Soviet submarine D-2 (my pics, 56k warn!)

[bigboywooly]

Thanx for that
Great pic
And shows how history should be displayed

[Jimbuna]

Some reeeeeeally cool shots there

[joea]

FANTASTIC shots tovarish!! Love the shots, very clear and interesting. That sub seems to be kept in very good shape as a museum boat. I must say, despite the differences, the similarities among the subs of the time are amazing.

Oh and what kind of camera do you have?

[CptSimFreak]

good pics. Too bad I never visited that musum...

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by CptSimFreak

good pics. Too bad I never visited that musum...

Don't feel bad. I lived right next to it for 14 years, in fact I went fishing with some friends right under its bow, and never visited the inside until last year. Well worth it though.

Originally Posted by joea

FANTASTIC shots tovarish!! Love the shots, very clear and interesting. That sub seems to be kept in very good shape as a museum boat. I must say, despite the differences, the similarities among the subs of the time are amazing.

Oh and what kind of camera do you have?

I use a really crappy no-name 3 megapixel camera I took thousands of pictures with it on my trip to Russia last year though.

And yea, I agree, there are a lot of parallels with this one and many subs of its period. Nowadays with SHIV being my main subsim fare, it really reminds me a lot of early fleet boats. In fact its performance is very similar to those. What's interesting, though, is some obvious differences between this, being a 20's boat, and later WWII-era boats. Not obvious ones so much as internals. There's a lot more buttons and other obviously-electronic devices you see aboard boats in SHIII and IV than this one!

[lesrae]

Nice pics mate, cheers.

[joea]

Originally Posted by CCIP

And yea, I agree, there are a lot of parallels with this one and many subs of its period. Nowadays with SHIV being my main subsim fare, it really reminds me a lot of early fleet boats. In fact its performance is very similar to those. What's interesting, though, is some obvious differences between this, being a 20's boat, and later WWII-era boats. Not obvious ones so much as internals. There's a lot more buttons and other obviously-electronic devices you see aboard boats in SHIII and IV than this one!

Well, I guess no TDC then. Kind of like the "sugar boats" - did you find out how they aimed torpedoes? Were they steam, gyro angle or straight runners? What was the periscope like? Sorry for the questions, the Soviet Navy in WWII is one of the lesser known stories, even among those into the Eastern Front. I did find Admiral Kuznetsov's (head of the navy in WWII) memoir online which are instructive but still a lot to learn.

http://admiral.centro.ru/start_e.htm

[AntEater]

Wow, I had seen on the Net that D-2 was preserved, but I had no idea how well preserved she is.
Did anybody yet visit K-21 in Murmansk? Or S-56 in Vladivostok?
I wonder in what condition these two are.

Regarding the attack on the rail ferry Deutschland (2300 tons), it took place on 19th October 1942.
D-2 had allready sunk a 4000 ton freighter on this patrol and damaged another vessel (according to german sources) when it attacked the Ferry which was carrying around 1000 Soldiers on leave from the postings in Norway.
I wonder how almost half of those could have been killed by a hit which was not fatal, especially since I couldnt find anything about loss of life in my literature; which doesnt mean there was none, only that I couldnt find anything except a short notice in Rohwers "Chronology of war at sea". Maybe a fire, but the Ferry Deutschland continued operation throughout the war and was used for the east prussia evacuation in early 1945. Apparently the ship survived the war, but had to be given away as reparations, so that a new "Deutschland" ferry was build for the route in 1952.
I find it suprising that such a major troopship disaster wouldnt be mentioned in more detail.
Ok, the picture is somewhat idealistic, since there were hardly regular german warships to escort a ferry running Trelleborg-Gedser. If there was an escort, it was converted Trawlers, not Z-Class destroyers.
But rather I suppose they didnt expect a soviet sub attack that far west in the Baltic, almost in the Kattegatt.
Interestingly, D-2s Captain was named Lindberg.

Regarding soviet WW2 subs, I have Kolyshkins "In arctic depths", published in Chrushew's time around 1960, but that, as the name implies, covers arctic fleet subs only. I read it in german translation, published by the GDR.
Of course he claims the Germans still cover up the fact that the Tirpitz had to abandon the PQ-17 sortie due to heavy damage by K-21.

