In the Baltic, on the island Big Tyuters, summarize the intermediate results of the expedition to search for and export equipment from the Great Patriotic War
The event, organized by the Russian Geographical Society together with the Ministry of Defense, started in early May and will end on August 14. In less than four months, the search engines must comb the island, collect the German military equipment, which it is full of, and take it to the mainland. This is the first such expedition: before that, only sappers worked here. According to experts, the island can be called unique: wild, almost uninhabited (only two people on the lighthouse), stuffed like an open-air museum with artifacts abandoned 70 years ago.
Eight square kilometers taiga and stone
We depart from the Levashovsky military airfield. Flying weather despite low purple skies. Several officers of different branches of the armed forces are loaded on board. And two soldiers with a can-bast basket - for berries.
- They asked, they took us, - they share, informing along the way that they still have hoo - 4 months left until the end of the service. - Interesting! There will be something to tell at home ...
To Big Tyuters, which, if you look at the map, lies near Estonia and Finland itself, is about an hour's flight, 180 kilometers. The island came under the jurisdiction of our country back in 1721, when Peter I defeated the Swedes in the Northern War. In 1920, it suddenly became part of independent Finland. After 20 years, he returned to us again. After three years, Finns and Germans were in charge there. Since 1944 he has been Russian again.
Throughout the post-war period, these eight square kilometers of stone and taiga have been empty: unnecessarily. Yes, and it's dangerous. Until 2005, when sappers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations came to the island, it was stuffed with shells and mines.
From the window, Tyuters looks like a cozy green fluffy hat in the middle of the water. When descending, extensive sand dunes on the shores, stepped rock formations are visible. On the western shore is a lighthouse match. A forest road runs through the island. And the expedition camp: white military tents, trucks.
Key to the Gulf of Finland
Unloading. A strong smell of pine needles hits the nose. In the ears - an unusual silence.
We transfer to the UAZ and, picking the branches of trees along the winding path with the cabin, we go to the place of one of the finds. A month ago, there, in the windbreaks, they discovered a curious specimen - an anti-aircraft gun of the Wehrmacht.
The island, I must say, looks really wild. But in the past centuries there was a large Finnish fishing village, there was a wooden church, a school, and later a narrow-gauge railway.
During the Second World War, the garrison of German troops on Tyuters was 2 thousand soldiers: one person per four square meters! And it is no coincidence that, together with neighboring Gogland and a couple of smaller islands, this ridge played a strategic role - the key to the Gulf of Finland. Whoever owned the archipelago controlled the entrance to the bay. Between the islands, the Germans pulled anti-submarine nets, stumbled mine chains. Gogland was controlled by the Finns, Big Tyuters by the Germans. We made attempts to return them, but to no avail. That is why our Baltic Fleet stood still, not entering into major battles until 1944, locked up in Kronstadt and Leningrad ...
In each tank of the field kitchen - a grenade
On one of the hillocks across the road there is a Ural tractor and a truck crane. Nearby is the same gun - an 88-mm cannon of the Bofors system.
“It was made in Sweden,” the head of the expedition, General Valery Kudinsky, brings up to date. - One of the best examples of anti-aircraft weapons of that time: automatic, reliable. Her condition in this moment satisfactory. Cleaned, restored - and almost like new. Ammunition was also found in the ground nearby: 80 shells in oiled paper. Of these same guns, they thrashed our planes.
The search work, the general explains, has now been completed. From May to June, the expedition members combed the island up and down: they walked in chains, 20-30 meters apart. Now the task is to deliver what was found to the pier. A total of 207 objects were found. 137 of them need to be pulled out with the help of heavy equipment - these same tractors and cranes. Half already on the shore, half in the forest. Among the finds are anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft fire control points, field kitchens, searchlights, trailers of various capacities, and fuel barrels.
All without exception, I must say, disabled. The Germans left the island in a hurry. They abandoned everything and on September 18, 1944 they left this land. Guns and trailers were blown up. In each tank of the field kitchen - a grenade. In each barrel - several through shots ...
ATVs and helicopters
It takes half an hour to load the cannon. Despite its seemingly compact size, it does not fit entirely on the tractor. During transportation, on one of the hillocks, it falls with a creak on the stones. Again you have to adjust the crane, hook the cable ...
