In just a month, seven transport ships of the first allied caravan arrived in Arkhangelsk. Until the end of the year, the ports of the USSR received seven such caravans - from "PQ.0" to "PQ.6", consisting of 52 vessels. Thus, in 1941 alone, 699 aircraft, 466 tanks, 330 tankettes and many other military cargoes were delivered to Arkhangelsk from England and the USA. In the opposite direction, during the same period, 136,000 tons of timber, ore and other raw materials were sent (a total of four caravans - from "QP.1" to "QP.4" with a total of 45 ships).
"Maxim" on a trawler
Allied help came from the shores of England and Iceland. Approximately up to Svalbard, these caravans were guarded by the British and US navies, and in the Barents Sea Soviet ships and aircraft, along with British warships, based in the summer of 1941 in the north of the USSR, took over the baton in the Barents Sea. And yet, at the beginning of the war, our Northern Fleet was extremely weak. Formally, it consisted of 51 pennants, although only 8 destroyers and 15 submarines could be considered a real force. At that time there were no large ships in its composition at all. Therefore, in the summer of 1941, the most modern civilian ships of the Northern Shipping Company began to hastily arm them, installing several 75-mm or 45-mm guns and machine guns of the Vickers, Hotchkiss, or even simply Maxim systems on them. After that, the former fishing trawlers and steamers were transferred to the Northern Fleet as minesweepers or patrol ships. This is how the Fyodor Litke icebreaker turned into the SKR-18 patrol boat, the Semyon Dezhnev icebreaker into the SKR-19, and ordinary trawlers, such as the RT-33 and RT-76, into the T-894 and T-911 minesweepers. … Of course, these ships could be considered full-fledged combat units only with a very big stretch, which means that the Far North badly needed real warships.
Hero ships
The memory of the ships participating in the EON-18 secret expedition is kept in the form of a few surviving photographs and modern models. The photo shows the destroyer Razumny.
Destroyers in a winter "fur coat"
That is why the order of the People's Commissar of the Navy No. 00192 of 1942-19-06 approved a plan for the transfer to the Northern Fleet of several warships from the Pacific Fleet. The operation under the code "EON-18" (special expedition) was carried out in conditions of maximum secrecy, and the entire passage of ships along the route of the Northern Sea Route had to be completed before the end of navigation.
Such operations for the covert transfer of warships from one fleet to another have been carried out before. The first of them, EON-1, took place back in the summer of 1933, when the destroyers Uritsky and Rykov, the patrol ships Smerch and Uragan, submarines D -1 and D-2. The ships of the Navy also passed by the Northern Sea Route. For example, in 1936 the destroyers Stalin and Voikov (Operation EON-3) were transferred to the Pacific Ocean, and in 1940 - the submarine Shch-423 (EON-10). Now it's time to move the ships in the opposite direction - from the Pacific Ocean to the Barents Sea.
According to the plans of EON-18, the leader of the Baku and three destroyers left for the Northern Fleet: Reasonable, Enraged and Zealous. The main advantage of such ships has always been considered to be fast speed (up to 40 knots!) And high maneuverability, which was achieved due to very weak armor protection. Their hull withstood a water pressure of only 2 t / m2, so the thickness of the skin in some places did not exceed 10 mm. But the destroyers were never intended to sail in the Arctic, where the ice pressure could reach 10-12 t / m2. That is why, at the docks of Vladivostok, all the EON-18 ships were dressed in a special “ice fur coat” made of boards and wooden beams 100 x 100 mm, sheathed with steel sheets with a thickness of 3-5 mm along the sides to 15 mm in the area of the stem. Such a "fur coat" protected the destroyers 3 m below the waterline and 1 m above it. To represent the scope of work performed, it should be noted that it was not tiny ships that had to be “dressed”, but full-fledged warships with a displacement from 1700 to 2500 tons and a hull length from 113 to 127 m.
All the interiors of the destroyers were insulated for the coming frosts and were seriously reinforced with additional internal struts made of box-shaped metal beams and 250 x 250 mm beams. In addition, many mechanisms have also been specially modified to take into account the expected low temperatures and strong body vibrations due to impact with ice. Bronze propellers were reinforced with special steel fittings, and some of them were simply replaced with collapsible steel propellers with removable blades, allowing them to be repaired during sailing. All these works were carried out almost around the clock under the guidance of the flagship ship engineer, captain 2nd rank A. I. Dubrovin, who already had experience of participating in Operation EON-3. In order to comply with the secrecy regime, the ships were preparing for a long voyage under the legend of the official redeployment of the destroyer battalion to Kamchatka.
