In the Baltic, on an island Big Tyuters, sum up the interim results of the expedition to search for and remove 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, searchers must comb the island, collect 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), crammed like an open-air museum with artifacts abandoned 70 years ago.
Eight square kilometers taiga and stone
We depart from Levashovsky military airfield. The weather is flyable, despite the low purple sky. Several officers of different branches of the military are loaded on board. And two soldiers with a can for berries.
“We asked, they took us,” they share, informing along the way that they still have a whopping 4 months left until the end of their service. - Interesting! There will be something to tell at home...
To Bolshoy Tyuters, which, if you look at the map, lies near Estonia and Finland, 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 unexpectedly became part of independent Finland. 20 years later he returned to us again. After three years the Finns and Germans ruled 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 dangerous. Until 2005, when sappers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations came to the island, it was filled with shells and mines.
From the porthole, Tyuters looks like a cozy green fluffy hat in the middle of the water. As you descend, you can see extensive sand dunes on the shores and stepped rock formations. On the western shore there is a lighthouse match. A thread of forest road stretches through the island. And the expedition camp: white military tents, cargo equipment.
Key to Gulf of Finland
Let's unload. The strong smell of pine needles hits your nose. There is an unusual silence in my ears.
We change into a UAZ and, using the cab to pick up tree branches along the winding path, we drive to the site of one of the finds. A month ago, there, in the windfalls, they discovered a curious specimen - a Wehrmacht anti-aircraft gun.
The island, I must say, looks truly wild. But in past centuries there was a large Finnish fishing village here, there was a wooden church, a school, and later a narrow-gauge railway.
During World War II, the garrison of German troops on Tyuters amounted to 2 thousand soldiers: one person per four square meters! And it is no coincidence - 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 stretched anti-submarine nets and laid mine chains. Gogland was controlled by the Finns, Bolshoi Tyuters by the Germans. Ours made attempts to return them, but to no avail. That is why our Baltic Fleet stood, not entering into major battles until 1944, locked in Kronstadt and Leningrad...
Each field kitchen tank contains a grenade
On one of the hills across the road there is a Ural tractor and a truck crane. Nearby is the same gun - an 88-mm Bofors cannon.
“It was made in Sweden,” the expedition leader, General Valery Kudinsky, explains. — One of the best examples of anti-aircraft weapons of that time: automatic, reliable. Her condition is at the moment satisfactory. Cleaned, restored - and almost like new. They also found ammunition in the ground nearby: 80 shells in oiled paper. They used these very guns to hit our planes.
The search work, the general explains, has now been completed. From May to June, members of the expedition combed the island length and breadth: they walked in chains, 20 - 30 meters from each other. Now the task is to deliver what was found to the pier. A total of 207 objects were discovered. 137 of them need to be pulled out using heavy equipment - these same tractors and cranes. Half are already on the shore, half in the forest. Among the finds are anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft fire control posts, field kitchens, searchlights, trailers of various capacities, and fuel barrels.
All without exception, it must be said, are out of order. The Germans left the island hastily. They abandoned everything and left this land on September 18, 1944. Guns and trailers were blown up. There is a grenade in each field kitchen tank. There are several through shots into each barrel...
All-terrain vehicles and helicopters
It takes about half an hour to load the cannon. Despite its seemingly compact size, it does not fit entirely onto the tractor. During transportation, on one of the hills it falls creakingly onto the stones. Again we have to adjust the crane, hook the cable...
At the pier we are met by the deputy head of the director of the expedition center of the Russian Geographical Society and the main inspirer of the entire process, Artem Khutorskoy.
“You have to tinker with almost every object like this,” he says. — But some things cannot be removed with wheeled vehicles at all - rocks, windbreaks. We will try by air, using a helicopter.
And he adds that, despite the difficulties, all the work is a joy. They dreamed of this project for many years and studied archives, including German ones. But it was impossible to just pick up and go here—considerable funds were needed. Last December, the project was presented to the President of the Russian Geographical Society Sergei Shoigu, and the Minister of Defense gave the go-ahead: go ahead.
Three-inch gun, unfound aircraft
The result of the work of the military and geographers is obvious: there is a picturesque pile of metal near the pier. For specialists, all of these are valuable exhibits, which in the near future will probably take their place in various military museums across the country.