At the pier, we are met by the Deputy Head of the Director of the Expeditionary Center of the Russian Geographical Society and the main inspirer of the whole process, Artem Khutorskoy.
“Almost every object has to be dealt with like this,” he says. - And something in general cannot be taken out by wheeled vehicles - rocks, windbreaks. We will try by air, with the help of a helicopter.
And he adds that, despite the difficulties, all the work is a joy. They dreamed about this project for many years, studied archives, including German ones. But just like that, it was impossible to take and go here - considerable funds are needed. In December last year, the project was presented to the President of the Russian Geographical Society Sergei Shoigu, and the Minister of Defense gave the go-ahead: act.
Three-inch gun, unfound aircraft
The result of the work of the military and geographers is obvious: at the pier there is a picturesque pile of metal. For specialists, all these are valuable exhibits, which in the near future will probably take their place in various military museums in the country.
“Here are the barrels for fuel, standard, two hundred liters,” says Khutorskoy. - Immediately from several countries. German, Finnish, Latvian, French. Look at their round logs - here you can make a whole collection! Or still very interesting object: three-inch cannon, made in 1917 at the Putilov factory. She went to independent Finland. And she fought during the Great Patriotic War against us ...
What about the people who died? - I'm interested.
- As for the Germans, from 1941 to 1944, about 20 soldiers died for various reasons on Bolshoi Tyuters. We found the site of a possible cemetery - eight name tags were found there, which were attached to grave crosses. But the Nazis suffered the main losses in neighboring Gogland. In 1944, when Finland had already withdrawn from the war, the Germans decided to intercept Hogland - after all, we could get it! At first they tried to negotiate peacefully, then they began to intimidate, and in the end they sent their troops there. And the Finns - yesterday's German allies - gave them a serious rebuff. Moreover: they requested air assistance from the Soviet troops - this was the only such case during the Great Patriotic War. The Nazis were then completely defeated by ours and the Finns: up to 700 Germans died, went missing and were wounded.
- And ours here, on Bolshoi Tyuters? ..
- There were losses. And when we left in the 41st. And when in the 42nd they tried to storm twice. It is known that later two of our scouts landed here. But they went missing. There are Soviet planes in the swamps - one or two. The lighthouse says that he remembers the tail of the plane in one of the swamps as a boy. But where is unclear. We found parts of the fuselage skin. Nothing else…
In the next two weeks, the delivery of equipment to the pier will continue. Then - sending on landing boats to Kronstadt, accommodation at one of the military arsenals of the Leningrad Region. It is likely that in the coming years, detachments to search for dead soldiers will begin work on this patch in the middle of the Gulf of Finland.
By the way
As part of the expedition of the Russian Geographical Society and the Ministry of Defense in late July - early August, search activities are also carried out on the island of Gogland. Unlike Bolshoi Tyuters, only search engines work on Gogland, which are engaged in discovering the burial places of our soldiers (military equipment was taken out of here almost immediately after the war). According to preliminary data, about 500 Red Army soldiers were killed and buried here. Work on the island is being carried out by a search group of the "North-West" association of 16 people (including various detachments of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region). This is the first such large-scale action. At present, many household items and weapons of both Soviet and Finnish soldiers have been found - grenades, shells, rifle shields, communication coils, flasks, mugs, spoons, teapots, sanitary stretchers. And the remains of one soldier of the Red Army: on a cigarette case found nearby, the name is Sapozhnikov. The search is complicated by the rocky nature of the soil. At present, the landing-prone areas of the island are being combed.
The complex expedition "Gogland" to explore the Outer Islands of the Gulf of Finland, a truly historic event took place. A three-year search for an aircraft shot down during the Great Patriotic War was crowned with success: at the end of May, the wreckage of a Soviet Pe-2 dive bomber and the remains of the pilots were found, and their names were soon established. These are the crew commander, 19-year-old junior lieutenant Mikhail Kazakov, 23-year-old gunner-radio operator Arseniy Tyshchuk and navigator Mikhail Tkachenko. The Gogland team even managed to contact the relatives of the dead heroes.
A Pe-2 dive bomber was shot down on Bolshoy Tyuters Island on the night of September 8-9, 1943.
