In May 1990, one of the most famous Soviet submariners, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, was posthumously awarded the star of a Hero of the Soviet Union by government decree, a brief biography of which formed the basis of this article. For many years his name was hushed up due to a number of circumstances that made him scandalous and eclipsed his military feats.
Young Black Sea Sailor
The future legendary submariner was born on January 15, 1913 in one of the coastal areas of Odessa. His father, Ion Marinesco, was a Romanian worker, and his mother, Tatyana Mikhailovna Koval, was a peasant from the Kherson province. Having studied 6 classes and barely reaching 13 years of age, he got a job as a sailor apprentice on one of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet. Since then, the biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko is inextricably linked with the sea. His zeal and patience were noticed, and soon the capable guy was assigned to the Jung school, after which he was already included in the composition of the ship's teams not as a student, but as a full sailor of the 1st class.
Continuing his education at the Odessa Maritime College and graduating in 1933, Alexander Ivanovich went on board the Ilyich and the Red Fleet for several years as the third and then second assistant captain. Those who were acquainted with him later told that in his youth Marinesco did not at all plan to become a naval sailor, but preferred the merchant fleet. Perhaps his father played a role in this, having worked for several years as a sailor in various civilian vessels, and, undoubtedly, told his son a lot about his travels.
Komsomol trip to naval life
A sharp turn in the biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko occurred in 1933, after he, along with a group of other young sailors, received a Komsomol ticket for special courses for the command staff of the navy. In those years, this was tantamount to an order, and to refuse was to cross out his entire future career, wherever he tried to arrange it. So, the local committee of the Komsomol made for him the choice of a future life path. However, such examples were by no means uncommon in the pre-war years.
After completing the course, Marinesco assumed the position of navigator on a submarine called Haddock, and then, after additional training, was first promoted to assistant commander of the L-1 submarine, and then took a command post in the M-96 submarine. By the beginning of the war, the shoulders of the young submariner Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko were already adorned with shoulder straps of the captain-lieutenant.
Addiction
In the early days of the war, the submarine commanded by Marinesco was relocated to Tallinn, from where she went on combat duty to the waters of the Gulf of Riga. Despite the absence of any serious achievements in those days, Alexander Ivanovich fulfilled his duty of duty in good faith, only he had a sinner after him, not so rare in Russia ─ he liked to drink, and nothing could happen to him in the hop. And Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko hopelessly spoiled his biography with this destructive addiction.
Troubles began in August 1941, after he became public the fact of drunkenness and the organization of gambling among the officers of the division, to which his submarine was assigned. Marinesco, one of the first to appear on the list of participants in the game, was stripped of the title of candidate for party membership, and the division commander was given tribunal and sentenced to 10 years in camps, but with a delay in the execution of the sentence and immediate sending to the front.
In part, Alexander Ivanovich managed to restore his reputation only the next year, when after a successful military operation he was awarded the Order of Lenin and restored as a candidate for party membership. Then Marinescu opened the account for the sunken enemy ships, attacking in mid-August 1942 a ship that was part of a large German transport convoy.
Submarine Commander S-13
In late December, for the heroism and high combat results Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the rank of captain of the 3rd rank. However, in this “barrel of honey", newly appointed, the division commander added a "fly in the ointment", noting in the description that his subordinate is prone to frequent drinking. Nevertheless, the distinguished and promoted officer was appointed commander of the S-13 submarine, on which he was destined to serve until September 1945 and complete his main feat. Her photo is presented below.
Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko almost never went to sea during 1943, as he performed a number of tasks related to the preparation of replenishment of the personnel of the Baltic submarine fleet. However, life on the shore was fraught with many temptations, which he could not resist. Twice during the year, “drunken stories” ended with a guardhouse for him, followed by penalties on the party line.
At the end of October 1944, Marinesco again took part in military operations, and in one of them he discovered and then pursued a German transport ship for a long time. It was not possible to sink it with torpedoes, but as a result of successful hits from the onboard guns, the ship was seriously damaged, and, towed to the port, it stood in repair until the end of the war. For this campaign, Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Unpleasant story
Marinesco met the victorious year 1945 with yet another “adventure”, after which he only managed to escape the tribunal with great difficulty. Shortly before this submarine, which he commanded, suffered serious damage during an artillery duel with the German ship Siegfried and was under repair for a long time in the port of the Finnish city of Turku.
By the end of December, the commander embarked on another spree and on a festive night disappeared from the submarine. The next day he did not return, after which he was put on the wanted list. As it turned out later, on the shore of Marinesco, he met a Swede who kept a restaurant in the city and took advantage of the hospitality of a loving hostess.
Threat to fall under tribunal
It should be noted that the commander’s personal life did not add up, and vodka was to blame. Shortly before the events described, the third marriage fell apart, and Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich, whose wife and daughter did not want to endure his drunken tricks, clearly felt a lack of female affection.
He was threatened with a tribunal for the unauthorized abandonment of a warship during wartime, but the high authorities decided to postpone the punishment and give the fined submariner a chance to atone. Therefore, the military campaign on which Marinesco went in early January, in fact, decided the fate of his future life. Out of the ordinary success in a military operation could save him from inevitable punishment. Everyone understood this, and, of course, first of all, the submarine commander himself ─ Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko.