“Here are the fuel barrels, standard, two-hundred-liter,” says Khutorskoy. — From several countries at once. German, Finnish, Latvian, French. Look at their round timbers - you can make a whole collection here! Or even very interesting object: three-inch gun, manufactured in 1917 at the Putilov plant. It went to independent Finland. And she fought against us during the Great Patriotic War...
- What about the people who died? - I’m interested.
— As for the Germans, from 1941 to 1944, about 20 soldiers died on Bolshoi Tyuters for various reasons. 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 Gogland - it could have gone to us! 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. Then ours and the Finns completely defeated the Nazis: up to 700 Germans died, went missing, and were wounded.
- And ours are here, on Bolshoi Tyuters?..
— There were losses. And when we left in '41. And when in 1942 they tried to storm it twice. It is known that later two of our scouts landed here. But they went missing. There are Soviet planes lying in the swamps - one or two. The lighthouse says that as a boy he remembers the tail of a plane in one of the swamps. But where is unclear. We found parts of the fuselage skin. Nothing more...
Delivery of equipment to the pier will continue in the next two weeks. Then - sending on landing boats to Kronstadt, placement at one of the military arsenals of the Leningrad region. It is likely that in the coming years, teams will begin work on this patch in the middle of the Gulf of Finland to search for dead soldiers.
By the way
As part of the expedition of the Russian Geographical Society and the Ministry of Defense, search activities are also carried out on the island of Gogland in late July - early August. Unlike Bolshoi Tyuters, only search engines work on Gogland, who are engaged in discovering the graves of our soldiers (military equipment was removed from here almost immediately after the war). According to preliminary data, about 500 Red Army soldiers died and were buried here. Work on the island is 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 event. Currently, many household items and weapons of both Soviet and Finnish soldiers have been discovered - grenades, shells, rifle shields, communication coils, flasks, mugs, spoons, teapots, sanitary stretchers. And the remains of one Red Army soldier: on a cigarette case found nearby, the surname is Sapozhnikov. The search is complicated by the rocky nature of the soil. The island's landing areas are currently being combed.
Last week, the Hogland search expedition, sent by the Russian Ministry of Defense to the island of Bolshoy Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland, loaded several dozen pieces of German military equipment and weapons from World War II onto the landing boats of the Baltic Fleet (this is reported by the Internet portal of the Russian Ministry of Defense). At the end of the war, the Germans, hastily leaving Bolshoi Tyuters, were forced to leave a large amount of heavy weapons, military equipment, ammunition and other property on the island. Among the finds discovered by the expedition are the legendary German FlaK 18/36 anti-aircraft guns of 88 mm caliber, the Swedish Bofors L60 anti-aircraft gun and rare models of German artillery trailers.
The island is located to the west of the Baltic coast of Russia, so for an observer from St. Petersburg the sun sets behind Bolshoi Tyuters
hodar.ru
The expedition has been working on the island since July 15: it includes representatives of the All-Russian public organization “Russian Geographical Society”, the All-Russian social movement to perpetuate the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland and the “Russian Search Movement”. The total number of the expedition is more than 80 people.
There are many large and small islands in the Gulf of Finland. It has long been known that some of them contain ruins of fortifications and the remains of broken military equipment. A scientific expedition of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) in 2013 examined a group of the Outer Islands and confirmed these facts in its reports. Islands such as Gogland, Maly Tyuters, Bolshoy Tyuters, Sommers and Seskar, which have a strategically significant location, served as important strongholds for the Germans during the war.
Bolshoi Tyuters Island (marked in red)
navytech.ru
Bolshoi Tyuters Island is located 180 km west of St. Petersburg, is about 2.5 km across, and its area is approximately 8.3 square meters. km. Bolshoi Tyuters is located south of the island Gogland, forming with it a kind of gate through which the main sea route leading to the ports of St. Petersburg and Vyborg passes. It was this location of the island that determined its role as a location for coastal batteries. Currently, of the existing buildings on the island, there is only a lighthouse with a height of 21 m.