The island of death, as Bolshoy Tyuters was called during the war years, was a well-fortified granite citadel stuffed with ammunition and military equipment. In September 1944, the three thousandth German garrison hurriedly left the island, having previously mined it. Since then, Bolshoi Tyuters has been repeatedly demined, but even now, after several operations and after the titanic work of sappers, abandoned ammunition is still found on the island. Perhaps that is why the Gogland team managed to get to the crash site only now, after three years of searching and painstaking work in the Russian and German archives.
The search team of the Russian Geographical Society managed to find the first fragments of the aircraft on May 25, on the very first day of the search, during the re-combing of the alleged square, located almost in the very center of Bolshoi Tyuters. Under a shallow soil layer and woven tree roots, license plate engine parts, pieces of burnt aluminum skin, a center section wing, an unopened burnt parachute and a large number of fragments were found. Almost everything around them is dotted with them, since the impact of a downed 7-ton bomber was so strong that it split a granite boulder, squeezing the debris into a shallow layer of rocky earth.
There are enough versions about the exact cause of death: but it is quite clear that the heroic Pe-2 completed its task and fell in an impenetrable forest thicket with empty ammunition. “Most likely, the plane was shot down by German anti-aircraft artillery, but it is likely that the enemy did not immediately manage to detect this, since there are no reports of this in the combat log for September 8 and 9, 1943,” says a member of the search detachment of the Russian Geographical Society Sergei Karpinsky.
“This is the first combat aircraft found by the search team of the Russian Geographical Society,” emphasizes Artem Khutorskoy, expedition leader, deputy executive director of the expeditionary center of the Russian Geographical Society. detection of the tail section and the remains of the crew in order to bury them in a military cemetery in the Leningrad Region.
Environmental watch continues...
The second shift of the environmental watch on the Outer Islands of the Gulf of Finland - Gogland and Bolshoy Tyuters began on June 2, 2016. The long road along the busy sea route was filled with conversations and the expectation of a meeting with mysterious islands, because getting to them is a dream come true of three dozen volunteers who came from the most remote corners our country.
Evgeny Selivanov from Chelyabinsk is a professional traveler. Having received a diploma in the field of tourism 4 years ago, the graduate decided to see for himself what it means to be a traveler in the 21st century. Since then, he has traveled all over Russia and visited many countries. Before participating in the change of the Russian Geographical Society on the Outer Islands of the Gulf of Finland, he built ecological trails in Kenozersky national park Arkhangelsk region, after Gogland, he is going to the Arctic shift of the Youth Forum "Morning" in Khanty-Mansiysk.
Artem Zaguraev graduated from the Faculty of Geography of St. Petersburg State University, 10 years of field life behind him, participation in the project of the RGS "Kyzyl - Kuragino" in 2012. Since then, he has been following the projects of the Russian Geographical Society, and here is good luck - in February, when he went to the website of the Society, he saw an advertisement for the recruitment of volunteers and applied, having planned his vacation in advance. Artyom's energy manifested itself on the very first day. In the early morning, after a long walk, Artyom was already washing dishes and putting things in order in the forest kitchen of the volunteer camp.
Sargey Vaganov is a professional diver, diving and organizing expeditions to the Barents Sea. I learned about the expedition by chance from social networks, but, like many Petersburgers, he heard a lot about the islands and always dreamed of getting to them. For the sake of such a chance, he put aside all his personal and professional affairs for a while and went on an expedition.
Pavel Chukmeev represents the easternmost region of the country - Khabarovsk region. An ecologist by profession, Pavel took part in expeditions to Sakhalin and Kunashir Island, where he studied the biodiversity of the soil inhabitants of these islands. In 2015, he spent a shift in the camp "Ermak" of the archaeological and geographical project "Kyzyl - Kuragino". Having learned about the expedition from social networks, he sent an application, and when it was approved, he took a vacation and came to St. Petersburg.
Dmitry Anatsky, a 22-year-old lawyer from Moscow, decided to join the expedition after his girlfriend worked on a three-month expedition in Antarctica. He considers himself lucky that he will work at Bolshoy Tyuters - literally a few managed to visit this island, Dmitry notes with enthusiasm.
Igor Zelkin studies at the Faculty of Geography of the Crimean Federal University, a member of the Crimean branch of the Russian Geographical Society, last year he spent a month in Kyzyl-Kuragino, after which, like many of his expedition comrades, he began to regularly follow the projects of the Society.
