Regarding the Tarawa, if it were beached or otherwise not on the bottom, it would not be in a port in Poland - there simply aren't any not in Pact hands which are capable of taking such a large vessel (all too small, too shallow, too nuked, or a combination of the three).
The crew of the ship, once immobilised/sunk/etc would almost certainly have joined the nearest friendly unit. It's pointless for them to have stayed aboard if there was no hope (as would be the situation in 2000) of recovery and repair.
My guess is that the Captain would have ordered the ship scuttled, perhaps even drawing on the services of a nearby engineer unit to destroy it with a demolition nuke.
Chances are the ship would already be suffering damage from earlier in the war that could not be repaired with the available resources - perhaps it needed dry docking to replace a screw, plus the flight deck had some sizable weak spots from missile/bomb hits which had been patches up to the best of the crew's ability. Could even have been on the fringes of a nuclear blast with radio antenna's destroyed, electronics fried, even perhaps a little residual radioactivity in the vessel's hull (which of course the higher ups would do their damnedest to keep quite).
It's even potentially possible that the 2000 landings were considered to be a one way trip for the ship - one last throw of the dice to win the war which would secure the ability to then salvage the ship and repair it at leisure.
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If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives.
Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect"
Mors ante pudorem
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