The lighthouse of Bolshoi Tyuters Island is maintained by a keeper who does not risk straying far from it, fearing the deadly “surprises” of wartime
smallbattle. ru
IN different years garrisons were placed on the islands, fortifications with minefields were built, and coastal batteries were installed to keep the sea routes at bay. Some islands changed their owners, alternately being Swedish, Finnish, Russian, and during the Great Patriotic War, some of them were occupied by German troops (Bolshoi Tyuters was held by the Germans almost until the end of 1944). Fierce battles in the Gulf of Finland cost the warring parties thousands of casualties, and the exact number of Soviet soldiers and officers who died here has not yet been established.
Channel One's story about the search expedition to Bolshoi Tyuters
Not all islands were completely cleared of mines and shells after the end of the war, especially those in border areas that were closed to the public. There is reason to believe that in addition to old military equipment, the remains of soldiers who died in the battles for their liberation may be found on the islands.
At the end of the war, the Germans, hastily leaving Bolshoy Tyuters, were forced to leave a large amount of heavy weapons, military equipment and ammunition on it. In addition, minefields and barriers remained here, and in such large numbers that Bolshoi Tyuters earned the reputation of an “island of death”, since military personnel continued to die there for many years after the war. In the post-war period, sapper units arrived on the island several times (seven such landings are known) and carried out work to clear the territory. In particular, in 2005, a joint expedition of Russian and Swedish sappers worked here, neutralizing more than 30 thousand explosive objects.
Despite all efforts to clear mines from the island, Bolshoi Tyuters still poses a great danger to people
postleduvremeni.ru
Preparations for the expedition of the Russian Ministry of Defense to the islands of the Gulf of Finland began in the spring of this year. The Gogland reconnaissance expedition, consisting of representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian Geographical Society and participants in the search movement, visited the Outer Islands at the end of May and completed a large amount of work: studied the area, outlined search areas, laid out routes, carried out engineering markings, prepared berths and sites, compiled inventory of the remains of weapons and military equipment.
The island, closed to visitors, has become a kind of nature reserve, preserving weapons and equipment from World War II in its forests.
poludurkoff.net
After a reconnaissance expedition in early July, a landing party of sappers from the Baltic Fleet naval engineering regiment was landed on the islands. Naval sappers, working on maps prepared by the reconnaissance expedition, conducted a study of a number of areas, freeing them from explosive objects. During a week of work, sappers discovered more than seven hundred mines, shells and other ammunition, which were destroyed by explosion. Anti-personnel mines, whose fuses had been activated for several decades and could detonate at any moment, posed a particular danger.
Among the military equipment found there are many valuable samples. In the photo - presumably a Bofors L60 automatic anti-aircraft gun of 40 mm caliber
postleduvremeni.ru
Specialists of the Russian Ministry of Defense working on the islands report that about two hundred samples of German weapons and military equipment have already been assembled and shipped. After delivery to Mainland those found samples that are subject to restoration will be restored and will become exhibits of Russian military history museums and memorial parks. As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a recent interview, the restored samples of weapons and equipment will become exhibits of the Patriot military-patriotic park, where it is planned to transport the exhibitions of some military museums.
Loading finds onto ships of the Baltic Fleet
military.rf
The expedition also reportedly discovered the remains of a Red Army soldier, who has yet to be identified. Work on the island will last until August 14.
A complex expedition of the Russian Geographical Society, with the support of the Russian Ministry of Defense, continues to survey the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The group went to Big Tyuters And Gogland to study their geography, geology, biology and historical and cultural heritage.
“Island of Death” is parting with the legacy of the war - volunteers from all over the country are preparing hundreds of tons of rusty military iron for removal from Bolshoi Tyuters. Shell casings and ammunition fragments will soon be disposed of. But this land is still fraught with danger.
Despite the fact that seven mine clearance operations have already been carried out here, volunteers find another cache of ammunition. Sappers who recently worked in Palmyra, Syria, discovered hundreds of German anti-personnel mines on the island - so-called “frogs” without detonators.
“When the Germans left here, they didn’t have time to take everything with them - they buried and hid something. Look, they are in excellent condition, even the paint has not peeled off,” Ilya Shcherbakov, commander of the mine clearance group of the 30th engineer regiment, shows the mine.
