Do you remember, brother, that time is long ago:
pine trees and the sea, sunset sun;
how we saw off the ships on the voyage, how did we wait for them back?
How we wanted to be captains
and go around the world in the spring!
Well, of course, we became the masters -
each in his own craft …
The usual story of those years: after graduating from only 6 classes, the Odessa boy Sasha Marinesko went to sea as a sailor's apprentice. After a couple of years, he is already a 1st class sailor. After graduating from the Odessa Maritime College in 1933, he was the third and second mate of the captain on the steamers "Ilyich" and "Red Fleet". In November of the same 1933, on a ticket to the Komsomol, he was sent to the courses of the command staff of the RKKF. There it was discovered that the working guy had relatives abroad, for which he was almost expelled (Alexander's father, Ion Marinescu - Romanian; was sentenced to death, fled to Odessa, where he changed the Romanian ending of the surname to the Ukrainian "o").
Then, it seems, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko began to look into the glass. From 1939 he served as the commander of the M-96. In the 40th, the submarine's crew took first place according to the results of combat training: the standard of immersion of 35 seconds was almost doubled - 19.5 seconds. The commander was awarded a personalized gold watch and was promoted to lieutenant commander.
In October 1941, Marinesco was expelled from the candidates for membership in the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for drunkenness and the organization of card games in the submarine division, and the divisional commissar, who made a mess, was given ten years in suspended camps and sent to the front. The sailors were walking! And every time - like the last time!
During the war, the Baltic resembled a soup with dumplings: about 6 thousand mines were exposed in the area of the island of Gogland, and about 2 thousand in the area of the island of Nargin (Neissaar). The fairways for the exit from the Gulf of Finland were not only mined by the Germans, but also blocked by anti-submarine nets. All our submarines were concentrated in the confined space of the bay, and very rarely the submariners who left for the campaign returned. The families of the crew members did not even receive a funeral - only a notification: "Missing" …
… For years surfing the wave, recklessly believing in luck, how many of us have gone to the bottom
how few of us went ashore …
The "Baby" M-96 was in demand in 1941 for combat service only once - to carry out coastal patrol off the Moonsund Islands at the end of July, while the boat did not meet with the enemy. On February 14, 1942, an artillery shell from the siege battery made a one and a half meter hole in the hull of the M-96, which was at the pier, flooded two compartments, and many instruments were out of order. The repair took six months.
It turns out that when on August 12, 1942, the submarine embarked on a regular campaign, its crew and commander not only did not have normal training during the year, which included diving and training torpedo attacks, but they never saw a real enemy at sea! Combat experience does not come by itself, this must be taken into account when "debriefing".
On August 14, finding a convoy consisting of a floating battery SAT 4 "Helene" and two schooners guarded by three patrol boats, Marinesco attacked it at 11:17 am. One torpedo was fired at the transport from a distance of 12 cables. A minute later, a crackling sound was heard on the boat, which was mistaken for a sign of a hit. But "Helene" got off with a slight fright (in 1946, the "sunk" ship was transferred to the Soviet Navy).
Escort boats rushed to bomb the area. They dropped twelve depth charges, from the hydraulic shocks of which some of the instruments were damaged on the boat, in the area of the fourth tank of the main ballast the hull seam burst, the gyrocompass went out of order. On the return, we had to force several lines of minefields, the boat touched the mines three times (minrep is a cable that keeps the mine at anchor).
… Straining with minrepes, anchors hold death
whose horned creed is
help us die.
Only - nakosya, take a bite -
the deadline has not come yet:
from the underworld we will rise
drink a sip of heaven!..
Grinding on the left … Attention!..
Left hand drive!.. Silence?
They held their breath -
fearfully. This is war:
bitch-trembling under the knees, the heart is squeezed in a vice …
For boys it is timeless
whiskey …
In November 42, M-96 entered Narva Bay to land a reconnaissance group in an operation to seize the Enigma encryption machine. There was no cipher machine in the German headquarters, the landing party returned with nothing. Alexander Ivanovich did not like how he was met on the shore after the hike, and without ceremony he gave the command to dive right at the pier. For 24 hours the crew celebrated their return under water, not paying attention to the attempts of the command to reach him.
But nevertheless, the actions of the commander in the position were highly appreciated, he managed to secretly approach the shore and returned the landing force to the base without losses. AI Marinesko was awarded the Order of Lenin. At the end of 1942, he was awarded the rank of captain of the 3rd rank, he was again accepted as a candidate for membership in the CPSU (b); however, in the combat characteristics for 1942, the battalion commander, 3rd-rank captain Sidorenko, nevertheless noted that his subordinate "on the shore is prone to frequent drinking."
In April of the 43rd, Marinesco was transferred to the commander of the S-13 submarine, on which he served until September 1945. Until the fall of 1944, the C-13 did not go out to sea, and the commander got into another "drunken" story: Marinesko did not share the pretty doctor with the commander of the submarine division, Alexander Orl, and prevailed over him in a fight - forced inaction relaxes and discourages.
The submarine set out on a campaign only in October 1944.
… West-south-west! Dive!
The depth is twenty-five!
By compartments movement
stop! Keep it up!
The white-winged one will wave at us, going into a bend.
S-13. "Happy!" -
the crew was joking …
On the very first day, October 9, Marinesko discovered and attacked a single transport (in reality - the German fishing trawler "Siegfried", 563 brt). From a distance of 4, 5 cables a volley was fired by three torpedoes - a miss! Two minutes later - another torpedo: miss! Having surfaced, the S-13 opened artillery fire from the submarine's 45-mm and 100-mm guns. According to the commander's observation, as a result of the hits, the ship (the displacement of which Marinesko in the report overestimated to 5000 tons) began to quickly sink into the water.
