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The feat of Marinesco and the tragedy of "gustloff". The personal enemy of the Fuhrer: how Alexander Marinesko destroyed the color of the Nazi submarine fleet with three torpedoes

Alexander Marinesko is one of the most controversial figures of the Great Patriotic War, around whom controversy still does not subside. A man covered in many myths and legends. Undeservedly forgotten, and then returned from oblivion.

Today in Russia they are proud of him, they perceive him as a national hero. Last year, a monument to Marinesko appeared in Kaliningrad, his name was entered in the Golden Book of St. Petersburg. Many books have been published dedicated to his feat, among them the recently published "Submariner No. 1" by Vladimir Borisov. And in Germany they still cannot forgive him for the death of the Wilhelm Gustloff ship. We call this famous combat episode the "Attack of the Century", while the Germans consider it the largest maritime disaster, perhaps even more terrible than the sinking of the Titanic.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the name of Marinesko in Germany is known to everyone, and the topic of "Gustloff" today, after many years, excites the press and public opinion. Especially recently, after the story "The Trajectory of the Crab" came out in Germany and almost immediately became a bestseller. Its author, the famous German writer, Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass, reveals the unknown pages of the flight of East Germans to the West, and in the center of events is the Gustloff disaster. For many Germans, the book was a real revelation...

The death of the Gustloff is not without reason called a "hidden tragedy", the truth about which both sides hid for a long time: we always said that the ship was the color of the German submarine fleet and never mentioned the thousands of dead refugees, and the post-war Germans, who grew up with a sense of repentance for crimes of the Nazis, hushed up this story, because they feared accusations of revanchism. Those who tried to talk about those killed on the Gustloff, about the horrors of the German flight from East Prussia, were immediately perceived as "extreme right." Only with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the entry into a united Europe did it become possible to look more calmly to the east and talk about many things that were not customary to remember for a long time ...

The price of the "attack of the century"

Whether we like it or not, we still cannot get around the question: what did Marinesko drown - a warship of the Nazi elite or a ship of refugees? What happened in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945?

In those days, the Soviet army was rapidly advancing to the West, in the direction of Koenigsberg and Danzig. Hundreds of thousands of Germans, fearing retribution for the atrocities of the Nazis, became refugees and moved towards the port city of Gdynia - the Germans called it Gotenhafen. On January 21, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz gave the order: "All available German ships must save everything that can be saved from the Soviets." The officers were ordered to redeploy submarine cadets and their military equipment, and in any free corner of their ships - to accommodate refugees, and especially women and children. Operation Hannibal was the largest evacuation of the population in the history of navigation: over two million people were transported to the west.

Gotenhafen became the last hope for many refugees - there were not only large warships, but also large liners, each of which could take on board thousands of refugees. One of them was the Wilhelm Gustloff, which seemed unsinkable to the Germans. Built in 1937, the magnificent cruise ship with a cinema and a swimming pool served as the pride of the "Third Reich", it was intended to demonstrate to the whole world the achievements of Nazi Germany. Hitler himself participated in the descent of the ship, which was his personal cabin. For the Hitlerite cultural leisure organization "Strength through Joy", the liner delivered vacationers to Norway and Sweden for a year and a half, and with the outbreak of World War II it became a floating barracks for cadets of the 2nd diving training division.

January 30, 1945 "Gustloff" went on his last flight from Gotenhafen. About how many refugees and soldiers were on board, the data of German sources differ. As for refugees, until 1990 the figure was almost constant, since many of the survivors of that tragedy lived in the GDR - and there this topic was not subject to discussion. Now they began to testify, and the number of refugees grew to ten thousand people. In relation to the military, the figure almost did not change - it is within one and a half thousand people. The calculation was carried out by "passenger assistants", one of whom was Heinz Schön, who after the war became the chronicler of the death of the Gustloff and the author of several documentary books on this topic, including The Gustloff Catastrophe and SOS - Wilhelm Gustloff.

The submarine "S-13" under the command of Alexander Marinesko hit the liner with three torpedoes. The surviving passengers left terrible memories of the last minutes of the Gustloff. People tried to escape on life rafts, but most only lasted a few minutes in the icy water. Nine ships participated in the rescue of its passengers. The terrifying pictures are forever etched in my memory: children's heads are heavier than their legs, and therefore only their legs are visible on the surface. Lots of baby feet...

So, how many managed to survive this catastrophe? According to Shen, 1,239 people survived, of which half, 528 people, were German submariners, 123 female auxiliaries of the navy, 86 wounded, 83 crew members, and only 419 refugees. These figures are well known in Germany and today it makes no sense to hide them with us. Thus, 50% of the submariners and only 5% of the refugees survived. We have to admit that, basically, women and children died - they were completely unarmed before the war. Such was the price of the "attack of the century" and that is why in Germany today many Germans consider Marinesco's actions a war crime.

Refugees become hostages of a ruthless war machine

However, let's not rush to conclusions. The question here is much deeper - about the tragedy of war. Even the most just war is inhuman, because the civilian population suffers first of all from it. According to the inexorable laws of war, Marinesko sank a warship, and it is not his fault that he sank a ship with refugees. A huge blame for the tragedy lies with the German command, which was guided by military interests and did not think about civilians.

The fact is that the Gustloff left Gotenhafen without proper escort and ahead of schedule, without waiting for the escort ships, since it was necessary to urgently transfer German submariners from the already surrounded East Prussia. The Germans knew that this area was especially dangerous for ships. A fatal role was played by the side lights turned on on the Gustloff after a message was received that a detachment of German minesweepers was moving towards it - it was through these lights that Marinesko discovered the liner. And finally, on her last voyage, the ship left not as a hospital ship, but as a military transport, painted gray and equipped with anti-aircraft guns.

Until now, Shen's figures are practically unknown to us, and data are still being used that the color of the German submarine fleet died on the Gustloff - 3,700 sailors, who could have equipped from 70 to 80 submarines. This figure, taken from the report of the Swedish newspaper "Aftonbladet" dated February 2, 1945, was considered indisputable by us and was not questioned. Until now, the legends created back in the 1960s with the light hand of the writer Sergei Sergeyevich Smirnov, who raised the then unknown pages of the war - the feat of Marinesko and the defense of the Brest Fortress, are still unusually tenacious. But no, Marinesco was never "Hitler's personal enemy", and a three-day mourning was not announced in Germany for the death of "Gustloff". This was not done for the simple reason that thousands more people were waiting to be evacuated by sea, and the news of the disaster would have caused panic. Mourning was declared for Wilhelm Gustloff himself, the leader of the National Socialist Party in Switzerland, who was killed in 1936, and his killer, student David Frankfurter, was named Hitler's personal enemy.