Bolshoi Tyuters, Gogland and neighboring islands literally blocking the exit to the Baltic from the Gulf of Finland. From 1941 to 1944, it was from here that the Germans fired at Soviet ships and aircraft.
The area of Bolshoi Tyuters is only eight square kilometers. But during the war, the Germans made it absolutely impregnable: rows of barbed wire surrounded the entire island, and machine gun nests were located every 50-100 meters. Everything was done to ensure that the Soviet landing force could not take it.
Tyuters was defended by a garrison of three thousand, while combat losses during almost three years of war amounted to only 30 people.
There is a German military cemetery on the island. Now servicemen of a separate search battalion of the Western Military District, at the request of the People's Union of Germany, are carrying out work to exhume the remains of German soldiers.
“Since this place is forested and wild, even last year there were attempts by looters to enter the island, despite the remoteness. Therefore, if you imagine the idea of leaving it and not touching anything, unfortunately, it won’t work,” explains Dmitry Volkov, an employee of the People’s Union of Germany.
Participants in a joint expedition of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Geographical Society hope to find the remains of Soviet soldiers who took part in several landings. Hundreds of soldiers and sailors went missing in these places.
“It seemed that after the last expedition, well, everyone had already moved this island far and wide, everything interesting was evacuated from here. And we seem to know everything, but it turned out that a lot of interesting things remained,” notes the head of the International Complex Expedition “Gogland” Valery Kudinsky.
On Bolshoi Tyuters, several more bunkers were discovered, built by the Germans in granite rocks. Their goals are still unknown. Geophysicists are now trying to solve this mystery of the island.
Here, presumably, there may be grottoes, the entrances to which were blocked by the Germans during the retreat. They could hide anything - from stocks of weapons and food to valuables and art objects looted by the Nazis near Leningrad.
For 70 years, Tyuters, mined far and wide, remained a reserve of war on its last legs, and only now it has finally begun to reveal its secrets.
In ancient times, Tyuters was a haven for Vikings, then a haven for smugglers. Here, Polish and Swedish privateers robbed merchants going to Narva, and here, it happened, they hid the loot. Northern granites, plowed by an ancient glacier, conceal many secluded places.All Russian tsars, starting with Peter, attached great importance to protecting the capital of the empire from attack from the sea. The most important and most fortified defense centers were the islands of the Gulf of Finland. And the first to stand in the way of the enemy were two rocks: Gogland and Bolshoi Tyuters. During the war, fierce battles were fought for the islands. Our landing forces went on the assault. And the Germans and Finns held the defense.
The only possible channel for heavy ships and submarines is exactly within firing range of their artillery guns from the island. This means whoever owned Tyuters owned the entire Gulf of Finland.
Over the past 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 18th century until 1940, it was only a village of Finnish fishermen. After the Winter War, little remained of it. There was also a Lutheran church, but it burned down relatively recently.
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 amazingly beautiful. It’s so quiet that your ears are ringing. Mushrooms, fish, berries, rocks, forest, pure water. Here we could build sanatoriums, 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 structure on Tyuters is the lighthouse. There is no way without it, the fairway in these places is very difficult. So Big Tyuters shines at night: 1 second on, 1 second off, then 3 seconds on, 9 seconds off. Although the lighthouse is the most tall building on the island - 21 m, it’s impossible to see anything below from it. There were no people here for 70 years, the roads and buildings were overgrown, nature took its toll. Even traces railway- and here she was - covered by the crowns of silent Karelian pines.
In October-November 1939, more than 2,000 aerial bombs were dropped on Tyuters and 4,500 shells were fired. But it was, so to speak, just a shooting.
In October 1941, under German pressure, 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 - passage along the fairway became deadly dangerous for our ships. The fleet was locked in Kronstadt, as if in a mousetrap. IN New Year's Eve In 1942, the Red Army and Marine Corps landed on Tyuters, but did not last long. There was no supply of food and ammunition, the reinforcements sent simply did not arrive: the ice on the Gulf of Finland was not yet strong, there were ice holes under it, and half a meter of icy water above it. The soldiers froze to death on the way, and few managed to return to the mainland.
Subsequently, it became increasingly difficult to take Bolshoi Tyuters. The Germans transferred so many forces and resources here that it became the largest stronghold among the islands of the Gulf of Finland, and installed batteries of large-caliber guns, anti-aircraft guns and naval guns on the island.