The first thing that the volunteers of the second shift of the "Gogland" complex expedition on the Bolshoy Tyuters saw were two huge piles of rusted metal standing on the pier, like a giant gate, conveying symbolic greetings from the pioneers of the ecological landing.
Perhaps, if not for these trophies, it would be hard to imagine that this peaceful and fragrant island with lilacs and flowering apple trees once wore such scary name- Isle of death. Volunteers will have to clear this unique corner of nature and history from the legacy of the war and later traces of human activity that disfigure the island in the next two weeks.
Text and photo: Tatyana Nikolaeva, Andrey Strelnikov
In ancient times, Tyuters was a haven for the Vikings, then a shelter for smugglers. Here, Polish and Swedish privateers robbed merchants on their way to Narva, and here, it happened, they hid the loot. Northern granites, plowed by an ancient glacier, hide many secluded places.All Russian tsars, starting with Peter, attached great importance to the protection of the capital of the empire from attacks from the sea. The most important and most fortified defense nodes were the islands of the Gulf of Finland. And the first on the way of the enemy were two rocks: Gogland and Big Tyuters. During the war for the islands, fierce battles were fought. Our landings went on the assault. And the Germans and Finns held the defense.
The only possible fairway for heavy ships and submarines is exactly at the distance of their artillery shot from the island. And this means whoever owned Tyuters also owned the entire Gulf of Finland.
For the last three centuries the island has been Swedish, Russian, Finnish, Russian again, German and Russian again. But there has never been a large population here. From the XVIII century until 1940 - only the village of Finnish fishermen. After the Winter War, little was left of her. There was also a Lutheran church, but relatively recently burned down.
Thousands and thousands of ships pass by Tyuters every year. But over the past 60 years, almost no human has set foot on it.
Tyuters is strikingly beautiful. It's so quiet it's ringing in your ears. Mushrooms, fish, berries, rocks, forest, the purest water. It would be nice to build sanatoriums here, breathe the healing pine air and watch the sun set in the cool waters of the Baltic. But the war made its own adjustments to this picture.
The only intact building on Tyuters is a lighthouse. Without it, in any way, the fairway in these places is very difficult. So Bolshoi Tyuters shines at night: 1 second on, 1 second off, then 3 seconds on, 9 seconds off. Although the lighthouse is the most high building on the island - 21 m, it is impossible to see something below from it. There were no people here for 70 years, roads and buildings were overgrown, nature took its toll. Even traces railway- and here she was - covered the crowns of silent Karelian pines.
In October-November 1939, more than 2,000 bombs were dropped on Tyuters and 4,500 shells were fired. But it was, if I may say so, only shooting.
In October 1941, under the onslaught of the Germans, the island was abandoned by the Red Army, but the Soviet command quickly realized their mistake. The narrowness of the bay turned it into a trap - the passage along the fairway for our ships became deadly. The fleet was locked up in Kronstadt, as if in a mousetrap. IN new year's eve In 1942, troops of the Red Army and Marines landed on Tyuters, but did not last long. There was no food and ammunition supply, the reinforcements that had been sent simply did not reach: the ice on the Gulf of Finland was not yet strong, there were polynyas under it, and half a meter of ice water above it. The fighters froze right on the way, and few managed to return to the mainland.
Subsequently, it was more and more difficult to take Bolshoy Tyuters. The Germans transferred so many forces and resources here that it became the largest stronghold among the islands of the Gulf of Finland, they installed batteries of large-caliber guns, anti-aircraft guns and ship cannons on the island.
The Nazis, who were preparing for a serious battle in the Baltic, brought a fantastic amount of ammunition to the island. And the rest of the part cannot be counted, but how many were fired on our ships? By our landings? After all, there was a second landing. And the third. And the fourth. No one can say how many of our soldiers lie here.
It is believed that the Germans mined the area before their flight from the island, in 1944. This is wrong. Studying German maps and documents, examining the former minefields, you see that the most powerful fortifications of Tyuters did not appear suddenly. All three years that the Germans were on the island, they meticulously built up its defenses. Others were added to one row of thorns, new mines were placed both between old and new places, until the quantity and density of all this iron amounted to some fantastic value.
