Alexander Marinesko: the most "bad" hero of the Great Patriotic War. The Fuhrer's personal enemy: how Alexander Marinesko destroyed the color of the Nazi submarine fleet with three torpedoes

Captain of the 3rd rank, known for the "Attack of the Century". Hero of the Soviet Union (1990).

Biography

Childhood and youth

Alexander Ivanovich was born in Odessa. From 1920 to 1926 he studied at a labor school. From 1930 to 1933, Marinesko studied at the Odessa Nautical College.

Alexander Ivanovich himself never wanted to be a military man, but only dreamed of serving in the merchant fleet. In March 1936, in connection with the introduction of personal military ranks, Marinesko received the rank of lieutenant, and in November 1938 - senior lieutenant.

After graduating from retraining courses, he served as an assistant commander on the L-1, then as commander of the M-96 submarine, the crew of which, following the results of combat and political training in 1940, took first place, and the commander was awarded a gold watch and promoted to lieutenant commander.

War time

In the early days of the Great Patriotic War, the M-96 under the command of Alexander Ivanovich was relocated to Paldiski, then to Tallinn, stood in position in the Gulf of Riga, had no collisions with the enemy. In August 1941, they planned to transfer the submarine to the Caspian Sea as a training one, then this idea was abandoned.

On August 12, 1942, the M-96 went on another combat campaign. On August 14, 1942, the boat attacked a German convoy. According to Marinesko's report, he fired two torpedoes at German transport. According to German sources, the attack was unsuccessful - the ships of the convoy observed the trail of one torpedo, which they successfully evaded. Returning from the position, Marinesko did not warn the Soviet patrols, and when surfacing, he did not raise the naval flag, as a result of which his own boats almost sank the boat.

At the end of 1942, Marinesko was awarded the rank of captain of the 3rd rank. In April 1943, Marinesko was appointed commander of the S-13 submarine. The submarine under his command went on a campaign only in October 1944. On the very first day of the campaign, on October 9, Marinesko discovered and attacked the Siegfried transport. The attack with four torpedoes from a short distance failed, and artillery fire from the 45-mm and 100-mm guns of the submarine had to be fired at the transport.

From January 9 to February 15, 1945, Marinesko was on his fifth military campaign, during which two large enemy transports, Wilhelm Gustloff and Steuben, were sunk. Before this campaign, the commander of the Baltic Fleet V.F. Tributs decided to bring Marinesko to court-martial for unauthorized abandonment of the ship in a combat situation, but he delayed the execution of this decision, allowing the commander and crew to atone for their guilt in a military campaign.

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

On January 30, 1945, S-13 attacked and sent the Wilhelm Gustloff liner to the bottom, on which there were 10,582 people:

• 918 cadets junior groups 2nd submarine training division
• 173 crew members
• 373 women from the Auxiliary Marine Corps
• 162 seriously wounded soldiers
• 8956 refugees, mostly old people, women and children

Transport, the former ocean liner "Wilhelm Gustloff", went without a convoy. Due to a lack of fuel, the liner was heading straight, without performing an anti-submarine zigzag, and the damage to the hull received earlier during the bombing did not allow it to reach high speed. It was previously believed that the German Navy was seriously damaged. So, according to the Marine magazine, 1,300 submariners died with the ship, among whom were fully formed submarine crews and their commanders. According to the commander of the division, captain 1st rank A. Orel, the dead German submariners would be enough to equip 70 submarines of medium tonnage. Subsequently, the Soviet press called the sinking of "Wilhelm Gustloff" "the attack of the century", and Marinesko - "submariner No. 1".

End of the war

On February 10, 1945, a new victory followed - on the approach to the Danzig Bay, S-13 sank the Steuben ambulance transport, on board which were 2680 wounded military personnel, 100 soldiers, about 900 refugees, 270 military medical personnel and 285 ship crew members. Of these, 659 people were saved, of which the wounded were about 350. It must be borne in mind that the ship was armed with anti-aircraft machine guns and guns, went on guard and transported healthy soldiers as well. In this regard, strictly speaking, it could not be attributed to hospital courts. It should also be noted that Marinesco identified the attacked ship as the light cruiser Emden. The S-13 commander was not only forgiven for his previous sins, but was also presented with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. However, the higher command replaced the Golden Star with the Order of the Red Banner. The sixth military campaign from April 20 to May 13, 1945 was considered unsatisfactory. Then, according to the commander of the submarine brigade, Captain 1st Rank Kournikov, Marinesko:

On May 31, the commander of the submarine division submitted a report to the higher command, in which he indicated that the submarine commander was drinking all the time, was not engaged in official duties, and his continued stay in this position was inappropriate. On September 14, 1945, Order No. 01979 of the Commissar of the Navy N.G. was issued. Kuznetsov, where it was said:

From October 18, 1945 to November 20, 1945, Marinesko was the commander of the minesweeper T-34 of the 2nd division of minesweepers of the 1st Red Banner Mining Brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet. On November 20, 1945, by order of the People's Commissar of the Navy No. 02521, Senior Lieutenant Marinesko A.I. was retired. Submarines under the command of Alexander Marinesko made six military campaigns during the Great Patriotic War. Two transports sunk, one damaged. The M-96 attack in 1942 ended in a miss. Alexander Marinesko holds the record among Soviet submariners in terms of the total tonnage of enemy ships sunk: 42,557 gross register tons.

post-war period

After the war, in 1946-1949, Marinesko worked as a senior mate on the ships of the Baltic State Commercial Shipping Company, in 1949 - as deputy director of the Leningrad Research Institute of Blood Transfusion. In 1949 he was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of squandering socialist property, he served his sentence in 1949-1951 in Vanino. In 1951-1953 he worked as a topographer for the Onega-Ladoga expedition, since 1953 he was in charge of a group of the supply department at the Mezon plant in Leningrad. Marinesko died in Leningrad after a serious and prolonged illness on November 25, 1963. He was buried at the Theological Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Nearby is the Museum of Russian Submarine Forces. A.I. Marinesko. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko was awarded posthumously on May 5, 1990.

Memory

• Monuments of A.I. Marinesko are installed in Kaliningrad, Kronstadt, St. Petersburg and Odessa.
• In Kronstadt, on house number 2 on Kommunisticheskaya Street, in which Marinesko lived, a memorial plaque was installed.
• Marinesco is dedicated to the feature films "Forget about the return" and "The first after God."
• The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is described in the Nobel laureate Günther Grass's novel Trajectory of the Crab.
• In the name of A.I. Marinesko named the embankment in Kaliningrad and the street in Sevastopol.
• Stroiteley Street in Leningrad, where Marinesko also lived, was renamed Marinesko Street in 1990. There is a memorial plaque on it.
• At the Central Museum Armed Forces the flag of the submarine "C-13" is on display.
• In St. Petersburg there is the Museum of Russian Submarine Forces. A.I. Marinesko.
• A stone block with a memorial plaque was installed in Vanino.
• In Odessa:
  • A memorial plaque was installed on the building of the Odessa Naval School, on Sofievskaya Street, in house No. 11, where Marinesko lived as a child.
  • Name A.I. Marinesko wears the Odessa Naval School.
  • Also, a memorial plaque is installed on the building of the labor school where he studied.
  • In 1983, the students of the Odessa school No. 105 created a museum named after A.I. Marinesko.

In May 1990, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, one of the most famous Soviet submariners, was posthumously awarded by government decree. short biography which formed the basis of this article. For many years, his name was hushed up due to a number of circumstances that earned him scandalous fame and eclipsed his feats of arms.

Young Black Sea sailor

The future legendary submariner was born on January 15, 1913 in one of the seaside regions. His father, Ion Marinesko, was a Romanian worker, and his mother, Tatyana Mikhailovna Koval, was a peasant from the Kherson province. After studying 6 classes and barely reaching the age of 13, he got a job on one of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet as a sailor's apprentice. Since then, the biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko has been inextricably linked with the sea. His diligence and patience were noticed, and soon a capable guy was assigned to the cabin boy school, after which he was already listed in the ship's crews not as a student, but as a full-fledged sailor of the 1st class.

Continuing his education at the Odessa Naval College and graduating in 1933, Alexander Ivanovich sailed for several years on the Ilyich and Krasny Fleet ships as a third and then second mate. Those who knew him later said that in his youth, Marinesko did not plan to become a military sailor at all, but preferred the merchant fleet. Perhaps his father played a role in this, having worked for several years as a sailor on various civilian ships, and, undoubtedly, told his son a lot about his travels.

Komsomol ticket to naval life

A sharp turn in the biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko occurred in 1933, after he, along with a group of other young sailors, received a Komsomol ticket for special courses for the command staff of the navy. In those years, this was tantamount to an order, and to refuse meant to cross out your entire future career, no matter where you tried to arrange it. So, the local committee of the Komsomol made for him the choice of further life path. However, such examples were by no means uncommon in the pre-war years.

After completing the course, Marinesko took up the position of navigator on a submarine called Haddock, and then, after additional training, he was first promoted to assistant commander of the L-1 submarine, and then took a commanding position in the M-96 submarine. By the beginning of the war, the shoulders of the young submariner Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko were already adorned with the shoulder straps of a lieutenant commander.

addiction

In the first days of the war, the submarine, commanded by Marinesko, was relocated to Tallinn, from where she went on combat duty to the water area. so rare in Russia ─ he liked to drink, and even in hops, what only happened to him. And Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko hopelessly spoiled his biography with this addiction.

