NORFOLK, Va. -- Three Soviet warships steamed into port at the Norfolk Naval Station Friday, initiating an historic and unprecedented five-day visit to the world's largest naval installation.
The Soviet ships, carrying 1,100 personnel, sailed through the Chesapeake Bay into the port of Hampton Roads, accompanied by several Coast Guard vessels.
Before reaching port the ships engaged in an elaborate exchange of military goodwill that included cannons booming international greetings.
The Slava-class Marshal Ustinov, the Sovremenny-class destroyer Otlichny and the Boris Chilikin-class oiler Genrikh Gasanov, their path cleared by tug boats, pulled in slightly ahead of schedule, accompanied by an American flotilla of Coast Guard vessels and aircraft.
The Ustinov, the 613-foot Soviet flagship, was the first to pull into port at 8:15 a.m. EDT. Ropes from the ship's bow, which bears the Communist red star, were thrown to waiting American sailors on Pier 7 and the ship was secured.
Dozens of Soviet sailors dressed in pressed white uniforms lined the deck, and a handful of officers clad in cream-colored uniforms could be seen near the top of the ship, which carries a crew of about 450. A U.S. Navy band played American and Soviet martial music.
High atop the Ustinov, an American flag was waving in the breeze.
Across the pier and parallel to the Soviet vessel, dozens of U.S. sailors aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Harry E. Yarnell faced their Russian counterparts.
Excited U.S. sailors and officers scurried about on their pier to get a good look at the Soviet ship. Lt. Cmdr. Mike John called the Soviet ship 'awesome.'
'This is a chance to show America, to exchange Navy formalities, as well as have a little bit of fun, Navy to Navy,' John said.
The Soviet Embassy in Washington said this week that there are no nuclear weapons aboard its three ships.
Under U.S. Navy policy, officials neither deny nor confirm the presence of nuclear weapons on American ships. The Navy also does not comment on nuclear weapons aboard foreign vessels.
As the Soviet warships sailed into port they exchanged military salutes with American officials.
The Soviet ships fired a 21-gun salute to the United States, which was answered by a 21-gun salute from a battery of howitzers at Fort Monroe, one of the nation's oldest military bases.
The two nations also exchanged cannon salutes honoring Adm. Powell Carter, commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, and Vice Adm. Igor Vladimirovich Kasatonov, first deputy commander in chief for the Soviet Northern Fleet.
The fanfare inaugurated a rare and unique Soviet visit. No Soviet warship has previously visited a U.S. military port, the Navy said.
The crews of the Soviet ships are matched with those of three U.S. ships in Norfolk, Navy officials said. The ships are the Yarnell, the destroyer USS Peterson and the oiler USS Milwaukee.
'It gives us an opportunity to look at their ships and certainly it gives them an opportunity to look at ours,' said Lt. Cmdr. Steve Burnett of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. 'What it means is people-to-people understanding.'
A wide range of cross-cultural activities involving Soviet and U.S. sailors are planned throughout the weekend.
Soviet sailors will meet their American counterparts during tours of area military installations, cookouts with host U.S. ship sailors and their families, as well as volleyball, basketball and soccer matches.
Soviet sailors will also visit Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, check out a minor league baseball game, an auto assembly plant, a mall and restaurants, including McDonald's.
Two of the Soviet ships will be open to the public during the weekend, but people must have special passes that were distributed this week. The Soviet ships are to pull out of port next Tuesday.
The last time Soviet warships visited the United States was May 12, 1975, when two Kanin-class guided missile destroyers pulled into Boston Harbor for a six-day visit.
To reciprocate this week's visit, three U.S. Navy ships carrying 1,200 personnel will visit the Soviet Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea Aug. 4-8.re a soggy summer has brought record rain to some areas, and a flash flood watch was posted for portions of Nevada, the National Weather Service said.
One person drowned Thursday when a rain-swollen northern Virginia creek became a river and swept away a pickup truck. Authorities searched the same creek Friday for a second car believed to have two or three occupants.
Scattered showers and thunderstorms extended across the middle Mississippi Valley and the lower Ohio Valley, and from the Florida Panhandle to the southern Appalachians.
Afternoon thunderstorms were reported over coastal North and South Carolina and the Florida peninsula and a flash flood watch was posted for the mountains and foothills of North Carolina.
Thunderstorms were developing from a low pressure center in southern Illinois and over west Texas and across the northern High Plains.
Moist air from a high pressure center in northern Arizona was blamed for showers and thunderstorms in southern and eastern Nevada and a flash flood watch was posted until 9 p.m.
Fair weather prevailed over most of the rest of the country, with sunny skies in the central third and in the Pacific Northwest.
Almost daily thunderstorms in parts of the East has made it a soggy summer.
Rainfall in May, June and July for Wilmington, Del., surpassed the previous record of 22.43 inches for a three-month period in 1919 and nearly wiping out a 16.82-inch deficit in rainfall that had built up since then in the parched state.
Philadelphia has also been experiencing record rains, the NWS said. May was the 10th wettest of record for the city, and already July is the third wettest on record.
Some flooding from heavy rain was reported early Friday in Centre County in central Pennsylvania, along with portions of west-central Indiana.
Pensacola, Fla., reported 1.59 inches of rain in six hours ending at 2 p.m. Friday, the largest amount recorded in the period.
Afternoon temperatures ranged from 59 degrees at Fort Ord, Calif., to 104 at Palm Springs, Calif. Heat records were set or tied in at least six cities, most of them in Texas.
A pregnant West Virginia motorist drowned Thursday in a flash flood in the Shenandoah Valley. Tammy Conneway, 20, of Bloomery, W.Va., drowned when her pickup truck was swept off Route 17 in Delaplane, Va., when a flash flood turned a creek into a river 6 feet above a small bridge, said Lt. David Flohr of the Fauquier County Sheriff's Department.
'When it's normal you can jump across (the creek),' said Flohr. 'Last night it was definitely a river. Normally, it's a stream.'
Flohor said police were still searching for a car and as many as three occupants feared buried under muddy water and debris in the creek. A Virginia State Police helicopter spotted a brush pile measuring about 35 feet across in the water near where 10 cars were knocked from the road by Thursday's flash flood.
Rescuers were trying to break up the brush pile to determine if there was a car in it, Flohr said.
