"The Price of Victory": Swastika over Taimyr (Full version). A brief excursion through the spirals of world and naval history

Annotation:

More than sixty years have passed since the battles of the Great Patriotic War died down on the Kola land. However, the polar tundra and Arctic seas, and often the hills surrounding the remote garrisons of the Northern Fleet, continue to keep the secrets of the past.

The book by military journalist S.A. Kovalev is dedicated to the activities of the German Navy in the Soviet North. Based on archival materials and his own research, the author talks about operations in which ships and submarines took part, carrying out not only combat missions in complete secrecy in Soviet northern waters, but also transporting important strategic cargo and servicing the construction of secret bases and warehouses, many of them which have not yet been found.

The book opens a new series of the Veche publishing house “Naval Chronicle”, dedicated to the most striking and entertaining pages of naval history.

Swastika over Taimyr
Sergey Alekseevich Kovalev

Marine Chronicle
More than sixty years have passed since the battles of the Great Patriotic War died down on the Kola land. However, the polar tundra and Arctic seas, and often the hills surrounding the remote garrisons of the Northern Fleet, continue to keep the secrets of the past.

The book opens a new series of the Veche publishing house “Naval Chronicle”, dedicated to the most striking and entertaining pages of naval history.

S. A. Kovalev

Swastika over Taimyr

To the readers

Here is a book about the Arctic secrets of Nazi Germany, which we inherited as a kind of inheritance.

It would seem that a great many books, magazine and newspaper articles of various genres have been written about the Second World War: from serious scientific research to simple fiction. But, with rare exceptions, this “multi-ton lump” was entirely dedicated to our participation in the most terrible of world wars. But any information about those who came with a sword to our land, to the shores of Murman and Siberia, in particular, was scanty and fragmentary for many years. Only today have we come to understand a paradoxical, but at the same time completely obvious idea: without personally understanding and thoroughly showing new generations of Russians the place and role of the enemy in that war, we are thereby simply belittling the role of everyone who gave their lives for Russia, but still - those who defeated fascism! After all, what you, dear reader, are now holding in your hands is the fruit of work that lasted... several decades. Painstaking and, mostly for obvious reasons, completely thankless work. This is not surprising!

After all, this is not a famously twisted historical detective story, but a selection of facts and events that were previously most often kept under various classifications of secrecy. To exclude possible “misunderstanding” of individual readers, as the author, I would like to emphasize that the main information sources of this book were domestic and foreign publications unfamiliar to the general reader, as well as personal memories of direct participants in the events described.

Unfortunately, most eyewitnesses of the mysterious finds in the Soviet Arctic categorically refused to have their names or positions mentioned on the pages of this book. And the main argument here was one thing: “We signed a non-disclosure agreement.” Unfortunately, most of them left us forever with the same conviction. It would seem that already a decade and a half has passed since the Soviet Union disappeared, more than half a century since those who unleashed the Second World War passed away, we live in a completely different state and time, but the perfectly developed Soviet “system » secrecy continues to work without failures today. Nevertheless, as an author, I am sincerely grateful to all the courageous people who nevertheless dared to talk about “something” that they saw during wintering on remote Arctic islands or Siberian wintering, which was systematized by me, and today it has become the basis for pages of this book. At the same time, I remain hopeful that this version of the book is not yet the final truth. Perhaps it will help find new witnesses to the ancient events of World War II and the first post-war years, both on the territory of Russia and abroad. Or maybe it will also allow us to learn, at least from relatives, new names of heroes who remained forever somewhere in the icy deserts and on the shores of remote Arctic archipelagos (especially under unclear circumstances), which is extremely important for young Russians to study our true history.

For many years, we knew everything that happened in our Arctic, at best, from victorious reports about the next achievement of Russian and Soviet scientists, polar explorers, pilots or sailors. And only thanks to the famous Soviet polar historians and devotees - Sergei Smirnov and Mikhail Belov - did they learn about the heroic battle of the crew of the simple icebreaking steamship "A Sibiryakov" with the fascist battleship "Admiral Scheer". Any other information about Soviet activities in the Arctic seas and archipelagos did not reach the common man in the street, and sometimes even individual government officials. Therefore, it should not be surprising that even the full-fledged representative of Soviet Russia in Norway, Alexandra Kollontai, knew very little about the Arctic before entering the diplomatic service in 1923 and did not even suspect where the Spitsbergen archipelago was located.

True, later she was surpassed in state and bureaucratic “ignorance” by the acting head of the Russian government, Yegor Gaidar, who in January 1992 even declared from a high rostrum, on the day of the new Russia: “The North is unprofitable!” Meanwhile, Egor Timurovich, both during the period of fulfilling his duties as acting head of government, and as an economist, he could not help but know that our Arctic contains almost 100% of the proven national reserves of nickel, cobalt, tantalum, tin, niobium and rare earth elements. And also - that the potential gas content of the continental shelf of the Barents and Kara Seas today is estimated at 50–60 billion US dollars and accounts for almost 80% of all reserves of our country.

I would like to consider such a statement by one of the recent so-called reformers of the new Russia as an “accidental slip of the tongue.” However, an official of this rank has no right to make such mistakes. And even more so - to forget the words of the great Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov, who, unlike other sovereign men, sincerely cared for Russia and firmly believed in Russian power, growing precisely through Siberia and the Arctic Ocean. Fortunately for Russia, Mr. Gaidar’s official statement did not manage to become a direct indication to all interested parties that Russia’s unique polar regions are no longer needed.

In previous years, an equally serious ban was also imposed on the history of military operations in the Kara Sea during the last world war. Even the honored submarine commanders, who on their ships repeatedly sailed to the Far East along the seas of the Northern Sea Route or wintered near Biruli Bay on Taimyr, as well as near Tiksi, did not suspect what events took place here just twenty years before their arrival here. And the ruins of whose structures, the entrances to whose mines they accidentally noticed through the eyepieces of boat periscopes on the prehistoric shores of Taimyr or on the deserted coast of the Laptev Sea. But they often saw evidence of Nazi bases that once existed here, which, by the will of fate, we inherited. And yet - they had no idea. And they calmly passed by. Only after retiring did they share an amazing observation about a strange cemetery near the ruins of barracks on the shore of Biruli Bay, where crosses with half-erased inscriptions, made... in the Gothic style, stood above the swollen hills.

All of the above, as well as a number of other problems that visibly or invisibly accompanied the processing of the information received and its translation into an acceptable form, for a long time did not make it possible to begin publishing chapters from an already clearly emerging book. And even - to find a suitable title for this book, thanks to which it would not immediately receive a negative “assessment,” and especially among Russian people, but of “Soviet training.” And suddenly - “Eureka!” Once upon a time, back in my cadet years, I managed to read the extremely fascinating book “Shadows in the Ocean,” which introduced Soviet readers to previously unknown facts, most often of deadly encounters between people and sharks. One day, memories of this book I had once read “raised” its title from my subconscious. Quite unexpectedly, I remembered that German submariners, lovingly calling their ships “polar wolves,” always remembered that they served on “steel sharks.” Yes, yes, on those “sharks” whose shadows during the Second World War appeared not only in the Baltic, Northern, Black and Mediterranean seas, but also in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and even off the coast of Antarctica and the Arctic. And the sailors who controlled them, after the second military campaign, proudly received the Submariner’s Military Badge with the constant eagle holding a fascist swastika in its paws. German sailors established future fuel and food bases on the remote islands of the Soviet Arctic, and after our Victory they were forced to leave them deep behind the lines of the Soviet Union. But maybe there are still forgotten Nazi bases, abandoned factories or caches in the Russian North?

I tried to answer this difficult question in my book.

Here is a book about the Arctic secrets of Nazi Germany, which we inherited as a kind of inheritance.

hands, is the fruit of work that lasted... several decades. Painstaking and, mostly for obvious reasons, completely thankless work. This is not surprising!

S. A. Kovalev

Swastika over Taimyr

To the readers

Here is a book about the Arctic secrets of Nazi Germany, which we inherited as a kind of inheritance.

hands, is the fruit of work that lasted... several decades. Painstaking and, mostly for obvious reasons, completely thankless work. This is not surprising!

I tried to answer this difficult question in my book.

S. A. Kovalev

Swastika over Taimyr

To the readers

Here is a book about the Arctic secrets of Nazi Germany, which we inherited as a kind of inheritance.

I tried to answer this difficult question in my book.

Introduction

More than sixty years have passed since the last artillery shots of the war era died down on the Kola land. However, the polar tundra and Arctic seas, and often the hills surrounding the remote garrisons of the Northern Fleet, continue to harbor numerous military secrets and throw us new mysteries, to which sometimes there are not even supposed answers.

Thus, at the end of the 50s of the 20th century, the first garrison of North Sea nuclear submariners appeared on the Kola Peninsula - the city of Zaozersk. Over the past half century it has been called differently: Severomorsk-7, Murmansk-150, Zaozerny, but among the Severomorsk it has always remained the Western Lyceum and the capital of the Soviet nuclear submarine fleet. By the beginning of the 21st century, a whole generation of Soviet boys, who were once brought to the North by their fathers who mastered our first nuclear-powered ships here, had grown up here, served on nuclear submarines, and had already retired. Those boys who, while mushroom hunting, had to carefully look at their feet not so much for the opportunity to find the treasured red-headed “trophy”, but rather in order not to step on an anti-personnel mine or an unexploded artillery shell, whose rusty sides could peek out from under any creeping birch trees And those who found here human skulls in broken helmets and human bones with scraps of khaki, black or mouse-colored cloth.

It was these boys, in a close circle of friends and colleagues, who first spoke about their strange discoveries among the surrounding rocks. Those finds that did not fit into the post-war polar landscapes with dugouts twisted by explosions or abandoned and swollen trenches. And about the strange names of certain corners on the shores of Zapadnolitsky lips, such as: “Seaplane Factory”, “Falconer’s Cellar”, “German Checkpoint” or “German Pier”.

But in those years they had no idea that it was here, among the hills around Western Litsa, that most of the Arctic mysteries of the Third Reich were born, which not only gave birth to the “shadows” of the swastika in our Taimyr, but also became fatal for the days of several thousand Soviet, German, English and other military and civilian sailors. Mysteries that were never written about in Soviet literature. About those that are still waiting for their researchers and publishers.

The Soviet polar explorers from the research vessel Akademik Shokalsky, which on July 27, 1943, was slowly sailing ten miles east of the Novaya Zemlya Cape Spory Navolok, also did not know about this. The flight did not foretell any surprises. Nazi ships and submarines had not appeared here since last year, and planes with black crosses on the wings were a great rarity.

And yet the watchmen carefully examined the surface of the sea. After all, it was here, off the northeastern coast of Novaya Zemlya in October 1941, that they already encountered a fascist submarine. However, on that day, “Akademik Shokalsky” managed to hide behind the nearest cape. But then it was the first year of the war, and today their fate was already sealed.

First, the top watch of the Soviet motorboat heard the menacing “song” of foreign diesel engines, and then, as if by the will of an evil wizard, an unusually colored fascist submarine appeared directly from under the rays of the low polar sun, practically flying over the surface of the sea. The fence of her strong conning tower and the surface of the hull were strewn with large blots of white and blue paint, which made the enemy completely invisible against the backdrop of snow-covered coastal cliffs. Noticing that the Soviet hydrograph was trying to move towards the coast, the Nazis immediately opened artillery fire on him.

Several direct hits by German shells on the superstructure of the Akademik Shokalsky caused two or three fires on board. The ship's engine stopped, the rudder jammed. The fascist submarine, having extinguished its inertia, turned sideways towards the Soviet motorboat and began to shoot at it almost point-blank. But this same enemy maneuver to some extent saved the lives of most of our polar explorers, who managed to lower a ship’s boat from the side opposite the Germans and then, hiding behind a thick smoky strip from the burning ship’s superstructure, crossed to the edge of the nearby compacted ice field. It saved the lives of most of the Soviet sailors. However, the following died from shells and machine-gun fire: third mate Stepan Kochnev, boatswain Alexander Yushmanov, third mechanic Ignatiy Danilov, senior mechanic Viktor Grachev, cook Klavdiya Pelevina, hydrochemist Bronina Futerman. And on board the sunken ship, radio operator Vladimir Borshchevsky and sailor 2nd class Sergei Metlyaev died. After sinking the burning wreckage of the Akademik Shokalsky, the Nazi submarine, capsizing a boat left at the edge of the ice, went towards the open sea.

The surviving polar explorers managed to pull the overturned boat to the ice edge. With scraps of clothing they caulked the holes in its sides and by noon of the new day they headed towards the nearby shore of Novaya Zemlya. They understood perfectly well what awaited those who had escaped on this gloomy and deserted shore: they had to walk more than a hundred kilometers along moraine ridges and sandflat to the nearest Soviet polar station. But this was the only way to survive.

Having reached the shore, on July 29, the surviving polar explorers divided into two groups. The coastal party, which was supposed to go south along the coastal drainage at the foot of the cliffs, consisted of five of the strongest sailors. And the fourteen most weakened, having loaded the food supply, had to go down there on the boat.

A new test awaited our polar explorers in the area of Cape Middendorf, where the boat arrived that same evening. Weak and chilled polar explorers landed ashore to wait for the arrival of the coastal party. Here they lit a fire and began to cook food. Suddenly, just like two days ago, a blue and white Nazi submarine appeared from behind the barely visible Spore Navolok, which quickly reached the landing site and began to drift near the boat. Hitler's submariners, under the cover of two light machine guns mounted on the wheelhouse fence, poured onto the upper deck. Those who escaped from the “Akademik Shokalsky” immediately took refuge among the rocks, but the Nazis, having fired a couple of bursts along the shore as a warning, took the boat in tow and took it away with them. Along with it, the remains of the saved food and ship's property disappeared.

For the next six days, hungry polar explorers, unable to dry themselves, walked along a deserted shore, bending under the fierce blows of the north wind, interspersed with streams of rain and snow. Only at the beginning of August they were discovered by the search forces of the White Sea Flotilla. By this time, three more had died: senior sailor Pyotr Korkonosov, 2nd class sailor Vasily Trubin and barmaid Ekaterina Bibikova. But the sailors and polar explorers from the “Akademik Shokalsky” were not the only ones who met the blue and white “polar wolf” in the Kara Sea. A year earlier, in August 1942, the same “wolf” shot up a meteorological station at Cape Zhelaniya (the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya). And two weeks later, his replacement, following the Novaya Zemlya position, destroyed the Soviet meteorological station on Solitude Island (in the middle part of the Kara Sea).

Only after the end of the Great Patriotic War was it possible to learn that the appearance of German submarines at the north-eastern tip of Novaya Zemlya (and in particular in the Ledyanaya Harbor Bay) was not at all accidental. After all, it was here, in the Ice Harbor Bay, that Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz created one of the secret strongholds for his “polar wolves.” Even today we know very little about their activities in the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea. But it was the German submariners who presented us with most of the “Arctic” mysteries of the Third Reich.

Prologue. Death among the icebergs

Spearfishing in the Kara Sea

Let’s start with Doenitz’s “Arctic wolves”.

The Kara Sea has traditionally been considered the Russian sea, and in the first months of the Great Patriotic War it was also considered our deep rear. Meanwhile, the days of August 1942 already showed that this opinion was wrong and the enemy was looking for an opportunity to get into our deep tyn. Moreover, from that time on, the Kara Sea became the front line of defense on the northern flank of the huge Soviet-German front. True, we learned about this only when our transports and warships began to break apart and die from the blows of fascist torpedoes. However, even after the war, all information about the battles in the Arctic remained hidden for a long time under various degrees of secrecy. What have you achieved?

Soviet military historians spoke extremely sparingly about battles and tragedies off the coast of Soviet Siberia during the Great Patriotic War. It is not surprising that today the residents of Russia, at best, know about the unsuccessful raid in the Kara Sea by the fascist battleship Admiral Scheer. Moreover, about several attacks by German submarines on Soviet transports traveling along the Northern Sea Route. But these are only individual episodes of the war in the Soviet Arctic. And if we do not remember that during the hard times of war, almost three dozen Soviet transports and escort ships, as well as more than one and a half thousand military and civilian sailors and polar explorers, perished here, then it is unlikely that our descendants will be able to find out about this. Meanwhile, the “forgetfulness” of military researchers of the Great Patriotic War had certain reasons.

This is how the People's Commissar of the Navy of the USSR, Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, recalled those days:

It must be admitted that in the pre-war period we, in the People's Commissariat of the Navy, underestimated the importance of sea routes in the North and did not sufficiently develop the problem of their protection. Therefore, already during the war years it was necessary to create new naval bases, airfields, and allocate ships for convoy service.

It is difficult not to smile sadly after reading these words of the famous Soviet admiral.