Why do we still hesitate to name the true extent of that tragedy? It is sad to admit it, but we are afraid that the feat of Marinesko will fade. However, today even many Germans understand that the German side provoked Marinesko. “It was a brilliant military operation, thanks to which the initiative to dominate the naval war in the Baltic was firmly intercepted by Soviet sailors,” says Yury Lebedev, deputy director of the A.I. Marinesko Museum of Russian Submarine Forces. the end of the war. It was a strategic success for the Soviet navy, and for Germany - the largest maritime disaster. Marinesco's feat is that he destroyed the seemingly unsinkable symbol of Nazism, a dream ship promoting the "Third Reich". on the ship, became hostages of the German military machine. Therefore, the tragedy of the death of the Gustloff is not an accusation against Marinesco, but against Hitler's Germany."

Recognizing that not only German submariners, but also refugees were on the sunken Gustloff, we will take one more step towards recognizing a historical, albeit unpleasant for us, fact. But we need to get out of this situation, because in Germany "Gustloff" is a symbol of trouble, and in Russia it is a symbol of our military victories. The question of "Gustloff" and Marinesko is a very complex and delicate one, affecting the present and future of relations between Russia and Germany. It was not for nothing that Consul General of Germany Ulrich Schoening, who recently visited the Museum of the Submarine Forces of Russia named after A.I. This is called for by the sinking of the German liner Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945.

Today we have the opportunity to move towards reconciliation even in such a difficult issue - through historical authenticity. After all, there are no black and white colors in history. And the uniqueness of Marinesko is that his personality does not leave anyone indifferent. His legendary personality may be destined for immortality. He became a legend and will remain so...

On January 30, 1945, the S-13 submarine under the command of Alexander Marinesko sank the German ship Wilhelm Gustlov. According to various sources, from 4 to 8 thousand people died then. So far, this is the worst maritime disaster. Why was Marinesko not given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and was the feat of his crew really a feat or were civilians of Germany on the ship?

Let us first turn to official Soviet sources:

On January 30, 1945, the S-13 submarine under the command of Captain 3rd Rank A.I. The cruiser "Admiral Hipper", destroyers and minesweepers, which approached the area of sinking, could no longer provide any assistance to the transport. Fearing attacks by Soviet boats, they hastily retreated to the west. On February 9, the same submarine "S-13" sank the steamer "General Steuben "with a displacement of 14,660 tons. For combat successes in this campaign, the S-13 submarine was awarded the Order of the Red Banner."

That's all that is said about the achievements of Marinesko in the "History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945". Attention should be paid to the words "6 thousand people" and "steamboat".
And here is what political instructor A. Kron wrote in his opus "Captain of a long voyage" (publishing house "Soviet Writer", 1984):

"On January 30, 1945, the S-13 submarine under the command of Captain 3rd Rank A.I. Marinesko sank in the Stolpmünde area the giant liner of the Nazi fleet "Wilhelm Gustlov" with a displacement of 25,484 tons, on board of which there were over seven thousand evacuees from Danzig under the blows of the advancing Soviet troops of the Nazis: soldiers, officers and high-ranking representatives of the Nazi elite, executioners and punishers.On the Gustlov, which served as a floating base for a diving school before going to sea, there were over three thousand trained submariners - about seventy crews for new submarines In the same campaign, Marinesko was torpedoed by a large military transport "General Steuben", 3600 soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht were transported from Koenigsberg on it. "

And now "Big Encyclopedic Dictionary", 1997:

"MARINESKO Al-dr. Iv. (1913-63), submariner, captain of the 3rd rank (1942), Hero of the Soviet Union (1990, see). In the Great Patriotic War, commanding the submarine "S- 13 "(1943-45), sank the German superliner "Wilhelm Gustlov" in the region of the Danzig Bay on January 30, 1945 (which had on board over 5 thousand soldiers and officers, including approx. 1300 submariners) and Feb. 10 - Auxiliary cruiser "General Steuben" (more than 3 thousand soldiers and officers). After the war, he worked in the Leningrad Shipping Company, then at the plant."

There is a tendency - first, according to official historiography, there were 6 thousand PEOPLE on Gustlov, then Kron had 7 thousand fascists, including over 3 thousand submariners, and finally again in the official source - 5 thousand soldiers and officers, among which only 1300 submariners. As for the Steuben, sometimes called a steamship, sometimes a large military transport, sometimes an auxiliary cruiser (and Kron in his opus calls it just a cruiser), the Germans called auxiliary cruisers civilian ships armed with 5-7 guns.

It is not known who was the first to launch a story about declaring Marinesko a personal enemy of Hitler and about mourning after the sinking of the Gustlov. According to Soviet sources, there was mourning, according to German - no. However, there is no doubt that really no other unit of such a small number destroyed such a large number of German citizens at one time. Even during the famous bombing of Dresden, when 250 thousand inhabitants were killed, several thousand pilots took part in this. However, neither then, nor after the sinking of the Gustlov, mourning was declared - the Germans did not advertise these losses so as not to give rise to panic among the German population.

So who and how much did Marinesko drown? Several thousand people or fascist executioners or military? In various sources, the composition of the Gustlov's passengers varies greatly. According to the number of drowned - from 4 to 8 thousand. According to the composition, it says either simply "refugees", then "refugees and the military", then "refugees, military, wounded and prisoners."

The most detailed figures on the Gustlov's passengers are as follows:

918 military sailors, 373 from the Women's Auxiliary Fleet, 162 wounded military personnel, 173 crew members (civilian sailors) and 4,424 refugees. A total of 6050. In addition to those included in the lists, up to 2 thousand more refugees managed to get on board the Gustlov. A total of 876 people were rescued. 16 officers of the training division of the submarine forces, 390 cadets, 250 female soldiers, 90 crew members, as well as wounded soldiers were killed. Such is the war damage inflicted by the sinking of the Gustlov.

As for those who drowned on the Steuben, it really (as it is written in Soviet sources) was more than 3 thousand soldiers and officers - 2680 wounded and 100 healthy servicemen, 270 medical personnel, as well as 285 crew members and about 900 refugees. A total of 659 people were rescued. Some sources include the sinking of the Steuben in the first lines of the list of the largest in terms of the number of victims of maritime disasters. By the way, the sinking of the "Gustlov" is always present in such lists - either in the first or in the second place in terms of the number of deaths in the entire world history of navigation. If in second place they call "Gustlov", then in the first place they call either the sinking of the "Goya" (by the Soviet submarine L-3 on April 17, 1945) - from 5 to 7 thousand refugees, or the sinking of the Cap Arkona liner (British aviation May 3, 1945), which resulted in the drowning of 5,000 prisoners.