Fog crash
On July 15, the EON-18 ships weighed anchor and left the Peter the Great Gulf into the Sea of Japan. The leader of "Baku" was commanded by the captain of the 3rd rank B. P. Belyaev. Destroyers - Captain 3rd Rank V. K. Nikiforov ("Zealous") and Lieutenant-Commander V. V. Fedorov ("Reasonable") and N. I. Nikolsky ("Furious"). Captain 1st Rank V. N. Obukhov, who commanded the destroyer "Stalin" in 1936 during its passage by the Northern Sea Route as part of "EON-3". Together with the warships, the Lok-Batan tanker and the Volga and Kuznets Lesov transport support vessels set off on the cruise.
Two days later, the caravan passed the Tatar Strait and arrived at De-Kastri Bay (now Chikhachev Bay). At that time, the southern part of Sakhalin and all the Kuril Islands belonged to Japan, therefore, for the warships of the USSR, this was the only possible route to the Bering Sea. Having replenished supplies of fuel oil and water in De-Kastri, the caravan continued to move, but the next day in the Amur estuary the destroyer "Zealous" had an accident. Moving in thick fog, he got out of order of the caravan and collided with the transport "Terney". The entire nose of the destroyer was crumpled and rolled to the right by about 10 m in length. The ships "EON-18" remained anchored until July 19, when the People's Commissar of the Navy decided to reduce the composition of the convoy.
One of the memorial signs
released for the 30th anniversary of the heroic transition from Vladivostok to Murmansk. This badge is dedicated to the destroyer Reasonable.
The damaged "Zealous" was towed to Sovetskaya Gavan, where in the dock the warped bow of the ship was cut off and rebuilt from three new sections. On the tenth day after the accident, the destroyer had already left the dock, but the command decided that the Zealous was hopelessly behind the caravan, so she was left in the Pacific Ocean. In August 1945, during the hostilities against Japan, the ship took part in the landing of Soviet troops on Sakhalin at the port of Maoku (now Kholmsk).
And the caravan passed the Sea of Okhotsk, passed the Soviet and Japanese minefields and on July 22 reached the First Kuril Strait, along which the border between Japan and the USSR passed. At that time, Japanese destroyers were constantly on duty here, in full view of which the ships and vessels "EON-18" and proceeded to the Pacific Ocean. It is believed that it was after this meeting that Japanese intelligence reported to Berlin about the redeployment of warships from the Pacific Ocean to Murmansk. In the evening of the same day, Soviet destroyers entered Avachinskaya Bay and anchored in Tarja Bay (now the city of Vilyuchinsk), where a base of diesel submarines had been deployed since 1938. Three days later, the ships replenished the stocks of fuel oil, which was supplied from the coastal tanks by gravity through the hoses, carried along the rafts 200 m from the coast. After refueling, the destroyers left the base and continued to move north.
On the morning of July 30, the ships arrived in Chukotka, having overcome almost all the way from Kamchatka to Provideniya Bay in thick fog. Here, another incident occurred: when approaching the pier, the "Enraged" caught the ground, damaging the propellers and bending the tip of the right propeller shaft. The repair work was carried out afloat, taking a whole week, but it was not possible to get rid of the shaft beating. In the future, the destroyer's course had to be limited to eight nodes, and later (already in Dikson) the right propeller was removed from the damaged shaft altogether.
Destroyer "Reasonable"
Attention - raider
In Providence Bay the icebreaker Mikoyan joined the caravan. Since November 1941, he made an unprecedented round-the-world voyage from Batumi through the Bosphorus and the Suez Canal to the Cape of Good Hope, and then, bypassing Cape Horn, passed through the entire Pacific Ocean to Chukotka. Moreover, in the Aegean Sea, the icebreaker was forced to actually break through the zone of operations of the Navy and Air Force of Italy and Germany.