Indeed, in the 30s of the last century, the names of polar explorers - Ivan Papanin and Otto Schmidt, polar pilots-M - did not leave the pages of magazines and newspapers of the USSR. Babushkin and B. Chukhnovsky and dozens of our polar heroes" During these days, the Soviet people were sincerely proud of the exploits of the sailors and polar explorers of the icebreaker "Krasin", the icebreaking steamships "Malygin" and "A Sibiryakov", the steamships "Sedov" and "Chelyuskin" and many others , who heroically and sometimes sacrificially mastered the routes of the Northern Sea Route. And in the light of this euphoria, for some reason no one remembered that back in 1912 there was a project for a German Arctic expedition under the command of Lieutenant of the Kaiser’s Navy Schröder-Strantz, which provided for an independent exploration of the Taimyr Peninsula by the Germans for further passage into the Bering Strait “to the Pacific Ocean. And also that during the Civil War, the British and French invaders, who temporarily settled in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, developed a plan for the Kara expedition on the icebreakers “Taimyr” and “Vaigach”. Its release was directly related to the uprising of the Czechoslovak corps in Siberia. This plan provided not only for a detailed clarification of the state of affairs in Western Siberia, but also for the creation of a radiotelegraph message between the headquarters of the rebel Czechs and the headquarters of General Miller in Arkhangelsk. To do this, representatives of the French military mission and the personal envoy of General Miller were invited to board one of the expedition ships with equipment from a coastal radio station. For some reason, they didn’t even remember the words of the famous Russian champion of Arctic exploration, Professor Dmitry Mendeleev:

If even a tenth of what was lost at Tsushima had been spent on reaching the Pole, our squadron would probably have sailed to Vladivostok, bypassing both the German Sea and Tsushima.

But every new Soviet Arctic achievement only fueled the interest of our Arctic neighbors, as well as Germany and Great Britain. And this interest was primarily reinforced by the participation in all “scientific research” of military sailors, pilots and intelligence officers. And often - with the arrival of English, German and Norwegian warships to our polar shores. But, apparently, back in the early 20s of the 20th century, Soviet Russia needed a new genius akin to Peter the Great, who would see in advance all the “glory and power of Russia.” Meanwhile, the Soviet political leadership became seriously concerned about the state of affairs in the Arctic only after the British and Norwegians tried to prevent our military and training ships from entering the Baltic Sea, that is, to block the Russian fleet without even starting a war. And only thanks to the rapid construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal we managed to break the loop of a potential naval blockade. And yet, lead our destroyers, patrol ships and submarines to the White Sea, and then to the Barents Sea. And with this channel, starting from 1937, the newborn Northern Fleet was annually replenished with warships from the Red Banner Baltic Fleet. True, several years, so necessary for strengthening the defense capability of our country in the North, were lost for various reasons. And how there weren’t enough of them when June 1941 came.

Even despite the obvious miscalculation of the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht High Command, which considered that after the quick defeat of three Soviet battalions in the Titov fortified area by two German mountain divisions, and then after the quick capture of defenseless Murmansk, the entire Northern Fleet would either be sunk by Luftwaffe bombers right at the piers Polyarny, or even before leaving the Kola Bay. However, this miscalculation turned out to be very blatant.

By the beginning of the war, the allies of Nazi Germany, the Finns, had in the port closest to Murmansk only one patrol boat, one minelayer, which was converted from a trawler, and a couple of hastily armed steamships that simply could not withstand the seven destroyers and fifteen submarines of the Northern Fleet. Only in In mid-July 1941, a real enemy of the North Sea men came to Kirkenes - five German destroyers of the 6th Flotilla, a training artillery ship and two submarines, which became the basis for the formation of the fascist naval group "Nord" here. However, at this time, Soviet submarines began to actively operate on German sea lanes off the coast of Northern Norway. So much so that after two or three attempts to break through to the south-eastern part of the Barents Sea and to the throat of the White Sea, all Nazi destroyers of the Nord group had to deal only with escorting their transports going along the northern coast of Norway to the port of Petsamo and back. Our Northern Fleet nevertheless forced the enemy to reckon with its capabilities to protect the shores of Murman. Even after the battleship Tirpitz, two “pocket battleships” and also the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper came to Northern Norway to disrupt communications between the USSR and the Western allies. Further - more!

An unsuccessful raid on the Vilkitsky Strait by the battleship Admiral Scheer in August 1942, which ended only with the sinking of the icebreaking steamer A Sibiryakov and the shelling of Dixon, forced the German Naval Headquarters to abandon the use of surface raiders in the Kara Sea.\"These areas were unconditionally given up groups of polar “wolves” of Doenitz and air squadrons of Reichsmarshal Goering. It was then that the time came to implement the plans of one of the main naval theorists of the Third Reich, Kapiten zur See (captain of the 1st rank, having seniority for more than three years. - Author] P. Ebert, who in the mid-30s of the 20th century proposed to Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler to allocate the “European Polar Sea” to an area of the World Ocean that was vital for the Germans. In the summer of 1943, immediately after the Novaya Zemlya Straits were freed from ice, fascist submarines began to be active. development of islands and shores of the Kara Sea.

Until the end of the 90s of the last century, it was believed that Nazi submariners came here for one and a half to two months. Here they attacked Soviet Arctic convoys or single ships, fired at our polar radio stations, laid minefields in narrows and on the approaches to Soviet bases, and then returned to Norway until next summer. From the Norwegian bases in the autumn-spring period, to maintain shape, they went to the Barents Sea or the Atlantic.

But the reality turned out to be different. A careful study of the circumstances of the attack by the Soviet submarine S-101 on the fascist submarine U-639h forced us to take a different look at the use of German submarines in the Arctic seas by the removal of the “Secret” stamp from a historical study on the military operations of our fleet in the Arctic, written by a polar hydrographer and participant in several polar expeditions I .Sendik.

The meeting of the two submarines, which was the last for the crew of U-639, has been told many times over more than sixty years. But more often than not, the authors of these stories basically repeated the version from the memoirs of Rear Admiral Ivan Kolyshkin. True, for a completely unclear reason, here they repeated the words of the commander of the Northern Fleet, Vice Admiral Golovko:

If this pirate had not been sunk, then of the fifteen river ships that were part of the convoy, few would have reached their destination.

But what does this have to do with the mention of the transfer of a convoy of river vessels? On August 7, his ships successfully reached their final destination on the Ob River - Novy Port. So it’s unlikely that Wikhman was going to hunt them. And most importantly, all the authors stubbornly considered the successful S-101 attack as an ordinary event from August 1943.

Meanwhile, it’s worth looking at this attack by Soviet submariners in a less ordinary way. It is no coincidence that even among the command of the Northern Fleet and the submarine brigade of the Northern Fleet, on the one hand, and the command of the White Sea Flotilla, on the other hand, there was no consensus on all the circumstances of this battle. And it was like this.

The submarine S-101 (commanded by captain-lieutenant Evgeniy Trofimov) on August 7, 1943 left Polyarny to a position located near the ice cliffs of the Novaya Zemlya Cape Konstantin.

In the endless Arctic, the polar summer was ending, with fogs, snow and rain squalls during the day, and prickly frosts at short nights. Daily underwater watches in the deathly light of dim red lamps were like one another; they gradually accumulated psychological and physical fatigue among the submariners. But the acousticians continued to tirelessly listen to the depths of the sea, and the watch commanders continued to examine the endless expanse of the sea, knowing full well that the same underwater, but fascist “hunter” could look for his prey somewhere in the neighborhood, for example, near the Gulf of Natalia or at the Ice Harbor .

And on August 21, 1943, the hydroacoustic on watch heard the enemy. In a few minutes the crew scattered to their combat posts, and the torpedomen began preparing torpedo tubes.

Imagine the surprise of the commander and senior officer on the campaign when, through the periscope, instead of an enemy raider, they saw several icebergs surrounded by strips of broken ice. It was this “company” that misled our acoustician, who was not yet accustomed to the sounds of hummocking ice. Meanwhile, there was not a single enemy ship nearby. True, taking into account current knowledge about the actual location of Nazi submarines and their support vessels off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, it is quite possible to accept the fact that the North Sea people actually heard an underwater enemy, and not icebergs at all. And yet, that day the enemy was not detected, and the submariners dispersed to their compartments. The tedious hours of underwater search began again.

In the early morning of August 28, when the Soviet submarine was near Cape Konstantin in Novaya Zemlya, the vigilance of its “listeners” was rewarded.

At 10:20 a.m., the hydroacoustic on watch, Red Navy man I. Larin, heard, among the blue and white silence, the barely audible but gradually increasing “singing” of the ship’s diesel engines. Such a ringing sound was characteristic of a submarine moving at maximum speed. But there could be no Soviet submarines in the Kara Sea. On alert, the crew quickly scattered to the boat compartments again.

Very soon, through the periscope in the darkness of the snow charge, Lieutenant-Commander Trofimov saw the low silhouette of an enemy submarine with an anti-network “saw” and a snow-white “whisker” at the stem. And then - her barrel-shaped cabin. There was no doubt - this was a fascist submarine “ringing” with diesel engines in the silence of the icy desert. And the S-101, as if on a cat’s paws, began to get closer to the enemy.

Half an hour later, when there were six cables left before the blue-and-white silhouette of the stranger, three torpedoes flew out of the bow torpedo tubes of the 101st, as if spring-loaded. At the same time, Lieutenant Commander Trofimov provided for various options for the development of the battle. All three torpedoes had different depth settings: one was prepared for a target going at a depth of two meters, the other two - for a target that, if torpedoes approaching it were detected, would begin to sink, that is, they went with settings of five and eight meters, respectively. And fifty seconds later, the roar of an explosion was heard over the sea.

The huge column of water paused for a moment in its upward movement, and then began to fall. Suddenly, a swirling yellow-brown bulge appeared inside this pillar: either torpedo ammunition or artillery shells detonated on board the enemy ship. Another second, and deathly silence fell over the sea. Only the eerie guttural gurgle and the clearly audible metallic crack of the Nazi submarine’s bulkheads breaking under the monstrous pressure gradually subsided in the cold depths. A few minutes later, the Soviet “eska” surfaced under the wheelhouse and, under electric motors, went to the point where the blue and white silhouette of the enemy had recently been located.

Here, slightly swaying on the surface of the calm water, floated the disfigured corpses of two German submariners in rubberized suits, and a huge rainbow stain of solarium spread around them. Before it surrounded the Soviet submarine, the North Sea men managed to catch the signal book, the diary and jacket of the commander of U-639, Oberleutnant Walter Wichmann, individual drawings of the boat and a whole life preserver.

The death of the Nazi submarine was undeniable. But the “flight” of a fascist submarine during the day and in a cruising position is strange. Unless the Germans were not afraid to meet Soviet ships here. But why was the keeping of the top watch by German submariners not up to the mark? There are plenty of possible answers (and more often hypothetical ones) to this seemingly single question.

For example, only in the 50s of the last century did we learn that even before the start of the Great Patriotic War, on the island of Alexandra Land (Franz Josef Land archipelago or simply ZFI), the Nazis created a secret stronghold of the Kriegsmarine or Luftwaffe. Heavy Dorniers or Focke-Wulfs could land here, and in the under-rock base, German submarines could charge batteries and load torpedoes and mines. In addition, there was a plant nearby for repairing fascist raiders and submarines. Below is a detailed description of this database.

In addition to the rear base on Alexandra Land, German submariners had small strongholds (a small house, a cave, next to which small food and fuel warehouses were built) on the shores of the Novaya Zemlya bays - Icy Harbor and Blagopoluchiya. There were the same maneuverable bases in the eastern part of the Kara Sea - on the coast of small bays in the Minin skerries. So, according to Lieutenant Vikhman, his submarine was sailing in a well-developed, if not inhabited, area, where warships of the Northern Fleet had not yet been seen. He had no idea that Soviet submarines had been periodically patrolling here since September 1942.

After today we became aware of the construction by the Nazis of a rear point and maneuver bases of the Kriegsmarine on the islands of FJL, Novaya Zemlya and the Minin skerries, the combat activities of the “polar wolves” can be presented as follows.

At the end of June - beginning of July, a group of fascist underwater minelayers assigned to operate in the Arctic came to the “offensive areas” located in the eastern part of the Barents Sea. German submariners spent up to thirty days on the passage, additional exploration and installation of TMS mines off the western coast of Novaya Zemlya. Most often, they laid mines at the western entrances to the Novaya Zemlya Straits to cut off convoys coming from the Kara Sea from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. At the same time, they cut off the access routes for warships of the Northern Fleet and the White Sea Flotilla, which could protect or provide assistance to the civilian ships locked here. Each of the sixteen TMS mines loaded on board a Nazi submarine at the piers of Kirkenes or Liinahamari was intended for installation in deep sea areas and could freely “reveal” the bottom of any ship or transport.

Then the Germans most likely left for Severnaya Bay (SFI), where they loaded a new set of mines on board. This time it consisted of twenty-four mines of the TMV type, specially designed for deployment in shallow sea areas, which are characteristic of the Kara Sea. The required number of such mines for “summer work” at a special weapons base created by the Nazis in Alexandra Land could be delivered without any problems by both special supply vessels (“Fenicia”, “Cordillere”, “Pelagos” or “Kerntern”), and the Komet raider, which will be discussed later. German submariners spent up to twenty days on the transition for a new loading, a short rest in the coastal barracks and the transition to the Kara Sea.

Thus, fascist submarines in a mine version came to the Arctic for sixty to eighty days. And definitely - with a short rest at one of the secret Arctic bases.

The rest of the Nazi submarines from the incoming group, which were armed only with torpedoes, operated in the Kara Sea for about the same number of days. At the same time, there is information that the crews of individual “polar wolves”, in order to keep their activities secret, lived at remote Arctic bases for two or even three years. The absence of mandatory vacation days for front-line soldiers to Germany was fully compensated for by all types of pleasures in the polar “ Paradise" - a holiday home created next to the port of Liinakhamari. If you look even at an ordinary map of the world, we can easily notice that the Germans were pragmatists here too. During the day of transitions from Alexandra Land to the Kara Sea and back, German submariners most often used the wide “nameless” strait between Novaya Zemlya and FJL. This route was almost two times shorter than the route from Kirkenes and even more so from Narvik. Hikes through the Novaya Zemlya strait, the Kara Gate, were rare, and data on voyages allegedly made through the Yugorsky Shar or Matochkin Shar straits require serious verification. Especially through the last strait, which will be discussed later.

By the beginning of the summer navigation of 1943, the command of the Northern Fleet had most likely already learned about the role of the “nameless” strait in the combat activities of enemy submarines. And it is not at all by chance that in July 1943, on one of the first flights of the new Arctic navigation, the Soviet transport Roshal, under the command of Captain 2nd Rank I. Kotsov, delivered the Cepheus-2 noise direction-finding station to Cape Zhelaniya. It didn’t take much time to bring it into working order, and it immediately showed the high intensity of movement of fascist submarines along the strait, which, among other things, were also negotiating with each other via sound communication. But, unfortunately, we learned such detailed information about the activities of Doenitz’s “wolves” in our “deep rear” only after the end of the war.

Meanwhile, German documents recovered from the surface of the water by the North Sea men showed that U-639 was one of the aforementioned underwater minelayers. Before her death, she managed to lay mines in the areas of the Pechora and Ob Bays. But where was she in such a hurry when she met S-101? This question was not asked by chance. It is unusual that in his memoirs, the commander of the Northern Fleet, Admiral Arseny Golovko, did not even mention this victory of the crew of Lieutenant Commander Trofimov, but limited himself to only posting a photograph of the submarine with a short caption. At the same time, he mentioned the submarine K-1, which disappeared here, twice. In addition, by a strange coincidence, all data about the attack on August 28, 1943, without additional analysis, was archived (at least according to open data). How can we understand such inattention to a completely unusual event during the war? After all, this was the only real victory of a Northern Fleet submarine over an enemy submarine, and even near Novaya Zemlya.

THE UNUSUAL NAZI TRANSITION. BUT WHY WERE THEY CAREFUL?

But Vikhman was clearly not in a hurry to go to the Norwegian base, and after the return of our “eska” the command of the Northern Fleet found out about this. After all, upon arrival in Polyarnoye, the commander of the S-101 reported that the fascist boat was heading north, and not southwest or west. The fact that the command of the Northern Fleet received such a report (or that attention was specially drawn to this fact) is described in YA’s memoirs. Panteleev, at that time the commander of the White Sea military flotilla.

After the war, we learned that on August 28, 1943, I-639 operated in the Kara Sea as part of the Viking group for just a month. During this time, namely on August 1, she deployed sixteen TMS mines west of Cape Russky Zavorot (a sand spit on the northwestern edge of Pechora Bay). And two weeks later, according to the plan for Operation Zeehund (Seal), twenty-four TMV mines in the Gulf of Ob.

Interestingly, the Gulf of Ob, sandwiched between the Yamal Peninsula and the Gydan Peninsula, is the longest bay in the Soviet Arctic. Above it, northern winds are especially frequent, almost instantly turning into storms, and the Ob River annually carries a huge amount of silt and sand to the Kara Sea, which form extensive and very dangerous estuarine bars at the entrance. It was here that the most difficult river areas began, and not every captain was ready to navigate his ship here on his own. But the mighty Ob has always been especially important for Russia.

After all, the West Siberian region is one of the largest economic regions of our country, rich in oil and endless forests. In addition, only along the Ob at that time it was possible to get to the Novosibirsk region - an important industrial (ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy) and agricultural (wheat, rye, barley, flax and vegetables) rear region of our country.

Thus, Lieutenant Wichmann (if he had not been in a hurry to get a new set of mines or for some other reason) would have had an excellent opportunity for another month here to successfully hunt for Soviet transports with the help of torpedoes. But he was in a hurry somewhere!

It was also possible to find out after the war that almost simultaneously with the 639th, U-636 came to the Soviet Arctic under the command of Oberleutnant Hans Hildebrand, which on August 4 deployed sixteen TMS mines at Cape Russky Zavorot, and on August 23 - twenty-four TMV mines at neighboring the Gulf of Ob - the Yenisei Gulf.

This gulf was no less important for the Soviet defense industry than the Gulf of Ob. It allows sea vessels to reach the port of Igarka and its famous timber processing plant, as well as the Norilsk copper-nickel region.

