In the 1930s, a grandiose construction was launched in the Far East …
During the Second World War, the Atlantic Wall became widely known. Fortifications built by Hitler's order stretched along the entire western coast of Europe, from Denmark to the border with Spain. Dozens of films have been filmed about this grandiose structure, comparable in size to the Great Wall of China and the Mannerheim Line, and many of the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall are now turned into museums. But practically no one in the world knows about another gigantic military structure, "Stalin's Pacific Rim". Although its forts stretch almost along the entire Far Eastern coast of Russia - from Anadyr to the Korean border.
Russian size
The tower batteries of the Pacific Rampart were impressive in size and resembled underground cities.
Monuments of a harsh age
On the site of the abandoned batteries of the "Stalin's shaft" it would be possible to create a museum: there is something to see inside them.
Miscalculation of gray-haired generals
The first Russian coastal batteries in the Far East appeared in the 1860s in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, and by the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War coastal fortresses were also rebuilt in Port Arthur and Vladivostok. But during the years of that shameful war for us, they did not help much - due to the amazing inertia of the tsarist generals and admirals.
Despite the fact that back in 1894, the Obukhov plant began producing 305/40-mm guns (305 - caliber, 40 - the ratio of barrel length to caliber, that is, the barrel length of such a gun is 12.2 m) with a firing range of 26 km, on ships and coastal batteries cannons continued to fire, firing at 4, maximum 6 km. The gray-haired generals only laughed at the officers who offered to replace them with more long-range ones: "What kind of fool is going to shoot 10 miles away ?!" According to the authorities of that time, the enemy ships had to approach our coastal fortresses for four kilometers, anchor and begin an artillery battle.
But the Japanese were underestimated: their ships did not come so close to Port Arthur and Vladivostok, and they shot military and civilian objects from several long distances with impunity. After the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War, our military department began building several dozen concrete coastal batteries in the Vladivostok area. Not all of them were completed when the First World War broke out. But Japan became an ally of Russia, and the need for the defense of the Far Eastern borders disappeared. As a result, almost all the coastal batteries of Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk-on-Amur were disarmed, and the guns were sent to the front and to the coastal batteries of the Baltic. And when the Red Army "finished its campaign in the Pacific Ocean," in Vladivostok, as well as in all of Primorye, there were no longer any ships or coastal guns.
Do not be alarmed if you suddenly stumble upon formidable cannons while wandering along the Far East coast. Hundreds of abandoned guns with removed electronic and optical devices are scattered along the entire coast.
Defenseless border
The first ten years of Soviet power in the Far East, there was no navy or coastal defense. The protection of the multi-thousand-kilometer coast was carried out by several schooners armed with small-caliber cannons. Everything would have continued like this, but in 1931 a terrible threat loomed over the Far East and Siberia. Japan occupied Manchuria and put forward territorial claims against the Soviet Union. Thousands of miles of the coastal strip of the Far East were completely defenseless in front of the huge Japanese fleet.
At the end of May of the same year, the government decided to strengthen the Far Eastern coastline with new batteries. A special commission chaired by the People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov arrived in Vladivostok to select their positions. Assessing the combat positions, Voroshilov came to a disappointing conclusion: "The capture of Vladivostok is a simple expedition that can be entrusted to any dummy adventurer."
But Stalin firmly decided not to give the Japanese an inch of land: echelons with tanks, artillery systems, armored vehicles reached the Far East … The Far Eastern divisions first of all received new aircraft, so that soon there were already several hundred long-range TB-3 bombers in the Far East, ready strike at the cities of Japan at any moment. At the same time, the construction of the huge Pacific Rampart of many hundreds of coastal batteries and concrete pillboxes began.
On the map of the eastern coast of the USSR, the red line indicates the location of the coastal batteries (on the right).
Giant construction site
Formally, this grandiose structure had no name, and some of its areas were modestly designated by the coastal defense sectors.
Stalin's Pacific Rampart stretched from Chukotka, where the Northern Sector of Coastal Defense was created, to the southern end of the Far Eastern coast of the Soviet Union. Dozens of batteries were built in Kamchatka, along the shores of Avacha Bay, in Northern Sakhalin, in the Magadan and Nikolaevsk-on-Amur regions. In those days, the coast of Primorye was a deserted land, so coastal batteries often covered only the approaches to the naval bases of the Pacific Fleet. However, in the Vladivostok area, the entire coast from the Preobrazheniya Bay to the Korean border was blocked by hundreds of coastal guns. The entire coastal defense was divided into separate sectors - Khasansky, Vladivostok, Shkotovsky and Suchansky. The strongest among them, naturally, was Vladivostoksky. So, on the Russky island alone, adjacent to the Muravyov-Amursky peninsula, seven coastal batteries were built. Moreover, the battery No. 981 named after Voroshilov, located on Mount Vetlin, was the most powerful not only on the Russky Island, but, possibly, in the entire USSR: the firing range of six 305/52-mm guns of the battery was 53 km!
Our tower batteries were entire underground cities. The construction of the Voroshilov battery took the same amount of concrete as the construction of the entire Dneproges. Under the 3–7-meter thick concrete there were shell and charging cellars, personnel premises - an infirmary, showers, a galley, a dining room and the "Lenin's room". Each battery had its own diesel generator, which provided autonomous power and water supply. Special filters and a ventilation system allowed the personnel to spend weeks in the tower in case of contamination of the surrounding area with toxic or radioactive substances.
Tower installations have not become obsolete even in the atomic age. So, to disable a 305-mm or 180-mm battery, a direct hit of at least two nuclear bombs with a capacity of 20 kt and above was required. When a 20 kt bomb (Hiroshima "baby") exploded with a miss of 200 m, such a tower also retained its combat effectiveness. In the early 1950s, many batteries received automatic fire control systems from a Zalp-type radar station. Stalin's shaft in action
Cyclopean shaft of Stalin fully fulfilled the task assigned to it. The Japanese fleet did not dare to approach our shores. Nevertheless, several coastal batteries of the Pacific Wall had to shoot in August 1945. So, the batteries of the Khasan sector supported the offensive of our troops on the Korean border with fire. And the 130-mm battery No. 945, located at the southern tip of Kamchatka - Cape Lopatka - supported our troops with fire for several days when they landed on Shimushu (now Shumshu) island - the northernmost of the Kuril ridge islands.
Four railway installations, which were part of the Vladivostok sector of coastal defense, in August 1945 were transferred under their own power through Harbin to the Liaodong Peninsula. Moreover, they were supposed to shoot not at the Japanese, but at the Americans. The fact is that the American ships took on board several thousand Chiang Kai-shek soldiers, whom they were going to land in Port Arthur and Dalny. But Comrade Stalin had completely different plans with regard to North China, and the presence of the Kuomintang there was not at all envisaged. The presence of four corps of the 39th Army and long-range railway batteries on the Liaodong Peninsula made the right impression on the Americans, and the question of the landing disappeared by itself.
Bye weapons
In the early 1960s, the coastal batteries of the Pacific Wall began to disband, and in thirty years they were all disabled. Everywhere were removed electronic and optical devices, in some places the guns themselves were removed. The process of disbanding was accelerated by the "prospectors" who broke everything that contained non-ferrous metals. But to dismantle the armored towers and concrete Cyclopean structures was beyond the power of either the Soviet regime or the new democratic. In the places of the Pacific Rim, more than one tourist route could be organized, but the Far East is not the West. Here are the desert concrete batteries and pillboxes as a silent monument to a great and cruel age.