Now let's imagine how this event looked on the historical background.

Germany is heading towards the abyss. This is understood even by those who, until recently, shouted “Heil Hitler!” at the top of their lungs. The flames of war are raging on the land of the Third Reich. Soviet tanks rumble on the roads leading to Berlin, flying fortresses terrify the organized retreat of German soldiers.

In early February 1945, the heads of government of the allied powers gathered in the Crimea to discuss measures to ensure the final defeat of fascist Germany and outline the paths for the post-war order of the world.

At the very first meeting in the Livadia Palace in Yalta, Churchill asked Stalin: when did the Soviet troops capture Danzig, where is a certain number of German submarines under construction and ready? He asked to expedite the capture of this port.

The anxiety of the English premier was understandable. Britain's war effort and the supply of its population depended largely on maritime transport. However, the wolf packs of fascist submarines continued to rampage on sea lanes. Although, of course, their effectiveness was no longer the same as in the first years of the war, when it turned out that the British ships were simply powerless in the face of the threat of the German U-shek. Danzig was one of the main nests of fascist submarine pirates. The German Higher School of Diving was also located here, the floating barracks for which was the Wilhelm Gustlov liner.

But the British Prime Minister was late with his question. Volleys of Soviet guns and Katyushas were already heard in Danzig. A hasty flight of the enemy began. “Thousands of soldiers, sailors and civilians boarded the Wilhelm Gustloff. Half of the passengers of the liner were highly qualified specialists - the color of the fascist submarine fleet. Strong security at sea was to ensure the safety of their passage from Danzig to Kiel. The convoy included the cruiser Admiral Hipper, destroyers and minesweepers. This follows from Soviet post-war sources. In fact, among the 9,000 refugees, the vast majority were civilians, otherwise they would have been detained as deserters, or vice versa, brought into some kind of teams. In general, it is strange to assume that among the 9,000 refugees there is an absolute absence of any kind of military, for example, one-legged veterans of the Franco-Prussian War. The entire underwater German elite died in 42-44. And the entire convoy consisted of one (!) minesweeper.

At the end of January 1945, the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of Alexander Marinesko entered the Danzig Bay.

On January 30, a severe storm broke out at sea. The cabin of the boat, antennas and periscopes are quickly covered with a thick layer of ice. The commander and commissar peer into the darkness until their eyes hurt. And then the silhouette of a huge ship appeared.

"S-13" and at about twenty-three hours on January 30 attacks an enemy ship: several torpedoes rush to the target one after another. There is a strong explosion - and "Wilhelm Gustlov" goes to the bottom.

The Nazi officer Heinz Schön, who was on board the liner and survived, in his book The Death of the Wilhelm Gustlav, published in West Germany, confirms that on January 30, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustlav was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine near Danzig, as a result which killed more than five thousand people.“If this case can be considered a disaster,” the author writes, “then it was undoubtedly the biggest disaster in the history of navigation, in comparison with which even the death of the Titanic, which collided with an iceberg in 1913, is nothing ".

1517 people died on the Titanic. This tragedy shocked all mankind then. No one regretted the "Wilhelm Gustlov".

Heinz Shep describes in detail the story of the sinking of the liner:

"Wilhelm Gustloff was under dual command - as a ship, the liner was headed by the captain of the merchant fleet Friedrich Petersen, and as a floating barracks of the 2nd submarine training division, the liner was headed by a naval officer Wilhelm Zahn.

By the evening of January 22, 1945, the liner was prepared for the flight and loading of passengers - thousands of emaciated, frostbite and wounded refugees. The thermometer showed 14 degrees below zero, chaos and collapse reigned all around.

There were about 60 thousand refugees in the Gotenhafn harbor itself, and as soon as the ladders were installed, thousands of people rushed to the assault. During the landing, many children, in the ensuing crush, were separated from their parents.

About 400 girls - employees of the Women's Auxiliary Organization of the Navy, aged from 17 to 25, boarded the ship. They were placed in the swimming pool on deck E. Of course, the girls were more than happy to leave Gotenhafn in view of the impending Soviet occupation of East Prussia. On the morning of January 29, another hospital train arrived in Gotenhafn, the wounded were placed on the sun deck.

Now there were about 7-8 thousand people on board, but how many of them were exactly, it has not been possible to establish to this day. The liner was literally packed, and the cabins, and the corridors and aisles, were overcrowded.

As an air defense, a pair of anti-aircraft guns were installed on the upper deck. About 60% of passengers were provided with rescue equipment.

On Tuesday, January 30, at 12.30 local time, 4 tugboats approached the liner and took it away from the pier. The weather conditions were bad - wind force up to 7 points, temperature 10 degrees below zero, slush (small loose ice - approx. M. Volchenkov).

I was appointed foreman of the anti-aircraft crew. Upon leaving, icing began on the decks, and we had to constantly clear the guns of ice. A minesweeper followed the liner to search for and destroy mines. It got dark and even colder. Downstairs, feelings of joy and relief were replaced by depression, because. many refugees began to suffer from seasickness. But most considered themselves perfectly safe, firmly believing that in a couple of days they would reach Stettin or Denmark.

My shift started at 21:00. Everything was quiet and calm. And suddenly, somewhere at 21.10, there were explosions. At first I thought we had hit mines. But later I learned that we were hit by torpedoes fired by the Soviet submarine S-13, commanded by Alexander Marinesko. Thousands of people panicked. Many began jumping overboard into the icy waters of the Baltic. At first, the ship tilted to starboard, but then straightened up, and at that time another torpedo hit the liner, in the forecastle area. We were in the coast region of Stolpmünde, Pomerania. An SOS signal was immediately given and flares were fired.

The impact of the second torpedo fell on the section of the ship, which housed the swimming pool. Almost all the girls died, they were literally torn to pieces. I wanted to go back to my cabin and take a few personal things, but that was no longer possible. Thousands of people rushed from the lower decks upward, driven from below by streams of water.