Unexpectedly, immediately after August 23, any mention of U-636's combat activities disappears. Although no one noticed her in the Norwegian bases. Just as unexpectedly, but already on November 14, Hildebrand’s submarine reappears near Novaya Zemlya, where at the western entrance to the Yugorsky Shar Strait it lays a minefield of... twenty-four TMVs. And only then returns to Norway. Thus, the combat patrol of the Hildebrand submarine lasted almost eighty days.

It is appropriate to assume that both submarines (11-636 and U-639) were preparing for operations in the Kara Sea according to a single plan. But after the death of Wikhman’s crew, the 636th apparently had to close the gap in the minefield system at the exit from the Kara Sea. At the same time, Hildebrand did not have time, and perhaps even a real possibility of a day of transition to at least Kirkenes or Liinakhamari.

In any case, on August 28, 1943, Wichmann's submarine was premature to return to Norway, and its passage was not normal. Openly “flying” on the surface, the Nazis were either going to Franz Josef Land (for example, having polar explorers or meteorologists on board, or some serious malfunction of the torpedo system or sonar), or were in a hurry to meet with a support vessel (for the same reasons) . Both versions will be discussed below in more detail.

But why was the top watch carried out carelessly? And this is completely uncharacteristic of wartime signalmen in all fleets. Unless the Germans were counting on the high speed capabilities of their ship.

Even today there are no acceptable explanations for the weakening of the attention of the top watch on Wikhmann’s submarine. However, there are some considerations.

Firstly, they could have been distracted by other submariners U-6 3 9, who, during Operation Zeehund, saw icebergs so closely for the first time. And secondly, it is possible that on board the German submarine, in addition to the main crew, there could also be a shift of German meteorologists, or service personnel from one of the secret bases, removed after wintering, for example, from the coast of the same Gulf of Ob, or intelligence officers from a special reconnaissance - sabotage "Zeppelin Enterprise". What if there are still fellow countrymen?

Unfortunately, the submariners with U-639 will never be able to tell anyone what or who was on board and what “relaxed” the top watch so much. Maybe they really felt like masters in the Kara Sea? At least in its northern part?

This is how the commander of the White Sea Military Flotilla, Vice Admiral Yu. Panteleev, talks about the state of our affairs in the Novaya Zemlya region in those days:

The islands of Novaya Zemlya stretch for almost a thousand kilometers. Their width is up to one hundred kilometers. On land there is complete impassability. Communication between garrisons is only by sea. There are many deep, well-sheltered bays here, but not all of them were developed at that time. And although our observation and communication posts were already located in many places, including even the northernmost point of Novaya Zemlya - Cape Zhelaniya, some of these bays until recently served as a haven for fascist submarines.

SERIOUS SUCCESS FOR THE NORTH SEA PEOPLE.

With their precise torpedo strike, the Soviet submariners S-101 not only destroyed the fascist submarine. They immediately destroyed the entire complex system that the Kriegsmarine command, together with the Luftwaffe command, had been creating in the Soviet sector of the Arctic for at least ten years. At present, only fragmentary information has been found about this system. But the time will come when we will know everything about her. For now, let’s look at a selection of facts about the existence of the “Arctic system” of the Third Reich that became known in the 60 years after the end of World War II. How it was conceived and how its plans were brought to life remains to be seen by the reader. But back in the summer of 1942, and primarily relying on the peculiarities of the Russian character, it began to act, although at first it still failed. And its first significant shortcomings were clearly demonstrated by the unsuccessful raid of the Admiral Scheer, a detailed account of which you will find in Chapter 2.

But at the same time, this operation with the completely appropriate name “Wunderland” (“Wunderland”, “Wonderland”) pointed out the special vulnerability of the areas of our Northern Sea Route, and also that the majority of Soviet transports in the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea are not documents of hidden communication at all enjoy. At the same time, captains of individual Soviet transports and heads of polar stations of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (GUSMP) believed that they were deep in the rear of the Soviet Union. Even a year after the start of hostilities in the Arctic, they often used radio communications in open mode and thereby “supplied” the enemy with extremely valuable intelligence information about the current location of their ships. It also helped that a number of communication instructions that were available, for example, on icebreakers, were absent at coastal polar stations, and the daily communication documents of the icebreakers of the Northern and Far Eastern Shipping Companies differed markedly from each other. Yes, combat training of polar station personnel for the first military summer navigation (1942) on the Northern Sea Route was organized more than poorly. Moreover, radio operators at both polar stations and on the icebreakers of the State Navigation Service turned out to be unprepared for round-the-clock watchkeeping and ensuring the combat activities of the North Sea ships guarding them. And the almost complete absence of wired communications at Novaya Zemlya stations and the use of radio communications as the only means of combat control of units and individual units of the Novaya Zemlya naval base allowed the enemy to easily intercept these radiograms and radio communications, quickly determine the location of one or another Soviet radio station and turn it into a radio beacon for submarines Denitsa. Here are just a few examples.

Throughout the entire navigation of 1942, the radio silence zone established for our ships west of the 85 degree meridian (on the approaches to Dikson) was often not observed in practice. Even worse, the administration of the port of Dikson (the headquarters of the western sector of maritime operations in the Arctic was located here) even established a procedure, following which icebreakers and single ships were required to report the expected time of their arrival at the port twelve hours before approaching the island of the same name. Allegedly - to avoid artillery shelling of them by Soviet coastal batteries. I would like to especially note that the Kuibyshev steamship (Captain Tokovenko), whose radio operator strictly fulfilled this requirement and transmitted an open radiogram to Dixon, was soon discovered by the German submarine U-601 (Lieutenant Captain Peter Ottmar Grau) and sunk.

At the same time, radio stations in Dudinka and Igarka daily transmitted clear text reports to Dikson listing all the ships in the port and their cargo operations. At the same time, the connection between Dixon and transport ships at sea until August 27 (that is, almost until the fascist raider appeared here, and partly after that) remained open. Even after the death of “Kuibyshev” and “A. Sibiryakova”, individual captains managed to openly go on the radio (“Ussuri”, “Shchors”), and the “Belomorkanal”, when moving to Dikson Island, also openly radioed the time of its intended departure from Kozhevnikov and its initial point of call.

The polar stations of the Main Northern Sea Route did not lag behind them. Some of them, not having the means for covert communication, openly reported to Dixon about all ships passing in the station’s visibility zone. There could not have been a better tip of the day from German radio intelligence officers. And a striking example of this was the case of the “Murmanets” motorboat, well known to all Soviet polar explorers.

At the estimated time of September 6, 1942, the Murmanets arrived at Solitude Island the day before to transfer cargo and food to the local polar station. Suddenly, it started flying into the radio air: “Everyone, everyone, an unknown ship is approaching us.” And then came the requirement for the motorboat to name itself. In response, “Murmanets”, also on the radio, suggested stopping the transmission, but the coastal radio operator could not be stopped, he continued to persistently request the name of the suitable vessel. And the captain of the Murmanets, in order not to attract the enemy’s attention to himself or the polar station without completing the task, had to take the ship out to sea.

Less than a day had passed when a Nazi submarine surfaced near Solitude Island and set fire to the station buildings with several artillery shots. It is possible that the attention of the Germans was attracted to the polar station by recent open radio conversations. All the data presented here was told to the author by veterans of the Northern Fleet and veterans of the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk shipping companies. But one should not blame them for any “corporate bias” or “influence of perestroika.” In the literature of the Soviet era, dedicated to the war in the Arctic, no, no, and even their individual memories burst through. Another thing is that they were all scattered and “smoothed out” by the notorious political situation of those years. Only today was it possible to put them together and compare them with the opinion of the German side. Unfortunately, there were points of agreement here. As confirmation, without citing here in detail the opinion of the famous German military historian Jürg Meister, I offer several excerpts from his work “Eastern Front. - War at sea 1941–1945":

Soviet defenses in these remote areas in 1942 turned out to be very weak and temporary. During Operation Wunderland, the U-255 submarine fired at a Russian radio station in the area of Cape Zhelaniya on August 25, 1942, but this action did not find approval at the Naval War Command Headquarters... In the summer and autumn of 1943, German submarines carried out operations in the West -Siberian and Kara seas. It turned out that the Russians, while carrying out very modest defensive measures, were unable to respond in a timely manner to the rapid shift in the direction of the main attack of the German submarine forces. And these words can be an excellent confirmation of how the German military leadership protected their Arctic “brainchild” from the sometimes completely unreasonable initiative of their own commanders.

The fact that the fascist naval reconnaissance officers on watch always tried to be attentive and professionally took advantage of the blatant mistakes of Soviet sailors is evidenced by the same August raid of the Admiral Scheer. The radio operators of the “pocket battleship” quickly figured out that Soviet polar explorers most often used six-hundred-meter radio waves. And they immediately began to “clog” them with radio interference.

On August 25, 1942, radio operators of the Admiral Scheer used radio interference to interfere with negotiations between A Sibiryakov and the radio station on Dikson Island. And two days later - radio communications between the patrol ship "Dezhnev" and the radio station at Cape Chelyuskin. The following year, new elements were included in the work of the “Arctic system”.

Here are some more facts about the previously unknown work of Nazi radio intelligence, which also only became known in the post-war years.

1. Polar explorers of the Novaya Zemlya stations on Cape Vykhodnoy (Matochkin Shar Strait) and in Blagopoluchiya Bay in July-August 1943 often noted the operation of an unknown high-power ship radio station nearby. Soon after the radio operator of the Zaliv Blagopoluchiya station reported this to Dikson, a fascist submarine surfaced next to the station and destroyed the station buildings with artillery fire. Only after the end of the Great Patriotic War, Murmansk sailors discovered an abandoned shelter for eight people in the coastal cliffs, which still contained scraps of German uniforms and empty tin cans with Kriegsmarine markings.

2. In the northern region near Novaya Zemlya (S-101 was patrolling in the eastern region), simultaneously with Trofimov’s submarine, there was another Soviet “esque” - S-54 (commander - captain 3rd rank Dmitry Bratishko). She came to Novaya Zemlya in tandem with the 101st, only with a slight difference in time. While in position from the "eski", Bratishko repeatedly heard a noise of unknown origin and observed the silhouette of an unknown ship, which was transmitting light signals to someone. However, the Soviet commander did not find out who was looking for a meeting with whom here in the icy desert. If we exclude from the calculation the underwater pair of “esoks”, which neither Wikhman nor the unknown captain of the enemy ship (and there could be no Soviet ships here) had any idea about, the “stranger” was most likely waiting for U-639. At the same time, in the snow charges, he mistook the 54th for a German submarine. (In silhouette, the Soviet submarine type “C” is very similar to its German “ancestor” of the VII series.) And this information may directly indicate that the ship that arrived at the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya was waiting for Wikhman’s submarine precisely for the transfer of personnel who were not included as part of the submarine's crew, or to receive some important cargo from the submarine. To indicate its place, it used an onboard hydroacoustic guidance beacon and a searchlight. It is interesting that after the war, similar hydroacoustic beacons were discovered by Soviet sailors on the Kerntern tanker, which throughout the war was a supply ship for the German “polar wolves”. What is not an indirect confirmation of the previously stated assumption about the reason for the blatant inattention of the top watch from the submarine of Oberleutnant Wichmann.

And the Kriegsmarine had two such “supplies” in the North Atlantic, “Pelagos” and “Kerntern”. Moreover, the first was a floating base for Norwegian whaling ships in Antarctica until 1940, and the latter was designed and built in 1937–1940. Both tankers became special-purpose ships and had on board two special tanks for diesel fuel and fresh water that could be launched into the water (twenty tons each), spacious refrigerated chambers for storing food, special storage for torpedoes, as well as special lifting equipment. The areas of the hikes, in particular “Kernternsh”, were only able to be established after the end of the Great Patriotic War from several accidentally preserved sea water salinity logs. These logs were found by our sailors in one of its uninhabited enclosures (“Kerntern” by this time had become the Soviet tanker “Polarnik”). It was from the entries in these logs that it was possible to establish that this polar “supply”, assigned to the Norwegian port of Hammerfesg, rarely was at the native pier. Almost monthly he traveled between Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land and the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya. Of course, it would be nice to see the logbooks of the Pelagos and the missing documents of the Kerntern, which would make it possible to more accurately establish the entire geography of the voyages of these very interesting ships, which are still probably stored in special archives (including Russian ones). However, for now we will limit ourselves to what we managed to find.

It is known that by the beginning of World War II, in order to create complete “radio transparency” of the Barents and Norwegian Seas, Kriegsmarine reconnaissance officers had only a radio direction-finding station in Kirkenes, Norway. Later, to control the northern part of the Barents and Kara Seas, they created the 24th base of the meteorological and direction-finding service on Alexandra Land (this station on the Franz Josef Land archipelago will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2). However, both stations were too far from the areas where Soviet transports traveled along the Northern Sea Route. And Grand Admiral Doenitz and his special reconnaissance unit B-Dienst urgently needed a coastal radio reconnaissance post on Novaya Zemlya or somewhere on the Kara Sea coast, which would allow them to view areas from the throat of the White Sea to the Vilysitsky Strait. The northern island of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago was best suited for this. Probably, it was with this island that the German Naval Headquarters pinned special hopes, trying to create here some kind of “centralizing, and perhaps central body” of the control system for German submarines in the Arctic. Perhaps, including hopes for the implementation of the future global provisions of the “General Plan “Ost””. Time will show. And a deep bow to the North Sea submariners of Captain-Lieutenant Trofimov, who with just one torpedo destroyed the enemy “system” that was already gaining strength. However, the Nazis still managed to create something in the Soviet sector of the Arctic. And this should not have come as a surprise to us.

WE COULD EXPECT THE APPEARANCE OF THE GERMANS IN THE ICY DESERTS.

After all, only in the pre-war years did the Soviet Union really pay attention to the trans-Arctic communications of our country, including military sailors. However, the Great Patriotic War showed that too many years, much needed days of practical study and development of the Northern Sea Route areas, were still lost. By the way, it is a pity that today we are only just beginning to give a proper assessment of the role of the Arctic in the day of the new Russia, while at the same time continuing not to remember the deeds and covenants of our grandfathers.

The first special group of three commanders of the Red Army Naval Forces was sent east of Novaya Zemlya only in 1935. She began a detailed study of the Northern Sea Route and the conditions of ice navigation, got acquainted with the organization of the service for escorting ships in ice, the existing Arctic bases, and also began developing the necessary documents that should amend the existing organization of escorting warships in ice. The naval sailors worked hard, and the following year, as part of the Special Purpose Expedition (EON-3), the destroyers Stalin (commander - Lieutenant Commander V. Obukhov) and Voikov (commander - Captain 3-3) sailed to the Pacific Ocean. rank M. Sukhorukov). This campaign showed that warships, even with weak hulls, with proper support along the Northern Sea Route, can be used to replenish the ship composition of both the Northern and Pacific fleets. But this same trip through the Arctic seas revealed poor knowledge and equipment of certain sections of the Northern Sea Route.

And yet, a year later, in the summer of 1937, a Special Detachment of Hydrographic Vessels (OOGS) left for the Far East across the Arctic seas, which included two icebreaker-type hydrographic vessels (Okean and Okhotsk) and a hydrographic vessel with a reinforced hull - "Kamchadal". If both icebreaking vessels successfully completed the entire route and reached Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on September 19. then the "Kamchadal", which went to sea ten days later than its brothers, together with the icebreakers accompanying it, had to winter in the southwestern part of the Laptev Sea. And this wintering had the most negative consequences of the development of the Northern Sea Route.

As a result of unqualified management of Arctic navigation by the leadership of the Main Northern Sea Route, more than twenty ships, icebreakers and icebreaking steamships were left for the winter in various areas of the Arctic. During this wintering, almost all the ships left in the Arctic received significant damage, and one was crushed by ice and sank.

Only in 1940 did a new transition of warships along the Northern Sea Route take place - the Soviet submarine Shch-423 left for the Pacific Ocean as part of EON-Yu. This transition will be discussed in more detail below.

We have to admit that before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the Northern Sea Route was never considered by the Soviet military leadership as a likely theater of direct military action. The basis for such a misconception was the views of military theorists formed in the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, when it was believed that the Arctic seas and coasts, due to their geographical inaccessibility, had no military significance. The entire military significance of the Northern Sea Route was limited only by the possibilities of its use for the inter-theater transfer of RKKF ships along a sea route not controlled by the enemy. To this end, at the beginning of 1941, the formation of a special Northern (Polar) department began at the Main Naval Headquarters of the RKKF, which was entrusted with the development of issues of the operational use of the Arctic seas in the area from the Novaya Zemlya Straits to the Bering Strait, as well as the organization and management of the escort of fleet ships from the ports of their special equipment to destination ports. The officers of the new department were immediately assigned the following tasks:

1. Development of organizational measures for the use of the Northern Sea Route in peacetime and wartime. And first of all - the days of construction of coastal defense, airfields, a network of observation and communication posts, the development of special naval training for personnel and equipment of the Main Directorate of the NSR for their use in the event of the outbreak of hostilities in the Arctic.

2. Development of all documentation and management of preparations for the transfer of Navy ships along the Northern Sea Route, preparation of instructions and other documentation for the day of navigation of ships in ice, accounting for command personnel with experience in ice navigation.

