Images | Wikimedia Commons1, 2)
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