When the Germans left the island, for several months it had not played its former strategic importance for them - in September 1944, the Red Army was already very far to the west. It seems that this is another example of Hitler's stubbornness, to cling to such patches of land even when they no longer had not only a strategic, but even a tactical need. And then they themselves and their garrisons turned into a burden, which was no longer possible to take care of and which was not worth evacuating. Obviously, Tyuters also turned into such a burden - the thrifty Germans could not, as usual, take the equipment with them and limited themselves to damaging it.
And no matter how saturated with ammunition Tyuters, there were even more of them in the strait between Tyuters and Gogland Island. During the war in these waters, on the minefield "Zeigl" ("Sea Urchin"), the Germans in total were exposed to several tens of thousands of mines, and almost half - on 9 and a half nautical miles between Gogland and Tyuters.
Under enemy fire, our minesweepers made passages in minefields, and the Germans methodically dumped new mines into the strait - a thousand after a thousand.
During the days of the war, a few submarines of the Baltic Fleet crossed this deadly fairway. The power of the fleet was not fully used, and the war left here only in 1944. Yes, it's gone too far. How much explosive metal is at the bottom: dead submarines and boats with torpedoes, downed bombers with full ammunition, dozens of drowned transports with ammunition, several artillery ships with full cellars. These waters will be unsafe for a long time to come. Such a concentration of combat losses in one place speaks of the colossal importance attached to the island by the warring parties.
Today the island is the farthest part of Russia in the northwest. On the northern coast - Finland, on the south - already Estonia. Special border zone special treatment tolerance. But thanks to the assistance of the border guards and a specially organized expedition of the Russian Geographical Society, we had the opportunity to find out what Bolshoy Tyuters, the most mysterious island in the Gulf of Finland, is, and to answer the question of what exceptional importance it had for the German forces in the Baltic. It’s not easy to talk about this, but: perhaps it was this small battle for Tyuters, lost by the Soviet troops at the very beginning of the war, that enabled the Germans not only to keep a long blockade of Leningrad, but also delayed our victory.
The first shelters and burrows were dug here in the time of the Varangians. IN tsarist times built artillery positions and gun magazines. The Finnish army, having received Tyuters from Russia, started a large construction of fortifications. Before the big war, Soviet troops also built their own fortifications - aboveground and underground. On the German map from the archives of the Abwehr - there is an interesting inscription. It says that there should be 15 underground structures on the island. The last joint Soviet-Swedish demining mission on the island found six bunkers on it. The remaining nine have never been found. Maybe they didn’t look carefully, or maybe they hid these bunkers with knowledge of the matter? For how long?
There are many versions about the purpose of the mysterious bunkers. The most interesting one, of course, is that the values stolen by the Nazis were kept here. After all, the army group "North", to which the Tyuters garrison belonged, marauded in these parts with all the breadth of its Teutonic soul. Pskov and Novgorod, Oranienbaum and Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, Gatchina and Strelna - many treasures and objects of art after the war were never found either in Germany or anywhere else. Why don't the Germans store them here, under the protection of granite dungeons and powerful fortifications Tyuters?
During the war years, the perimeter of the island was braided with barbed wire in several rows. And mines - tens of thousands. And then - guns and machine guns at close range. Our troops landed here. It seems to me to step on here open space, under dagger fire, through a minefield - impossible, hopeless. If the cruisers and battleships of the Baltic Fleet had approached, mixed the German defenses with the fire of their twelve-inch guns, the landing force would have succeeded. But the tragedy was that the ships of the fleet could sail these waters only on the condition that the island was occupied by ours.
Another version: in these dungeons, the Germans had a plant for the production and equipping of ammunition. This, of course, is not the Amber Room, although there would be little left of amber in the local dampness.
In general, some kind of shelters, caches are often found here. And almost everywhere there are traces of human presence. But for something serious, they obviously do not pull. For weapons production, larger sizes are needed, and for storing valuables - paintings, sculptures - special conditions.