3. Drawing up assignments for hydrographic study and navigation equipment of the route, accounting for the navigation of foreign ships in the western sector of the Soviet Arctic. However, the war made significant adjustments to these plans, and soon after June 22, 1941, without actually starting work, the Northern Department of the General Staff of the RKKF ceased to exist. Some of the tasks facing him were redistributed between the directorates and departments of the Main Naval Staff, and some were assigned to the headquarters of the Northern and Pacific Fleets.

It is difficult to disagree that, despite all the victories over the Arctic in the 30s of the 20th century, the importance of the Arctic maritime direction in the USSR was clearly underestimated, and the issues of protecting the Arctic regions and the safety of local maritime communications were practically not developed. We learned the true significance, as well as the volume of national economic transportation along the Northern Sea Route, which required provision by the Soviet military fleet, only during the war.

Since enemy actions near the Novaya Zemlya Straits and further to the east were not considered probable, the need to deploy fleet and aviation bases, as well as surveillance and communications systems in the eastern part of the Barents and Kara Seas on the unequipped coast was not envisaged. And the results of such “forgetfulness” very soon affected the defense capability of our country.

Until the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Northern and Pacific fleets were not given any tasks to develop the Arctic regions and organize coastal defense here. The eastern border of the operational zone of the Northern Fleet and the northern border of the Pacific Fleet were not even determined. So is it any wonder at the paucity of our capabilities along the entire length of the Northern Sea Route (both in the western and eastern sectors), as well as at the extreme confidence of the Nazis, who, as it turned out, long before the start of World War II began to prepare for battles and campaigns in our Arctic.

Let us immediately agree that only the western Arctic sector will be considered in more detail in this book. And for a better understanding of individual events, we will briefly talk about the events in the areas of the Murmansk coast and the throat of the White Sea.

We did not have military bases or strongholds in either the western or eastern sectors of the Arctic, and the construction of ports was just beginning. Judge for yourself!

The construction of the seaport closest to Arkhangelsk, Dikson, began only in 1938. It was supposed to become a bunkering base and a port of refuge for icebreakers and transports. Before the start of fighting in the Arctic, only a 60-meter coal pier was built here near Cone Island and a small coal reserve was created. In the port itself there was a small workshop and a radio center. The construction of a pier for the simultaneous arrival of two ocean-going ships has not yet been completed. At the same time, Soviet ships were not very keen on this port: there was no way to get fresh water on Dikson. And, in order to replenish its supply, our transports traveling along the Northern Sea Route had to go to the mouth of the Yenisei River, that is, more than one hundred and twenty miles from Dikson.

The next port is Tiksi. In pre-war times, it was built to receive and process cargo heading to Yakutia, and partly for the export of timber and coal from the Lena River basin. There were several berths, port workshops and a small supply of coal. But, due to the shallow waters of the port, these berths could only be used by ships with a draft of no more than five meters. The rest were forced to stand in the roadstead. True, a hydroairfield and a radio center had already been created here.

In the eastern sector, the farthest port was the port in Ambarchik Bay. The berths built here allowed only river vessels with a draft of no more than one and a half meters to approach in low water. For others, all cargo operations were carried out in an unprotected roadstead located more than ten miles away. Coal for ships was delivered by river boats along the Kolyma River.

The most developed ports in the sector were the ports of Pevek and Provideniya.

The first of them belonged to the notorious Dalstroy, but here, too, the first pier for sea vessels was built only in 1942. Previously, all cargo operations were carried out at the roadstead. This port was created and grew together with the Chaunsky industrial mining and ore cluster and had a convenient anchorage, a hydroairfield and a radio station.

The Port of Provideniya was the main bunkering base in the eastern part of the Northern Sea Route. By the beginning of the war there was a pier with coal reserves, a hydroairfield and a radio station. Fresh water supplies were replenished at nearby Head Bay.

The development of the airfield network in the Soviet Arctic before the war was also in its infancy - until 1938 there was not a single land airfield on the Arctic coast. Subsequently, all Polar Aviation aircraft used for ice reconnaissance in the Kara Sea were based exclusively on natural airfields, most often unequipped and without repair capabilities. Landing sites were available only in the Naryan-Mar region (36 kilometers from the city), on a sand spit near the villages of Amdermai Ust-Kara. In other places, land planes could land only in winter on skis, on the ice cover of bays and bays. Flying boats of Polar Aviation in the summer could land in bays and lagoons near polar stations, but as soon as young ice formed here, ice reconnaissance had to be stopped. During the polar night and during the spring and autumn thaw, there were no flights in the Arctic at all.

The Northern Fleet Surveillance and Communications Service (SNiS SF), which was entrusted with control over the coastal areas of the Barents and White Seas, was also still in its “childhood”. And the areas of her responsibility were very, very difficult: deserted and completely impassable. And the construction of radio centers and relay communication lines here is an extremely difficult task, because it had to be carried out in permafrost conditions. However, even after the establishment of communication lines, radio communication in the Arctic regions was extremely difficult. Especially at short waves, which are noticeably weakened in the ionosphere.

To improve the quality and range of communications, North Sea radio operators had to work on medium waves or UHF. But even here, in the absence of ground-based repeaters, the construction of which was also “on strike” in the Arctic, radio communications were not much better. In general - a “vicious circle”!

And yet, until the end of 1937, on the approaches to the Kola Bay and the throat of the White Sea - on the island of Kildin and on capes Tsyp-Navolok, Pogan-Navolok and Vashenga (Murmansk fortified area), as well as on the islands of Morzhovets (Southern and Northern) and on the cape Orlovsky (Belomorsky fortified area) - sea observation posts were created. At first it was planned that heat direction finding stations would be installed here, which would make it possible to observe the entrance to the Kola Bay and the throat of the White Sea even during fogs and polar nights. However, these stations, where they were installed, failed to play a significant role. They could only detect surface ships (without identifying the target class), had large “dead zones” and too often refused to work in fog or during the passage of a snow charge.

The first serious test of the day of the surveillance service of the newborn Northern Fleet was the Soviet-Finnish war, which showed that the entire naval surveillance system created in the Arctic clearly did not meet the requirement of reliable and reliable surveillance beyond the area of the main base of the Northern Fleet. There was no mention of remote areas in the Arctic.

True, soon, as often happens with us, at a “shock” pace (the personnel lived in tents or huts built with their own hands), several additional observation and communication posts were created. And then two heat collection stations were increasingly deployed on the Rybachy Peninsula: at Cape Tsyp-Navolok (December 1939) and in Volokovaya Bay (February 22, 1940). And by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Ponoisky and Kola districts of SNiS, as well as the Arkhangelsk section of SNiS, appeared as part of the surveillance and communications service of the Northern Fleet. Moreover, more than half of them did not have a sufficient number of technical surveillance equipment (primarily optical equipment). And some of the posts (and their personnel) that had a wired telephone connection with the main base were used as small telephone exchanges. And this became a new “headache” for the command of the young Northern Fleet.

The weak development of the simplest wire communications in the Northern Fleet with the outbreak of hostilities immediately led to a sharp increase in radio traffic and load on the radio communication facilities of posts. In turn, this also forced, and again at an “accelerating pace,” to create a new wired communication network, using the so-called additional suspension of wires on the street<е построенные опоры. В том числе порой даже в нарушение всех технических норм. Однако, несмотря на все трудности, со временем флотская система наблюдения и связи начала действовать.

The radio stations of the polar stations and the Polar Aviation Administration of the Northern Sea Route provided serious assistance in this work. In 1940, more than fifty radio and meteorological stations operated on the Arctic coast and on the islands of our polar seas, of which 35 were located west of the meridian of Cape Chelyuskin.

In order to better illuminate the situation in the eastern part of the operational zone of the White Sea Flotilla, more than twenty polar stations of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (GU NSR) were quickly subordinated to its headquarters, with the duties of observation posts assigned to them. However, negative interdepartmental relations between the leadership of the Main Northern Sea Route and the command of the Northern Fleet became a very serious obstacle to the combat activities of the North Sea troops in the Arctic.

With the beginning of the war, the naval SNiS began to grow rapidly. Thus, as part of the Kola district of SNiS, in addition to the Murmansk section, the Tsyp-Navoloksky and Teribersky sections of SNiS (a total of thirty-nine posts) were created. On June 24, 1941, a naval base was formed in Yokanga (Iokangsky - the SNiS section consisted of ten posts). The Arkhangelsk region of SNiS also developed, and with the beginning of the war it included, in addition to the Ponoisky and Morzhovetsky sections, also the Solovetsky and Novozemelsky sections of SNiS (a total of twenty-eight coastal posts). Already from the first days of the war, in order to provide and supply all the necessary SNiS posts scattered along the entire Murmansk and White Sea coasts, the North Sea residents had to allocate a significant number of, albeit completely small, watercraft. Most often these were small fishing boats and fishing motor-sail boats. It is not surprising that the deployment of observation posts to the most remote corners of the Arctic “deserts” was constantly associated with many, sometimes most unpredictable, difficulties.

It is known that from 1941 to 1944, one hundred and fifteen regular and more than four hundred and fifty emergency observation posts were opened in the western sector of the Arctic. But even in this case, the security of observation was satisfactory only in the areas of the Main Base and the throat of the White Sea. Further east things were much worse. Thus, from Kanin Nos to Vaygach Island there was an average of one post per thirty miles of coastline. On the coast of the Kara Sea, each post on average had to control a hundred miles. And on Novaya Zemlya, each post was assigned even three hundred and eighty miles of responsibility. At the same time, their observers, at best, had only optical observation means, which completely excluded the detection of enemy submarines underwater, and in poor visibility conditions - absolutely all enemy ships (including surface raiders and ocean-going supply ships). Only by the beginning of 1943, at the entrance to the Kola Bay (the area of the Toros and Sedlovaty islands), two active-passive coastal hydroacoustic stations (CGAS) of the Saturn type were installed, operating in the “echo-direction finding” (“ED”) and “noise direction finding” modes. "("SHP"), And a year later, a similar BGAS, although operating only in the "SHP" mode, was installed on the shore of the Svyatonossky Bay. At the same time, two coastal radar stations (RAS) were installed at the entrance to the main base of the Northern Fleet. It was not possible to find reliable information about the work of these RAS, but we managed to find something about the work of the “Saturns”. Until the end of the war in the North, oddly enough, it was the Iokangsky “Saturn” that had the largest number of detections - ten contacts. The BGAS on Taurus Island received three contacts in the “ES” mode and four in the “SIL” mode. The station on Sedlovaty Island never detected enemy submarines. But today it is no secret that in the area between the Rybachy Peninsula and the Kildin Island, fascist submarines were very frequent “guests”. Sometimes they even went directly into the Kola Bay. But all this technical support of the Northern Fleet applies only to the areas of the Barents and White Seas. Our defensive capabilities in the Kara Sea were weak throughout almost the entire war.

Only in March 1944, after the Kara Naval Base (KarVMB) was formed and new minesweepers with hydroacoustic stations arrived here, did Nazi submariners have to think about how to keep their presence off the Arctic coast secret. At the same time, several SNiS posts were specially created at several polar stations of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, which previously independently monitored the islands and the coast of the Kara Sea, which made up the Novaya Zemlya region of SNiS (twenty coastal posts) and the Khabarovsk section of SNiS (nine posts).

Only in the third war year did the Northern Fleet really gain the real opportunity to control the entire Kara Sea, including its most deserted areas. And very soon the fascist military sailors, pilots and polar explorers felt this attention.

Of course, it’s easy to talk about this today, after more than seventy years, but did no one really understand in the mid-30s of the last century that if we ourselves do not develop our own territories, even in the Arctic, then there will always be those who want to do this for us?

Chapter 1. THE SOVIET ARCTIC IN THE EYES OF BINOCULARS OF GERMAN “STEM WORTS”

1. A BRIEF EXCURSION THROUGH THE SPIRAL OF WORLD AND NAVAL HISTORY

But let's go back to 1939. During preparations for a new war, Nazi Germany again had to consider the real possibility of war against Great Britain, which had a powerful navy. And here it turned out that the expected military clash, in addition to the long-known “obverses of a military medal,” could have many “reverses” that were not noticeable in peacetime, firmly connected to each other.

For a war with the British Isles, reliably sheltered from any enemy by the waves of the Atlantic, the North Sea and the English Channel, the Third Reich needed a strong navy capable of successfully competing with the British fleets in the ocean zone. However, the defeat of the Kaiser's Germany in the First World War and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles deprived the Germans of the opportunity to build a modern navy for many years. According to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany, which lost the war, was allowed to retain in its navy the ancient battleships of the Deutschland and Lothringen class, which were built at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the Gazelle-class cruisers, designed and built at the end of the 19th century.

Over time, the Germans were allowed to replace them, but... The Entente countries, during the years of the First World War, despite the losses suffered in naval battles, having significantly strengthened their fleets, assumed that the losing Germany could only build coastal defense battleships. And in this case, the recent imperialists, securely closed in the Baltic Sea by British and French battleships, will have only one enemy left with an equally weak military fleet - Soviet Russia.

True, Germany had its own special opinion on this matter. But at first the Germans really bitterly called their fleet “pygmy.” The “Deutschlands” and “Lothringens” and the armored “Gazelle” looked especially deplorable, suitable only for training cruises, where the crews and cadets could acquire some familiarity with the sea. No self-respecting sailor could put up with such coercion. And as a result, despite all the prohibitions, by the beginning of new naval battles, the command of the Kriegsmarine, as the Navy of the Third Reich was now called, began to look for an acceptable way out. True, German designers were the first to find it.

After serious consultations with the sailors, they installed powerful artillery and diesel engines in the small hulls of the battleships authorized by Versailles, and these new buildings, thanks to someone else, began to be called “pocket battleships.” And by the mid-1930s, the German navy received from shipbuilders five new battleships and “pocket battleships”, seven cruisers, more than twenty destroyers and almost sixty submarines.

True, even with this composition, the “newborn” Kriegsmarine still could not really break the possible blockade of Germany from the sea or engage in open battle with English battleships. After all, the main forces of the British Royal Navy on the Atlantic (the so-called Home Fleet) consisted of nine battleships and battlecruisers, three aircraft carriers, seventeen heavy and light cruisers, thirty-five destroyers, more than thirty patrol ships and sixteen submarines. With the outbreak of hostilities, in a very short time, stationary troops from the Pacific and Indian Oceans and ships of the fleets of the British Union could join it. And also the French navy! Under these conditions, Germany could only try to “scatter” the British naval formations, battleships and aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy in various areas of the World Ocean and then, having assembled a superior naval group in one of the areas, destroy the British detachment or group that had fallen into a trap. Or, direct all your efforts against British and French supply routes. But for this, the new Reich needed “long arms” in the World Ocean.

Due to the fact that by the beginning of World War II, the shipbuilders of the Third Reich were unable to introduce a sufficient number of heavy warships with powerful artillery into the operational composition of the Imperial Navy, the Kriegsmarine admirals had to rely on the doctrine of cruising (raider) warfare. Moreover, unlike battleships, German cruisers were least of all squeezed in the vice of the Versailles restrictions.

The doctrine of raider warfare could really turn the weak fleet of the recent Weimar Republic into a formidable fighting force of the Third Reich. At the same time, it could sharply hit British communications in the Atlantic and Pacific, which would immediately paralyze all commercial activities of Great Britain.

One of the first to speak about raider actions in the most remote corners of the World Ocean at the end of the 19th century was the then signal officer from the cruiser Deutschland, junior lieutenant Erich Raeder.

In 1898, the Deutschland, commanded by frigate Captain Plachte, as part of the cruising squadron of Rear Admiral Prince Heinrich of Prussia, arrived at the Chinese port of Qingdao to strengthen the service of German stationers. The campaign of the German ships coincided with the beginning of the Spanish-American War, where military success was on the side of the United States. Spain, which lost the war, was forced to sell all its overseas possessions in the Pacific to Germany.

Prince Henry of Prussia (or, as he was always called, the Prince Sailor), upon his arrival in the Pacific waters and taking command of the Far Eastern squadron, conducted several staff exercises with its officers, the main purpose of which was to find optimal solutions for the actions of the German squadron in the event of an unexpected war with England.

During the staff game, Second Lieutenant Erich Raeder was on the side of the “British command”. It was then that he came up with the idea that in the event of an unexpected war, the entire squadron of German stationary soldiers could gather near the Mariana Islands, and then, skillfully “getting lost” in the boundless expanses of the Pacific Ocean, inflict unexpected and fatal blows on the enemy. These exercises became the first of a series of war games, which subsequently made it possible to develop real tactics of action for the German squadron of Count von Spee, and a quarter of a century later - for the actions of the Kriegsmarine raiders.

The words “cruiser” and “raider”, as ships operating independently on the enemy’s sea communications, have been well known since time immemorial. Most likely, they originated from the Dutch "kreutz" ("cross") and the English "raider" ("swooping") back in the 16th century. And indeed, on almost every merchant ship, on the grief of the crew who met the sea corsairs and were unable to quickly break away from them, one could confidently give up on the fate of the ship and cargo, and most often on the life of the unfortunate crew.

At that time, the world was well aware of the oceanic mischiefs of the ruthless English privateer Francis Drake, who kept French, Spanish and other merchants in constant fear. Being a loyal sailor of the English Queen Elizabeth I, he periodically became her “headache”. Drake's ship "May Flower" either protected English merchant ships from pirates, or even captured British traders.

Since childhood, the German Prince-Sailor loved to listen to stories about the brave campaigns and raids of the famous pirate. It is not surprising that the proposal of young Erich Raeder was considered very carefully.