Climbing up, people constantly and terribly screamed and pushed, those who fell were doomed, they were trampled to death. Nobody could help the helpless - pregnant women and wounded soldiers. Crowds of people stormed lifeboats, and there was no question of fulfilling the famous commandment “Women and children first!”. No one obeyed anyone, those who were physically stronger took over. Many boats covered with ice could not be lowered at all, and I watched as one of the boats being lowered broke off one of the painters, and the boat threw all the people in it down into the icy hell. The liner continued to sink forward into the water, the forecastle rails were already under water, and the launching of the boats became even more difficult.

For a while I stood on the sun deck watching this nightmare. Some families and individuals who had a personal choice chose to shoot themselves rather than die a much more painful death in icy water and darkness. And thousands of others continued to cling to the liner as it continued to sink.

I thought I couldn't get out. I jumped into the water and began to swim quickly to the side so that I would not be pulled into the funnel. At first, I didn’t feel the cold at all, and soon I was able to cling to the bridge of an overcrowded lifeboat (special lifelines are stretched along the sides of the lifeboats just for this purpose - ed.). The picture that opened up to me was truly terrible. The children, who were wearing life jackets, turned upside down, and only their helpless twitching legs protruded above the water. The dead were already floating around. The air was filled with the screams of the dying and calls for help. Two children clung to me, they screamed and called for their parents. I managed to get them on board the boat, but whether they escaped or not, I never found out.

Then I felt my weakness - hypothermia set in. I was able to hook onto a metal life raft, about 50 yards from the sinking liner. The bow was almost completely submerged, the stern lifted into the air, and hundreds of people were still there, screaming wildly. The sinking speed increased. Then, suddenly, there was dead silence. Wilhelm Gustloff disappeared underwater, taking the lives of thousands of people with him. The largest disaster in the history of navigation lasted approximately 50 minutes.

For about 20 minutes, the scariest minutes of my life, I just floated somewhere. From time to time, ice slush covered me. The screams around me grew quieter and less frequent. Then something happened that I consider a miracle. I saw a shadow approaching me and screamed, gathering my last strength. They spotted me and brought me on board.

The T-36 torpedo boat saved me. The crew of the boat helped us, rescued, with all available means - hot tea, massage. But many rescued died already on board, from hypothermia and shock. Pregnant women were also among the rescued, and it just so happened that the crew members had to try their hand at being midwives that night. Three children were born. The T-36 boat was part of a squadron commanded by Lieutenant Herring, whose task was to escort the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. The cruiser also sailed from East Prussia with refugees on board. Suddenly, the boat abruptly changed course, the cars howled. As I later learned, they noticed the trail of two torpedoes, one passed on the starboard side, the boat was able to evade the other with a sharp maneuver. The turn was so sharp that some of the rescued on the upper deck fell overboard and drowned. But 550 people were saved. Due to the great danger of a repeated attack by the submarine, the boat moved away from the crash site and at 02.00 on January 31 arrived in Saschnitz. The rescued were transferred to the Danish hospital ship Prinz Olaf, which was anchored there. Many were sent, on stretchers, to the shore. We, military sailors, were placed in the barracks. Lieutenant Herring was on the bridge at all times and saluted as the last survivor left the boat. As I later learned, only 996 of the approximately 8,000 on board survived.

We, the surviving sailors, once again escaped death. As sailors of the German Navy, we were all comrades, we loved our homeland and believed that we were doing the right thing by defending it. We did not consider ourselves heroes, and our death was heroic, we simply did our duty.

Ten days later, Marinesko's boat sank another ship, the General von Steuben, killing 3,500 people ...

Why was Marinesko not given the Hero, but was fired from the fleet almost at the first opportunity? More than he, none of the Soviet submariners did. Is it because of drunkenness? Or was it just a pretext, and the motives were different?

Perhaps there was a common policy here. Let's count - in a couple of volleys, in one campaign, Marinesko sent to the next world, according to the most conservative estimates, over 10 thousand people! The death of "Gustlov" was the largest maritime disaster in the history of mankind, "Titanic" in comparison with the victorious volleys of Marinesko looks like a boat overturned on a pond with drunken vacationers. Cooler than Marinesko were, perhaps, only the crews of those B-29s that tamed Japan - with atomic bombs. In general, the numbers are comparable. There and there - tens of thousands. Only, however, Marinesko managed without atomic bombs, only two at that time on the entire planet. Marinesko and a dozen torpedoes were enough.

It is likely that the destruction of the Gustlov was embarrassed, because they prepared batches of bread for occupied Germany, they wanted to win over the Germans, and here - the death of such a large number of people, and partly civilians, from the torpedoes of one small submarine.

Finally - about Marinesko himself. His mother was Ukrainian, and his father served in his youth as a stoker on a warship of the Royal Romanian Navy. After some quarrel with the authorities, my father fled to Russia and settled in Odessa. The growing up Alexander Marinesko graduated from the junior school, and then in the thirties - and the Odessa Naval School. Sailed on ships in the Black Sea. As a long-distance navigator, Marinesko was drafted into the Navy and after studying he asked for a submarine.

Always calm, confident, he was very persistent and skillful in achieving his goals. Commanding the ship, he never raised his voice, did not shout at his subordinates. All this created an unshakable authority for him, he earned the love and respect of the sailors.

In contrast to all this, it remains to be added that Marinesko was kicked out of the fleet for drunkenness and poor discipline. Marinesko got a job as a warehouse manager. There he completely drank himself and began to drink away the state property entrusted to him. He was caught and convicted in 1949 for 3 years.

As you can see, Alexander Marinesko is a rather controversial figure. And his feat can be interpreted in different ways ... Despite all the contradictions, the award nevertheless found a submariner: in 1990 he was posthumously awarded the gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

The feat of Marinesko and the tragedy of "Gustloff"

The price of the "attack of the century"

Refugees become hostages of a ruthless war machine

In May 1990, one of the most famous Soviet submariners, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, was posthumously awarded by government decree, whose brief biography formed the basis of this article. For many years, his name was hushed up due to a number of circumstances that earned him scandalous fame and eclipsed his feats of arms.

Young Black Sea sailor

The future legendary submariner was born on January 15, 1913 in one of the coastal regions. His father, Ion Marinesko, was a Romanian worker, and his mother, Tatyana Mikhailovna Koval, was a peasant from the Kherson province. After studying 6 classes and barely reaching the age of 13, he got a job on one of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet as a sailor's apprentice. Since then, the biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko has been inextricably linked with the sea. His zeal and patience were noticed, and soon a capable guy was assigned to the cabin boy school, after which he was already listed in the ship's crews not as a student, but as a full-fledged sailor of the 1st class.