On August 14, a convoy of destroyers again went out to sea and in the area of the village of Uelen met the first ice. The next day, already in the Chukchi Sea, the ships entered the ice with a density of 7 to 9 points. The destroyers could move through such ice only with the help of the Mikoyan and Kaganovich icebreakers, which simultaneously with the EON-18 caravan provided escort for five transport ships with strategic cargo. It was the Chukchi Sea that became the most difficult part of the entire transition. At some moments, the pressure of the ice fields became critical, while the ship's instruments recorded the deflection of the sides of more than 100 mm.
True, the destroyers were worried not only about the polar ice. So on August 26, EON-18 received a message about the appearance in the Kara Sea of the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. The command of the Navy ordered to urgently take all measures to increase combat readiness, and in the event of a meeting with enemy ships, they had to be attacked and destroyed. It is curious that our ships went to the area of operations of the German raider for a whole month, and our three destroyers were simply not able to offer him at least some serious resistance. But in the last days of August, "Admiral Scheer" himself returned to Norway, and the ships "EON-18" at that time were still off the coast of Chukotka.
Slowly moving in heavy ice, the icebreakers escorted each destroyer separately, so the convoy was forced to temporarily split up in the Chukchi Sea.
For this reason, by September 15, "Baku" and "Enraged" had already arrived in Tiksi Bay, while "Razumny" at the same time was still sailing through the East Siberian Sea. Only in Tiksi did the ships again assemble into a single detachment and subsequently moved only together.
By September 24, the caravan had finished overcoming the most difficult and dangerous section of the Northern Sea Route and, accompanied by the icebreaker Krasin, arrived in Dikson.
After a difficult transition, the destroyers looked quite satisfactory, although their hulls received small dents from compression in the ice. True, the screws of "Baku" and "Enraged" had bends and cracks, while the beating of the shaft on "Enraged" caused a very strong vibration of the entire body. The "ice coat" also significantly reduced the speed of ships. Thus, the maximum move of the leader “Baku” was 26 knots, “Reasonable” - 18, and “Enraged” - only 8 knots in clear water.
In an icy grip
The destroyer Razumny makes its way through the Chukchi Sea. After the completion of EON-18, the ship actively participated in military campaigns, including escorting 14 Arctic convoys. He was in the ranks until the end of the war (with a break for repairs).
Interestingly, after the arrival of the caravan in Dikson, the headquarters of the White Sea Flotilla tried to use the EON-18 destroyers as an escort for icebreakers and transports returning from the Arctic to Arkhangelsk. A special request was even sent to the command of the Navy, to which a categorical refusal was immediately received.
New warships were urgently awaited in Murmansk. On October 9, the destroyers left Dikson and the very next day arrived in the Yugorsky Shar Strait. In the Varneka Bay, the ships replenished their fuel supplies and on the evening of October 12 safely sailed into the Barents Sea, narrowly avoiding death by German mines. The fact is that German intelligence knew about the passage of Soviet destroyers through the Yugorsky Shar Strait, although the exact timetable of their movement was unknown to the enemy. Covert mining of the strait was carried out by the submarine U-592, having exposed 24 mines of various types at the exit from Yugorsky Shara. But the German submarine was 24 hours late, having mined the strait after the caravan passed into the Barents Sea. Nevertheless, on October 14, one of these mines still blew up the Shchors transport, heading through the strait to the western coast of Novaya Zemlya.
A convoy of destroyers safely arrived in Vaenga Bay (now the city of Severomorsk) in the early morning of October 14. On the approach to the Kola Bay, they were met by the commander of the Northern Fleet, Vice Admiral A. G. Golovko, who went to sea aboard the destroyer "Thundering". Thus, in three months a detachment of ships "EON-18" traveled from Vladivostok to the main base of the Northern Fleet almost 7360 miles in 762 running hours at an average speed of about 9.6 knots. With the autonomy of the destroyers of about 2,000 miles, the ships had to replenish fuel supplies several times from the shore and from the tanker Lok-Batan accompanying the convoy. The damaged destroyer "Enraged" was towed by the leader "Baku" for a significant part of this long journey.
Thus, the most difficult operation was successfully completed, and two days later the EON-18 caravan was officially disbanded. As a result, the Northern Fleet was replenished with the most modern ships built at the shipyards of Nikolaev and Komsomolsk-on-Amur in 1938-1941.