However, the defeat in the world war seriously hit the pride of all imperial sailors. And soon after the Versailles disgrace, German naval theorists, Otto Gross and Wolfgang Wegener, as well as the future Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, clearly believed that victory at sea (and therefore the new war itself) could be won even without such the same strong navy as Great Britain or France.

After all, for example, if the enemy is island England, then why sink its battleships in open battle? You can simply leave them without fuel. The British do not have their own oil; hundreds of tankers transport it from afar. Capture, sink, lock oil carriers in ports - and the English fleet will stand “dead” at its native berths. And the merchant fleet of the countries of the British Union, located in various areas of the World Ocean, will become easy prey for German raiders. So - let's get to work!

Moreover, the rich experience of cruising warfare in the Pacific Ocean and the South Atlantic had already been acquired by the Imperials back in 1915-1917. And Versailles also forced German shipbuilders to find very interesting and even revolutionary solutions for the construction of new cruisers.

And the first of them were light cruisers of the Koenigsberg type. When creating them, technologies were used that were previously used only in the construction of destroyers and minesweepers (longitudinal hull construction, electric welding for fastening armor plates, and others). And most importantly, in addition to the main turbines, the Koenigsbergs were equipped with ship diesel engines, which immediately made it possible, without increasing their displacement, to significantly increase the cruising range of the ocean “robbers”. Behind them, “pocket battleships” (“Deutschland” (new), “Admiral Scheer”, “Admiral Graf Spee”), specially built as powerful raiders for operations on the sea and ocean communications of the countries of the British Union, came off the German stocks. The largest industrial “pillars” of the new Reich were involved in their construction. Rheinmetall supplied the 280 mm main caliber guns, Krupp supplied the Wotan armor, Karl Zeiss supplied the ship's optics, Siemens supplied the artillery fire control systems, and Schwarzkopf supplied the torpedoes.

“Pocket battleships,” or more correctly, battleships, were a completely new type of combat ship with a diesel engine and light armor. In terms of their speed, they almost always surpassed the battleships available to the Reich's opponents (with the exception of three English battlecruisers, encounters with which the “pocket battleships” avoided in every possible way), and in terms of armament - all the fastest enemy ships of special construction (heavy and light cruisers, leaders of destroyers and, naturally, the destroyers themselves). Moreover, the main installation of the raiders, which consisted of eight diesel engines, made it possible to quickly reach maximum speed (in order to overtake a merchant ship or break away from a stronger enemy). Moreover, it increased the cruising range by more than three times (compared to steam “peers”).

The diesel engine turned out to be so economical in fuel consumption that it provided these ships with an unprecedentedly large range, immediately making them the most suitable ships for operating far from their bases. And such success became possible thanks to the close cooperation of the ship designer Laudan with the MAN engineering plant (Augsburg-Nuremberg).

Built later, but as truly battleships, the Scharngorst and Gneisenau, for a number of reasons, had high-temperature steam turbines as the main ones. However, they also had diesel engines installed as backup engines.

Both Raeder and Wegener were firmly convinced that the Kriegsmarine would be able to wage a successful fight in the future both on ocean communications and directly off the British Isles. In accordance with these views, the large shipbuilding program of the new Reich, Plan “Z,” was worked out. In accordance with it, before 1948 it was planned to build: six battleships, with a displacement of fifty thousand tons each, up to twelve cruisers with a displacement of twenty thousand tons (initially conceived as enlarged copies of “pocket battleships”), four aircraft carriers of twenty thousand tons, a large number of light cruisers and more than two hundred submarines. It was planned to create several raider squadrons from them, which were supposed to operate on the ocean communications of all enemies of the Third Reich. It was assumed that the raider squadrons would be in the World Ocean for the maximum possible time. Their ships will return to bases only for necessary repairs, replenishment of ammunition and food, as well as for short-term rest for the crew. But the implementation of these grandiose plans was prevented by the outbreak of World War II and the lack of a sufficient number of powerful ship diesel engines.

From the entire future armada of raiders, the Germans managed to build: two large battleships of the Bismarck class, five heavy cruisers of the Admiral Hipper class, five light cruisers of the Königsberg-Leipzig class. Two more Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers were designed. It was assumed that both high-speed (up to 32 knots) “counts”, in addition to sixteen 150-mm main caliber guns, were to have forty carrier-based aircraft: Ju-87C bombers, Me-109T, Me-155 and Ag-197 fighters. But until 1945, a German aircraft carrier did not go to sea.

In the future, all raiders were to become the “long arms” so necessary for the Third Reich in the World Ocean. And over time, even become rulers of the oceans. However, all German raiders had two serious “weaknesses”: they could not independently conduct long-range aviation reconnaissance and had weak hull armor.

The light armoring of the raider hulls was deliberate, solely for the sake of increasing speed capabilities and fuel reserves on board, which, in turn, allowed the ocean “robbers” to have a huge cruising range for those times - up to eighteen thousand miles (including at high speed at 13 knots). According to the German designers, the light armor of the raider's hull was to be compensated by its ability, after a successful attack on an enemy convoy, using its superior speed, to break away from the pursuing enemy battleships and cruisers from the long-range guard of the convoy. And light ships from close guard or a detachment of direct guard of enemy transports can win in an oncoming battle due to powerful artillery weapons.

German designers tried to eliminate their other serious drawback by arming the ocean “robbers” with seaplanes.

To ensure long-range aviation reconnaissance, each raider received from two (light cruisers) to six (battleships and heavy cruisers) seaplanes of the Ag-196 and He-114 types.

But all plans for aircraft armament of ships collapsed due to the lack of the required number of ship aircraft in German industry. For the same reason, even the lead aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, never went to sea. And yet, with the outbreak of World War II, the Reich began to look for options for ocean-going “long arms.”

As one of the options, the conversion of several high-speed steamers into aircraft carriers was considered. The need for them was so acute that in 1942 (to accompany “pocket battleships” and auxiliary cruisers) the possibility of converting the following ships for aircraft-carrying transports was studied: “Europe” (eighteen bombers and twenty-four fighters), “Potsdam” and “Gneisenau” ( eight bombers and twelve fighters each).

Another option was to try to place seaplanes and helicopters on cruising submarines. Nazi scientists developed the XI series submarine cruiser, which was supposed to carry the Ag-231 reconnaissance aircraft (with folding wings). In addition, several German submarines operating in the Indian Ocean were armed with non-motorized Focke-Achgelis Fa-33O (Rotor Dragon) helicopters. But things did not go beyond the factory order for a naval reconnaissance aircraft, and the “dragons” were unable to influence the conduct of the raider war. And soon Germany was no longer interested in searching for “long arms” in the World Ocean. Moreover, the new world war showed: the “childhood diseases” of the raiders were not the worst thing that awaited them.

Back in 1937, the Kriegsmarine command began building special high-speed tankers of the Trosschifr project (combined oil carrier and supply vessel), which were planned for use as part of raider squadrons. Each of these ships was capable of transporting up to twelve thousand tons of various cargoes. Currently, only one of these supplies is known to be commissioned into the German fleet - the Kerntern tanker. More will be said about it below. But why only one? It’s hard to say, because the real knockout for the Nazi admirals and sailors was that the fuel from the captured British Union transports was not suitable for the engines of the ocean “robbers”. Because of this, the autonomy of heavy raiders (in terms of fuel) had to be limited to two to three weeks of sailing, and then their crews had to urgently look for this damned fuel. But somehow no one thought about this in peacetime.

With the outbreak of World War II, the Third Reich encountered another very serious problem - the limitation of the system of basing Kriegsmarine ships in the Baltic and North Seas. The formations operating in the Baltic had to limit themselves to using bases created on the German coast. The formations operating in the North Sea have bases in the “wet triangle” of the islands of Borkum, Sylt and Heligoland. Moreover, Nazi sailors had practically no opportunity to successfully navigate the Northern Passage (the area of the North Sea between the Shetland Islands and the coast of Norway) and certainly not the narrow English Channel. After all, German ships had to sail for a long time along the eastern and southern coasts of Great Britain, constantly under the threat of mortal blows from the English linear or light forces of the fleet and the Royal Air Force, and in the English Channel - also from the forces of the French fleet (in the event of a war with France). German ships and vessels damaged in battles in the vast Atlantic also had to return to their bases for repairs through the same Northern Passage. It was here that they became easy prey for British ships, torpedo boats and bombers. It turned out that the British fleet, accustomed to operating everywhere for several centuries, could confidently, without even firing a single shot, cut off Germany from all the seas of the World Ocean. And the Germans have already experienced such humiliation once.

But the English state “medal” also had its own “reverse”.

Geographical isolation, a deadly danger in the days of the Reich, very quickly turned into a serious threat to the day of national defense and the “foggy Albion” itself.

The British Isles have always been constantly dependent on imports of grain and food. Even with the outbreak of hostilities, up to two thousand British merchant ships were simultaneously in the vastness of the World Ocean in its various seas. Every day more than two dozen transports and ships arrived at British ports and the same number left the English shores. But all of Great Britain's foreign maritime trade operated successfully, relying only on large ports: London, Southampton, Hull, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester.

The first three had access to the North Sea and the English Channel. They provided more than a third of the country's foreign trade and almost a quarter of its cabotage. But there was a serious “flaw”: they were all within daylight range of Kriegsmarine ships and Luftwaffe aircraft.

The remaining ports, whose capacity, although noticeably lower, still absorbed almost a fifth of the external and almost a tenth of the UK's coastal trade. They were located on the west coast of the British Isles. And the appearance of Nazi raiders here was possible only if the Germans successfully crossed the invisible Scapa-Flow-Bergen line or after a breakthrough through the English Channel.

Understanding the direct dependence of the survival of the English economy on the uninterrupted functioning of maritime shipping, the Royal Admiralty did everything to ensure that one of the main elements of protecting British sea communications was the reliable blocking of Kriegsmarine ships within the North and Baltic Seas. To strengthen the blockade in 1940, it provided for the installation of “offensive” minefields between the Orkney Islands and the coast of Norway, with a total length of about five hundred kilometers (more than one hundred and eighty thousand mines in total), which would lock the German fleet in the North Sea. These same minefields made it possible to establish the necessary control on the approaches to the North and Baltic seas, to the northwestern coast of the Scandinavian Peninsula. At the same time, to deprive German raiders of the opportunity to unhindered access to the Atlantic communications connecting Great Britain with the countries of North and Latin America;

Free up significant Royal Navy forces from guarding convoys in the Atlantic. In return, to ensure overwhelming superiority in forces along the “offensive” minefield belt, while creating real prerequisites for the British fleet to transition from defense to offensive action. But, as always, “it turned out to be smooth only on paper.”

Protecting the supply of food and strategic goods to the British Isles became the very cornerstone of all British military activities. Fascist Germany, sending out first heavy raiders into the Atlantic, and then two waves of auxiliary raiders, tried in every possible way to stop these supplies and put pressure “on the throat of the Britons with the bony hand of hunger.”

Of course, this in itself was a very difficult task. But the expected results would more than compensate for the difficulties of the German raiders breaking through to the Atlantic expanses. And if this succeeded, then the new Reich would have a powerful lever for taking military revenge, undermining the national security of the United Kingdom, and even an excellent opportunity to offer the British to voluntarily withdraw from a new world war. However, first the Germans still needed to reach the Atlantic.

2. THE NAZIS NEEDED FREE EXIT TO THE OCEAN

For successful raiding operations, the Nazis needed open access to the Atlantic Ocean, which they did not have. Of course, bases located outside German territory could help them out. But these bases did not exist either.

Faced with such problems, the leadership of the Third Reich began to urgently look for an ally with free access to the Atlantic. And at the end of the 1930s, the Soviet Union became such for Nazi Germany.

Already in August-September 1939, a trade and credit agreement was signed between the USSR and Germany in Berlin (08/19/1939) and two agreements in Moscow: the Non-Aggression Treaty and Secret Protocol (08/23/1939) and the Treaty of Friendship and Border ( September 28, 1939).

Without going into discussions about the intricacies of political intrigue and interstate relations, we can say that the Soviet leadership, taking into account the realities of politics at that time, “chose the lesser of two evils.” But at the same time, it also calculated that Germany, which is in dire need of Soviet supplies of strategic raw materials and oil, would have to agree, if not with all Soviet conditions, then at least with many. However, Germany did not remain unscathed.

The Soviet-German alliance, first theoretically and then in practice, strengthened Hitler’s faith in the possibility of a real “breakthrough” of the naval blockade of the Reich, locked in the narrowness of the English Channel and the Northern Passage. Moreover, only forty-one German transports were intercepted by the enemy or scuttled by their own team. More than three hundred fascist ships managed to take refuge in neutral ports (including Soviet ones) and after some time returned to their native shores. But the main “plus” of the new German-Soviet relations could be something else.

It is known that even before the Second World War, Great Britain covered half of its needs for manganese and almost two-thirds for iron ore at the expense of the Scandinavian countries. At the same time, it received iron ore from the mines of the unique (iron content in the ore is up to seventy percent), but... the Swedish Kiruna deposit. But the British also had less well-known sources of strategically important raw materials. The Monde-Nickel company, thanks to the Norwegian concession Petsamon Nickel, provided Foggy Albion with rich nickel ores. Only proven reserves of nickel in the area were more than two hundred thousand tons, and copper - almost eighty thousand tons. At the same time, the new Kaupa mine (today the city of Nikel has grown up here) was practically prepared by Canadian builders for operation.

But the Third Reich had to transport nickel silicate ores from far away: Brazil, Greece and the Dutch Indies. But even in this case, he barely provided his industry with nickel a third of what was needed (even in peacetime). It is not surprising that the Norwegian and Barents Seas, as well as the western part of our Northern Sea Route, were important to Nazi Germany, and especially in military-economic terms: to successfully wage a war, German industry needed metal and ores, timber and cellulose from Sweden, Norway and Finland.

It is not surprising that already on October 10, 1939, Grand Admiral E. Raeder personally reported to Hitler his thoughts on the need to create a Kriegsmarine base somewhere in the Scandinavian Peninsula, which would in the future make it possible not only to break the British blockade, but I create a real threat to the British Isles.

During his report, he showed the latest intelligence reports, which clearly showed England's intentions “to land troops in neutral Norway. He also drew Hitler's attention to the fact that even if in this case Germany manages to capture several strongholds on the Norwegian coast, this will not lead to anything other than a permanent military conflict with Britain. The best solution for the Third Reich would be “a situation in which Norway’s neutrality could be considered guaranteed.”

Most likely, all of the above agreements, treaties and the report of Grand Admiral E. Raeder served as the basis for the creation of the project, which later turned into the secret “Basis Nord” on the Kola Peninsula. Anticipating the objections of potential “opponents,” I would like to immediately warn that sometimes it is even called the “Polar” base. But this, most likely, is only a free translation of the word “Nord”, and not at all an indication of the location of the secret base.

Initially, the port of Murmansk was considered for creating a “secret base”. “Basis Nord,” according to the Nazis, was supposed to connect the naval bases of the Third Reich with German bases on the shores and islands of the Pacific Ocean, in Latin America or Southeast Asia, and even in Antarctica. At the same time, it could provide not only a secluded anchorage, but also the necessary inter-cruise repairs for blockade-breaking ships, raider supply ships and Nazi submarines operating in the North Atlantic or moving to the Pacific Ocean. In the event that Germany’s access to the Atlantic was completely closed, the secret base on the Kola Peninsula would immediately become a link between the Baltic, Barents and Norwegian seas and could provide Kriegsmarine ships with year-round access to the open ocean. And the beginning of World War II showed that these plans are quite realistic. In September 1939, the Soviet side allowed German merchant ships, which the war found outside the Reich, to enter the port of Murmansk. This immediately allowed them to avoid meeting with English patrols in the Northern Passage, and then to carry out the necessary repairs after sailing in a stormy ocean and replenish food supplies.

In those days, more than thirty fascist ships came to the Kola Bay (the most notable among them was the famous liner "Bremen" under the command of Captain Ahrens, which back in 1929 received the "Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic" for its speed), which took refuge here from those waiting for them in the Norwegian a sea of English cruisers and destroyers.

Later, when the Soviet and German sides managed to finally agree, the German tanker Jan Wellem and the auxiliary cruiser Komet, which will be discussed in more detail below, came to the secret Basis Nord. But why were the Germans so eager to go to Murmansk? To answer this question, let us turn to Russian history.

Murmansk is our only port that never freezes. From the Kola Bay, ships of any class, thanks to the existence of a “branch” of the warm Gulf Stream, are always able to enter the Barents Sea, even in the most severe frosts.

For the first time, people started talking about the significance of Murman both in Russia and abroad in the late 60s of the 19th century. Then the Russian fleet in the Baltic had a dangerous rival - the Kaiser's navy. This was facilitated by the Crimean War, which was not successful for us, the Central Asian issues that almost brought Russia and Britain into conflict, as well as the long work of “reformers” in the Russian government, who set out to make the Russian navy only defensive. But most importantly, the close proximity of the German naval base of Kiel to the only exit from the Baltic Sea - the Belt Strait, and the energy with which Germany set about creating a modern military fleet, as well as the weakness of Denmark as the “guardian” of the strait, extremely quickly made the Germans here almost the only masters .

Only the most far-sighted Russian politicians and sailors resisted this to the best of their ability. In particular, the head of the Russian Maritime Ministry, Admiral I. Shestakov, unlike other “guardians of Russia”, who understood what new state opportunities Germany had and the extreme urgency of prohibiting the free access of Russian ships to the open ocean, firmly insisted on the creation of a special cruiser day station in the Arctic Ocean. In this matter, he was equally firmly supported by Emperor Alexander III.

