The ten largest victories of Soviet submariners have a rather gloomy connotation:
1. "Goya" (April 17, 1945, about 7 thousand refugees from East Prussia, cadets and wounded soldiers were killed);
2. "Wilhelm Gustloff" (January 30, 1945, the official figure - 5348 dead);
3. "General von Steuben" (February 9, 1945, 3608 wounded soldiers and refugees from East Prussia were killed);
4. "Salzburg" (October 1, 1942, about 2,100 Soviet prisoners of war were killed);
5. "Hindenburg" (November 19, 1942, 800 Soviet prisoners of war were killed);
6. "Taityo-Maru" (August 22, 1945, 780 refugees from South Sakhalin were killed);
7. "Struma" (February 24, 1942, 768 refugees from the countries of South-Eastern Europe to Palestine were killed);
8. "Ogasawara-Maru" (August 22, 1945, 545 refugees from South Sakhalin were killed);
9. "Nordstern" (October 6, 1944, 531 refugees from the Baltic states to Germany died);
10. "Shinkyo-Maru" (August 22, 1945, about 500 refugees from South Sakhalin were killed).
As you can see from the list, the controversial Wilhelm Gustloff, which has been debated for decades, was not the first and far from the last ship in the history of the greatest disasters at sea. There are exactly 10 places in the top ten, but the list goes on: for example, the German transport Zonnewijk takes the "honorable" 11th place - on October 8, 1944, a torpedo salvo from the Sch-310 submarine killed 448 people (mainly the evacuated population of East Prussia) … 12th place - transport "Göttingen" (sunk on February 23, 1945, again several hundred dead refugees) …
Needless to say, the successes are simply awful. How to classify these "atrocities of Soviet submariners"? Are these war crimes or tragic mistakes that are inevitable in any war?
There are usually several answer options
The first categorical opinion: this is a lie of Western propaganda. The Soviet Navy is clean as a tear, and everything that offends the honor of the fleet must be classified in the archives for a period of up to 2145.
The second opinion is more tactful: were the victims German? Serves them right!
Of course, the Soviet people have many reasons for a mortal grievance - in every family there is a relative who fell at the front or was tortured to death in German captivity. But the question arises: how then will “we” differ from “them”? "An eye for an eye - will blind the whole world" (Mahatma Gandhi).
The third, masochistic-democratic opinion sounds simple: Repent! We repent! We repent! Soviet submariners made an irreparable mistake, and they have no forgiveness.
Someone will say that the truth always lies in the middle. But this is a very naive and primitive idea of the truth! It can be shifted in one direction or the other, which is why the truth is always so difficult to find.
Life has long passed a fair verdict on each of the sea tragedies of the Second World War. Some of the circumstances can be blamed on the submariners, in some cases there is every reason to blame the victims themselves (not those innocent victims of the war who, holding their children to their chest, went into the depths of the sea, but those who treacherously ineptly planned the operation to evacuate refugees). Of course, one thing - all this is a TRAGIC COURSE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. Inevitability. The terrible costs of any war.
And if so, then you need to consider the problem in a broader sense. The list below is not intended to "praise" the Soviet submariners, nor to "throw mud at" foreign sailors. These are just statistical data that directly confirm my thesis about the inevitable tragedies in any war.