Continuing his education at the Odessa Naval College and graduating in 1933, Alexander Ivanovich sailed for several years on the Ilyich and Krasny Fleet ships as a third and then second mate. Those who knew him later said that in his youth, Marinesko did not plan to become a military sailor at all, but preferred the merchant fleet. Perhaps his father played a role in this, having worked for several years as a sailor on various civilian ships, and, undoubtedly, told his son a lot about his travels.

Komsomol ticket to naval life

A sharp turn in the biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko occurred in 1933, after he, along with a group of other young sailors, received a Komsomol ticket for special courses for the command staff of the navy. In those years, this was tantamount to an order, and to refuse meant to cross out your entire future career, no matter where you tried to arrange it. So, the local committee of the Komsomol made for him the choice of a further life path. However, such examples were by no means uncommon in the pre-war years.

After completing the course, Marinesko took up the position of navigator on a submarine called Haddock, and then, after additional training, he was first promoted to assistant commander of the L-1 submarine, and then took a commanding position in the M-96 submarine. By the beginning of the war, the shoulders of the young submariner Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko were already adorned with the shoulder straps of a lieutenant commander.

addiction

In the first days of the war, the submarine, commanded by Marinesko, was relocated to Tallinn, from where she went on combat duty to the water area. so rare in Russia ─ he liked to drink, and even in hops, what only happened to him. And Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko hopelessly spoiled his biography with this addiction.

Trouble began in August 1941, after the fact of drunkenness and organization of gambling among the officers of the division to which his submarine was assigned became public. Marinesko, one of the first to appear on the list of participants in the spree, was stripped of the title of candidate member of the party, and the division commander was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 years in the camps, but with a reprieve and immediate dispatch to the front.

In part, Alexander Ivanovich managed to restore his reputation only the following year, when, after a successful military operation, he was awarded the Order of Lenin and reinstated as a candidate member of the party. At the same time, Marinescu opened an account for the sunken enemy ships, attacking in mid-August 1942 a ship that was part of a large German transport convoy.

Commander of the submarine "S-13"

At the end of December, for the heroism shown and high combat results, Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the rank of captain of the 3rd rank. However, the newly appointed division commander added a “fly in the ointment” to this “barrel of honey”, noting in the description that his subordinate was prone to frequent drinking. Nevertheless, the distinguished and promoted officer was appointed commander of the S-13 submarine, on which he was destined to serve until September 1945 and accomplish his main feat. Her photo is shown below.

Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko practically did not go to sea during 1943, as he performed a number of tasks related to the preparation of replenishment of the personnel of the Baltic submarine fleet. However, life on the shore was fraught with many temptations, which he was unable to resist. Twice during this year, "drunken stories" ended for him in a guardhouse with subsequent penalties along the party line.

At the end of October 1944, Marinesko again took part in military operations, and in one of them he discovered and then pursued a German transport ship for a long time. It was not possible to sink it with torpedoes, but as a result of successful hits from onboard guns, the ship was seriously damaged, and, towed to the port, it stood under repair until the end of the war. For this campaign, Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Bad story

The coming victorious year of 1945 Marinesko met with another "adventure", after which he managed to avoid the tribunal only with great difficulty. Shortly before this, the submarine, which he commanded, was seriously damaged during an artillery duel with the German ship "Siegfried" and for a long time was under repair in the port of the Finnish city of Turku.

By the end of December, the commander embarked on another spree and disappeared from the submarine on a festive night. The next day he did not return, after which he was put on the wanted list. As it turned out later, on the shore, Marinesko met a Swede who kept a restaurant in the city, and took advantage of the hospitality of a loving hostess.

Threat to be sued

It should be noted that the personal life of the commander did not work out, and vodka was to blame. Shortly before the events described, the third marriage fell apart, and Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich, whose wife and daughter did not want to endure his drunken antics, clearly felt a lack of female affection.

For unauthorized abandonment of a warship in wartime, he was threatened with a tribunal, but the high authorities decided to defer the punishment and give the offending submariner a chance to atone for his guilt. Therefore, the military campaign, on which Marinesko set off in early January, in fact, decided the fate of his future life. Only out of the ordinary success in a military operation could save him from inevitable punishment. Everyone understood this, and, of course, first of all the submarine commander himself ─ Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko.

Attack of the century that began with a malfeasance

For almost three weeks, the Marinesko submarine was in the water area assigned to it, trying in vain to detect the enemy. Finally, he decided, contrary to the order of the command, to change the course of the submarine and continue the "hunt" in a different square. It is difficult to say what made him go to such a blatant violation of the charter.

Whether it was a manifestation of intuition, excitement, or the usual Russian “seven troubles ─ one answer” pushed him onto the path of malfeasance, no one can say with certainty. Most likely, the urgent need to rehabilitate for past sins, or, more simply, to accomplish a feat, played a role. Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, as they say, went for broke.

The sinking of the giant ship

One way or another, but, having left the given square, the submariners soon discovered a large enemy transport ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff (its photo is presented below). It was a pre-war cruise liner with a displacement of 25,000 tons, used for the needs of the army and currently sailing almost without an escort. The difficult situation that developed towards the end of the war did not allow the Germans to provide adequate cover for their transport ships.

On board the Gustloff, as it turned out later, there were more than 10 thousand people, the vast majority of them were refugees from the regions of East Prussia, that is, the elderly, women and children, which later gave grounds to certain circles to accuse Marinesko of the destruction of civilians. One can only object to them that, firstly, looking through the periscope, the submariners could not determine the composition of the ship's passengers, and secondly, in addition to the refugees, there were a fairly large number of military personnel on board, redeployed for combat operations.

Having quietly approached the enemy ship, the submariners fired 3 torpedoes at it, each of which successfully hit the target. Subsequently, the Soviet propaganda organs called this strike "the attack of the century." The enemy transport was sent to the bottom, and with it almost half of those who were on board. According to data collected by military historians, as a result of that attack, 4855 people died, of which 405 were submarine cadets, 89 were crew members, 249 were women who served in the navy and 4112 were refugees and wounded (including about 3 thousand . children).

Continuation of the military operation

For all the years of the war, the ship "Wilhelm Gustloff" was the largest of the ships of this type destroyed by Soviet sailors, and the second in terms of the number of victims, second only to the transport ship "Goya", sent to the bottom by the submarine "L-3". More than 7,000 people died on it.

Having safely escaped from the place where the German ship was sinking into the sea, falling aft, the S-13 crew continued the hunt. In the same square, 10 days later, submariners discovered and sank another enemy ship, the General Steuben, which was also very impressive in size and had a displacement of 15,000 tons. Thus, the combat campaign undertaken by the S-13 crew from January to February 1945 became the most successful raid by Soviet submariners in the entire history of this type of troops.

