Passing by the island of Kildin, the ships of the Red Banner Northern Fleet lower their flags and give a long whistle. 69 ° 33'6 "north latitude and 33 ° 40'20" east longitude - the coordinates of the place where on August 10, 1941 the patrol ship "Tuman" died heroically.
Before the war, it was a fishing trawler RT-10 "Lebedka". Since 1931, they have been fishing on the "winch" for ten years in the Barents Sea and the North Atlantic. On the very first day of the war, the RT-10 was mobilized and converted into a patrol ship. Some of the fishing equipment was removed from it and two 45-mm cannons were installed on the forecastle and the stern superstructure. On the wings of the bridge were two Maxim anti-aircraft machine guns. Depth charge racks and smoke bombs were installed at the stern. Already on June 26, 1941, the naval flag was raised on the "Fog", and on the 29th its crew received their first baptism of fire. The ship was sailing from Murmansk to the main base of the Northern Fleet, Polyarny. A German Ju-88 bomber jumped out from behind the coastal hills. fire from the Mist made him turn.
In early July 1941, to support the ground forces, the command of the Northern Fleet formed a detachment of patrol ships Groza, No. 54, and Tuman, as well as two minesweepers, three patrol boats of the MO type and several motorbots.
On the morning of July 6, 1941, our ships, under the cover of fighter planes, successfully landed troops in the area of Zapadnaya Litsa and supported them with artillery fire. In a fierce battle, the paratroopers threw the fascists back to the western bank of the river and united with the army units advancing from the front.
During this operation, the crew of the "Fog" acted selflessly. At the time of the landing, the boatswain of the ship Alexander Sablin and the sailor Philip Marchenko stood in the icy water and, putting the heavy gangway on their shoulders, gave the others the opportunity to jump straight to the shore. When Marchenko was seriously wounded, he was immediately replaced by the foreman of the second article Ivan Volok. The gunners of the "Fog", showered with a hail of fragments from exploding bombs, fired fiercely at coastal targets. Operation was successfully completed.
On August 5, "Fog" began an independent patrol service on the line Kildin Island-Cape Tsyp-Navolok. In the logbook, records began to appear either about the discovery of an enemy submarine and its bombing, then about the shelling of German aircraft flying over the ship.
On August 9, the headquarters of the OVR (Water Area Protection) received an extract from the order of the People's Commissar of the USSR Navy No. 01457 dated July 28, 1941 on assigning the commander of the TFR "Tuman" Lieutenant L. A. Shestakov to the next military rank - senior lieutenant. Did the commander know about this?
On the fifth day, August 10, at 3 o'clock in the morning, a German reconnaissance plane swept over the ship at low altitude. At 3 hours 1 minute "Fog" reported on the radio: "One enemy bomber with a course of 90 degrees, height 100 meters."
At 4:25 a.m. the Fog signalman spotted three enemy destroyers on the horizon. Obviously, it was this plane that pointed the Nazi destroyers on the patrol ship. They moved in close formation towards the patrolman. Further events unfolded rapidly. The commander of the "Fog" Lev Alexandrovich Shestakov announced a combat alert and led the ship at full speed towards our coastal batteries to the island of Kildin. Noticing the maneuver of the patrol ship, the Nazi destroyers increased their speed and a few minutes later, approaching the "Tuman" at a distance of 25 cables (4, 63 km), opened fire on it with volleys of six guns, two from each ship. The forces were clearly not equal. But the crew of a small slow-moving patrol boat, which had only two light cannons, without flinching, entered into single combat with three newest Raeder-class destroyers, each of which was armed with five 127-mm guns and could develop a 36-knot speed (66, 7 km / h).
The first salvo of German ships turned out to be a migratory one, but fragments of one of the shells that exploded near the side interrupted the antennas. The ship was left without radio communication. Firing back, "Fog" tried to hide behind a smoke screen, but this failed: it was blown away by the wind. The first holes appeared in the hull. The next salvo of destroyers caused a fire at the stern, disabled the steering, demolished the chimney, and then damaged the forecastle, bridge and wheelhouse. Several of the ship's crew were killed and many were injured. An air wave threw the commander of the ship L. A. Shestakov overboard - it was not possible to find him later. On the right wing of the bridge, a ship commissar, senior political instructor P. N. Strelnik, who was returning from a round of combat posts, was killed by a shrapnel in the head. Lieutenant L. A. Rybakov assumed command of the ship. During the battle, Lieutenant M. M. Bukin, knowing that the naval flag had been lowered for the night, ordered to raise it; the steering Red Navy sailor KD Semenov, who had a serious wound in the arm, and the radio operator, the senior Red Navy sailor VK Blinov, raised the flag under enemy fire.
Enemy destroyers conducted artillery fire for 13 minutes and made up to a dozen six-gun volleys up to 4 hours 55 minutes. "Fog" received 11 direct hits. The shells pierced the hull of the ship through and through, exploded in the boiler room, in the superstructure, on the forecastle, demolished the chimney, smashed the cargo boom. Despite heavy damage and a growing fire that engulfed all superstructures, the sailors and officers stood firm. The gunners of the "Fog" continued to shoot from the only surviving bow cannon. All the rest of the crew under enemy fire fought for the survivability of the ship, extinguished the fire, tried to patch up the holes, which became more and more every minute. In the midst of the battle, an enemy shell shot down a scorched flag waving on a gafel. Immediately through the flames at the stern, the wounded helmsman K. Semyonov rushed and, seizing the flag, raised it high above his head, but was again wounded, radio operator K. Blinov rushed to Semenov's aid. The flag flew over the ship again. All the secret maps were destroyed, Lieutenant M. M. Bukin saved the secret documents of the navigator's service, and the Red Navy man A. I. Yanin saved the machine logs. Military assistant I. T. Petrusha continued to provide first aid: he stopped bleeding, fixed fractures, and supervised the work of military orderlies. With the help of the Red Navy man A. P. He removed Sharov from the sinking ship of the last of the wounded - the foreman of the 2nd article I. F. Bardana. By 5 hours 15 minutes the patrol ship had a roll of 15 ° to starboard. Fifteen minutes later, Lieutenant L. A. Rybakov ordered to launch the boats, the holes in which were filled with pea jackets and peakless caps. First of all, the wounded were transferred to the boats. The surviving personnel did not leave the ship until the "Fog" lay down on the starboard side of the water. At the command of Lieutenant L. A. Rybakov's crew left the dying ship. Rybakov himself, leaving the ship last, ordered the rowers to select a team and only after all those in the water had been picked up, he climbed into the boat.
At 5 hours 50 minutes, the waves of the Barents Sea closed over the wounded ship, with a proudly raised flag.
Thus ended the dramatic events of August 10, 1941, which unfolded in the Barents Sea at the entrance to the Kola Bay. The survivors were placed at the OVR coastal base - in Kuvshinskaya Salma, and the wounded - in the hospitals of Polyarny, Murmansk. Of the 52 crew members, 15 were killed and 17 were injured.
