Suddenly a profound roar shook the harbor and the sky glistened with stars of every color. It was the fleet stock of signal rockets, going up in one heavenly shower.
Panteleyev now was aboard the Pikker at the wharf. It was decided to move the Military Council to the Minsk in stages, beginning at 4 A.M. Panteleyev was in the second echelon, due to go at 7 A.M. The last would leave at 8 A.M., headed by General Moskalenko.
Time dragged on. The night grew more raw and cold. The Germans were almost at the entrance to the Minna piers. The crossfire died down. Panteleyev checked his reports. Nearly 23,000 persons had been loaded aboard the evacuation ships, as well as 66,000 tons of freight, mostly military materials.5
At 4 A.M. the Military Council was sent to the Kirov. Two cutters stayed behind, a little gunboat for Panteleyev and a torpedo boat for Moskalenko. The harbor was empty and quiet. The docks stood deserted. Slowly it began to get light. At 7 A.M. Panteleyev bade good-bye to Moskalenko and took off with his deputy, Captain N. A. Pitersky, and Commissar L. V. Sere-brennikov. The wind was fresh, and the cutter threw up a splashing wave. Soon Panteleyev was aboard the Minsk, relaxing in a warm cabin and drinking coffee.
* * *
1 The staff went back ashore July 22 in order to boost morale in Tallinn. (Smirnov, op, eh., p. 31.) Tributs proposed moving his flag headquarters to the Luga gulf, 120 miles to the east but permission was refused. (Kuznetsov, Oktyabr, No. 8, August, 1968, pp. 154–155.
2 The decision to unify the defense under Admiral Tributs came much too late, in the opinion of Smirnov (op. cit., p. 36),
3 It was heavy guns that enabled the Russians to hold Tallinn as long as they did. In all, 11488 shells were expended in the defense, 7,505 by shore and railroad batteries. (Yu. Perechnev, Yu. Vinogradov, Na Strazhe Morskikh Gorizontov, p. 152.)
4 The figure is given as “more than 3,000” by one writer (Achkasov, Voyenno-htori-cheskii Zhurnal, No. 10, October, 1966, p. 19) and as 4,000 by another (Orlov, op. cit., p. 134).
5 This is Panteleyev’s figure and probably is correct. The figures are given as more than 20,000 persons and 15,000 tons of materials by Orlov (op. cit., p. 135).
23 ♦ The Russian Dunkirk
THE 190 SHIPS OF THE TALLINN EVACUATION HAD BEEN divided into four convoys. They formed up off Tallinn, waiting for orders to proceed. Desultory German fire splashed toward the ships. At 11:30 the signal to be prepared to proceed at noon was run up. Ahead of the convoy stretched an odyssey of 220 miles, of which 150 miles lay between two coasts occupied by the Germans and 75 miles were heavily mined. German airports were in easy range of almost the whole course. No Soviet air cover could be expected before the ships got to the immediate vicinity of Kronstadt.
Shortly after noon the first ships got under way—nine troop transports, including the Virona, and an escort of three submarines, five trawlers, five mine sweepers and five coastal cutters. The torpedo boat Surovy (Grim) commanded the escort. From the Minsk, Panteleyev could see how jammed were the transports, not a free spot on deck. They waddled along behind the tiny trawlers like turtles after frogs. Next came Convoy No. 2, headed by the Kazakhstan, guarded by the gunboat Moskva,
The signal officer reported: “The Virona has raised anchor. . . . The Kazakhstan has raised anchor. . . .”
The first and second convoys had just begun to move out of the harbor when the first of the German contact mines were touched off.
“It’s begun!” someone on the bridge of the Minsk exclaimed.
Admiral Panteleyev kept his binoculars fixed on the shore. At about 1:35 P.M. the red flag on the ancient tower of Long Herman fluttered down and the tricolor of bourgeois Estonia was run up in its place.
At 2 P.M. Convoy No. 4 began to move. It was composed of nine ships, including self-propelled barges and tugs. It was protected by two cutters and nine trawlers.
Convoy No. 2 started moving again at 2:50 P.M.—ten large transports, four mine sweepers, nine trawlers and four gunboats.
Twenty minutes later came Convoy No. 3, the last and largest—nine big transports, including the Luga, the Tobol, the Lucerne, the Balkhash, the Asumaa, the Kumari and the Vtoraya Pyatiletka.
It was protected by five gunboats and cutters and eight trawlers. The two transports which rescued the garrison from Paldiski joined this convoy.