The largest maritime disasters of the Second World War in terms of the number of victims:
1. "Goya" (April 17, 1945, 7000 wounded German soldiers and refugees from East Prussia died);
2. "Zunyo-Maru" (September 18, 1944, killed 1,500 American, British and Dutch prisoners of war and 4,200 Javanese workers in bamboo cages. "Zunyo-Maru" - a terrible trophy of the British submarine "Tradewind");
3. "Toyama-Maru" (June 29, 1944, ≈5, 5 thousand victims. At that time the democratic American submarine "Stejen" "distinguished itself");
4. "Cap Arcona" (May 3, 1945, among the dead ≈5, 5 thousand concentration camp prisoners. The Royal Air Force of Great Britain distinguished itself in the battle);
5. "Wilhelm Gustloff" (January 30, 1945, "Attack of the Century" by Marinesco. Officially 5348 dead);
6. "Armenia" (November 7, 1941, about 5 thousand people died);
… German ships "General von Steuben", "Salzburg", Japanese transport "Taityo-Maru", Bulgarian-Romanian-Panamanian sloop "Struma", British liner "Lancastria" (sunk by German aircraft in 1940, the number of victims exceeded the losses of the Titanic "And" Lusitania "combined) …
Everyone was wrong and always. Someone sarcastically will notice that the Goya, sunk by the Soviet submarine L-3, is still in the first place. What can be argued here? Soviet achievements were great, Soviet mistakes were monstrous. Otherwise, we do not know how to live.
The list of WWII maritime disasters is not "the ultimate truth." The only thing we know for sure is the names of the ships and the date of their sinking. Occasionally - the exact coordinates of the sinking site. Everything. The cited figures on the number of victims vary from source to source and, at best, reflect the official figures, which are very far from reality.
So, some researchers, according to the number of victims, put in first place "Wilhelm Gustloff" - according to the recollections of those who survived, more than 10 thousand people could be on board, while, according to various sources, only from 1, 5 to 2, 5 were saved. thousand!
The greatest of the sea tragedies - the sinking of the Goya transport - generally remained outside the scope of official history. This is easy to explain: unlike the Attack of the Century, in which the ten-deck handsome liner Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk, in the case of the Goya, the Soviet submarine destroyed an ordinary dry cargo ship packed with people. Among the passengers are wounded servicemen, soldiers of the Wehrmacht, but the bulk of them are refugees from East Prussia. Escort - 2 minesweepers, one more steamer and a tug. The Goya was not a hospital ship and did not carry the appropriate livery. At night, at the exit from the Danzig Bay, the ship was torpedoed by the Soviet submarine L-3 and sank after only 7 minutes.
Who is guilty? In fact - nobody! L-3 had the order to sink the German ships leaving Danzig. Soviet submariners did not have any means of detection, except for a primitive periscope and a hydroacoustic post. It was impossible to determine with their help the nature of the cargo and the purpose of the vessel. There is also a German miscalculation in this story - to evacuate thousands of people on a dry cargo ship in military camouflage, knowing that a couple of months ago, under similar circumstances, "Wilhelm Gustloff" and "General von Steuben" were killed - a rather dubious decision.
No less terrible events took place in the Black Sea on November 7, 1941 - the German torpedo bomber He-111 sank the motor ship "Armenia". On board the Soviet ship were the personnel and patients of 23 evacuated hospitals, the staff of the Artek camp, members of the families of the Crimean party leadership - thousands of civilians and military personnel. Maritime history has never known such tragedies: the death toll was 5 times higher than the number of victims of the Titanic disaster! According to official data, out of 5 thousand people who were on board the "Armenia", only eight managed to escape. Modern historians are inclined to believe that the official data was 1, 5-2 times underestimated - "Armenia" may well claim to be "first place" in the list of the most terrible sea disasters. The exact place of the sinking of the ship is still unknown.
“Armenia”, “Gustloff”, “von Steuben” - from the official point of view, they were all legitimate trophies. They did not carry the identification marks of "hospital ships", but they carried anti-aircraft artillery. On board were military specialists and soldiers. On board "Wilhelm Gustloff" were 918 cadets of the 2nd training submarine division (2. U-Boot-Lehrdivision).
Historians and journalists are still arguing about the number of anti-aircraft guns on board "von Steuben" or "Armenia", disputes about "dozens of trained submarine crews" aboard the "Gustloff" do not cease. But the conclusion seems simple: Alexander Marinesco, like the crew of the German torpedo bomber He-111, did not care about such trifles. They saw no clear evidence of a "hospital ship" - no special white paint, no three red crosses on board. They saw the PURPOSE. They had the order to destroy enemy ships and vessels - and they fulfilled their duty to the end. It would be better if they did not, but … who could know! As already mentioned, the sailors and pilots did not have any means to determine the nature of the cargo. A tragic coincidence, nothing more.
