[AAR] So Far, So Good - A Soviet Sub in the Arctic

[CCIP]

Q: Did the Norwegians surrender?

That’s the thing, no they didn’t! Instead, their response was to open up on us with machineguns that were apparently hidden on deck. That completely threw me off. I cursed, ordered full speed on the diesels, and maneuvered to avoid the fire, as our deck gun crew dodged behind the rubka [conning tower] to avoid the bullets.





Seaman Tikhonov, on the 45mm gun, opened fire, but was wounded in the arm by a ricochet. We had to drag him off the deck into the hatch.





Luckily, it didn’t continue for long. We soon recovered our composure, while their fire had trouble finding us. After two hits from the “sotka” [100mm] and at least one from the “sorokopyatka” [45mm], the enemy ship was on fire and we knocked out their searchlight.





We kept firing for the next five minutes, and after eight hits from the “sotka”, there was a dull explosion on board the Norwegian merchant, which then started going down. Besides the lightly-wounded Tikhonov, we had no other casualties or damage, save for a few nicks left by the enemy bullets.







Q: You didn’t stop to check the lifeboats?

No, we did not - we did not stay around and I’m not even sure there were lifeboats out there. It was a freezing cold night. Regardless, that whole situation made us quite angry at Norwegian-flagged ships - they were not supposed to be firing at us, we thought, and I think that left a bad taste for us. The confusion and hostility created by this encounter resulted in a bad situation later on during the same patrol, which ultimately drove a wedge between me and our politruk [political commissar] Khokhryakov...







To be continued...

[ReallyDedPoet]

Continued great work CCIP

[CCIP]

Q: What happened with the politruk and you?

Well, here’s the story. Our next contact with any ship was not for another 10 days, until the 12th of December. Now, when you have a boat patrolling uneventfully in a cold, freezing, hostile sea, you have to keep your crew busy, warm, and motivated enough - and that’s where a good politruk comes into his own. Khokhryakov was a good politruk.



As I said, he was a short, energetic, grumpy man - very no-nonsense, very keen to get at the enemy and make a difference in the war. He was our chief bureaucrat, our journalist and poster designer, our disc jockey and censor, and sometimes a little bit of an inquisitor. When the cold, weary, seasick crew grumbled, he was always there; at regular intervals, he’d do rounds of every station on the boat and offer to lend a hand. Some found him to be a bit of a nuisance, but most appreciated his input, especially on the slow days.



After that first encounter with the Norwegians, our next 10 days in patrol area No.2A were slow days. Sometimes it snowed, sometimes it was just freezing cold. Luckily, Khokhryakov had ripe material to work with in his role as information manager and motivator on the boat - these were anything but slow days in the war. The Red Army had just begun a counteroffensive against the Germans across the Moscow front on December 5th, and soon reports from the front were flooding our radio waves with very optimistic news. Town after town liberated. German units destroyed or pushed back. And elsewhere, from Rostov to Tikhvin, our troops were also defeating the enemy. There was a real glimmer of hope in this war at last!





The Allies were there too. We listened with interest about reports of the British fighting successfully at Tobruk. We liked the British here in the Northern Fleet, and we’d got to know their sailors personally - and their submarines were now on regular rotation in our waters as well, often coming to Polyarnyi for resupply. We greeted them as honoured guests, as we usually do in Russia, with good strong drink and even better chase.





Then on December 7th, news from America - Pearl Harbour! We listened with a lot of interest. Our imaginations ran a bit wild there since, unlike the news from our own front, information was scant. We didn’t know the Americans well, but by then we were eating their so-called “Spam” that was starting to come in with the lend-lease convoys, so that was something. And we certainly knew the Japanese - many of us had fathers and grandfathers who fought against them in 1905. We thought this was another Port-Arthur, and couldn’t believe the Americans didn’t see it coming.



Eventually though, between remembering heroes of pre-revolutionary [i.e. pre-1917] wars and sympathizing with a capitalist power, we all started getting on Khokhryakov’s nerves and he’d started sidetracking us into more politically-safe discussion. Like why we’d be leading the world to victory by showing them the right communist way, and why capitalists might be with us against the fascists but we still needed to set them straight….



To be continued...

[CCIP]

Q: Was there a lot of communist propaganda and indoctrination on board?