The channel was clear. The ships drew off to the north and further on, at the very horizon, moved to the east. Now that the transports had gotten away General Moskalenko touched off the last depots at the water’s edge. The Amur was sunk at one channel entrance, the transport Gasma at another and the tug Mardus at the eastern approach to Minna Harbor.
Under the direction of Vice Admiral Yu. F. Rail, the mine layers Bury a (Storm), Sneg (Snow) and Tsiklon (Cyclone) planted mine barrages around the harbor and in the channel. Finally, at 4 P.M. the Baltic Fleet itself raised anchor. Five fleet trawlers led the procession. Then came the Kirov, bearing the fleet commander’s flag, followed by the Leningrad, a squadron of mine layers, submarines and other warships. In all there were 28 fighting ships in the contingent, including rescue boats and icebreakers.
Not until 5:15 P.M. did the Minsk leave the harbor under German shrapnel fire. It headed a detachment of some 21 naval vessels. The Minsk steamed out, allowing an interval of twelve cable lengths behind her escorting trawlers. Finally, the rear guard of 13 ships under Admiral Rail departed at 9:15 P.M.
The hegira to Kronstadt was under way—a line of ships that stretched out over fifteen miles.
At 6 P.M. the dinner bell sounded on the Minsk, The steward laid the officers’ mess with the usual white linen and gleaming crystal. But Panteleyev remained on theimdge. Already over the long line of transports stretching into the horizon the German air attack had begun, and the first ship had gone down, the transport Ella.
Aboard the Virona it was also the mess hour. Mikhailovsky, his notebook in hand, sat down at the long table. Among those waiting on table was a young girl with black braids, sensitive face, blue eyes. She looked to Mikhailovsky like a girl graduate. After dinner everyone went on deck to watch the German planes. The girl, her hair neatly braided, stood next to Mikhailovsky.
“How strange war begins,” she said. “So unexpected. I just don’t understand anything.”
“Are you from Leningrad?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “and I happened to be in Tallinn quite by accident.”
They talked a while, then the ship moved on to the east. The islands of Naissaar and Aegna lay far behind. Again the German planes attacked. Nine struck at a tanker and a steamer. A smoke screen concealed the results. Suddenly the cruiser Kirov steamed ahead with its protective cover of trawlers. Fog began to spread over the sea.
They were coming into heavily mined waters now. The ships put out paravanes to touch them off. About suppertime a fierce new air attack was launched. The Vironcfs antiaircraft guns chattered ceaselessly. The ship swung wide and zigzagged madly. Wave after wave of German JU-88’s plunged down, attacking singly and then in trios.
Passengers began to run from side to side, but the stern base voice of Professor Tsekhnovitser halted them: “Comrades! Be calm! Nothing is going to happen to us. Panic is the most dangerous thing!”
The whistle of falling bombs filled the air. Suddenly Mikhailovsky felt the ship shudder. The deck under his feet seemed to rise up. The next moment he was under water, sinking to the bottom. The end. So it seemed. Then he rose. Blood was flowing from his forehead and into his left eye. Bullets flew through the water. He turned on his back and saw planes in the sky. They seemed to zero in on him. He ducked his head under water. When he came up again, the sky was clear. The sound of motors was fading into the distance. He felt something in the water—something firm and cold. He turned about and saw a body floating, the skull crushed and the face a mass of pulp. Only by the black braids did he recognize the schoolgirl from Leningrad who had found herself in Tallinn by sheer chance.
Mikhailovsky swam away. He swam
for a while, then turned on his back and rested. He was miles from shore. All around him he heard cries for help. He saw a box float by. It had on it the letters: “Theater: Baltic Fleet.” He grabbed for it, but had not the strength. The sun was setting and its red rays ran like tongues across the sky. He saw no people. Darkness—that is the worst, he thought. He grew cold. Suddenly, almost on top of him, a cutter appeared. Strong hands reached out and pulled him from the sea.
Admiral Panteleyev witnessed the Virona tragedy. He saw the ship, standing without movement, listing to the right. Over it rose a heavy cloud of oily smoke. The rescue ship Saturn made its way to the Virona to bring it under tow. The gunboat Surovy stood by, and the transport Alev hove to. But disaster followed on disaster. First, the Saturn was mined and sunk, then the Virona and finally the Alev and two more transports.
A sailor on the gunboat Sneg saw the Virona sink. The passengers were mostly staff of the Baltic Fleet, officers’ wives, propaganda workers, newspapermen, Party officials. The quarterdeck was crowded, but in the sea the sailor could perceive the dark figures of people swimming. Across the watery expanse he heard the faint sound of the Internationale. The crowd on the deck was singing, and the stirring strains rolled over the waves. Then the sailor heard the thin crack of shots and the yellow flash of flame as officers took their own lives in the last moment before the ship disappeared below the waves.