"Floating penal battalion"

In those days, the biography and photos of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko appeared on the pages of many Soviet newspapers, but the fleet command was in no hurry to present either him or the rest of the team for awards. The commander gained too scandalous fame for his drunken antics. By the way, the crew of the submarine entrusted to him was staffed for the most part from those who had serious problems with the disciplinary charter. So the S-13 submarine was jokingly called the "floating penal battalion."

Already at the very end of the war, Marinesko undertook another - the last military campaign in his life, this time unsuccessful and inconclusive. Those who communicated with him at that time said that Alexander Ivanovich began to have epileptic seizures, provoked by ever-increasing drunkenness. On this basis, the conflict with the authorities also escalated significantly. As a result, in September 1945, an order was issued to remove him from his post and demote him to the rank of senior lieutenant.

vicissitudes of fate

The post-war biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko looks extremely sad and ridiculous. Having soon retired from military service, he went to sea for some time on various merchant ships, and in 1949, to a complete surprise for everyone, he took the post of director of the Leningrad Institute of Blood Transfusion. It is not known how the former sailor was brought into the purely medical field, but only very soon he was convicted of major theft and sentenced to 3 years in prison. So fate brought the hero-submariner to the Kolyma.

Having been released from prison and having neither a home nor a family, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko worked for two years as a topographer as part of several geological expeditions, and then, returning to Leningrad in 1953, got a job as head of the supply department of the Mezon plant. He died on November 25, 1963 after a serious illness and was buried at the Theological Cemetery.

Hero's memory

Already during the period of perestroika, the Izvestia newspaper initiated the process of rehabilitation of the submarine hero, and on May 5, 1990, by personal decree of the President of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. From that time on, his military path began to be widely covered in the media, and 7 years later, not far from the cemetery where the hero was buried, at 47 Kondratievskiy pr., the Museum of Russian Submarine Forces was opened, named after Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko. Photos of the war years, models of submarines and original exhibits of the exhibition tell about the glorious military path of Soviet and Russian sailors.

Today, monuments to the posthumously rehabilitated submarine hero have been erected in St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, Odessa and Kaliningrad. Several feature and documentary films, as well as literary works are dedicated to him. In particular, the feat of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko is briefly described in the novel "The Trajectory of the Crab", the author of which is the German writer, Nobel Prize winner Günther Grass. In addition, streets in many cities of Russia are named after the hero.

Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko (January 2, 1913, Odessa - November 25, 1963, Leningrad). Commander of the Red Banner submarine S-13 of the Red Banner submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, captain of the 3rd rank, known for the “Attack of the Century”. Hero of the Soviet Union (1990).

Born in Odessa in the family of a Romanian worker, Ion Marinescu, and a Ukrainian peasant woman, Tatyana Mikhailovna Koval.

In 1920-1926 he studied at labor school No. 36 (now school No. 105, Pasteur St., 17), where he graduated from 6 classes, after which he became a sailor's apprentice.

For diligence and patience, he was sent to a jung school, after which he went on the ships of the Black Sea Shipping Company as a sailor of the 1st class.

In 1930 he entered the Odessa Nautical College and, graduating from it in 1933, went to the third and second assistant to the captain on the steamships Ilyich and Krasny Fleet.

According to the submariner Gennady Zelentsov, who served with Marinesko, Alexander Ivanovich himself never wanted to be a military man, but only dreamed of serving in the merchant fleet.

In November 1933, on a ticket from the Komsomol, he was sent to special courses for the command staff of the RKKF, after which he was appointed navigator on the submarine Shch-306 ("Haddock") of the Baltic Fleet.

In March 1936, in connection with the introduction of personal military ranks, Marinesko received the rank of lieutenant, in November 1938 - senior lieutenant. After graduating from retraining courses at the S. M. Kirov Red Banner Diving Training Unit, he served as an assistant commander on the L-1, then as commander of the M-96 submarine, the crew of which, following the results of combat and political training in 1940, took first place, and the commander was awarded gold medals. hours and promoted to Lieutenant Commander.

Alexander Marinesko during the Great Patriotic War

In the early days of the Great Patriotic War, the M-96 submarine under the command of Marinesko was relocated to Paldiski, then to Tallinn, stood in position in the Gulf of Riga, and had no collisions with the enemy.

In August 1941, they planned to transfer the submarine to the Caspian Sea as a training one, then this idea was abandoned. In October 1941, Marinesko was expelled from the candidates for membership of the CPSU (b) for drunkenness and organizing gambling card games in the submarine division (the division commissioner, who allowed this, received ten years in camps with a suspended sentence and was sent to the front).

On February 14, 1942, the submarine was damaged by an artillery shell during shelling, repairs took six months. Only on August 12, 1942, the M-96 went on another combat campaign.

On August 14, 1942, the boat attacked a German convoy, consisting of three transports guarded by two heavy floating batteries. According to Marinesko's report, he fired two torpedoes at German transport, did not observe the results of the attack, heard a strong explosion, interpreted as the result of a torpedo hit, as a result of which the boat was credited with sinking the transport. According to German sources, the attack was unsuccessful - the ships of the convoy observed the trail of one torpedo, which they successfully evaded, and then attacked the submarine with artillery and depth charges to no avail.

Returning from a position ahead of schedule (fuel and cartridges for air regeneration were running out), Marinesko did not warn the Soviet patrols, and did not raise the naval flag when surfacing, as a result of which his own boats almost sank the boat.

In November 1942, the M-96 entered the Narva Bay to land a group of scouts for an operation to capture the Enigma cipher machine at the headquarters of a German regiment. But there was no encryption machine in it. Nevertheless, the actions of the commander in the position were highly appreciated, and Marinesko was awarded the Order of Lenin.

At the end of 1942, Marinesko was awarded the rank of captain of the 3rd rank, he was again accepted as a candidate member of the CPSU (b), but in a generally good combat performance for 1942, the division commander, captain of the 3rd rank Sidorenko, nevertheless noted that his subordinate "on the shore prone to frequent drinking".

In April 1943, Marinesko was appointed commander of the S-13 submarine, where he served until September 1945.