Trouble began in August 1941, after the fact of drunkenness and organization of gambling among the officers of the division to which his submarine was assigned became public. Marinesko, one of the first to appear on the list of participants in the spree, was stripped of the title of candidate member of the party, and the division commander was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 years in the camps, but with a reprieve and immediate dispatch to the front.

In part, Alexander Ivanovich managed to restore his reputation only on next year, when, after a successful military operation, he was awarded the Order of Lenin and reinstated as a candidate member of the party. At the same time, Marinescu opened an account for the sunken enemy ships, attacking in mid-August 1942 a ship that was part of a large German transport convoy.

Commander of the submarine "S-13"

At the end of December, for the heroism shown and high combat results, Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the rank of captain of the 3rd rank. However, the newly appointed division commander added a “fly in the ointment” to this “barrel of honey”, noting in the description that his subordinate was prone to frequent drinking. Nevertheless, the distinguished and promoted officer was appointed commander of the S-13 submarine, on which he was destined to serve until September 1945 and accomplish his main feat. Her photo is shown below.

Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko practically did not go to sea during 1943, as he performed whole line tasks related to the preparation of the replenishment of the personnel of the Baltic submarine fleet. However, life on the shore was fraught with many temptations, which he was unable to resist. Twice during this year, "drunken stories" ended for him in a guardhouse with subsequent penalties along the party line.

At the end of October 1944, Marinesko again took part in military operations, and in one of them he discovered, and then long time pursued a German transport ship. It was not possible to sink it with torpedoes, but as a result of successful hits from onboard guns, the ship was seriously damaged, and, towed to the port, it stood under repair until the end of the war. For this campaign, Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Bad story

The coming victorious year of 1945 Marinesko met with another "adventure", after which he managed to avoid the tribunal only with great difficulty. Shortly before this, the submarine, which he commanded, was seriously damaged during an artillery duel with the German ship "Siegfried" and for a long time was under repair in the port of the Finnish city of Turku.

By the end of December, the commander embarked on another spree and disappeared from the submarine on a festive night. The next day he did not return, after which he was put on the wanted list. As it turned out later, on the shore, Marinesko met a Swede who kept a restaurant in the city, and took advantage of the hospitality of a loving hostess.

Threat to be sued

It should be noted that personal life the commander did not add up, and the vodka was to blame. Shortly before the events described, the third marriage fell apart, and Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich, whose wife and daughter did not want to endure his drunken antics, clearly felt a lack of female affection.

For unauthorized abandonment in wartime warship he was threatened with a tribunal, but the high authorities decided to postpone the punishment and give the offending submariner a chance to atone for his guilt. Therefore, the military campaign, on which Marinesko set off in early January, in fact, decided the fate of his future life. Only out of the ordinary success in a military operation could save him from inevitable punishment. Everyone understood this, and, of course, first of all the submarine commander himself ─ Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko.

Attack of the century that began with a malfeasance

For almost three weeks, the Marinesko submarine was in the water area assigned to it, trying in vain to detect the enemy. Finally, he decided, contrary to the order of the command, to change the course of the submarine and continue the "hunt" in a different square. It is difficult to say what made him go to such a blatant violation of the charter.

Whether it was a manifestation of intuition, excitement, or the usual Russian “seven troubles ─ one answer” pushed him onto the path of malfeasance, no one can say with certainty. Most likely, the urgent need to rehabilitate for past sins, or, more simply, to accomplish a feat, played a role. Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, as they say, went for broke.

The sinking of the giant ship

One way or another, but, having left the given square, the submariners soon discovered a large enemy transport ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff (its photo is presented below). It was a pre-war cruise liner with a displacement of 25,000 tons, used for the needs of the army and currently sailing almost without an escort. The difficult situation that developed towards the end of the war did not allow the Germans to provide adequate cover for their transport ships.

On board the Gustloff, as it turned out later, there were more than 10 thousand people, the vast majority of them were refugees from the regions of East Prussia, that is, the elderly, women and children, which later gave grounds to certain circles to accuse Marinesko of the destruction of civilians. One can only object to them that, firstly, looking through the periscope, the submariners could not determine the composition of the ship's passengers, and secondly, in addition to the refugees, there were a fairly large number of military personnel on board, redeployed for combat operations.

Having quietly approached the enemy ship, the submariners fired 3 torpedoes at it, each of which successfully hit the target. Subsequently, the Soviet propaganda organs called this strike "the attack of the century." The enemy transport was sent to the bottom, and with it almost half of those who were on board. According to data collected by military historians, as a result of that attack, 4855 people died, of which 405 were submarine cadets, 89 were crew members, 249 were women who served in the navy and 4112 were refugees and wounded (including about 3 thousand . children).