Again, to a point. We certainly had party activity, like a good Soviet boat. On the D-2, we had 7 party members; 34 VLKSM members [communist youth organization, aka. Komsomol], including myself; and 11 of the “party-less” - mostly junior ratings, but also including our seasoned head of watch Kislayev, as well as the ship’s doctor. I should say, nobody thought of anyone else as better or worse for their political status - as division commander Gadzhiev said, the Soviet submarine was a model of equality among men. There was no tension on the boat, and no divisions or opposing camps among us - at least up to a point. All the same, it was one of Khokhryakov’s stated goals to reduce the number of “party-less” to as close to zero as possible.



Honestly, most of the political activity boiled down to what every Soviet working person was used to, whether they worked on a submarine in the Arctic, a factory somewhere in the Urals, or a cotton-producing kolkhoz [collective farm] in Uzbekistan: it was comprised of a little motivation, a little information, a little political doctrine, a little general education, and a lot of committee and sub-committee and sub-sub-committee meetings of every breed, purpose and flavour.



We had those on the boat too, of course. Khokhryakov would chair the meetings of the party members, supervise the Komsomol [communist youth] membership meetings, have arbitration hearings and meetings on proposed policy changes. The sailors would gather for these, listen, affirm, vote - willingly or reluctantly - on the smallest and most irrelevant of details every small thing. Almost everybody on the boat was at least a deputy chairman of something. Deputy chairman of grain product rationing for example. We had a separate committee for bread rations, although all actual bread on the boat was usually gone two weeks into the patrol. But they’d keep meeting and reporting, meeting and reporting.



Khokhryakov always lent an air of importance to any committee. Every meeting had its chairman, every chairman had his deputy, every discussion had diligently-kept minutes. Everything resulted in a statement, decision, vote. Sounds like quite the democracy, right? The curious thing was that somehow in spite of all this, nobody ever doubted who was in charge on the boat, and everyone respected rank dutifully - nobody voted on my orders, and “yes, comrade commander!” was the immediate response to anything I said. Stranger still, I can’t remember a single vote or debate where the outcome didn’t go exactly in line with either our standing orders or the general line of party policy.

Making sure of that was the real job of the politruk. And, as I said, Khokhryakov was a good politruk.



To be continued....

[Longknife]

Another great post!

Not only do I enjoy the marvelous screen shots but how you weave the story with history & especially the inclusion of Soviet images.

As an American that grew up when the cold war was at hottest I know virtually nothing of their history. It is a rich one indeed!

[CCIP]

Cheers, thanks both of you
Like I said, it's a bit of a learning experience for me too, which makes it all the more fun!

[CCIP]

Q: So why was there a problem between you and the commissar?

It was because of an order I gave. It was on December 12th, as we were patrolling uneventfully off the Norwegian coast. It was afternoon, which meant it was of course very dark; after spending the previous couple of nights only a couple of kilometers from shore near the island of Rolvsoy, we found nothing there, and I decided to shift our patrol to 20-50km off the coast to see if that’s where they were hiding. We had just learned by radio that Germany and Italy declared war on the US, making the Americans our allies at last.



At 4:30 in the afternoon, the watch raised alarm - in the drifting ice mist, they spotted a ship dead ahead, with its lights dimmed. We quickly identified it as a Norwegian fishing boat, and I ordered the guns manned. At 4:35, we fired a warning shot; the trawler immediately turned on their lights and stopped, lowering their lifeboat. We approached them, our guns trained, ordering them off their ship immediately.











A bizarre exchange then took place. The captain of the fishing boat, who spoke pretty decent Russian, had somehow assumed that we only hailed them to buy some fish, and was offering cod to us! Khokhryakov, on the loudspeaker, plainly told them that this was not the case - and soon they realized that we were dead serious. Their captain pleaded with us not to sink his boat, and offered to surrender his vessel as prize. We would have none of it, and, after making sure the crew were off, opened fire and sank the trawler with 5 shots from the “sotka” at 4:46.







I then ordered the captain of the sunk boat on board the D-2 for questioning. He seemed visibly shaken, but cooperated fully. Khokhryakov immediately started grilling him about his knowledge of German positions, German military plans, and where Germans were running their shipping, and what their radio frequencies were - the poor fisherman knew nothing, and explained that the only German he ever spoke to was the military commandant at Hammerfest, to get his permit to fish. He said that the boat we just sunk was not German in any way - in fact, it was his own private property and his whole livelihood.