The Nazis, preparing for a serious battle in the Baltic, brought a fantastic amount of ammunition to the island. And the remaining part cannot be counted, but how many were fired at our ships? By our landings? After all, there was still 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 fleeing the island in 1944. This is wrong. Studying German maps and documents, examining 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 defense. Others were added to one row of thorns, new mines were placed both between old ones and in new places, until the quantity and density of all this iron amounted to some fantastic value.
When the Germans left the island, it had no longer played the same strategic importance for them for several months - in September 1944, the Red Army was already very far to the west. It seems that this is another example of Hitler’s stubbornness, clinging to such pieces of land even when there was no longer not only a strategic, but even a tactical need for them. And then they themselves and their garrisons turned into a burden that could no longer be taken care of and was not worth evacuating. Tyuters, obviously, also turned into such a burden - the thrifty Germans were unable, as usual, to take the equipment with them and limited themselves to damaging it.
And no matter how saturated Tyuters was with ammunition, there were even more of them in the strait between Tyuters and the island of Gogland. During the war in these waters, the Germans placed a total of several tens of thousands of mines at the Zeigl (Sea Urchin) minefield, almost half of them in the 9 and a half nautical miles between Gogland and Tyuters.
Under enemy fire, our minesweepers made passages in the minefields, and the Germans methodically dumped new mines into the strait - thousand after thousand.
During the war days, only a few submarines of the Baltic Fleet crossed this deadly channel. The power of the fleet was not fully used, and the war left here only in 1944. And she didn't go far. How much explosive metal is at the bottom: lost submarines and boats with torpedoes, downed bombers with full ammunition, dozens of sunken transports with ammunition, several artillery ships with full magazines. These waters will remain unsafe for a long time. Such a concentration of combat losses in one place indicates the enormous importance the warring parties attached to the island.
Today the island is the farthest part of Russia in the northwest. On the northern coast is Finland, on the southern coast is Estonia. Special border zone, special regime admission. But thanks to the assistance of 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 Gulf of Finland, and answer the question of what exceptional significance it had for German forces in the Baltic. It’s not easy to talk about this, but perhaps it was this small battle for Tyuters, lost by Soviet troops at the very beginning of the war, that made it possible for the Germans not only to maintain a long blockade of Leningrad, but also delayed our victory.
The first shelters and burial places were dug here back in the time of the Varangians. IN tsarist times built artillery positions and gun magazines. The Finnish army, having received Tyuters from Russia, began a large construction of fortifications. Before the great war, Soviet troops also built their own fortifications - aboveground and underground. There is an interesting inscription on a German map from the Abwehr archives. It states that there should be 15 underground structures on the island. The last joint Soviet-Swedish mission to clear mines on the island discovered six bunkers on it. The remaining nine were never found. Maybe they didn’t search carefully, or maybe they hid these bunkers with skill? For how long?
There are many versions about the purpose of the mysterious bunkers. The most interesting thing is, of course, that the valuables looted by the Nazis were kept here. After all, 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, Tsarskoe Selo, Gatchina and Strelna - many treasures and art objects were never found after the war either in Germany or anywhere else. Why don't the Germans keep them here, under the protection of granite dungeons and powerful fortifications Tyuters?
During the war, the perimeter of the island was braided with several rows of barbed wire. And mines - tens of thousands. And then - guns and machine guns point blank. Our troops landed here. It seems to me that I should step on here open place, under dagger fire, through a minefield - impossible, hopeless. If the cruisers and battleships of the Baltic Fleet had approached and mixed up the German defense with the fire of their twelve-inch guns, the landing would have succeeded. But the tragedy was that the ships of the fleet could navigate these waters only if the island was occupied by ours.
Another version: in these dungeons the Germans had a factory for the production and supply of ammunition. This, of course, is not the Amber Room, although there would be little left of amber in the dampness here.
In general, some kind of shelters or caches are often found here. And almost everywhere there are traces of human presence. But they are clearly not up to anything serious. For weapons production, larger sizes are needed, and for storing valuables - paintings, sculptures - special conditions are needed.