Already on July 20, 1870, the squadron of Vice Admiral Konstantin Posyet (the corvette Varyag and the clipper Zhemchug) entered Catherine Harbor. Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich was on the flagship ship. Here he carefully examined the Murmansk shores, where houses and barracks of the first main base of the Soviet Northern Fleet would eventually appear. Not content with inspecting just one area for basing cruisers, already on a clipper he examined the coast of Kildin Island and Motovsky Bay. Here, accompanied by the Arkhangelsk governor N. Kachalov and academician Alexander Middendorf, he visited the island of Shalim and the local camp of Heretics, where in those days the “First Murmansk Whaling and Other Fisheries Partnership” was created, then met with representatives of several whaling companies in the Norwegian city of Vadso. Soon, Sheremetyev’s Arsk Whaling Company appeared on the shore of nearby Ara Guba (Motovsky Bay). However, in the grand ducal retinue, naturally, there were not only industrialists. True, as they say: “In Russia they harness for a long time...”

Only in the summer of 1894 did Minister of Finance Sergei Witte visit the Murmansk coast. And already in August, he presented to the new Russian emperor, Alexander III, a detailed report on the structure of the port on Murman, in which he indicated that the Catherine Harbor made an even more grandiose impression on him than the Vladivostok port and Vladivostok harbor. This report was received with special attention. However, it is impossible to deceive world history and human diseases - in the same 1894, Emperor Alexander III died of nephritis.

Meanwhile, Kaiser Wilhelm II, understanding the reality of the German-Russian military clash over the Baltic, began to push in every possible way the young Russian Emperor Nicholas II (who changed his government course after the death of his father) to pay closer government attention to the Pacific Ocean. And he succeeded. As a classic example, today we can consider that in 1903, when meeting the Russian Emperor, a flag signal was raised on German ships: “The Admiral of the Atlantic Ocean greets the Admiral of the Pacific Ocean.” What's it like? Can politicians make cunning “feints” while sitting in easy chairs?

True, for some reason, ordinary officers, soldiers and sailors had to die for these plans, for whom both German and individual Russian politicians prepared Port Arthur and Tsushima...

It is not surprising that the war that soon broke out between Turkey and Bulgaria immediately showed all the “shortcomings” of the Russian defensive doctrine, which, despite numerous requests from the Bulgarians, did not allow the Black Sea (BSF) and Baltic (BF) fleets of Russia to provide assistance to Bulgaria, which was fighting for independence.

Unexpectedly for Russian politicians, it turned out that Turkey and Germany could easily establish reliable “control” over the Black Sea and Baltic straits, leaving only one Pacific port for Russia - Vladivostok. Isn't it true that German diplomats and military personnel found an excellent solution? And the fact that for the North American United States (USA) and Japan the Pacific waters are much more familiar than for Russia, they no longer worried. True, the Bulgarian-Turkish war nevertheless forced a “radical” revolution in the views of Russian statesmen on the need to build a modern military fleet. At the same time, in addition to the urgent need to renew the Russian fleets, they recognized the no lesser need to create a port in the North for Black Sea and Baltic ships, where in times of crisis they could freely enter, and after repairs, freely go out into the open ocean. Moreover, regardless of the enemy’s efforts. True, after the death of Emperor Alexander III and the coming to power of Emperor Nicholas II, any talk about the construction of a northern military port began to be called premature.

And yet Witte’s efforts and efforts were not in vain. In 1896, the State Council approved his proposals to build in Ekaterininskaya Harbor, if not a military, but at least a commercial port, where military cruisers could enter, capable of protecting the polar territorial waters of Russia from the invasion of foreign fishing vessels.

On June 24, 1899, the grand opening of the city, named in honor of Emperor Alexander III - Alexandrov (today Polyarny) took place. It seems that it should develop at least as a commercial port. But once again the complete unpredictability of Russian officials made itself felt.

In February 1915, a certain “statesman” unexpectedly chose Semenovskaya Bay, located in the southern part of the Kola Bay, as the best location for a new commercial port. This is how another northern Russian port appeared, which was named Romanov-on-Murman (today Murmansk). Well, Alexandroven remained “out of business”: neither a city nor a port, it was unable to provide parking for merchant ships and non-warships.

Meanwhile, a new war, the First World War, showed all the correctness of the Russian saying about trying to catch two birds with one stone. Once again, both the Baltic and Black Sea straits were closed to us. Once again, the port of Vladivostok turned out to be too far to ensure the delivery of military cargo from our allies. And once again we had to transport these cargoes to the port of Arkhangelsk. It couldn’t be any closer. But unlike Russian officials, Kaiser Wilhelm’s admirals knew very well not only the history of their newborn state, but also of Russia.

Already in 1915, German auxiliary cruisers came to the throat of the White Sea and actively began laying mines here, which just as often began to blow up steamships carrying weapons and weapons for the Russian army. A year later, they were followed by German submarines, which began to use not only mines, but also torpedoes, and sometimes artillery, to destroy transports going to Arkhangelsk and Romanovna-Murman.

And the recent Russian “reformers” had to ask Great Britain for warships to protect British ships and buy warships from Japan that once went to Port Arthur under St. Andrew’s flag. Then the Civil War, foreign intervention and devastation began in the North... Is it any wonder that in 1918, British cruisers and minesweepers became almost “our own” in the roads of Aleksandrovsk and Murmansk. And a couple of years later, English and Norwegian fishermen and trappers became permanent “guests” in Soviet territorial waters, for example, in Motovsky Bay and Teriberskaya Bay.

And the British showed particular activity in October 1929, when the Soviet-Chinese armed conflict broke out in the Far East. And in order to feel more confident here, they came with armed guards: the British light cruiser Catedio, two destroyers and six military minesweepers, which were then based at the Norwegian ports of Vardei Petsamo for more than four years. Foreigners acted confidently in our territorial waters, apparently remembering well the saying: “Whoever is allowed the goal, the means are also allowed.” Moreover, we never had real warships in the North, and those that could come from the Baltic could not pass the same Northern Passage near the British Isles. And even more so - to come to the Murmansk shores.

For a long time, the Soviet Union had to put up with the presence of foreign ships in the Barents and White Seas, which carried out openly predatory fishing and slaughter of sea animals.

Everything changed after the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Its discovery made it possible not only to begin the creation of a new Northern Fleet, but also in the event of a military threat to successfully transfer light forces from the Baltic. At the same time, the canal shortened the route from the Baltic ports to Spitsbergen and to the ports of the northern coast of Siberia. And through the Mariinsky system and the Volga, he connected the Kola Peninsula with a convenient waterway to the interior regions of the country and even to the Caspian Sea. How do stories spiral? Do they remind you of anything?

Soon after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, the same captain zur see P. Ebert, using aerial photography data obtained in 1931 from the airship “Graf Zeppelin”, began to work closely on developing the theory of identifying the “European Polar Sea” as particularly important for the new Germany region. Indeed, thanks to the “scientific” discoveries of the aeronautical expedition, the archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya, the islands of Wardroper and Kolguev, as well as the areas adjacent to Dikson, became much more accessible to the Kriegsmarine command. In the coming years, Ebert's hypothesis was thoroughly tested in practice. And largely thanks to the same Russian “unpredictability”. We were asked (or maybe offered) how to compensate for the “rotism” of a certain German technician, who allegedly exposed all the film and photographic films after the Graf Zeppelin flight. Moreover, using our own vessels.

First, excellent scientific (and most likely, not only scientific) data was brought to Germany by German polar explorers who spent the winter during the Second International Polar Year (IPY) together with Soviet scientists in the FJL and on Novaya Zemlya. In 1933, Soviet pilots guided German transport ships through the Kara Sea to the ports of Ob and Yenisei, and one the following year. And in 1937 there were two at once. In 1936-1937, the cruisers Königsberg and Cologne visited the Barents Sea to “protect fisheries”. Then the North Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea were “visited” by the auxiliary vessel (tender) Grille and the training ship Horst Wessel. In 1937, on the ship “Vologda”, the bays and lips of Novaya Zemlya were visited by participants of the 17th International Geological Congress, among whom there were more than a dozen foreigners. On board the Vologda they visited: Blagopoluchiya Bay and Russian Harbor, Matochkin Shar Strait, Chernaya Bay, Belushya Bay, Malye Karmakuly, Arkhangelskaya, Mityushikha, then examined the polar station at Cape Zhelaniya.

The following year, a group of scientists from the Arctic and Antarctic Institute came to the Kara Sea on board the Soviet hydrographic vessel “Murmanets”, who communicated with each other only in German, and entry into their living compartment for sailors of the Soviet crew was prohibited. They were later landed on remote Arctic islands, and these “scientists” worked here for almost two months. Is there any doubt that among them were Germans with whom their Soviet colleagues would meet face to face in a few years. Only this time the “scientists” will be dressed in rubberized submariner coats and fur jackets of mountain riflemen.

The “crown” of our state kindness was the passage along the entire Northern Sea Route of the ship “Ems” (or rather, the auxiliary cruiser “Komet”) in the summer of 1940. We will return to it later.

German “research” always took place without any difficulties, and only once, in April 1940, as an exception to the general rule, Soviet border guards detained five German trawlers at once near Porchnich Bay. Maybe the Nazis became outright insolent that day? However, details of this incident could not be found. But let us at least remember the above German proverb.

It may be a little drawn out, but I hope, dear reader, you have received an answer to the question: “Why was Grand Admiral Erich Raeder so interested in the Murmansk coast, and not the White Sea region?” In addition, let us add one more thing: from the first days of the existence of Murmansk, the conditions for leaving this port were noticeably different from the conditions for leaving the port of Arkhangelsk. And the ships that came to Arkhangelsk sometimes stood idle in the backwaters and at the berths for up to six months, waiting for the “White Sea” throat to clear of ice.

The provision of Basis Nord was compensated by German military-technical assistance to the Soviet Union. And first of all - the sale of ship armor for the laid down super-battleships of the "Soviet Union" type. The possibility of transferring technical documentation to the newest battleship Bismarck, which was under construction, to the USSR was even considered. Other well-known elements of German military-technical assistance to our Navy were:

Supply of several samples of mine and torpedo weapons, hydroacoustic and hydrographic equipment;

Sale of the unfinished heavy cruiser "Lützow". Initially, they were talking about “Seidpitz” or “Prince Eugen”, which were in a high degree of readiness, but they “agreed” on “Luttsov”.

In addition, 30 aircraft with spare engines were delivered to the Soviet Union (types Ju-88, He-100, Do-215, Me-109 and Me-110, Ju-207, Bu-131 and Bu-133). There is quite detailed information in Soviet literature about the first five types of aircraft, but very little about the last three. Perhaps it was these types of aircraft that were intended to be used from the airfield of the Basis Nord base.

3. A START IS MADE

By September 17, 1939, without waiting for the final decision on the creation of a secret base, the German transports Cordillere and San Louis arrived in Murmansk with cargo and equipment. By the end of November 1939, thirty-six German transports (including X Leonard, New York, Polline, Tobingen) had gathered at the Murmansk roadstead. In addition, from October 23, the fascist prize crew brought an American steamer here City of Flint, captured by the Deutschland raider. True, it is strange that this seizure did not occur without a loud international scandal: on October 28, the liner was released and returned to the United States. Along with other ships, the steamer “Iller” also arrived in the Kola Bay, on board of which, in addition to the 35 crew members, there were 15 more passengers. According to the official version of that time, they took refuge from the ships of the Royal British Navy at Cape Abram. However, today there is a different opinion.

Most likely, from the very beginning, the Bremen liner, which took refuge here, was supposed to become a floating base for placing on board the service team of a secret base on the Kola Peninsula. And if necessary, it can easily turn into a spacious and high-speed transport for transporting German landing units to the British Isles.

Indeed, until the end of the autumn of 1939, the fascist High Command was looking for options for creating a forward point for transporting troops to the British Isles, bypassing the lines of the English blockade (through the territory of Sweden and Finland). And the secret base in the North was supposed to become one of the main strongholds here. The “birthday” of the secret base on Murman can most likely be considered October 18, 1939.

On that day, according to the head of the US FBI, E. Hoover, a secret meeting between A. Hitler and I. Stalin took place in Lvov, where they signed a “certain” military agreement. True, such a decision could have been made in the process of personal correspondence between Stalin and Hitler.

What kind of document it was still remains a mystery, but it can be assumed that one of the issues resolved here could relate directly to Basis Nord. What is this hypothesis based on?

It is known that on October 17, 1939, a day before the above-mentioned meeting, “Voroshilov, Kulik, Kuznetsov, Isakov” were present at Stalin’s report. And then “immediately after Stalin returned to the Kremlin, from 20:25 to midnight, he had a conversation with V. Molotov.”

Let's look carefully at the above-mentioned state and military leaders of the Soviet Union, with whom J.V. Stalin met before the trip and immediately after it.

KE. Voroshilov, G.I. Kulik and N.G. Kuznetsov in those years occupied independent senior command positions in the People's Commissariat of Defense, and V.M. Molotov was the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and also the “curator” of the Northern Sea Route. Therefore, the meeting of the head of the Soviet state with them is quite understandable. But for what purpose was I.S. Isakov, who at that time was the chairman of the special naval commission, present here? It's difficult to answer, but let's try.

This commission was created to solve special problems in the interests of the national defense of the USSR. It was she who, by October 17, 1939, “concluded” military agreements with the leadership of the Baltic states, according to which Estonia transferred to the USSR (for the creation of naval bases of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet here) the islands of Ezel (Saaremaa) and Dago (Hiuma), as well as the Baltic port ( Paldiski), and Latvia - the ports of Libava (Liepaja) and Vindava (Ventspils). This “voluntary” transfer not only expanded the capabilities of the Soviet Navy, providing our ships and submarines with free access to the Baltic, but also made it possible to cover Finland from the south in the most natural way. The same commission from February to May 1939 conducted (albeit unsuccessfully) negotiations with the US government on the sale to the Soviet Union of technical documentation for battleships of the Washington or North Carolina type and equipment for them. Of course, there is no direct evidence that the main topic of Isakov’s report on October 17, 1939 in the Kremlin was options for compensation for the lease of the Nord base. But the aforementioned Lutzows, Junkers, Messerschmitts, Bismarck drawings, armor for the Soviet Unions, floating cranes from the Demag company (also designed for installing heavy ship and coastal guns) indicate that Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov was well “prepared” for friendly conversations with Adolf Hitler and Joachim Ribbentrop. An important addition to this assumption can be the words of the German naval historian and admiral Friedrich Ruge that already “at the beginning of October 1939, the German navy used secret supply bases ... in the bay west of Murmansk.”

Only the official request of the German authorities to allow long-term parking and inter-cruise repairs in the Murmansk port of Kriegsmarine warships was rejected by the Soviet leadership.

Among other Nazi ships that came to the Murmansk roadstead, the transport “Saint Louis” is of particular interest. There is an assumption that this is a completely distorted name for the fascist military transport and submarine base "Santa Lewis", which back in 1938 was identified as one of the repair ships for the Kriegsmarine overseas bases. If this is true, then already in September 1939, a floating base appeared in the Murmansk roadstead, which was supposed to house the crews of the group of fascist submarines supposed to be based at Basis Nord. Indeed, by November 25, 1939, two of them (U-36 and U-38) even arrived in Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa Bay. But something changed in the plans of the German command. Perhaps the new decision was facilitated first by the postponement of the start of the landing operation on the British Isles, and then by Hitler’s final choice of the land option for waging a new military campaign in 1940.

With the onset of the polar night, most of the fascist ships left the hospitable Murmansk. On December 6, Bremen also left here.

Only the Cordillere did not leave the Arctic, but stood in the roadstead of the Great Western Litsa Bay. This was the practical beginning of the secret base of Kriegsmarine ships on the Kola Peninsula.

4. DIFFICULTIES IN CREATING BASIS NORD

The choice of location for the secret base was not made immediately - the port of Murmansk had to be excluded. Instead, the Germans were offered to create a base in Teriberskaya Bay or in Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa Bay as a concession (military colony).

A professional assessment of the proposed bays was entrusted to the German naval attaché in the Soviet Union, Kapitan zur See von Baumbach.

Norbert von Baumbach was a naval sailor well known to Grand Admiral Raeder. Back in 1924, with the rank of Korvetten Kapitän, he assisted the Finns in creating a national submarine force. Ten years later, the Finnish submarine forces became the basis for the formation of the 1st German submarine flotilla - a real school of practical training for all senior officers of the future Kriegsmarine submarine forces.

After returning from Finland, von Baumbach became a naval attaché at the German Embassy in Moscow. In October 1939, he visited Teriberskaya Bay and recognized it as “a bay insufficiently protected from the weather and not suitable for a forward base of the German fleet.”

It is difficult to agree with such an assessment.

Of course, the Teriberskaya Bay is not as well protected from the winds as, say, another lip offered to the Germans - the Great Western Litsa, but back in the 20s it served as the main hiding place for English and Norwegian fishermen. And first of all - from autumn and winter storms. Two small lips, located in the upper part of Teriberskaya Bay, protruded deeply into the mainland and were sheltered from almost all winds. Most likely, it was not the weather conditions that influenced the final choice of the German naval attache. But what then?