In 1943, the S-13 did not go on military campaigns, and the commander got into another "drunk" story. The submarine under his command went on a campaign only in October 1944. On the very first day of the campaign, October 9, Marinesko discovered and attacked transport "Siegfried"(553 brt). The attack with four torpedoes from a short distance failed, and artillery fire from the 45-mm and 100-mm guns of the submarine had to be fired at the transport. According to the commander's observation, as a result of the hits, the ship (whose displacement Marinesko inflated to 5000 tons in the report) began to quickly sink into the water. In fact, the damaged German transport was later towed by the enemy to Danzig and restored by the spring of 1945. For this trip Marinesko received the Order of the Red Banner.

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

From January 9 to February 15, 1945, Marinesko was on his fifth military campaign, during which two large enemy transports, Wilhelm Gustloff and Steuben, were sunk.

Before this campaign, the commander of the Baltic Fleet, V.F. Tributs, decided to bring Marinesko to court-martial for unauthorized abandonment of the ship in a combat situation (on New Year's Eve, the commander left the ship for two days, the crew of which during this time "distinguished" by sorting out relations with the local population), but he delayed the execution of this decision, giving the commander and crew the opportunity to atone for their guilt in a military campaign.

Thus, S-13 became the only "penalty" submarine of the Soviet fleet.

On January 30, 1945, C-13 attacked and sent the Wilhelm Gustloff liner (25,484 brt) to the bottom, on which there were 10,582 people: 918 cadets of junior groups of the 2nd submarine training division, 173 crew members, 373 women from of the auxiliary naval corps, 162 seriously wounded soldiers and 8956 refugees, mostly the elderly, women and children. The transport, the former ocean liner "Wilhelm Gustloff", went without an escort (the torpedoes of the training flotilla TF-19 returned to the port of Gotenhafen, having received damage to the hull in a collision with a stone, accompanied by the second ship from the escort attached to the Gustloff - the light destroyer "Löwe" .)

Due to a lack of fuel, the liner was heading straight, without performing an anti-submarine zigzag, and the damage to the hull received earlier during the bombing did not allow it to reach high speed (the ship sailed at a speed of only 12 knots).

Alexander Marinesko - Attack of the Century

It was previously believed that the German Navy was seriously damaged. So, according to the Marine magazine (1975, No. 2-5, 7-11, Germany), 1300 submariners died with the ship, among which were fully formed submarine crews and their commanders. According to the commander of the division, Captain 1st Rank Alexander Evstafyevich Orel, the dead German submariners would be enough to equip 70 submarines of medium tonnage.

Subsequently, the Soviet press called the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff "the attack of the century", and Marinesko - "submariner No. 1", which is not entirely justified (submariners from other countries sank much larger ships, including combat ones, for example, the American submarine "Destroyed the Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano with a displacement of 71,890 gross tons, and the German boat U-47 on October 14, 1939 sank the English battleship Royal Oak with a displacement of 29,150 gross tons right in the harbor of Scapa Flow).

According to modern data, 4850 people died with the Gustloff, of which 406 sailors and officers of the 2nd submarine training division, 90 members of their own crew, 250 female soldiers of the German fleet and 4600 refugees and wounded (including almost 3 thousand children ). There are other estimates of the number of victims, up to 9343 people.

Of the submariners, 16 officers died (including 8 of the medical service), the rest were poorly trained cadets who still needed at least a six-month training course.

"Wilhelm Gustloff" was the largest ship in terms of tonnage sunk by Soviet submariners, and the second in terms of the number of victims (the leader is the ship "Goya", sunk on April 16, 1945 by the submarine "L-3" - about 7000 people died on it).

Estimates of the actions of Marinesko and the crew of the C-13 vary greatly, from extremely positive (in Soviet sources) to condemning (in anti-Soviet literature).

Some German publications during the Cold War called the sinking of the Gustloff a war crime, just like the Allied bombing of Dresden. However, the disaster researcher Heinz Schön concludes that the liner was a military target and its sinking was not a war crime, since: ships intended for the transport of refugees, hospital ships had to be marked with the appropriate signs - a red cross, could not wear camouflage, not could go in one convoy along with military courts. On board could not be any military cargo, stationary and temporarily placed air defense guns, artillery pieces or other similar means.

Legally speaking, the Wilhelm Gustloff was a Navy auxiliary ship that allowed 6,000 refugees to board. All responsibility for their lives, from the moment they boarded the warship, lay with the appropriate officials of the German navy.

Thus, "Gustloff" was a legitimate military target of Soviet submariners, in view of the following facts:

1. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was not an unarmed civilian ship: it had weapons on board that could fight enemy ships and aircraft;

2. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was a training floating base for the German submarine fleet;

3. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was accompanied by a warship of the German fleet (destroyer "Löwe");

4. Soviet transports with refugees and the wounded during the war years repeatedly became targets for German submarines and aviation (in particular, the ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, carried more than 5 thousand refugees and wounded on board. Only 8 people survived However, "Armenia", like "Wilhelm Gustloff", violated the status of a sanitary vessel and was a legitimate military target).

Most of the dead had nothing to do with the German Navy. Of the (estimated) 918 officers and cadets of the 2nd training division of submarines on board, (presumably) slightly less than half died.

The sinking of the transport "Steuben"

On February 10, 1945, a new victory followed - on the approach to the Danzig (Gdansk) Bay, S-13 sank the Steuben ambulance transport (14,660 brt), on board of which there were 2680 wounded military personnel, 100 soldiers, about 900 refugees, 270 military medical personnel and 285 members of the ship's crew. Of these, 659 people were saved, of which about 350 were wounded.

It must be taken into account that the ship was armed with anti-aircraft machine guns and guns, was on guard and was transporting healthy soldiers as well. In this regard, strictly speaking, it could not be attributed to hospital courts.

It should also be noted that Marinesco identified the attacked ship as the light cruiser Emden.

The S-13 commander was not only forgiven for his previous sins, but was also presented with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. However, the higher command replaced the Golden Star with the Order of the Red Banner.

The sixth military campaign from April 20 to May 13, 1945 was considered unsatisfactory. Then, according to the commander of the submarine brigade, Captain 1st Rank Kournikov, Marinesko “I had many cases of detecting enemy transports and convoys, but as a result of improper maneuvering and indecision I could not get close for an attack ... The actions of the submarine commander in position were unsatisfactory. The commander of the submarine did not seek to search for and attack the enemy ... As a result of the inactive actions of the commander of the submarine "S-13" did not complete the combat mission ".

On May 31, the commander of the submarine division submitted a report to the higher command, in which he indicated that the submarine commander was drinking all the time, was not engaged in official duties, and his continued stay in this position was inappropriate.