An expedition to Bolshoy Tyuters is a journey through time, not space. Since September 18, 1944, when the Germans gave up their positions and fled, the island has stood untouched - completely covered with gunpowder, spent cartridges and cocked mines
On September 1, 1943, a German patrol found a gap in the wire fence. There was also a rubber boat nearby. It was clear that at night a Soviet reconnaissance group had infiltrated Bolshoy Tyuters Island, where Wehrmacht artillery had settled. The entire garrison was put on alert. 800 people combed a modest 8 sq. km of the island in search of several saboteurs. Soon their hiding place was found: beds, a supply of food and medicine, cartridges, parts from the radio station.
The Germans never managed to catch our soldiers. I had to hastily change defensive positions and build new fortifications. However, according to the logbook of the Soviet submarine M-96, from which the landing force landed on Tyuters, the fighters also did not return aboard. Their fate remained a mystery.
Today Bolshoi Tyuters is crowded and noisy. Sappers, geologists, volunteers and journalists work here, they busily gas up trucks and pickups, a helicopter takes off and lands. But in the evening, when the work subsides and dusk falls on the island, it seems as if the Soviet intelligence officers are still hiding somewhere nearby, in the forest thickets or behind the nearest stone. Just about from behind the hill, rattling their weapons, a German search party will appear. Time on Bolshoi Tyuters seemed to have stopped. The island looks like the war on it ended just yesterday.
ISLANDS OF THE GULF OF FINNISH
Big Tyuters was not always uninhabited. The first archaeological finds on the island date back to the 6th century. Since the 16th century, the island has been inhabited by the peoples of the Finno-Ugric group. The path "from the Varangians to the Greeks" passed by the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The waters near Bolshoi Tyuters had a bad reputation: piracy flourished here, ships died. Shortly before the start of World War II, a Finnish village with a population of more than 400 inhabitants was located on the island.
brown dunes
Bolshoy Tyuters is a small uninhabited island, only 2.5 km across. On the western side, sharp rocks bristled in Karelian style. To the east are sand dunes. The landscape is reminiscent of curonian spit favored by photographers. The crest of the dune offers a picturesque view, especially at dawn. But here scraps of barbed wire come across. You begin to notice the pillars along which the barrier was stretched. Looking down, you understand: the sand is literally mixed with "straws" of artillery gunpowder and hundreds of shells.
On the same dune, until last year, there was a kind of hallmark of the Big Tyuters - an 88-mm anti-aircraft gun FlaK aiming at the sky. It was covered with a two-meter layer of sand, one trunk stuck out. Last year, the gun was dug up, transported by tractor to the bay, and from there it was sent by boat to the mainland.
If not for this anti-aircraft gun and its 15 twin sisters, the war could have ended much faster. The fairway of the Gulf of Finland runs exactly in the middle between Gogland, largest island archipelago, and Big Tyuters. In March 1942, after almost three months of the heroic defense of Gogland, a detachment of Red Army soldiers, having not received reinforcements from the mainland in time, was forced to retreat. Gogland was occupied by the Finns, Big Tyuters - by the Germans. Attempts to return the islands were unsuccessful, and the sea exit from the besieged Leningrad was closed. Coastal artillery prevented surface ships from leaving the bay, and tight nets and minefields prevented submarines from passing.
In 1944, when Finland signed a peace treaty with the USSR, Bolshoi Tyuters was hastily abandoned by the Germans. Leaving, they mined the island and blew up almost everything that could be of any value.
What is there to say! Everything that the Nazis managed to get to was spoiled, - the volunteers sigh, showing a shot through bucket, - and you haven’t seen the boilers of field kitchens yet. We will take them out with the garbage. The Germans threw grenades inside. Nothing left.
"Gifts" underfoot
Weapons, ammunition, ammunition parts, household items and personal belongings of soldiers - all this usually becomes the prey of "black diggers". The islands of the Gulf of Finland are practically inaccessible for amateur searchers. We got to Bolshoi Tyuters by helicopter. Of course, there is no landing site on the island, but this is not a problem for the military Mi-8: it sits on a cleared patch right next to the army tents. A little further is the camp. The tents of the Russian Geographical Society are bright, touristy, not as big as those of the military. There is nothing like a road here either. Soldiers and volunteers are transported to work points by army trucks. As a rapid transit superior comfort- pickups Volkswagen Amarok.
On the sloping sandy shore equipped with a pontoon berth for a landing craft. Not far from it rises a mountain of rusty cylinders. In Germany, each artillery shell was stored and transported in a separate metal tube (the Red Army carried ammunition in wooden boxes). There are several hundred of these tubes here, and in total there are tens of thousands of them on the island. In the same pile are curls of barbed wire, fragments of equipment beyond repair.