An expedition to Bolshoi Tyuters is a journey in time, not space. Since September 18, 1944, when the Germans surrendered their positions and fled, the island has remained untouched - completely covered with gunpowder, spent cartridges and cocked mines
On September 1, 1943, a German patrol discovered a gap in the wire fence. There was also a rubber boat nearby. It was clear that at night a Soviet reconnaissance group had penetrated onto the island of Bolshoy Tyuters, where the Wehrmacht artillery had settled. The entire garrison was put on alert. 800 people combed a modest 8 square meters. km of the island in search of several saboteurs. Soon their hiding place was found: beds, supplies of food and medicine, cartridges, parts from the radio station.
The Germans never managed to catch our soldiers. We had to quickly change defensive positions and build new fortifications. However, according to the logbook of the Soviet submarine M-96, from which the troops landed on Tyuters, the soldiers did not return back on board either. Their fate remained a mystery.
Today Bolshoi Tyuters is crowded and noisy. Sappers, geologists, volunteers and journalists work here, busily gassing up trucks and pickups, and a helicopter takes off and lands. But in the evening, when the work subsides and twilight falls on the island, it seems as if Soviet intelligence officers are still hiding somewhere nearby, in the forest thickets or behind the nearest stone. A German search group will appear from behind the hill, rattling weapons. Time seemed to stand still on Bolshoi Tyuters. The island looks as if the war ended only yesterday.
ISLANDS OF THE GULF OF FINNISH
Bolshoi Tyuters was not always uninhabited. The first archaeological finds on the island date back to the 6th century. Since the 16th century, the island was inhabited by peoples of the Finno-Ugric group. The route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” passed past the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The waters near Bolshoy Tyuters had a bad reputation: piracy flourished here and ships were lost. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, there was a Finnish village with a population of more than 400 inhabitants on the island.
Brown dunes
Bolshoi Tyuters is a small uninhabited island, only 2.5 km across. On the western side, sharp rocks bristle in Karelian style. To the east lie sand dunes. The landscape here reminds Curonian Spit, favored by photographers. Opens from the crest of the dune scenic view, especially at dawn. But then scraps of barbed wire come into view. You begin to notice the pillars along which the fence was stretched. Looking down, you realize: the sand is literally mixed with “straws” of artillery gunpowder and hundreds of cartridges.
On this same dune, until last year, stood a kind of calling card of Bolshoy Tyuters - an 88-mm anti-aircraft gun FlaK, aimed at the sky. It was covered with a two-meter layer of sand, with one trunk sticking out. Last year, the gun was dug up, transported by tractor to the bay, and from there sent by boat to the mainland.
If not for this anti-aircraft gun and her 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 Bolshoi Tyuters. In March 1942, after almost three months of heroic defense of Gogland, a detachment of Red Army soldiers, not receiving reinforcements from the mainland in time, was forced to retreat. Gogland was occupied by the Finns, Bolshoi Tyuters by the Germans. Attempts to return the islands were unsuccessful, and the sea exit from besieged Leningrad was closed. Coastal artillery prevented surface ships from leaving the bay, and stretched 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. When they left, they mined the island and blew up almost everything that could be of any value.
What can I say! Everything that the Nazis managed to get to was ruined,” the volunteers sigh, showing a bullet-ridden bucket, “and you haven’t seen the boilers of the field kitchens yet.” We will take them out along with the garbage. The Germans threw grenades inside. There's 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 to amateur searchers. We got to Bolshoi Tyuters by helicopter. Of course, there is no landing pad on the island, but this is not a problem for the military Mi-8: it lands on a cleared spot right next to the army tents. A little further away there is a camp. The tents of the Russian Geographical Society are bright, touristy, not as large as those of the military. There is nothing like roads here either. Army trucks transport soldiers and volunteers to their work sites. As a high-speed transport increased comfort- pickups Volkswagen Amarok.
On a sloping sandy shore equipped with a pontoon berth for a landing boat. Not far from it rises a mountain of rusty cylinders. In Germany, each artillery shell was stored and transported in a separate metal tube (Red Army soldiers transported ammunition in wooden boxes). There are several hundred of these tubes here, and there are tens of thousands of them on the island. In the same pile are curls of barbed wire and fragments of equipment beyond repair.
Volunteers collected all this during their day 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.