The notion of private property, of course, was totally alien to party commissar Khokhryakov, who continued grilling the poor Norwegian. I eventually changed the subject, asking the captain about his crew’s situation. As it turned out, all they had in the boats was the clothes on their backs and some cod fish that they’d wanted to trade with us. One look outside the tower hatch told the whole story - the temperature was approaching -30, with icy mist and hardly any wind; visibility was fairly poor and there were ice floes in the area. They wouldn’t last even a few hours out there, and we were some 70-80km off shore, in strong currents.



I ordered their boat taken in tow, and a course back towards the coast. That’s when Khokhryakov flew off his handle, protesting the decision and demanding that we stop aiding the enemy. As commissar, he could not override captain’s orders, but as I insisted, he began threatening to write a kompromat [denunciation] after we got back to port. I stayed firm in spite of his protests, explaining to him that we would leave them off the coast and depart. He countered that we were putting our boat and our mission in extreme danger by letting an enemy go with information about our boat and our patrol position. It would compromise our maskirovka [operational stealth] and jeopardize crew morale.



I left him off with this question: what would happen if we were sunk during our patrol? Who would most likely be pulling us out of the water? Answer: Norwegian fishermen. I think for most of sailors who’d lived in the north and made our traditional living from the sea, this was not hard to understand. For the commissar from the Russian heartland, it seemed more difficult to grasp. Despite Khokhryakov’s threats and grumbling, we towed the Norwegian lifeboat to within 15km of Rolvsoy and released them, some 6 hours after we’d sunk their ship.



Q: Did the crew side with you or with Khokhryakov on this?

The crew knew who the commander was. During the patrol, I knew that this incident wouldn’t be an issue, because we had a job to do. I was more worried about what would happen when we returned to port, because I knew that Khokhryakov was already putting together his report on the incident, and I couldn’t imagine it being very good for me. You know how things were back then.



He convinced himself that the Norwegians were all on the enemy side, and considering our previous encounter with a Norwegian ship that turned out to have German machineguns on board, that argument was not very hard to make, so I’m sure there were some who agreed with his view because of it. And I’m sure there were some who’d be willing to sign the kompromat.

But for the moment, we had a patrol to complete.



To be continued...

[CCIP]

Q: You stayed in the same patrol sector?

Those were our orders. We remained in 2A, continuing the same patrol pattern. The weather deteriorated somewhat, and even without the enemy, every day was a battle - against the elements, for now. The boat kept icing over, and even inside the hull it could be frigid at times.



After absolutely nothing on the horizon for a few days, we abruptly ran into a German patrol boat in the mist, only some 1500m away. He saw us before we could submerge, lighting us up and opening fire, and then dropped depth charges. Fortunately, we were well on our way down and his attack was completely inaccurate. He remained in the area, so after getting to some distance away, we surfaced and hightailed it off to the north, away from the coast.









Q: Was it possible to request a different patrol sector?

We did the next day, but were denied. Then the following evening, on the 19th of December, we received a report of a convoy passing through our sector - but it came late, as the convoy was already on their way out west, past Soroy island. Nonetheless, I requested permission to pursue this contact into patrol area No.2, and this time we were allowed to. By now our fuel tanks were down to ⅓ capacity, but we took off to a familiar hunting area just west of Soroy to chase this convoy.



To be continued...

[CCIP]

Q: Did you find the convoy?

We did not - it seems by the time we got there, they were already gone. However, it was a good opportunity to reconnoiter the sector. Surely enough, in the early hours of the 21st of December, I saw what I first thought was a transport, about 2km in front of us. I raised battle alarm, but soon figured out that it was actually another Norwegian fishing boat.



I dreaded having to deal with them after our last encounter, but nonetheless, ordered the warning shot as soon as we approached. Fortunately, this one made it easy for us - almost immediately after the gun fired, our radio operator reported that the fishing boat had started broadcasting distress signals on a frequency commonly used by Kriegsmarine guard ships. They also started shining a bright spotlight at us. I immediately gave permission to fire for effect.





I got a bit of a fright moments later when, as we began firing on the boat, we saw another ship directly ahead of the fishing boat. Luckily, it turned out to be another fishing boat. With accurate gunfire, we knocked out his spotlight and radio antenna, and gave them a few minutes to evacuate before sinking the boat. Afterwards, we left the area without much regret, and turned back to patrol area No.2A. We only had ¼ of our fuel reserve left by now, so I knew it would soon be time to go back home.







