April 16, 1945 submarine L-3 sank the Nazi transport "Goya"
The submarine war as an integral part of the Second World War throughout its entire length was distinguished by an unprecedented tragedy - almost greater than the one that accompanied everything that happened on land. And it should be noted that, above all, the blame for this lies with the German submariners - the "wolves of Doenitz". It is clear that it would be wrong to indiscriminately accuse all submariners of Nazi Germany of violating all and all conventions without exception. But it is also wrong to forget that it was they who unleashed an unlimited submarine war. And if they were untied, then, therefore, they must bear responsibility for its consequences - and for the severity of retribution, which was inevitable.
Alas, not only German naval officers had to pay the bills, but the entire people of Germany. This is precisely how - as a tragic consequence of the actions of the German armed forces - the events that took place in the Baltic in the last months of the war should be viewed. It was at this time that Soviet submariners won three major victories in the Great Patriotic War, and they also became the largest tragedies for German ships of that era. On January 30, the S-13 submarine under the command of Captain 3rd Rank Alexander Marinesko sank the liner Wilhelm Gustloff with a displacement of 25,484 gross tons (along with it, according to official data, 5348 people died, according to unofficial ones, over 9,000). In less than two weeks, the same C-13 sank the Steuben liner with a displacement of 14,690 gross tons (the death toll, according to various sources, from 1100 to 4200 people). And on April 16, 1945, the submarine L-3 "Frunzevets" under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Vladimir Konovalov sank the transport "Goya" with a displacement of 5230 gross register tons.
This attack, along with the transport that sank just seven minutes after being hit by the first of two torpedoes, killed about 7,000 people. In the current list of major marine disasters, the sinking of Goya ranks first in terms of the number of fatalities, almost five times surpassing the legendary Titanic in this indicator. And only one and a half times - the Soviet hospital ship "Armenia": on board this ship, sunk on November 7, 1941 by fascist aircraft, about 5,000 people died, the overwhelming majority of wounded and medical workers.
The attack of "Goya" was the culmination of the last, eighth campaign of the submarine L-3 "Frunzevets" during the Great Patriotic War. She went to it on March 23 from the Finnish port of Turku, where Soviet submarines from the submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet had been based since September 1944. By this time, she was already considered the most productive among Soviet submarines in terms of the total number of ships sunk: by the end of February 1945, their score at the L-3 exceeded two dozen. True, most of them were sunk not by torpedoes, but by exposed mines: the boat was an underwater minelayer. Nevertheless, all victories were counted, and L-3, on which the second commander was replaced during the war (the first, captain 3rd rank Pyotr Grishchenko, went up at the end of February 1943, transferring command to his assistant Vladimir Konovalov, served on a boat since 1940), confidently became the leader in the number of sunk ships.
Members of the L-3 crew together with the commander Pyotr Grishchenko. Photo: Wikipedia.org
On the eighth voyage, the boat went to the Danzig Bay area: the operation of the German fleet "Hannibal", the purpose of which was the hasty evacuation of German troops and refugees from East Prussia and from the occupied lands of Poland, where the troops of the Red Army had already entered, was in full swing. Even such catastrophic losses as the sinking of the S-13 transports "Wilhelm Gustloff" and "Steuben" could not interrupt it. And, despite the fact that the circumstances of their death directly indicated the danger of using ships in camouflage colors accompanied by warships to evacuate civilians, the Goya transport went on its fifth and last campaign within the framework of Hannibal in this format … And almost immediately came into the field of view of L-3, which was not the first day in wait for ships on the northern approaches to the Danzig Bay. Previous attempts to attack the convoys coming from there were unsuccessful for various reasons, and therefore, when the Goya transport, accompanied by two patrol boats, appeared in the evening twilight, the boat commander gave the command to attack the convoy. The boat went in pursuit of the target on the surface, since the underwater speed did not allow it to catch up with the transport, and shortly before midnight fired two torpedoes at it from a distance of 8 cables (just under one and a half kilometers). After 70 seconds, two powerful explosions were seen on board the boat: both torpedoes hit the target. Seven minutes later, the transport "Goya", having split in the place where the torpedoes hit, went to the bottom. A total of 183 passengers and crew members managed to escape - they were picked up by other ships.
The Soviet submarine left the scene of the attack without hindrance: shocked by the tragedy, the patrol teams rushed to the aid of the few survivors, and the heels of depth charges were dropped, obviously for ostracism, far from L-3. On the way to the base, the submarine attacked enemy convoys several more times, but these attacks did not bring any results. On April 25, "Frunzevets" returned to the base and did not go out on military campaigns again. A month after the Victory, on July 8, 1945, the boat commander, Captain 3rd Rank Vladimir Konovalov, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union "for exemplary performance of command missions, personal courage and heroism shown in battles against the Nazi invaders." Both in the Baltic and beyond it was well understood that the boat commander had long deserved this title, but since he commanded a submarine only since 1943, having already taken a guard ship under his arm (the title was awarded to the boat on March 1 of the same year), the main factor was sinking of the Goya.
In the post-war studies of foreign experts, and in the domestic historical literature of the last two decades, it was fashionable to call the deaths of such giants as Goya, Wilhelm Gustloff and Steuben nothing more than the crimes of Soviet submariners. At the same time, the authors of such statements completely forgot that the sunk ships, with no effort, could not be considered hospital or civil. All of them went as part of military convoys and had Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine servicemen on board, all had military camouflage colors and airborne anti-aircraft weapons and did not have a red cross on board or on deck. And, therefore, all three were legitimate targets for submariners of any country of the anti-Hitler coalition.
In addition, you need to understand that from aboard a submarine, any ship, unless it has a hospital designation noticeable under any conditions and does not go alone, looks like an enemy ship and is considered a legitimate target. The L-3 commander could only guess that there were not only military men but also refugees on board the Goya, which before the start of participation in Operation Hannibal served as a target for training torpedoes of the Doenitz wolves. I could - but I didn't have to. And therefore, having examined a large transport under the escort of two patrol boats, he logically assumed that the ship was military and was a legitimate target.
… Today, the cabin of the L-3 submarine takes an honorable place in the exposition of the Victory Park on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow. She was transported here from Liepaja, where she stood at the headquarters of the 22nd submarine brigade until the early 1990s. She appeared there in the early 1970s, when the legendary "Frunzevets" finished his military service, having gone through all the usual stages for a diesel-electric submarine: active military as a combat ship until 1953, then reclassification into training and service in this capacity until 1956, then disarmament and service in the role of a training station for damage control and, finally, the removal on February 15, 1971 from the lists of the fleet for cutting into metal. The ship outlived its famous commander for four years: Vladimir Konovalov died in 1967, having risen to the rank of Rear Admiral and the post of deputy head of the forge of Russian submariners - the Lenin Komsomol Higher Naval School of Diving. And one must think that his stories about military service and victories won have assured more than a dozen submariners of the justice of the chosen path.