Here is one of the versions. Perhaps the fishing collective farm “Red Army”, organized in Teriberka in the early 1930s, played an important role in its rejection. By the fall of 1939, it became the largest fish farm on the Kola Peninsula. Russified Finns and Norwegians worked here, as well as Russian fishermen who had ethnic and family ties with the fishermen of the Norwegian province of Finnmark, who until recently freely fished off the Kola coast. And this in itself meant that any, even the most secret information about Basis Nord, through the Norwegian fishermen of Finnmark, could easily fall into the hands of analysts of the Operational Intelligence Center (ORC) of the British Admiralty. At the same time, Teriberskaya Bay was located east of the Kola Bay, that is, it was an area where English minesweepers during the First World War then ensured the safety of Russian and English transports crossing to Arkhangelsk and felt almost like masters here. And it is not surprising if its depths and anchorages could be well known to the English Admiralty.

But the main reason for the refusal to use the Teriberskaya Bay on the day of the creation of the secret base, most likely, was that only a month before von Baumbach’s arrival, the command of the Northern Fleet set up one of the first direction-finding posts of the Northern Fleet on the Teribersky peninsula. And it designated this bay for inspection and control of foreign ships coming to the Kola Bay. In accordance with the order of the commander of the Northern Fleet, any foreign ship coming from the Barents Sea was obliged to enter the Teriberskaya Bay for inspection. After its completion, the overseas guest had to go along the designated fairway along the narrow Kildinsky Strait, while constantly being under the control of Soviet coastal SNiS posts , patrol ships of the North Sea and duty batteries of the coastal defense of the Northern Fleet (on the island of Kildin and on Cape Set-Navolok). Thus, for Kapiten zur See N. von Baumbach, as an experienced intelligence officer, Teriberskaya Bay automatically turned into a German base, under the constant control of the Soviet side. Everything is secret, but nothing is secret... And this hardly suited both Kapiten zur See N. von Baumbach and Grand Admiral E. Raeder.

The Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa Bay looked completely different, sheltered from prying eyes by the hills of the mainland and the Sredny and Rybachy peninsulas, and even located near the Soviet-Finnish border (the border was fifteen kilometers from the mouth of the river of the same name). It was perfectly suited for creating a secret base that no one, including the Soviet side, could constantly control.

This bay was located far away from the exit from the Kola Bay and the shipping routes of the Barents Sea. And Soviet coastal observation and communication posts located far from each other (in Titovka Bay, on Cape Tsyp-Navolok and on Kildin Island) could only see certain areas of Motovsky Bay, and even then in clear weather. They could not observe the entrance to the Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa Bay. At the same time, some calculation by Nazi military experts could have been made that the southern coast of the Motovsky Bay was inhabited by indigenous Finns (the villages of Ura-Guba, Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa, Bolshaya and Malaya Litsa), and the northeastern coast - by Norwegians (the village on Cape Tsyp- Navolok).

On November 1, 1939, the German naval attache once again examined the coast of the Great Western Litsa Bay and finally confirmed his decision. After all, now he came here completely openly.

Back in September, all the fishermen of the Komintern collective farm, who had lived in the villages of Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa and Bolshaya Litsa for almost ten years, were evicted to Karelia in one night. Only the third collective farm settlement remained untouched - Malaya Litsa, created on the shore of the bay of the same name, practically overlooking the coast of Motovsky Bay. (True, it was preserved only for a year, and, most likely, only for a day of natural camouflage of the berths directly at the Basis Nord.)

According to the plan of the Nazi command, the “collective farm” houses and warehouses in the area of Nerpichya Bay were supposed to provide secret accommodation for the staff of the secret base and the crews of the ships stationed here. Actually, the underground structures of the secret base were planned to be built in the area of another of the “Zapadnolitskaya” lips - Andreev Bay.

Initially, the “Comintern” berths in the Nershmøy area really perfectly camouflaged the parking of German supply ships and Kriegsmarine weather vessels. Only containers for ship fuel had to be buried in the coastal sand. It was possible to hide them from prying eyes from the side of the road to Titovka, at the turn of which the ruins of a German checkpoint are still visible today.

But, apparently, in reality, the structures in the two initially selected villages were still not enough. Almost a month later, construction of berths, repair shops, supply warehouses and new oil and kerosene storage facilities began on the coast of Nerpichya Bay. This construction was helped by a discovery made by the Germans among the desert hills in the upper reaches of the Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa River. They found three hundred cubic meters of construction timber that had been harvested two years ago by local residents, as well as boards purchased in large quantities.

The main construction work before the arrival of German sailors and builders was carried out by Soviet military builders (most likely, the 95th construction site of the Murmansk branch of EPRON). It is possible that the labor of prisoners from the NKVD special camps closest to Murmansk was used here. Most of the structures of the secret base were built among the rocks and well camouflaged on the banks of Andreeva Bay.

Therefore, one should not be surprised that the majority of eyewitnesses who visited the shores of Nerpichya Bay in July 1941 always claimed that no Basis Nord buildings existed here. And only the remains of log residential buildings and old wooden piers that once belonged to the Komintern collective farm were visible. In turn, these same statements gave rise to the very denial of the existence of a secret fascist base in Western Litsa among veterans and post-war historians. But it’s worth turning to the military builders who, in the 70-80s, erected special structures in Nerpichya Bay for basing our heavy submarine missile cruisers of the Typhoon type, and you can immediately hear (unofficially, of course) about the found under-rock structures of unclear purpose. Including information about the German machine tools, mechanisms and fuel storage facilities preserved here.

Under-rock construction was carried out with the help of special power plants and compressors, specially delivered to Zapadnaya Litsa on fascist transports. In those years they were frequent “guests” off the Murmansk coast. And this fact is confirmed by official reports of the commanders of the North Sea ships.

In December 1939, Soviet submarines going out on patrol to the Rybachy Peninsula “repeatedly had to encounter German reconnaissance vessels that appeared near Soviet territorial waters.”

Judging by the reports of Soviet submarine commanders, at least five German ships arrived at the Rybachy Peninsula in just a month. The word “repeatedly” may also indicate that there were noticeably more of them. At the same time, the fascist transports that came here or left the Kola Bay are, in fact, hardly worth calling scouts. After all, any of them, as a ship from a state allied to us, could easily enter the Kola Bay. And even - to hide here from English search ships. For example, this is exactly what the Cordillere, San Louis, Bremen and other German transports did with the outbreak of World War II. Moreover, for a long time they could have been here under the protection of the guns of the Soviet coastal batteries Tsyp-, Set- and Vyev-Navolok or Kildin Island. It is even known about an armed incident that occurred in the fall of 1939 (before December 6) right at the entrance to Soviet territorial waters.

On this day, off the eastern coast of the Rybachy Peninsula, a battery of the 104th cannon artillery regiment fired at two “lost” English destroyers, which, as it turned out later, were looking for the Bremen liner here. It turns out that there was no need for German reconnaissance ships to secretly come to the Soviet coast. Most likely, these were ships going to the Nord base or leaving from here.

5. WHAT IS STILL KNOWN ABOUT THE SECRET NAZI BASE?

Now very little is known reliably about her:

1. According to German sources, the location of the base was indicated by coordinates of 69 degrees 25 minutes north latitude and 32 degrees 26 minutes east longitude.

2. From December 1939 to April 1940, the senior naval commander at the base was Kapitan zur see Nischlag. He had previously commanded a German logistics unit in Istanbul and was assigned to Basis Nord in light of the preparations for the Norwegian operation. In July 1940, the commander of the special supply ship Fenicia, Korvetten-Kapitten Gaushofer, became the senior naval commander of the base. The general leadership of Basis Nord was entrusted to the Kriegsmarine.

3. Until May 1940, Nazi meteorological ships were assigned to the secret base: Viking 5, Sachsenwald (650 GRT), Ködingen, supply ships Cordillere (12,055-16,500 GRT) and the aforementioned “ Fenicia (4,124 brt), as well as the tanker Jan Bellem (11,766 brt). Some of these ships, due to the inconvenience of the Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa roadstead, eventually moved to Teriberskaya Bay and the Iokanga roadstead, and “Jan Wellem” had to wash ashore during the Norwegian operation (April 1940)

4. Until December 1939, the base contained the high-speed banana carrier Iller (officially owned by the North German Lloyd company, which previously operated on the Azores-Bremen line). Initially, this particular ship was assigned to transit to the Pacific Ocean along the Northern Sea Route. But later it was replaced by the Ems (Komet) transport, not so fast, but with a stronger hull and a larger crew.

5. In November 1939, fascist submarines U-38 (type IX, commander - captain-lieutenant Heinrich Liebe) and U-36 (type UNA, commander - captain-lieutenant Wilhelm Fröhlich) entered the base, which had been operating for more than a month against English timber carriers transporting timber from Siberia to the British Isles. According to the Revue Maritime collection No. 6 for 1966, they first entered the base on November 25, 1939. However, on December 4, 1939, U-36 was sunk by a torpedo from the British submarine Samon southwest of Kristiansand.

By a strange coincidence, a day after the destruction of the Liebe submarine, the Semon discovered the Bremen liner heading to Germany from Murmansk. But the seaplane accompanying the liner did not allow the English commander to launch a torpedo attack on a tempting target.

The Kriegsmarine command refused to base the second submarine (U-38) in Zapadnaya Litsa for unclear reasons.

Today it is no longer a secret that in the Soviet Arctic the Germans created their own system of control over the Kara Sea and the coast of Siberia. There is information, however, which needs additional serious verification, that they tried to take control of the waters of the Laptev Sea and even the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas, as well as control over the shores washed by them. And all this was considered in the light of the notorious “General Plan Ost,” which envisaged “the Germanization of all territories of the USSR up to and including the Urals.” But these views probably spread further!
Book by Sergei Kovalev: Swastika over Taimyr

O. BYCHKOVA: Good evening, good afternoon, this is the “Price of Victory” program, in the studio of the RTVi television company, radio “Echo of Moscow” Olga Bychkova. Vitaly Dymarsky handed over to me the authority to start this program - he will join us in just a few minutes. Well, today our guest is Sergei Kovalev, writer, historian, author of the book “Swastika over Taimyr”. Sergei Kovalev, in addition, captain of the first rank, first deputy. Editor-in-chief of the editorial office of the magazine "Sea Collection". Sergey Alekseevich, good evening to you.

S. KOVALEV: Good evening.

O. BYCHKOVA: Well, the book is called “Swastika over Taimyr”, now I’ll show it. Vitaly Dymarsky is coming straight to us now. I'll start asking questions right away. Vitaly, sit here, don’t leave me, please. If you allow me, I’ll immediately ask where the swastika over Taimyr came from and what is it still doing there?

V. DYMARSKY: Good evening.

S. KOVALEV: Good evening.

V. DYMARSKY: I apologize.

S. KOVALEV: The swastika over Taimyr began in a very interesting way. I graduated from the Leningrad Higher Naval School of Underwater Diving and spent my entire service in the Northern Fleet, on submarines and at the headquarters of the submarine forces. While still at school, I first heard that before the Great Patriotic War, a submarine with its entire crew, the D-1 submarine, “Dekabrist,” disappeared in Motovsky Bay. This is the first Soviet submarine; in 1940, on November 13, even before the start of hostilities, it disappeared with its entire crew. And in 1981, fate threw me exactly there, next to this Motovsky Bay, where for the first time again, well, I came almost close to the mystery of this submarine.

I tried for a long time. Well, as you understand, in those days they didn’t really like it when you were interested in such secrets. Yes. Moreover, it became clear that her death, well, naturally, the death when the crew had been missing for 70 years, was associated with the mystery of the existence of a secret German base, the Nord base. There in Zapadnaya Litsa, where one of our bases of the Northern Fleet is now.

When I started working with Basis Nord, I served there for 15 years. Therefore, of course, he crawled all the hills, walked in his free time from duty, naturally. And it turned out that there were a lot of structures, some solid structures, as well as rocks into which stone-paved roads rested. That is, they directly abut.

O. BYCHKOVA: Directly into the rocks?

S. KOVALEV: Right into the rocks, yes. That is, at first this caused long-term bewilderment. But in the end it became clear that these rocks were undermined from the inside and simply collapsed. That is, this road does not just abut a rock, especially since it is paved with stone. This, for example, if you’ve ever been to Lviv or Chernivtsi, there are beautiful stone-paved streets - that’s about the same road there.

V. DYMARSKY: It went nowhere.

S. KOVALEV: To nowhere. Well, initially it was going nowhere, but I understand that in fact it’s going somewhere. Moreover, it was interesting that these structures were located between the lines of Soviet and German defense during the war. Moreover, if anyone visits there one day, take a look, because German and Soviet defense is a very serious difference.

O. BYCHKOVA: Is it possible to repeat once again geographically where it is located?

S. KOVALEV: Geographically. This means that if you go west from Murmansk, there is such a bay as Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa, there is the city of Zaozersk.

V. DYMARSKY: This is a former closed city.

S.KOVALEV: Severomorsk-7, Murmansk-150.

V. DYMARSKY: City number.

S. KOVALEV: Yes, it’s numbered, but now it’s a normal, closed territorial administrative entity. Well, at least not only military people live there, but also civilians. This is how the first attempt to understand why no one talks about this base appeared. Then there, in the House of Officers, it became possible to get to books from the 50s; there has always been a very interesting library in this Western Litsa - this is the capital of the Soviet nuclear fleet. A very interesting library. And there I once came across Weiner’s book “The Northern Fleet of the Great Patriotic War,” 1966 edition. So that’s where I first came across the fact that we, it turns out, had secret German bases in the Arctic archipelagos. In particular, on Franz Josef Land. And, in particular, I noticed that there is Nagursky Bay, where our border guards are now stationed. And 2 or 3 years ago, members of the Security Council even flew there and opened this border guard outpost there in a new form.

O. BYCHKOVA: So there were secret German bases there, you say.

S. KOVALEV: So I’m going down there, right? Ours, ours, Soviet.

O. BYCHKOVA: Were there German bases on our territory?

S. KOVALEV: There were German bases on our territory, yes. That is, if “Basis Nord” was in agreement with our Soviet government, then in Nagursky Bay - well, let’s say so... In principle, the Arctic is very unique. That is, on one island there could be our polar explorers at one end, and German polar explorers at the other end. And they, well, at least pretended to each other that they did not know about each other’s existence.

V. DYMARSKY: Sergei Alekseevich, maybe let’s go back to the beginning of this story, that is, to the history of 1940, to “Decembrist”, well, it’s clear that 1940 - we are still kind of friends with Germany, and, apparently, that’s why that story was covered up, hidden. But why did this happen?

S. KOVALEV: Death?

V. DYMARSKY: Yes, death.

S. KOVALEV: The fact is that this base was created back in October 1939 by agreement. Since in Murmansk... Well, with the beginning of World War II, we’ll throw it even further.

V. DYMARSKY: Well, actually, the beginning of World War II was September 1, 1939, and this is October. That is, virtually immediately after the start.

S. KOVALEV: Yes, yes, yes. This means that we had almost 30 German ships gathered in Murmansk, which hid from English ships in our neutral port. These 30 ships were standing, and openly, in the roadstead off Cape Abram. We have such a place, Abram-Cape in the Kola Bay. They stood. That is, the German sailors quite calmly went out into the city, the ships were repaired in Murmansk. We are allies.

V. DYMARSKY: Well, we are allies, we are not opponents - why not?

S. KOVALEV: But over time, apparently, some specific problems arose between the British and Soviet governments, and therefore gradually these ships were diverted to Zapadnaya Litsa, even further west, there, closer to the Finnish border. This is if you imagine the Rybachy Peninsula, and below it is Motovsky Bay and below it is Zapadnaya Litsa.

V. DYMARSKY: And then it was Finland, not Norway?

S. KOVALEV: Finland, yes, yes, yes.

V. DYMARSKY: Now it’s Norwegian.

S. KOVALEV: Now it’s Norwegian, and then Finland, yes. And now it is carried even further, beyond the Pechenga Bay. And earlier it passed along the Rybachy Peninsula then. And so they took him there, where, in general, no one could reach him. The Soviet fishing collective farm was removed from there, that is, they were transferred to Karelia, these fishermen - this is what we called the collective farm of the Comintern. It consisted of Russified Finns, Nords and, according to Article 58, comrades who helped them there.

V. DYMARSKY: The irony of fate. Anti-Comintern Pact and the Comintern State Farm, right?

S. KOVALEV: Yes. They were literally evicted overnight. You were allowed to pick up, well, 20 kilograms, no more. And, accordingly, they were in Karelia... Moreover, during my service in Western Litsa, I managed to meet a man who, as a child, lived in one of these villages, Malaya Litsa, and then in Karelia he settled in Petrozavodsk. Moreover, he graduated from a higher party school, so he firmly convinced everyone that they were deliberately evicted only in order to create a submarine base for our Northern Fleet, neither more nor less.

V. DYMARSKY: Why, after all, “Decembrist”?

S. KOVALEV: “Decembrist” again, right? Sorry, let's go back to "Decembrist". This means that the base existed for almost a whole year and helped in August 1940 to transfer the so-called cruiser “Komet”, aka “Semyon Dezhnev”, aka “Danube”, aka “Donau”, aka “Semyon Dezhnev” again, to the northern sea route. in the Far East and "Tokio Maru" in the Pacific Ocean. That is, a werewolf, a real auxiliary werewolf cruiser.

V. DYMARSKY: Passed from hand to hand?

S. KOVALEV: No, no, he led all the German crew, but the name simply changed depending on the navigation area. As a result, somewhere in late October - early November, information was leaked in English newspapers. It was a secret passage, our ships, our icebreakers took him to the Far East, and he caused a very serious massacre there. And information leaked. But the British already had information that there was a certain base in Western Litsa, where German ships were stationed and supply ships were stationed. And here, most likely, an English submarine came. Maybe lay mines, maybe, I don’t know what other actions, and the “Decembrist”, which went out for exercises simply in the Motovsky Bay, into its terrorist waters, came out, sank and disappeared. That is, the observation posts observed in the evening only that a certain periscope of a submarine was leaving Motovsky Bay, and that was the end of it.