In fact, the trawler only lost speed and tilted, which did not prevent the Germans, after the departure of the C-13, to repair the damage and tow the ship to Danzig (now Gdansk), by the spring of 1945 it was restored. In the same campaign, Marinesco, in accordance with the data of his own logbook, had three more opportunities to attack, but did not use them - probably, the coast of people.
In 1944, Finland withdrew from the war, the USSR was able to relocate the fleet closer to the borders of the Reich. The submarine division was stationed in Turku. The coming 1945 Marinesko and his friend, the commander of the Smolny floating base Lobanov, decided to celebrate in the hotel restaurant. There, in the restaurant, Alexander began an affair with the hostess of the hotel, and he was "stuck" for two days.
As a result, Lobanov was on the front line, and Marinesko, the commander of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, Admiral V. F. Tributs wanted to prosecute a military tribunal, but provided an opportunity to atone for the upcoming campaign (there was no one to replace him, out of thirteen medium submarines that fought in the Baltic, only S-13 survived).
… And rushed in front of the line:
… Eats your mother!..
I'll arrange for you, bitches! …
Shoot!.. Shoot!.."
The S-13, in fact, became the only "penalty submarine" of the Soviet Navy for all the years of the war. As is clear from all of the above, the S-13 and its commander, neither in real nor in declared victories, clearly did not go to the top.
The fifth military campaign of the S-13 submarine and the destruction of the liner "Wilhelm Gustloff" went down in the history of submarine warfare as "the attack of the century", and they have been described in abundance. According to modern data, 406 sailors and officers of the 2nd training division of the submarine forces, 90 members of its own crew, 250 female soldiers of the German fleet and 4,600 refugees and wounded, including almost 3 thousand children, were killed with the Gustloff. During the Cold War, the Western press repeatedly blamed Marinesco for this fact, but the liner flew under the Kriegsmarine flag and did not bear the Red Cross insignia.
Of the submariners, 16 officers died (including 8 of the medical service), the rest were poorly trained cadets who needed at least another six-month course of training. Therefore, despite the statements of the submarine division commander Alexander Orel and the Soviet press about the deaths of 70-80 crews, the dead submariners could only form 7-8 submarine crews (the crew of the most common German type VII submarine was 44-56 people).
In the same campaign, on February 10, 1945, the "unlucky esca" sank the transport "General von Steuben", on board of which 2,680 wounded soldiers and officers of the Reich, 270 medical personnel, about 900 refugees, plus a crew of 285 people were evacuated. As a result, in terms of the number of gross register tons sunk, as well as the destroyed manpower, Marinesko came out on top among Soviet submariners in one trip.
For sunk enemy ships, submarine commanders received not only awards, but also good cash bonuses. In Finland, Marinesko bought an Opel with his bonuses and did not want to part with it when, at the end of the war, an order was received to relocate to Liepaja. The vehicle was reinforced on the deck of the red banner C-13, and it successfully crossed the Baltic.
This trick cost Marinesco his career as a submarine commander. On September 14, 1945, the order No. 01979 of the People's Commissar of the Navy, Admiral of the Fleet N. G. Kuznetsov, was issued: “For the negligent attitude to official duties, systematic drunkenness and domestic promiscuity of the commander of the Red Banner submarine C-13 of the Red Banner Brigade of submarines of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, Captain 3rd Rank Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich should be removed from his post, demoted to the rank of senior lieutenant and placed at the disposal of the military council of the same fleet."
For just a month, A. I. Marinesko served as commander of the T-34 minesweeper in the Tallinn naval defense area. On November 20, 1945, by order of the People's Commissar of the Navy No. 02521, Senior Lieutenant A. Marinesko was transferred to the reserve.
After the war in 1946-1949 A. I. Marinesko worked as a senior captain's mate on the ships of the Baltic State Merchant Shipping Company, went to the ports of Belgium, Holland, England. In 1949-1950 he was deputy director of the Leningrad Research Institute of Blood Transfusion.
Convicted on December 14, 1949, to three years in prison under Article 109 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (abuse of office) and the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 26, 1940 “On the transition to an eight-hour working day, a seven-day working week and on the prohibition of unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions.”
A. I. Marinesko served his punishment in the fishery in Nakhodka, and from February 8 to October 10, 1951, in the Vanino forced labor camp of Dalstroy. On October 10, 1951, Marinesco was released early from prison, and on the basis of an amnesty act of March 27, 1953, his conviction was removed.
After his release, the former commander of the submarine "S-13" in the period from the end of 1951 to 1953 worked as a topographer of the Onega-Ladoga expedition, since 1953 he headed the group of the supply department at the Leningrad plant "Mezon". Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko died in Leningrad on November 25, 1963, and was buried at the Theological cemetery. 27 years later, by the Decree of the President of the USSR of May 5, 1990, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union - posthumously …
Until now, disputes do not cease, who is he - a hero or a sloven, a victim of circumstances or a criminal? A man is not a button from underpants, you cannot assign him a certain article or "grind" to a given standard. It's not for us to judge him …
… Sadly the evening will burn out, and the pier will melt in the dark, and the white seagull flies
greetings from a past life …
From the end of World War II until his death, the name Marinesco was banned. But in the unwritten history of the Russian fleet, which is formed in smoking rooms, he was and remains the most famous legendary submariner!
