Alexander Sibiryakov (ship)
 Soviet postage stamp with picture of ship
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The Alexander Sibirjakow was a 7.6 cm cannon armed icebreaker and research ship of the Soviet Union . In 1932, the ship was the first to make the historic journey through the Northeast Passage .
Passage of the Northeast Passage
The ship made its first passage through the Northeast Passage in 1932 under Captain Vladimir Voronin (1890–1952) and expedition leader Otto Schmidt . On July 28, 1932, the ship set out from Arkhangelsk to reach Vladivostok via the Northern Sea Route .
The fate of the Cheliuskin in 1934 , who was crushed by the ice masses in the Chukchi Sea during the same task , proved how demanding this sea route is . Since the icebreaker voyage of the Alexander Sibirjakow was able to prove the principle usability of the Northern Sea Route , the steamer Tscheljuskin was sent on the voyage on July 12, 1933 to test the passability of this route for ordinary merchant ships.
The Sibirjakow had traveled the northern sea route in a west-east direction, in the opposite direction the icebreaker Fyodor Lütke mastered the route for the first time in 1934 under Captain Nikolai Nikolayev (1897-1958) in one shipping period.
The German Baltic Ernst Krenkel was the second radio operator on this trip. Because of the low density of stations in the far north of the Soviet Union, Krenkel had difficulty forwarding the required regular position reports to potential recipients.
Downfall
The icebreaker was sunk by the German cruiser Admiral Scheer on August 27, 1942 as part of the Wunderland operation .
On August 25, 1942, the German cruiser Admiral Scheer met the Arctic freighter Sibirjakow, northwest of the Nordenskiöld archipelago . The Sibiryakov came from Port Dikson and was in the process of installing radio stations on remote islands to improve the weather forecasts in the Kara Sea area .
This encounter with the Alexander Sibirjakow as a single sailing ship endangered the entire operational plan of the Wunderland company, as it was based on the complete secrecy of the presence of Admiral Scheer in these waters. On board the Sibiryakov , the identity of the foreign warship was requested several times by radio, because the ship's command was aware that there were no warships of the then very small Soviet Northern Fleet in these waters . The Admiral Scheer responded as a deception with light signals Tuscaloosa . The name belonged to the US heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa , which had anchored in Arkhangelsk some time earlier . The German ship set the US flag and only showed the Siberyakov the bow of the ship to make identification more difficult. The Siberyakov was asked to stop using the radio and, in particular, to stop radio communications with Port Dikson. At that time, communication between ships within sight was usually carried out with flag or light signals. However, the request to interrupt radio communications with Port Dikson was very unusual. On the Sibiryakov , people remained extremely suspicious and wanted to avoid meeting the warship. The Sibirjakow therefore headed for a group of islands to find protection there. However, the Admiral Scheer was more than four times as fast and cut her way. She hoisted the German imperial war flag and opened fire.
The first volley was highly aimed and tore down the radio antennas. The aim of the attack was to board an intact Soviet ship in order to steal documents about ice behavior and ship maps of future targets in the Arctic Ocean. The party secretary of the Alexander Sibiryakov managed, under fire, to climb the antenna mast and install a temporary antenna. The radio operator could use them to send an emergency call to Port Dikson. He wanted to warn the port and all ships in the Arctic Ocean about the German warship. The radio operator was unable to get an acknowledgment from Port Dikson.
In the brief skirmish with the far superior Admiral Scheer , Sibiryakov , which was only provisionally armed with hopelessly inferior small land artillery, was quickly and severely damaged and unable to maneuver. The makeshift guns of the Sibiryakov were only suitable for chasing off attacking submarines, but they were not suitable for combat with a heavy cruiser. The armor of the enemy Admiral Scheer was between 3 cm (deck) and 14 cm (front armor) of armor steel. The old freighter Sibiryakov had nothing even remotely equivalent to oppose the six 28 cm cannons .
Many crew members and civilians on the icebreaker were killed by the gunfire of the Admiral Scheer . The situation became hopeless and the crew opened the bottom valves before the ship could be boarded. In this way, the Soviet occupation successfully tried to prevent important navigation documents and research results from getting into the hands of the Germans. The crew tried to get into the remaining boats, but almost all of them were destroyed by the bombardment. The radio operator carried the seriously wounded captain, who wanted to stay on board, to one of the lifeboats.
The approximately 20 survivors of the 105 crew members and civilians aboard the Sibiryakov , including women and children, from the only lifeboat successfully launched were taken on board by the attacker Admiral Scheer . A launch of the Admiral Scheer opened fire on the people floating in the water . They were all killed by the crew of the Admiral Scheer . The only survivor was Pawel Wawilow, who was able to save himself to an island in the Belucha archipelago with the dog on board. As he was familiar with the extreme conditions in the north, he managed to stay alive without aids for over a month until he was rescued on September 28th.
On board the Admiral Scheer , the prisoners refused to testify. Nobody ever wanted to have been to Port Dikson and allegedly there were no officers, helmsmen or radio operators among the rescued. Even before the survivors were taken on board, radio messages arrived from Port Dikson, warning the Soviet merchant ships of the German warship. The Soviet convoys then immediately turned on north course, which could be seen very quickly on board the Admiral Scheer by radio direction finding . The large Soviet icebreakers brought the convoys into the relatively safe drift ice, where Admiral Scheer and the submarines could not follow them. When it met the icebreaker Alexander Sibirjakow , the “Operation Wonderland” of the Navy began to fail.
The prisoners of the Siberyakov , among them the captain Anatoli Kacharava, the party secretary Sarajev and the radio operator Sharschawin, were transported to Kiel. They were finally interned in various intermediate camps in the Stutthof concentration camp 37 km east of Danzig. Here the radio operator was betrayed to the Gestapo by a crew member from another ship by revealing his identity . The radio operator withstood all interrogations and was shot by Soviet tank troops two months before the camp was liberated. The captain and many of the other prisoners survived the concentration camp imprisonment. After the war they sailed again in the Arctic Ocean on different ships.
ship
The steamer Sibirjakow was built as a whaler in Scotland in 1908. It was acquired by Russia in 1914. The ship was named after the Russian polar explorer Alexander Sibirjakow and had 1,348 GRT. It was steam powered and was used as an Arctic freighter.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported in 1960 that the icebreaker had been in the Lloyd’s register up to this point . The reason was a formal mistake by Lloyds.
Footnotes
- ↑ CQ DL 1/1997 of the German Amateur Radio Club
- ↑ The Ghost Fleet . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1960, pp. 54 & 56-57 ( online ).