All this volunteers collected during the day of their stay on the island. They have to stay here for a whole month. And this is just one of the stages of the complex expedition "Gogland", which has been going on for the fifth year.
With the exception of the enclave Kaliningrad, the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland are the westernmost point of our country. You can say, the threshold, - says Major General Valery Kudinsky. This is our home and we want to keep it clean. And look at nature. Rusty pieces of iron in this landscape are superfluous.
Clearing the island is not mechanical gathering at all. Here you have to work with your head more than with your hands, and you can make a mistake only once.
Quite often, "gifts" of those times crawl out of the ground, - one of the sappers complains, - mostly shells. Sometimes mines. You'd better not go behind this ribbon yet.
One morning we were told new find, put in pickups and brought to the place. The search engines found a surviving armory with mines. We kept a respectful distance while the sappers did their job. A few minutes later we were invited to come closer. Since the mines were in storage, they did not have a fuse. Armed explosive devices are destroyed on the spot, and outsiders are not allowed there.
As it turned out, the warehouse kept S- mines, also known as "frogs". Before exploding, such a mine jumps out of the ground to a height of about a meter, after which 350 metal balls destroy all life within a radius of tens of meters. Somehow, without agreeing, we all decided not to leave the fully explored paths.
Field work
EXPEDITION "GOGLAND"
The complex expedition "Gogland" began work in the fall of 2012. The region of the expedition - 14 outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The largest of them is Gogland with an area of 21 sq. km, located 180 km west of St. Petersburg. The second largest island is Bolshoi Tyuters, and the main work will be carried out on it this season. It is also planned to explore the islands of Sescar and Sommers. The team has over a hundred members. Among them are servicemen of the 90th separate special search battalion and experts Russian Geographical Society: archeologists, historians, geologists, ecologists. Separately, it is worth mentioning the volunteers, each of whom passed the difficult competition of the Russian Geographical Society. It is they who will have to carry out work on the search, identification and restoration of military weapons, the identification of the soldiers buried here, as well as cleaning the island of debris.
Dissolved names
Arriving at another site cleared of mines, we saw the remains of three German soldiers. They were raised to the surface to be reburied in a more accessible place, at a military cemetery near the village of Sologubovka, Leningrad Region. As part of a joint program with the People's Union of Germany for the care of war graves, about 55 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers have already found their last refuge there.
Judging by the surviving fragments of uniforms, we were faced with fighters from the Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and ground forces. The buttons of the sailors depict an anchor, the pilots have the abbreviation LW, the infantry has smooth buttons. The discovery of a well-preserved personal badge of a serviceman is considered a great success: for 70 years, many of them have gone too deep into the soil.
Hastily leaving Bolshoy Tyuters, the Germans blew up most guns. However, a significant part of the weapons was preserved in excellent condition. During previous expeditions, restorers took out 88-mm anti-aircraft guns FlaK, 20-mm Swiss "Oerlikons", as well as the rarest small-caliber anti-aircraft gun "Bofors" made in Switzerland.
Most of the equipment was taken from the island last year, but something else remains. The rusty skeleton of a large-caliber cannon has grown into the very edge of the picturesque cliff. Massive and unshakable, but devoid of a trunk, it resembles a huge padlock without a key. Castle from besieged Leningrad.
Echoes of war
On paper, the war ends with the signing of a surrender treaty. In fact, everything is much more complicated. It is necessary to bury the dead, to collect the debris throughout the vast country, to remove the burden from nature. You need to answer questions.
For example, the head of the Gogland expedition, Artem Khutorskoy, told us about a Red Army plane that, according to archival sources, was shot down over the island. They've been trying to find him for years. In 2015, duralumin fragments of the fuselage skin were found. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine from them what kind of aircraft it was and how it ended up over Bolshoi Tyuters.
Artem told this story to us before leaving. A couple of weeks later, news agencies reported that the wreckage of a Soviet Pe-2 bomber was found on Bolshoy Tyuters Island and the names of the crew members were established. Commander Mikhail Kazakov, gunner-radio operator Arseniy Tyshchuk and navigator Mikhail Tkachenko flew to the island on the night of September 8-9, 1943. Eight days after the landing of a secret reconnaissance group from the M-96 submarine.