On September 14, 1945, order No. 01979 of the People's Commissar of the Navy N. G. Kuznetsov was issued, which stated: “For negligence in official duties, systematic drunkenness and everyday promiscuity of the commander of the Red Banner submarine S-13 of the Red Banner submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, captain 3rd rank Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich, removed from his position, demoted in military rank to senior lieutenant and enlisted at the disposal of the military council of the same fleet".

In 1960, the order to demote was canceled, which made it possible for Marinesko, by that time already very ill, to receive a full pension.

From October 18, 1945 to November 20, 1945, Marinesko was the commander of the minesweeper T-34 of the 2nd minesweeper division of the 1st Red Banner minesweeper brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet (Tallinn Marine Defense Region). On November 20, 1945, by order of the People's Commissar of the Navy No. 02521, Senior Lieutenant Marinesko A.I. was transferred to the reserve.

Submarines under the command of Alexander Marinesko made six military campaigns during the Great Patriotic War. Two transports sunk, one damaged. The M-96 attack in 1942 ended in a miss.

Alexander Marinesko holds the record among Soviet submariners in terms of the total tonnage of enemy ships sunk: 42,557 gross register tons.

After the war, in 1946-1949, Marinesko worked as a senior mate on the ships of the Baltic State Commercial Shipping Company, in 1949 - as deputy director of the Leningrad Research Institute of Blood Transfusion.

In 1949 he was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of squandering socialist property, he served his sentence in 1949-1951 in Vanino.

In 1951-1953 he worked as a topographer for the Onega-Ladoga expedition, since 1953 he was in charge of a group of the supply department at the Mezon plant in Leningrad.

Marinesko died in Leningrad after a serious and prolonged illness on November 25, 1963. He was buried at the Theological Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Not far from here (Kondratievsky pr., 83) is the Museum of Russian Submarine Forces. A. I. Marinesko.

The title of Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko was awarded posthumously on May 5, 1990.

Biography of Alexander Marinesko

Hero of the Soviet Union, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko was born on January 15, 1913 in Odessa in a working-class family. Growing up near the sea, since childhood, Alexander dreamed of becoming a sailor. After six years of labor school, he manages to become a sailor's apprentice. Having managed to prove himself well, the young Marinesko receives a referral to a junior school, after which he continues his studies at the Odessa Nautical College. At the age of twenty, his dream to work in the Navy comes true, and Alexander Marinesko, as the third, and then the second assistant captain, makes voyages on steamships.

In 1933, Marinesko was sent to special navigation classes for the Red Fleet command staff. After their graduation, he becomes the head of the navigational combat unit on the Shch-306 submarine in the Baltic Fleet. In 1936 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In 1938, like a bolt from the blue, Marinesco's dismissal follows, with a ban on holding positions even in the merchant marine. The reason was the origin of Alexander Ivanovich (his father is a Romanian, who in 1893 fled to Odessa from Romania from under arrest) and the presence of relatives abroad. Marinesko, being a proud and proud man, did not write requests for restoration, despite the fact that his whole life and dreams were connected with the sea. Fortunately, for a still unknown reason, a month later, Lieutenant Marinesko was reinstated in his position and two months later he became a senior lieutenant.

After graduating from the diving unit, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko served as an assistant commander, then commander of the M-96 submarine. Under his leadership, in 1940 the crew of the submarine became the best in combat and political training. The commander himself receives a promotion - he becomes a lieutenant commander, and is awarded a personalized gold watch.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Marinesko, together with the crew of his submarine, were transported to the Gulf of Riga and did not take part in military operations for a long time. Forced idleness affected the discipline of sailors. At the end of 1941, Alexander Ivanovich was even deprived of his candidate status as a member of the party for drunkenness and gambling at cards. Finally, in August 1942, the M-96 submarine under the command of Marinesko took the battle with the German floating battery. Information about whether the release of two torpedoes managed to damage enemy ships varies. Despite the fact that not all the actions of the commander in this campaign corresponded to the need (the submarine left the position, did not raise the flag in time, which is why it was almost flooded by its own), nevertheless, Marinesko was awarded the Order of Lenin. By the end of the same year, he was reinstated as a candidate for the CPSU (b) and a few months later became a member of the party and a captain of the 3rd rank.

In 1942 and early 1943, while continuing to serve on the M-96, the crew led by Marinesko made three more combat exits, but was not marked with victories. From April 1943 to September 1945, the fate of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko is connected with another submarine "S-13". As a commander, Marinesko made three S-13 combat campaigns. October 1944 was marked by an attack on the German trawler "Siegfried" with significant damage to the ship. Marinesko received the Order of the Red Banner.

Underwater "Attack of the Century" by Alexander Marinesko

At the end of 1944, the commander had another problem with discipline: he arbitrarily left the ship for two days in a Finnish port, being in a state of intoxication. The commander of the Baltic Fleet was even going to give Marinesko to a military tribunal. Having given a chance to justify himself in a combat situation, Admiral V.F. Tributs at the beginning of 1945 sent the S-13 submarine on a military campaign. During this, the fifth military campaign, Marinesko becomes the number 1 submariner for all Soviet people, having sunk two large enemy ships at once.

January 30, 1945 after the attack led by A.I. Marinesko, went to the bottom of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a huge liner that carried more than 2,000 German soldiers, including 406 submarine specialists, many Gauleiters and Nazi leaders, Gestapo and SS officers, and several thousand civilians. In essence, this once former tourist liner has become the base for the study of German submariners. Military experts called the operation the naval attack of the century.

Ten days after this feat, the C-13 crew accomplishes the second. The German ship "General von Steuben", on board which there were more than 3 thousand German officers and soldiers who were trying to evacuate through the Danzig Bay, was sunk by an attack by a Soviet submarine that broke through the outposts. During this campaign, Marinesko was presented with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, however, perhaps due to past sins, instead of the Golden Star, he was given the Order of the Red Banner.

The military campaign of April-May 1945 did not add glory to Marinesko. Complaints began to come in about his neglect of official duties and drunkenness. After the end of the war, there were attempts to demote him in rank. He was repeatedly disciplined.

Having worked in the merchant marine until 1949, Marinesko was decommissioned for health reasons. While working as deputy director of the Research Institute of Blood Transfusion in Leningrad, he received a term of 3 years for theft and absenteeism. In 1953, the conviction was removed under an amnesty. He continued to work in Leningrad at the Mezon plant as the head of the supply group. Marinesco died in 1963 from a serious oncological disease. His name was erased for a long time in Soviet history, but justice prevailed - in 1990 posthumously, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, the leader among Soviet submariners in terms of the total tonnage of enemy ships sunk, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.