The Sneg picked up dozens of survivors. Some of the women had lost all their clothes. Some of the men were hysterical. Later another gunboat picked up a woman who had clung to a German mine for hours before she was taken off. She was a commander’s wife. She had sung the Internationale with the others. But she put no bullet in her head. She simply leaped into the water and eighteen hours later was rescued. Anatoly Tarasenkov jumped from the ship in full uniform, wearing his greatcoat, his pockets filled with manuscripts and notes, his pistol in his belt. He joined a circle of passengers who were holding hands and attempting to support each other with the help of life belts. Soon his limbs grew stiff, and he slowly swam off. How long he had been swimming he did not know when a tug appeared and he was hauled aboard.
As the tug plowed through the murky waters, he heard the cry again and again: “Save us! Help! Help!”
The tragedy of the Virona shook those who saw it. A commissar on the Sneg said bitterly: “Did you ever think we would drown like blind cats in a puddle? Where were our planes?” He was bitter at the commander of the Kirov for steaming proudly ahead, as though trailing his cape to the Germans. Why, he demanded, did not the commander go ahead with torpedo boats and organize aid?
The poet Yuri Inge watched the Virona sink from the foredeck of the icebreaker K. Voldemars. Inge was thirty-five years old, a tall, straight man with serious gray eyes and blond hair which was only beginning to darken a little. Vissarion Sayanov, his fellow poet, thought he looked like a Scandinavian.
“What bastards!” a friend heard Inge exclaim as, notebook in hand, he tried to jot down impressions for the poem already taking shape in his mind. Every life preserver on board the Voldemars was thrown to the struggling victims of the Virona. A moment later the Voldemars itself was hit and sank immediately.
Inge’s wife, Yelena Vechtomova, knew of the tragedy as soon as the survivors got back to Kronstadt. A young boatswain named Virchik said, “I saw him almost at the end.” But no one wanted to believe in Inge’s death, and the letters he had written Yelena kept coming by slow military post week after week: “Good morning, Alenushka. It’s a perfectly beautiful morning . . .”; “Broushtein has come and he brought two letters from you . . .”; “I’ve been to the post office and there are no letters . . .”; “How is Serezhenka? . . .”; “I’ve bought you some blue wool gloves.” It was almost too much for Yelena Vechtomova.
The losses of the Virona were great: the writers F. Knyazev and Ye. Sobolevsky, Professor Tsekhnovitser, the poet Vasya Skrulev, the Pravda photographer Misha Prekhner. The elderly novelist and revolutionary president of Estonia, Johannes Lauristin, was lost on the Volodarsky.
No witness of the tragedies ever erased the scene from his memory. On the distant horizon the lagging ships of the rear guard loomed as dark shadows silhouetted against the rose-and-black sky where Tallinn lay burning. Enormous plumes of dense smoke poured upward and curved inward over the heavens, reaching toward the enactments of horror in the nearer sea. In the total blackout the burning carcasses of sinking ships glowed like campfires in a watery desert. Occasionally the sea would be blindingly lightened as the thunder of a torpedo or mine sent another ship to its end. The antiaircraft guns of the warships chattered ceaselessly at German dive bombers which swarmed in for the kill, their bomb paths illuminated by the flames of vessels already afire. The sea boiled with wreckage amid which swam survivors, some clinging to planks, others staying afloat with the aid of life preservers. The few lifeboats were loaded to the gunwale. Patrol boats and submarines picked their way through the waters, saving as many of the swimming men and women as they could. All around was the shuddering roar of mines, being exploded by the paravanes of the surviving ships. Within one hour the Minsk had touched off a dozen. The Kirov exploded five in half an hour.
As the ships neared Cape Uminda-Nina, they came under shellfire from German shore batteries. Coveys of German attack boats launched torpedoes amid the stricken convoys.
Just after 8 P.M. the submarine S-j, which was escorting the cruiser Kirov, struck a mine and disappeared under the water. A few moments later the right paravane of the Kirov caught a mine and, to the horror of the crew, began to draw it aboard the cruiser. Sailors managed to cut loose the paravane at the last moment, preventing an explosion aboard the cruiser. While the Kirov struggled with the faulty paravane, another escort, the mine layer Gordy, blew up at 8:36 P.M., followed in a few moments by the Yakov Sverdlov, which took a torpedo aimed at the Kirov. Many sailors were drowned. The flagman on the Kirov’s lookout kept up a continuous call of mine sweepers and minor ships sinking in the puree of mines. Another mine caught in the Kirov’s paravane just as a German torpedo boat dashed in for the kill. The torpedo boat was beaten off by the Kirov’s main guns. Simultaneously shore batteries opened up, but the cruiser silenced them and finally won a moment’s respite when the mine layer Smetly covered it with a smoke screen.