Attack of the Century, beginning with a misconduct
For almost three weeks, the submarine Marinesco was in the assigned water area, trying in vain to detect the enemy. Finally, he made a decision, contrary to the order of the command, to change the course of the submarine and continue the “hunt” in a different square. It is difficult to say what made him commit such a flagrant violation of the charter.
Whether this was a manifestation of intuition, excitement, or the usual Russian “seven troubles ─ one answer” pushed the path of official crime, no one can say with certainty. Most likely, the extreme need to rehabilitate for previous sins, or, more simply, to accomplish a feat, played a role. Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, as they say, went all-in.
Giant ship sinking
One way or another, but, having left the given square, the submariners soon found the enemy’s large transport vessel Wilhelm Gustloff (his photo is presented below). It was a pre-war cruise liner with a displacement of 25 thousand tons, which was used for the needs of the army and was currently sailing almost without a convoy. The difficult situation at the end of the war did not allow the Germans to provide proper cover for their transport ships.
On board the Gustloff, as it turned out later, there were more than 10 thousand people, the vast majority of whom were refugees from areas of East Prussia, that is, old people, women and children, which subsequently led certain circles to accuse Marinesco of destroying civilians. It can only be objected that, firstly, looking through the periscope, the submariners could not determine the composition of the ship’s passengers, and secondly, apart from the refugees, there were a fairly large number of military men on board who were redeployed to conduct military operations.
Stealthily approaching an enemy ship, submariners fired 3 torpedoes at it, each of which successfully hit the target. Subsequently, the organs of Soviet propaganda called this strike "attack of the century." Enemy vehicles were sent to the bottom, and with it almost half of those on board. According to data collected by military historians, as a result of the attack, 4855 people were killed, of whom 405 were submarine cadets, 89 ─ crew members, 249 ─ women serving in the Navy and 4112 refugees and wounded (including about 3 thousand . children).
Continuation of the combat operation
For all the years of the war, the ship "Wilhelm Gustloff" was the largest of the ships of this type, destroyed by Soviet sailors, and the second in the number of victims, second only to the transport ship "Goya" sent to the bottom of the submarine "L-3". It killed more than 7,000 people.
Safely hiding from the place where, falling into the stern, the German ship plunged into the sea, the S-13 crew continued the hunt. In the same square 10 days later, the submariners discovered and sunk another enemy ship, the General Steuben, which was also very impressive in size and had a displacement of 15 thousand tons. Thus, the combat campaign undertaken by the S-13 crew from January to February 1945 was the most productive raid of Soviet submarines in the history of this type of troops.
"Floating penal battalion"
In those days, the biography and photo of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko appeared on the pages of many Soviet newspapers, but the fleet command was in no hurry to present either him or the rest of the crew for awards. The commander gained too scandalous fame for his drunken antics. By the way, the crew of the submarine entrusted to him was staffed for the most part from those who had serious problems with the disciplinary charter. So the submarine "S-13" was jokingly called "floating penal battalion."
Already at the very end of the war, Marinesco undertook yet another ─ last military campaign in his life, this time unsuccessful and ineffectual. Those who spoke with him at that time said that Alexander Ivanovich had epilepsy attacks, provoked by increased drunkenness. On this basis, the conflict with the bosses has become much aggravated. As a result, in September 1945, an order was issued to remove him from his post and demoted him to the rank of senior lieutenant.
The vicissitudes of fate
The post-war biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko looks extremely sad and ridiculous. Having soon retired from military service, he went to sea for some time on various merchant ships, and in 1949, to the complete surprise of everyone, he took the post of director of the Leningrad Institute of Blood Transfusion. How the former sailor was brought into a purely medical sphere is unknown, but only very soon he was convicted of major embezzlement and sentenced to 3 years in prison. So fate brought the hero-submariner to Kolyma.
Having been released from prison and having no home or family, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko worked as a surveyor for two years as part of several geological expeditions, and then, returning to Leningrad in 1953, got a job as head of the supply department of the Mezon factory. He died on November 25, 1963 after a serious illness and was buried in the Theological Cemetery.
Hero's memory
Already during the perestroika period, the Izvestia newspaper initiated the rehabilitation of the submarine hero, and on May 5, 1990, by personal decree of the President of the USSR M.S. Gorbachev, he was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Since that time, his military career began to be widely covered in the media, and 7 years later, near the cemetery where the hero was buried, at 47 Kondratyevsky Ave., the Museum of Russian Underwater Forces, named after Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, was opened. Photos of the war years, models of submarines and genuine exhibits of the exhibition tell about the glorious military path of Soviet and Russian sailors.
Today, monuments to the posthumously rehabilitated submariner hero have been erected in St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, Odessa and Kaliningrad. Several feature films and documentaries, as well as literary works, are dedicated to him. In particular, the feat of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko is briefly described in the novel “The Trajectory of the Crab,” authored by a German writer, Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass. In addition, streets in many cities of Russia are named after the hero.