Before that, though, I plotted out a course to check up on all the key positions in 2A one last time.



To be continued...

[CCIP]

Q: Did you find anything in your last search?

Actually, that plan got cancelled before we even got to 2A. At 4 in the night on the 22nd of December - the darkest day of the year - we got a report from fleet on the radio about a westbound German convoy rounding Nordkapp. Hoping to have enough fuel, I ordered 12kt speed and headed directly to intercept. We spent the day dashing towards our search position, but ultimately did not find it. However, not all was bad - the Sch-403, which had found the convoy, reported sinking a transport and escort ship late in the evening. We were very glad at their success.





At 5:45 the following morning, I called off the search for the convoy, ordered a course out of No.2A, and headed back to base. I expected us to be back in port by the 26th. By that point, we will have been at sea for a month, having sunk 23,000 tons of enemy shipping. Well, at least by my count. My only worry now was fuel.




Q: Did you make it back to base?

With no trouble, save for the bitter cold. We arrived into Kola Bay just after midnight on the 26th, and, after spending the night anchored off the Oleniy lighthouse, were given an escort into Polyarnyi inlet at 11:00. We announced our arrival with 4 shots from the “sotka” and 4 shots from the 45mm gun - for the transports and fishing boats we sank. Convoy PQ-6 had sailed through to Arkhangelsk a few days earlier, and some of its escorts - a British cruiser and a pair of destroyers - had anchored here in Polyarnyi afterwards. We made sure to pass close to them with our victory salute, which surely woke them up a bit. Plenty of pork roast was then awaiting our hungry crew at the dock.









However, my mind was a bit elsewhere at the time - I’d remembered about our incident with the politruk, and wondered what consequences his report would have for me...


map of D-2's third patrol

To be continued...

[CCIP]

Q: What awaited you at headquarters?

The first bit of news that I got, actually, was that the D-2 was being transferred out of the 1st Division, which by now had grown and prospered into a unit of very effective K-type boats under Gadzhiev. The “Katyushas” were large, fast, long-range boats specializing in minelaying and artillery tactics; whereas our “Narodnovolets” was a relatively slow, medium-range torpedo boat - so we fit poorly into their operations. That initially worried me, as I knew I could rely on Gadzhiev, but was not sure what to expect from a new commanding officer.



And I had plenty to worry about, of course. A couple of months earlier, the commander of our sister ship D-3 “Krasnogvardeyets” [“Red Guardian”] was dismissed - because of a report by his politruk, citing lack of aggressiveness and questionable decisions when encountering Norwegian shipping. The D-3 was then transferred and, even though by that point I was the commander with the best tonnage tally in the fleet, I was certainly worried that this might be my fate as well.



Q: What was the outcome of your transfer?

Well, in the end, it turned out that my worry was mostly over nothing. Brigade commander Vinogradov was not terribly concerned about any incidents - this was the peak of winter, the Allies were running as many convoys as they could during the polar night, and all he needed was our submarines to be at maximum efficiency to support these operations. Luckily, my record with the D-2 showed no lack of efficiency.



I was transferred to the 2nd division, which before the war was one of our brigade’s two divisions of Sch-type medium boats. The Sch-402, where I previously served, was here as well - and they so they already knew me well. Our new division commander was 2nd rank captain Kolyshkin, a great man. Soon after we’d left for our next patrol, he became the first Soviet submariner to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.



Khokhryakov’s report report did have some consequences, of course. One of them was that the issue of any awards to me was held back pending review. There were some medals on the boat, though. Tikhonov, lightly wounded in our action against the armed Norwegian ship, received the medal “For Bravery”, as did head of watch Kislayev - both deserved them entirely. Politruk Khokhryakov himself, as well as my starpom [first officer] Malyshev, were awarded the Order of the Red Star. This helped smooth things over and help Khokhryakov part my company the “nice way” - there was, of course, no question that I couldn’t continue working with him.



Q: Was it difficult to find a new commissar for the boat?

Not particularly, though as part of the deal to ensure that all was going well with my command, our new superior Kolyshkin ordered that the divisional commissar himself sail with us for the next patrol. That seemed worrying, until I realized that the division’s commissar was none other than politruk Tikhonov - before the war, he served together with me on the Sch-402, where I was the starpom. We’d got on well and I knew that the next patrol would go just fine.