Apart from the enclave Kaliningrad, the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland are the westernmost point of our country. One might say, a 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 are superfluous in this landscape.
Island clearing is not mechanical gathering at all. Here you have to work with your head more than with your hands, and you can only make a mistake once.
Quite often, “gifts” of those times come out of the ground, complains one of the sappers, mostly shells. Sometimes mines. You better not go behind this ribbon just yet.
One morning we were informed about new find, they put us in pickup trucks and brought them to the place. Searchers discovered a surviving armory with mines. We kept a respectful distance while the sappers did their work. 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, they were storing in the warehouse 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 living things within a radius of tens of meters. Somehow, without saying a word, we all decided not to stray from the fully explored paths.
Field work
EXPEDITION "GOGLAND"
The complex expedition "Gogland" began work in the fall of 2012. The expedition area is 14 outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The largest of them is Gogland with an area of 21 square meters. km, located 180 km west of St. Petersburg. The second largest island is Bolshoi Tyuters, where the main work will be carried out this season. It is also planned to explore the islands of Sescar and Sommers. The team has more than a hundred members. Among them are servicemen of the 90th separate special search battalion and experts Russian Geographical Society: archaeologists, 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 the work of searching, identifying and restoring military weapons, establishing the identities of the soldiers buried here, as well as clearing the island of debris.
Dissolved names
Arriving at another site cleared of mines, we saw the remains of three German servicemen. They were raised to the surface to be reburied in a more accessible place, in a military cemetery near the village of Sologubovka, Leningrad Region. As part of a joint program with the People's Union of Germany to care for war graves, about 55 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers have already found their final resting place there.
Judging by the surviving fragments of the uniform, we were faced with soldiers of the Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and ground forces. The sailors' buttons have an anchor on them, the pilots' buttons have an abbreviation LW, the infantry has smooth buttons. The discovery of a well-preserved personal dog tag of a serviceman is considered a great success: over 70 years, many of them have sunk too deep into the soil.
Hastily leaving Bolshoi Tyuters, the Germans blew up most of guns However, a significant part of the weapons remained in excellent condition. During previous expeditions, restorers removed 88-mm anti-aircraft guns FlaK, 20-mm Swiss Oerlikons, as well as the rare Bofors small-caliber anti-aircraft gun made in Switzerland.
Most of the equipment was taken from the island last year, but some remains. The rusty skeleton of a large-caliber cannon has grown into the very edge of the picturesque rock. Massive and unshakable, but without a barrel, it resembles a huge lock without a key. Castle from besieged Leningrad.
Echoes of War
On paper, the war ends with the signing of a surrender agreement. In reality, everything is much more complicated. It is necessary to bury the dead, collect debris throughout the vast country, and remove the burden from nature. Questions need to be answered.
For example, the head of the Gogland expedition, Artem Khutorskoy, told us about a Red Army plane, which, according to archival sources, was shot down over the island. They have been trying to find him for several years. In 2015, duralumin fragments of the fuselage skin were discovered. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine from them what kind of plane it was and how it ended up over Bolshoi Tyuters.
Artem told us this story before leaving. And a couple of weeks later, news agencies reported: wreckage of a Soviet Pe-2 bomber had been found on Bolshoi Tyuters Island and the names of the crew members had been established. Commander Mikhail Kazakov, gunner-radio operator Arseny 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 submarine M-96.
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 the answer to this question will appear.
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 it received the playful nickname “Pawn”. In Finland it was called “Pekka-Emelya”, and according to NATO classification the aircraft is called a “deer” - Buck.
FlaK
88 mm anti-aircraft gun, also known as "eight-eight". Due to the high initial velocity of the projectile, it was used not only to combat aircraft, but also as an anti-tank and anti-ship weapon. Considered the most famous weapon of World War II.
"Oerlikon"
20 mm anti-aircraft gun with a rate of fire of 450 rounds per minute(for comparison: FlaK- up to 20 rounds 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
Bouncing anti-personnel mine was developed based on Schrapnell-Mine during the First World War, hence the name - S-mine. If old model jumped out of the ground on command from the remote control, the new one was triggered 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 thank the Volkswagen company for organizing the trip. Amarok is an iron car that can handle Big Tyuters.