It was much the same on the destroyer leader, Minsk. At 9:40 P.M. a mine exploded in one of the Minsk’s paravanes. Vice Admiral Panteleyev estimated that the ship took on 650 tons of water. The mine layer Skory came to the aid of the Minsk as it lay in the water without movement. The Skory and a tugboat took the Minsk in tow, but were sunk by a mine. The five base trawlers at the head of the Minsk detachment did not notice what had happened and steamed ahead, leaving only one trawler with the Minsk. Without escort amid waters filled with mines, Vice Admiral Panteleyev ordered his protective detachment and convoy to cast anchor. He did not resume course until after daylight the next day.
The rear guard was almost obliterated. About 10 P.M. the guard ships, Sneg and Tsiklon, were sunk and twenty minutes later the squadron leader, Kalinin, was lost off Cape Uminda-Nina. The Kalinin stayed afloat for an hour, and most of its wounded and personnel were removed. But at the same time the mine layers Artem and Volodarsky went down. Vice Admiral Yu. F. Rail, commander of the detachment, suffered severe wounds. The transports Luga, Everitis and Yarvamaa were sunk.
In view of the density of the mines, the terrible losses already suffered and the inability to cope with the hazards in the night, the fleet commander ordered all ships to anchor until daylight. Patrols were set up to ward off torpedo attacks.
What were the Tallinn evacuation losses? Of the 29 large transports which left Tallinn, 25 were lost, 3 were beached on Hogland Island and only 1 reached Leningrad. One of the three ships beached on Hogland, the Saule, later was towed to Leningrad. In all, the Baltic Merchant (noncombat) Fleet lost 38 ships in the Gulf of Riga and the Irben Strait. More than 10,000 lives were lost. In addition, 16 warships, mos
tly gunboats, mine sweepers and cutters, were sunk and 6 small transports were sunk. Among the great ships which went down were the Ivan Papanin, carrying 3,000 troops; the V tor ay a Pyatiletka with about 3,000; the Luga with 300 wounded; the Balkhash and the Tobol, each carrying several hundred. Of a total of 67 non-Navy ships, 34 were lost; of something over 100 naval craft, 87.5 percent were saved along with about 18,000 personnel.1
The Kazakhstan, carrying 3,600 troops, including 500 wounded, was the largest transport in the convoy. It was captained by Vyacheslav Kaliteyev, one of the most experienced Baltic skippers. He had been captain of the steamer Cooperation, which brought to Russia children of the Spanish Republicans. He had taken the Kazakhstan on several dangerous trips through the Arctic, and he had captained his boat through the Baltic from the beginning of the war.
The Kazakhstan took its place in the first convoy to leave Tallinn. Kaliteyev, was on the bridge. The ship quickly drew German attention. First there were submarine attacks and then wave after wave of JU-88’s struck. A stick of bombs fell harmlessly in the water. Then one struck. It hit a glancing blow at the bridge, killing the commander of the antiaircraft battery, the signalman and all those on the upper bridge.
The Kazakhstan was left without command. It lost speed and dropped out of the convoy. More than a hundred bombs fell around the ship. Flames broke out. The decks swarmed with hundreds of persons, most of whom had never before been at sea. Soldiers and passengers were pressed into service to fight the fire. For nine hours the battle raged before the flames were brought under control. Only seven members of the thirty-five-man crew survived. Headed by Second Boatswain L. N. Zagurko, they managed to get steam up and steered the Kazakhstan to a lonely spit of land called Vaindlo or Stenskjiner, about 500 yards long and 150 yards wide. There stood a lighthouse, a round cast-iron tower, painted white, manned by a small detachment of sailors. It was located about sixteen miles off the coast, between Naissaar and Gogland. The passengers were landed and picked up by sloops and small boats, which brought them to Kronstadt. Then, lightened of its load, the Kazakhstan, still under the command of its seven-man crew, was navigated, without charts, with field telephones connecting the bridge and the engine room, to Kronstadt. It got there September 1. All seven members of the crew won Orders of the Red Banner for their achievement.
The 900 Days Page 35