(Submarine Sch-402 at Polyarnyi)

To be continued...

[CCIP]

Q: When did your next patrol start?

Actually it was quite soon - we’d only spent a couple of weeks at base. We got to celebrate the New Years and greet 1942 at base, and that was enough. The boat was in good condition, and there were Germans to hunt. While the front at Moscow saw some major reverses, we knew that the war situation was anything but easy. Besides, it was anything but calm and easy at base - even with the polar night, the few twilight hours of the day would always bring German airplanes, which kept trying to bomb our ships and docks. So, we had orders to sail by January 11th.



Q: What were your patrol orders?

Well, the situation had changed a bit for us, especially now that we were in the medium-range division. The Allied convoy operations to bring us lend-lease goods were ramping up, and they wanted to bring as many supplies as possible while days were still short and German air power was a limited threat. This meant that the enemy’s main weapons were submarines and surface raiders. The convoys had their own escorts, provided mainly by the British - so our job would be mainly to provide early warning and intercept these raiders and submarines as they were leaving the Norwegian coast. And, of course, continue to deny German communications along the coast.



We were assigned to Patrol Area No.5, the closest open-ocean sector, stretching from Sulte-fjord to cape Kibergnes and Varde. We were to be sharing the sector with M-175, one the “baby” submarines of the 4th division, which had departed two days before us. The nimble M-175 would scout near the coast, while we were assigned to search for enemy raiders, scouts and submarines north of the 71st parallel, and respond to contact reports if the M-175 or other subs found something.


(Submarine M-175, under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Melkadze)

This seemed like a fair plan, although brigade commander Vinogradov explained that this was a transitional plan for convoy protection - we were still getting a sense for German operations off Norway, and ironing out cooperation with the British. A comprehensive procedure for identifying ourselves to Allied forces in the area was given to us, although we were still advised to keep away from all aircraft and warships, lest they mistake us for a German U-boat.

So, plans and codes in hand, we headed off to the pier for departure.



To be continued...

[ReallyDedPoet]

Nice. Enjoy the continued mix of real and in-game pics to go with the story.

[CCIP]

Thanks as always, more of the same coming
The more I'm playing this career, the more I'm enjoying doing the research and reading up on what else has been going on in the war - it's suddenly made the "boring" patrols a lot more meaningful, and again I'm reminded that war history is way more interesting and strange than fiction more often than not!

[CCIP]

Q: How would you describe your 4th patrol?

Long!

It was a fairly uneventful patrol as far as combat goes, but we had a lot to contend with from the elements - after all, we spent the entire time in the open ocean, deep in the middle of the Arctic winter. We only had one significant encounter with the enemy, but the work of keeping the ship in good working order and the crew warm, healthy, and safe from frostbite proved grueling.



We were a bit late getting out of port, and fleet command was keen to push us out to see - the convoy QP-5 was already gathering for departure from Murmansk in about a day, while the inbound PQ-7 was already approaching and due to take its place immediately after. They needed us out of the bay before they came through. It was fairly quiet at Polyarnyi; there hadn’t been any attacks from German aircraft for a while, and no British ships were in sight at harbour - they’d left to escort PQ-7 in.



The war on land was once again a radio chronicle to us. The Moscow counter-offensive was coming to an end, but the Germans were pushed back quite soundly. Even in encircled Leningrad, delivery of food and supplies resumed by the ice road across Lake Ladoga. The winter was bitterly cold all around the front.



As we rounded cape Tsyp-Navolok, conspicuous absence on the radio was the M-175, our companion for this patrol who’d left 3 days earlier and should have arrived in the patrol sector by now. On the other hand, we were getting plenty of reports of German U-boats in the area. That was a bit worrying.



Q: Did you ever hear from the M-175?

No, and nobody else had, either. They never made it to their patrol area. As we found out much later, it was one of those U-boats lurking in the Barents Sea that spotted it - the U-854, I think. The M-175 was a “Baby” boat, so it would not have been easy to find in the dark polar night, but the Germans heard their diesels on hydroacoustics, and happened to be in the right position to attack. Captain Melkadze was a very experienced officer, but he had no chance - he went down with the whole crew, as well as the 4th division’s chief engineering officer Shilyayev who was on board with them to supervise the patrol.



That was our first submarine loss of the war in the Arctic.

To be continued