But apart from occasional propaganda and vastly inflated sinking claims (apparently the arctic subs sank every german vessel in Norway twice) it is better than nothing as a source.
Seems soviet subs operated pretty similar to US ones in 1941. Submerged attacks only, mostly they dived away directly after firing torpedoes, so that the success of an attack was only judged by explosions.
Torpedoes could apparently be fired off angle, but there was nothing like a TDC. At least soviet torpedoes (only steam ones) were very reliable and there were no dud problems.
He describes some missions of D-4, and apparently the D-type submarines were a nightmare to operate, especially in arctic conditions. They took extremely long to dive, over a minute.

[U49]

Originally Posted by AntEater

I find it suprising that such a major troopship disaster wouldnt be mentioned in more detail.

In former times it was for sure politically "unwelcome" and today it is "unsexy" to wite about all those stuff.

I feel that it is no problem to start any investigation about big and terrible war activities from WW I, but there are still deep emotions about any try to investigate grave human losses of WW II. There is still not a culture of true and documented history just because it is probaby to early..?

[Sniper31]

Very cool pics and narrative of your visit to D-2...very cool indeed.

[AntEater]

Originally Posted by U49

In former times it was for sure politically "unwelcome" and today it is "unsexy" to wite about all those stuff.

I'm not talking wartime propaganda reports, but rather official recordings. Basically, normally if something happened at sea, it's in the Rohwer. Prof. Rohwer spent 60 years of his life researching 5 years of his life.
Especially successes of allied submarines against german merchant ships are his speciality so I would be rather suprised not to read something about it at his site.
Maybe I should mail his staff...
http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg...e/asaindex.htm
Rohwer dug out the Struma tragedy, for example.
Here's his entry on this case:
19.10.42 15571711 sj D-2 2T sw dt -Dfe -Dfe Konung Gustav V Deutschland 3150 2972 /= 55.11n 19.13e
10sm S/ Trelleb.

That means that Lindenberg shot two torpedoes shot two torpedoes at 1557 and 1711 at two seperate ferries, one swedish (Konung Gustav V) and one German (Deutschland), missing the Swede and damaging the German. The = means repairable damage while / means missed.
So the incident is recorded, only no mention of heavy loss of life, which in other chases is often reported by a footnote.

Btw, according to the database here, D-2 spent a full month on war patrol in the western Baltic, sank one ship for 4000 tons and damaged one (one additional ship was claimed but not confirmed in german records).
That's one hell of a patrol in such a rather obsolete boat.
D-2 made three further war patrols in 1944/45, always with Kapitan 2nd Rank Lindberg in command.

Btw, there's a fourth soviet WW2 submarine preserved, Lembit in Tallin.

[jmr]

Great pics there. Were they any Russian wiz wheels used for targeting available for you to see?

[CCIP]

Yep, the last names can be a real irony. Considering I've got a serious German (and Finnish) heritage myself, I always found the war quite sad in that way myself.

Glad you actually dug up some of this info on Deutschland since I have not been able to find much myself. The incident was something that always kind of fascinated me; and yea, there really is not that much info on it.

I wouldn't call the D class totally obsolete, but it was certainly not terribly modern. The 4 boats performed quite well actually, D-2 was not even the top scorer among those. I believe D-1, which was lost in the war, did better. Considering the conditions they were in, that's pretty remarkable.

I've read some general stuff on Soviet subs, but I'll have to read a bit more of the specific literature. Would love to visit more Soviet boats - thanks for the tipoff on Lembit, there's a good chance I'll visit Estonia as well.

I'm kind of curious about the Sch (Schuka) class submarines that the Soviets had. On paper they look similar to Type VIIs, but I'm curious just how similar/different they would be...

PS - I haven't seen any whiz wheels. They may even have something like that, but I hadn't asked. I was going to take a second tour of the sub during my visit there and try to pester them for more technical stuff, but I ran out of time

[nikimcbee]

Those are nice photos! When I was in St Petersburg in 94, our tour bus drove by the sub on the way back to the train station to go back to Moscow. My wife and I were in the area, and I didn't know the sub was there!!! It killed me that we couldn't stop to see it. On the way out, I also saw a glimpse of a Kilo in the Neva, I wanted to take picture, but it was twilight and I didn't have a good camera, plus I was on a moving bus.

[TLAM Strike]

Fantastic photos.

BTW I think some of that equipment is not WWII era but from the 70's since it looks just like the gear on the Jullett SSG toured by Timmyg00. I dout even the Russians kept that equpment in production and use for 30-40 years!

http://www.pbase.com/timmyg_00/k77_juliett