The big find will give historians new data to work with the archive. Perhaps they will help shed light on the fate of Soviet intelligence officers. Then this question will be answered.
Technique
Pe-2
The most massive dive bomber produced in the USSR. According to Soviet tradition, it was named after the designer Vladimir Petlyakov, but in the army he received the playful nickname "Pawn". In Finland, it was called "Pekka-Emelya", and according to NATO classification, the aircraft is called "deer" - Buck.
FlaK
88 mm anti-aircraft gun, also known as "eight-eight". Due to the high muzzle velocity of the projectile, it was used not only to fight aircraft, but also as an anti-tank and anti-ship weapon. It is considered the most famous weapon of the Second World War.
"Oerlikon"
20 mm anti-aircraft gun with a rate of fire of 450 rounds per minute(for comparison: FlaK- up to 20 shots per minute). It was designed by the German engineer Reinhold Becker, but was produced in Switzerland: in Germany, the production of many types of weapons was prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles.
S- mine
Pop-up anti-personnel mine was developed on the basis Schrapnell Mine during the First World War, hence the name - S mine. If old model jumped out of the ground at the command from the remote control, then the new one worked automatically. The Americans nicknamed her "Bouncing Betty" and the Russians called her "Frog".
Photo: Alamy / Legion-media, Grigory Polyakovsky (x4), RIA Novosti, Legion-media (x2), MKFI, Evgeny Odinokov / RIA Novosti
The editors would like to thank Volkswagen for organizing the trip. Amarok is an iron car that is tough for Big Tyuters.
Big Tyuters (Finnish Tytärsaari; Swedish Tyterskär; Estonian Tütarsaar - a daughter island) - Russian island in the central part of the Gulf of Finland, located 75 km from the coast of Finland and southeast of Gogland. It is part of the Kingiseppsky district of the Leningrad region. The area of the island is 8.3 sq. km.
The island of Bolshoy Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland, after the war, was also called the "island of death." People continued to die there in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Finns and Germans captured the archipelago, located in the very center of the Gulf of Finland, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The islands of Gogland and Bolshoi Tyuters were of exceptional importance. After all, they are right on the fairway, along which both military and civilian ships go in those years, and even now. The Finns then occupied Gogland Island, and the headquarters group of the Germans and a large garrison were located on Bolshoi Tyuters. A powerful battery appeared there to fight the Soviet fleet. It is quite clear that the Nazis, who were preparing for a serious battle in the Baltic, brought a huge amount of ammunition to the island. In addition, for some time shells were produced right there. Leaving the island in a hurry, the Germans could not take out the accumulated arsenal. They acted insidiously - they mined the territory of the island, turning it into one big mine. The Soviet paratroopers who landed on Tyuters in the summer of 1944 fell into this terrible trap.
They tried repeatedly to clear the fortifications and the territory of the mined island, immediately after the war, and then, in the 1950s. At the same time, many sappers died. In order not to destroy people in vain, they decided not to touch the island. At the same time, a lighthouse appeared on Tyuters, which is still working. The population of the mined island still consists of one person - the hermit Leonid Kudinov, who serves this very lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper lives on a small plot of land, gets everything he needs from big land and does not risk going far from home. After all, any careless step can be the last ...
It is quite clear that ammunition was found on the ill-fated island. You don't even need to look for them. In dugouts, in warehouses, in open areas and underground, there are thousands of shells, mines, and heavy bombs. Next to them you can see German guns that have stood for 60 years. All this is mined and can fly into the air even with a light impact.
In 2005, sappers from the Russian Emergencies Ministry, together with specialists from the Swedish Rescue Services Agency (SHASS), completed the demining of Bolshoi Tyuters Island in the Gulf of Finland.
Sappers discovered and destroyed 30,339 explosive objects on the island during the Great Patriotic War.
The expedition, which began on August 10, together with sappers from Sweden, was attended by employees of the 294th Center for Rescue Operations of Special Risk "Leader", the 179th Rescue Center and the North-West Regional Center of the Russian Emergencies Ministry.
In addition to numerous mines, shells and aerial bombs, sappers of the two countries discovered six buried fortifications on the island.