Soviet sailors were not bloodthirsty killers - after the sinking of the sail-motor sloop "Struma" the commander of the submarine Shch-213 Lieutenant Dmitry Denezhko was depressed. According to the recollections of foreman Nosov, Denezhko spent the night studying nautical charts and verifying the data - he tried to convince himself that it was not his torpedo that ended the lives of 768 Jewish refugees. It is noteworthy that the remains of the "Struma" were not found in the indicated place - there is a certain probability that the Soviet sailors at that time really had nothing to do with it - the "Struma" was blown up by mines …
As for the accidental sinking of the Japanese "ships of hell" - "Dzunyo-Maru" and "Toyama-Maru", everything is very clear here. The scoundrels from the Japanese General Staff used ordinary dry cargo ships to transport thousands of prisoners of war and the population from the occupied territories. No security measures were taken. People were often transported in bamboo cages, transported to certain death - the construction of strategic facilities on the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Special transports were no different from ordinary military transport ships - it is not surprising that they periodically became prey for American and British submariners.
Under similar circumstances, the Soviet submarine M-118 sank the transport "Salzburg", which was transporting more than 2 thousand Soviet prisoners of war from Odessa to Constanta. The blame for these events lies entirely with Japanese and German war criminals - those who ineptly planned the transportation of prisoners of war and did everything to kill people.
Sometimes the question is asked: what is the point in the sinking of three Japanese transports overloaded with refugees from South Sakhalin - the tragedy took place on August 22, 1945 and killed almost 1,700 people. The Soviet submarine L-19 fired torpedoes "Taityo-Maru" and "Shinke Maru" right in the port of Ruma on about. Hokkaido. Despite the fact that there were 10 days left before the official end of the war, and already from August 20, the process of surrender of the Japanese troops was underway. Why was the senseless bloodshed necessary? There is only one answer - this is the bloody essence of war. I sincerely sympathize with the Japanese, but there is no one to judge - the L-19 minelayer did not return from a combat campaign.
But the worst was the sinking of the Cap Arcona liner. On May 3, 1945, the ship, overloaded with thousands of concentration camp prisoners, was destroyed by gallant British aircraft in the port of Lubeck. According to the reports of the pilots, they clearly saw the white flags on the Cap Arcona masts and a living mass of people in striped camp uniforms rushing about the deck in despair, but … they continued to shoot the flaming ship in cold blood. Why? They had orders to destroy ships in the harbor of Lübeck. They are used to shooting at the enemy. The soulless mechanism of war was unstoppable.
The conclusion from this whole story is simple: tragic coincidences happened everywhere, but in the naval history of other countries, such cases are masked against the backdrop of numerous bright victories.
The Germans prefer not to recall the horrors of "Armenia" and "Lancastria", the heroic pages of the history of the Kriegsmarine are connected with completely different events - the raid on Scapa Flow, the sinking of the battleships "Hood", "Barham" and "Roma", the destruction of the British aircraft carriers "Korejges", Eagle and Arc Royal … The tragic mistakes of the US Navy are lost against the background of night artillery duels, the sinking of the Yamato, the supercarrier Shinano or Taiho. The assets of the British sailors are the sinking of the Bismarck, the Scharnhorst, the attack of the Taranto naval base, the destruction of heavy Italian cruisers, and the won Battle of the Atlantic.
Alas, the Soviet Navy became hostage to its own propaganda - choosing the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff liner as the "Attack of the Century", the political strategists, without knowing it, opened the "Pandora's Box". There is no doubt that Marinesco's night torpedo attack from the technical point of view is worthy of all praise. But, for all its complexity, it does not pull on a military feat. There is nothing to reproach the brave sailor with, but there is nothing to admire here either. It's all just a tragic coincidence.