V. DYMARSKY: Exploded?

S. KOVALEV: No, there was no explosion. He just disappeared.

O. BYCHKOVA: Where?

S. KOVALEV: Also unknown. Because there was diesel fuel on the surface, a broken life preserver and a sticky battery, which the commission attributed presumably to a Dekabrist-class submarine. That's it, there was nothing more.

V. DYMARSKY: So nothing is still known?

S. KOVALEV: And it is still unknown. This means that no crew - no one surfaced from the submarine, that is, no dead, no one surfaced, no boat was found, no traces.

V. DYMARSKY: Well, maybe they are just buried?

S. KOVALEV: They still lie there to this day. That is, for 70 years they...

V. DYMARSKY: But why did she die?..

S. KOVALEV: For now it is unknown. Most likely a ram. There would be an explosion, this is a huge plume of sea water and plus a huge flash.

V. DYMARSKY: Emission.

S. KOVALEV: Yes, an outlier. A torpedo is the same as if it were a torpedo. This means that we have passed the maximum depth. That is, here is the official version: it slipped through the fault of the crew - well, this was standard at that time - through the fault of the crew it slipped through the maximum depth and crushed it there. But in fact it turned out that, most likely, it was rammed. So he died, and after that, no matter how much they tried to look for it, this submarine, for some reason they secretly ran into misunderstandings, and at the very top...

O. BYCHKOVA: And these searches were closed one way or another.

S. KOVALEV: They covered, yes.

O. BYCHKOVA: Why?

S. KOVALEV: It’s hard to say. Most likely, because of this “Basi Nord”, so that this information does not surface.

V. DYMARSKY: Sergey Alekseevich, then this question still arises. This is 1940, right? But there were apparently many German bases of this kind in the north. This kind, any kind, right?

S. KOVALEV: 11 are known so far.

V. DYMARSKY: Some kind of caches, right?

S. KOVALEV: Yes, yes, yes.

V. DYMARSKY: And there are talks, rumors to this day, that they are almost still standing there mothballed.

S. KOVALEV: Well, there are some, there are some.

V. DYMARSKY: And now, are these still considered secret objects?

S. KOVALEV: I think not, but it’s simply not profitable to show that we had bases so deep around the Kara Sea. That is, the mouth of the Yenisei, Ob and even Lena. There is an assumption that the famous Stolb Island is this one... I’ll immediately take this opportunity to say that it’s a pity that the “Seekers” of Channel One, who, in my opinion, went there last year in the fall to look for this base, well, did everything to can't be found. Andrey I. our famous seeker. Because it's very strange. In general, it aroused a very strange interest in me that he walked along the banks of the Lena River at the same time, as it is known that the only stone island there in the delta is Stolb Island, all the others are formed by ice and sand that melt, and not a single sane polar explorer I wouldn’t organize any kind of base there.

V. DYMARSKY: That is, Lena is quite far to the east.

S. KOVALEV: This is very far. This is beyond the Vilkitsky Strait, in general, the Laptev Sea.

V. DYMARSKY: This is Eastern Siberia already.

S. KOVALEV: Yes, this is Eastern Siberia. That's why such bases exist. But, in particular, in Lena there is a very strange 200-meter pier, which, in general, exists, and the most interesting thing is that Austrian and German tourists often go there.

V. DYMARSKY: Now?

S. KOVALEV: Yes, for the last 5 years.

V. DYMARSKY: So this is a known fact there, of course?

S. KOVALEV: No, they are on tour.

V. DYMARSKY: Tour object, tourist object. This means that travel agencies there sell tickets and tours.

S. KOVALEV: Yes, and it’s the German and Austrian ones that have become more frequent. Why was this interesting? And there is even information that they want to organize some kind of diving center there. For what?

V. DYMARSKY: This is extreme.

S.KOVALEV: Extreme, extreme, yes. Cold. But why?

V. DYMARSKY: By the way, about the cold. Well, since I was really late for the broadcast, I didn’t have time to take the questions from our listeners and viewers who came before the broadcast, but I remember one question very well, but, unfortunately, I don’t remember the author, I ask his forgiveness. The question sounds a little naive, but for a normal person it apparently evokes the right associations. He says: “We were told all the time that the Germans were not prepared for winter.” Well, I mean 1941, the harsh winter of 1941, all these pictures, frostbitten, in bast shoes. – And at the same time, the Germans in the Arctic, the Germans in our north, well, they hardly went there unprepared, right?

S. KOVALEV: Of course, it’s unlikely.

V. DYMARSKY: That is, after all, it was not winter, and the cold was not such a surprise for them, such a surprise that fell from the sky.

S. KOVALEV: The emphasis there needs to be a little different.

V. DYMARSKY: Well, of course, yes. Because this is a very naive and strange question, but nevertheless.

S. KOVALEV: Because it’s winter, yes. They were ready to take Moscow and St. Petersburg within 2-3 months. And so when it turned out that not everything was as planned, winter came and they really weren’t ready. Of course, they went to the Arctic ready.

V. DYMARSKY: But did they have uniforms?

S. KOVALEV: Everything is prepared. Moreover, several finds are known. Why do I say that not all of them remained mothballed, because several bases were found after the war in the 50s and 60s.

V. DYMARSKY: So they weren’t even discovered during the war?

S. KOVALEV: No, no!

O. BYCHKOVA: That is, they didn’t even know about their existence.

S. KOVALEV: They didn’t know and didn’t suspect. Because the Germans, unfortunately, or fortunately, perhaps for the Germans, but unfortunately for us, they are truly excellent sailors. They calmly walked to the Arctic and even now it has become clear. This is my first book from the maritime chronicle, the second has just been published - “Riddles of the Sixth Continent” - these are the Germans in Antarctica. Well, or rather so. The working title was “The Unknown War for the Antarctic,” but most of it was dedicated to the Germans there, in Antarctica. Do you understand? And they went there and got their way.

O. BYCHKOVA: So how long were they there? Until what time?

S. KOVALEV: Until 1944. That is, in particular, Berulia Bay is so interesting - it is the southeastern part of the Kara Sea, and the Germans mined some ore there. Then they were transported by submarines to us in Linohamari, this is the Pechenga Bay. There they were reloaded from submarines onto surface ships and taken to Germany. Naturally, a question arose. Firstly, submarines cannot take away much, that’s it. Second, what kind of ore is this that is transported in small quantities? And third, what happened in Linohamari? Because in Linohamari there turned out to be a very interesting point, which was protected much better, even the Altenfjord, where the famous (INAUDIBLE) stands. Do you understand? There is such artillery, such fortified areas that no one suspected anything. Most likely, they mined beryllium there in Berulia Bay, or uranium on the shore of Khariton Laptev. And in Linohamari there may have been a Uranium enrichment plant.

V. DYMARSKY: Okay. But these bases - you said 11 of them in total, right?

S. KOVALEV: No, more were discovered. But the point is that I managed to find 11.

V. DYMARSKY: Okay, let's operate with this number for now. As I understand it, they are located quite far to the east in the north, right?

S. KOVALEV: Yes, yes, yes. Just the northern sea route map.

V. DYMARSKY: Well, let us at least show the audience, very roughly. Is this map in the book?

S. KOVALEV: No, this one is not there, unfortunately - this one appeared recently, we managed to get it.

V. DYMARSKY: It’s a pity. But, nevertheless, I will return to my question. 11 of these bases that you know about are quite far to the east. Tactical, strategic purpose, if you like, of these bases?

S. KOVALEV: Everything is clear. The fact is that when the famous convoy PQ-17 was infamously defeated in July 1942, the allies refused to transport cargo to us under Lend-Lease until the end of the polar day. And to be honest, at this time, near Stalingrad, the Germans entered the Caucasus very firmly, already near Rostov, and got bogged down. Therefore, the decision was made...

V. DYMARSKY: Moreover, the Northern Route - we must make a reservation here - this was, in general, the main supply route under Lend-Lease, right? It was also through Alaska.

S. KOVALEV: No, the Northern Sea Route is very rare.

V. DYMARSKY: Not the Northern Sea, the northern direction.

S. KOVALEV: Ah, Northern wing, yes, yes, yes. There were several more - through the Far East.

V. DYMARSKY: It was also through Alaska there.

S. KOVALEV: Through Iran. Well, the Northern route is the shortest.

V. DYMARSKY: The shortest and largest volume was transmitted there.

S. KOVALEV: The biggest one, yes, we did it in time. And when transportation stopped, then, of course, some decision had to be made. Because a lot of cargo has accumulated both in the USA and in Iceland, and our army, in general, was already in great need. Plus, by this time the Northern Fleet had suffered quite large losses in surface ships, and help was needed. And then they remembered the Northern Sea Route, which before that, for some reason - yes, there were victories, yes, flights over the pole and so on - but which very few people remembered, that this is also the shortest route from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic and vice versa. Here it is, the share of our Siberian shores is the shortest route.

The cruiser Komet, accompanied by our icebreakers, completed it in 15 days. That is, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. And if he had gone the southern route, through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, around Africa, he would have had to walk for more than one month. Finally, they remembered. Plus the safest, it seems, ours, the safest. But it turned out that the Germans had already penetrated there by that time.

That is, the famous “Admiral Scheer”, the battleship that Sibiryakov shot at one time, it passed around the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya and penetrated into the Kara Sea by the Northern route. Having diverted the boats near Novaya Zemlya, the attention of our command was diverted, “Admiral Scheer” penetrated into the Kara Sea and tried to intercept it at the Vilkitsky Strait - here, Severnaya Zemlya, here is Novaya Zemlya. Near Severnaya Zemlya, this is the Laptev Strait, the Vilkitsky Strait, he wanted to intercept 50 transports and the entire icebreaker fleet. They were accompanied by only 3 destroyers - one leader and two destroyers, which were unarmed. That’s why it would be such an easy prey for an armadillo, you know? Destroy our entire, almost entire merchant fleet, our entire icebreaker fleet, plus this addition, the newest destroyers. But fortunately for us, the Arctic weather intervened. That is, firstly, he got into a heavy ice field, then he lost his air reconnaissance officer. And in the end, he heard negotiations that were held between transports, but the elbow was close, but it was impossible to take. Therefore, he moved south to Dikson, where the coal warehouses were located, and accidentally ran into Sibiryakov.

V. DYMARSKY: Thank you for answering our questions so far; there will certainly be more. Let me remind you that our guest is Sergei Alekseevich Kovalev, a writer-historian, author of the book “Swastika over Taimyr”. And we will continue this conversation in a few minutes in the presence of, for the first time at “The Price of Victory,” we have a woman as a presenter, Olga Bychkova.

O. BYCHKOVA: Yes, yes. Well, somehow I tried to reassure our guest, to say that I also had sailors among my ancestors. I'm almost on my own.

S. KOVALEV: I calmed down.

V. DYMARSKY: Yes. Well, we’ll say goodbye for a few minutes and continue our conversation with Sergei Kovalev.

V. DYMARSKY: Once again I greet the audience of the radio station “Echo of Moscow” and the TV channel RTVi, this is the “Price of Victory” program. Well, I was the only one left as the presenter, Vitaly Dymarsky. Olga Bychkova has left us and is preparing for the next program. We saw her off with tears in our eyes. And we are the presenter of the program and our guest today, Sergei Alekseevich Kovalev, captain of the 1st rank, historian, writer, captain of the 1st rank and 1st deputy editor-in-chief of the editorial board of the magazine “Sea Collection”. By the way, the oldest magazine in the world. How old is he? More than 150 years?

S.KOVALEV: 162.

V. DYMARSKY: 162 years - that’s the magazine, the management of which magazine our guest today belongs to.

S. KOVALEV: Moreover, I would like to note right away that he never stopped publishing for a single month. Even during the civil war, there were 2 of them - one in Petrograd, and the second in Tunisia, in Bizerte.

V. DYMARSKY: Seriously? Is our emigration?

S. KOVALEV: Emigrants, yes. Our commander of the submarine “Duck” Nestor Monastyrev, captain of the 2nd rank, published the “Sea Collection” there.

V. DYMARSKY: Sergey Alekseevich, let’s return to our topic - this is what we called it, you called your book “Swastika over Taimyr”. We have a lot of questions here, including before and during the broadcast. Still, here is the question we asked you before our short break. Still, I would like, perhaps, to put it more clearly, in a military way, so to speak: what interest did the Germans have in the Russian north, let’s say? Let's call it that.

S. KOVALEV: Well, first of all, these are the riches of the Russian north. First of all, this is Siberia, Chukotka, you know, these precious metals, precious metals, ores, furs. Including...

V. DYMARSKY: And they managed to take it all out?

S. KOVALEV: Yes, yes, yes. It was taken out. There is information about this in previously closed archives, then there were the NKVD. But in 1999, in my opinion, the NKVD archives were published for the first time in the Marine Collection, which revealed that German submarines even came to the camps of local residents and received something there. Well, furs for sure, but ore - as I already said, they dug themselves, on their own. And the second one. The Northern Sea Route is the shortest route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. And firstly, the north has always been for us - this is the ocean that no enemy has ever been able to close to us. If the Baltic or Black Sea straits were always quietly closed by the Turks and Germans, the Far East was always precisely the Far East. The only road that was very difficult for all materials and cargo to pass through was for us an open gate, which, unfortunately, we always used as a stepchild for some reason.

V. DYMARSKY: Sergei Alekseevich, such a question. Well, there are German bases, as we said, along virtually the entire North.

S. KOVALEV: Northern Sea Route, yes.

V. DYMARSKY: Yes. Were there any naval battles? Were there any clashes? Or, as it were, the Germans lived on their own, we on our own?

S. KOVALEV: No. The fact is that the Germans used the Northern Sea Route and these bases only to cut off our communications from the United States. Because along the Northern Sea Route, as the most protected, we have always transported the most important strategic cargo.

V. DYMARSKY: Was it possible?

S. KOVALEV: Yes, they succeeded.

V. DYMARSKY: So it was no secret to us that there were Germans there?

S. KOVALEV: No, it was just a secret for us, and no one understood why they knew almost exactly the locations of the transports that were carrying these cargoes. Only after the war, in particular, on Franz Josef Land, which I called Alexander Land, there is such an island, and there is Nagursky Bay. There the Germans had the 24th Kriegsmarine direction-finding base, from which they took direction of all conversations, at least along the western sector of the Northern Sea Route. And any careless exit by our captain of our transport was immediately taken bearings, and submarines in the Kara Sea were located near Novaya Zemlya, and in ambush near the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei Gulf.

V. DYMARSKY: Well, okay. Look, they're in ambush, right? They're attacking our convoy, right? But this means it is no longer a secret. So it’s clear that the Germans are there if someone attacked, right?

S. KOVALEV: Yes. But the thing is, they found out when the torpedoes had already exploded.

V. DYMARSKY: Well, of course, yes.

S. KOVALEV: And under whom they exploded - you understand. Kara Sea - those who fall into the water live there for a very short time. Plus 4 - plus 8 degrees even in summer. That is, the ships disappeared. For example, the following is known. In 1943, out of 4 transports, the Germans destroyed 2 transports that were carrying cargo for Norilsk Nickel and, in my opinion... In general, for the Norilsk mining and metallurgical plant they were transporting cargo and some cargo to the Yenisei and Ob, to Dudinka there. And out of 4 transports, 2 were destroyed. But unfortunately, the team believed that they were blown up by mines, because the Germans used electric torpedoes, which apparently had no trace.

V. DYMARSKY: Arthur asks: “Did the Germans try to use the Northern Sea Route to communicate with Japan?”

S. KOVALEV: We tried. We tried. In particular, the mentioned cruiser "Komet" - it went to the Far East, and from the Bering Strait it went to the "Tokio Maru" and landed its in Japan... Well, there was a very interesting translator, he was called the German naval attaché translator Kurt Krepsch , so famous. Which was immediately organized along our railway, through Vladivostok, he quickly got to Moscow to Norbert von Baumbach - this is the German naval attache in Moscow.

V. DYMARSKY: Who was sitting at the embassy.

S. KOVALEV: Yes, who was sitting in the embassy. No one knows why it was organized so quickly. But a supply ship was brought from the Pacific Ocean especially for him.

V. DYMARSKY: So, there’s something here... Alishka from Kazan: “I read that the Germans landed troops on Matochkino Shar and Kara Bay. Is this true? What did they do, how did it end?”

S. KOVALEV: They dropped us off. Moreover, during the First World War there is a 99% probability that there was a German base there, on Matochkina Ball, which our military personnel discovered in the 60s. And the dynamo that stood there, it even started and started working.

V. DYMARSKY: How did the Germans supply their bases? So, they ask you.

S. KOVALEV: Winter delivery. There were supply ships that went... Look at the map - it’s not that far. If you go there from Franz Josef Land, for example, it is much closer than, say, from Norway or, especially, from Germany.

***
My comment: Considering the fact that the Germans did not give themselves away in the Arctic, did not attack from the rear the convoys of ships coming from Murmansk, I will conclude that they did not plan to use these bases as military bases. At least in the immediate time scale of the war. They were looking for something in these areas along the Ahnenerbe line. I wonder if you found it?
And so, a direct continuation of the film “