Continuation of the military operation

For all the years of the war, the ship "Wilhelm Gustloff" was the largest of the ships of this type destroyed by Soviet sailors, and the second in terms of the number of victims, second only to the transport ship "Goya", sent to the bottom by the submarine "L-3". More than 7,000 people died on it.

Having safely escaped from the place where the German ship was sinking into the sea, falling aft, the S-13 crew continued the hunt. In the same square, 10 days later, submariners discovered and sank another enemy ship, the General Steuben, which was also very impressive in size and had a displacement of 15,000 tons. Thus, the combat campaign undertaken by the S-13 crew from January to February 1945 became the most successful raid by Soviet submariners in the entire history of this type of troops.

"Floating penal battalion"

In those days, the biography and photos of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko appeared on the pages of many Soviet newspapers, but the fleet command was in no hurry to present either him or the rest of the team for awards. The commander gained too scandalous fame for his drunken antics. By the way, the crew of the submarine entrusted to him was staffed for the most part from those who had serious problems with the disciplinary charter. So the S-13 submarine was jokingly called the "floating penal battalion."

Already at the very end of the war, Marinesko undertook another - the last military campaign in his life, this time unsuccessful and inconclusive. Those who spoke with him at that time said that Alexander Ivanovich began to have epileptic seizures, provoked by ever-increasing drunkenness. On this basis, the conflict with the authorities also escalated significantly. As a result, in September 1945, an order was issued to remove him from his post and demote him to the rank of senior lieutenant.

vicissitudes of fate

The post-war biography of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko looks extremely sad and ridiculous. Resigned shortly after military service, he went to sea for some time on various merchant ships, and in 1949, to a complete surprise for everyone, he took the post of director of the Leningrad Institute of Blood Transfusion. It is not known how the former sailor was brought into the purely medical field, but only very soon he was convicted of major theft and sentenced to 3 years in prison. So fate brought the hero-submariner to the Kolyma.

Having been released from prison and having neither a home nor a family, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko worked for two years as a topographer as part of several geological expeditions, and then, returning to Leningrad in 1953, got a job as head of the supply department of the Mezon plant. He died on November 25, 1963 after a serious illness and was buried at the Theological Cemetery.

Hero's memory

Already during the period of perestroika, the Izvestia newspaper initiated the process of rehabilitation of the submarine hero, and on May 5, 1990, by personal decree of the President of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. From that time on, his military path began to be widely covered in the media, and 7 years later, not far from the cemetery where the hero was buried, at 47 Kondratievskiy pr., the Museum of Russian Submarine Forces was opened, named after Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko. Photos of the war years, models of submarines and original exhibits of the exhibition tell about the glorious military path of Soviet and Russian sailors.

Today, monuments to the posthumously rehabilitated submarine hero have been erected in St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, Odessa and Kaliningrad. Several art and documentaries, as well as literary works. In particular, the feat of Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko is briefly described in the novel "The Trajectory of the Crab", the author of which is the German writer, Nobel Prize winner Günther Grass. In addition, streets in many cities of Russia are named after the hero.

Name: Alexander Marinesko

Age: 50 years

Place of Birth: Odessa

A place of death: Leningrad

Activity: submarine commander

Family status: was unmarried

Alexander Marinesko - Biography

In the early 1960s, in the pubs of Leningrad, one could see an elderly man with the Order of Lenin on his jacket. Visitors knew him as Sasha the submariner and did not even suspect that they were drinking ruff with a personal enemy.

Wine, desperate fights and women - this is the lot of a real pirate. This was the captain of III rank Alexander Marinesko. Only he commanded not a pirate frigate, but a submarine of the Soviet fleet.

Alexander Marinesko can be called a hereditary sailor. His father, a sailor in the Romanian Navy, Ion Marinescu, fled to Odessa from being sentenced to be hanged for beating an officer. On Odessa land, Ion settled down, settled down and by the age of forty married a peasant girl Tatyana Koval. On January 15, 1913, a boy was born in the family, who was named Sasha.

Already at the age of 13, Sasha was accepted as a sailor's apprentice to the Black Sea Shipping Company, and from there he was sent to a cabin boy. He graduated with honors, having received the qualification of a sailor of the 1st class, which gave him the right to sail on ships of the merchant fleet.

Alexander wanted more - to become a captain. At the age of 17, the young man entered the Odessa Marine College, and after graduating from it, he was accepted as an assistant captain of the Red Fleet merchant ship. But the governing bodies, noticing the guy, sent him to the courses of the Red Fleet command staff. Soon, Marinesko was already listed as the navigator of the submarine Shch-306 ("Haddock") of the Baltic Fleet.

He carried out his service regularly, but even then the authorities began to notice what an "inconvenient" specialist they got. Marinesko said what he thought, besides, he was not indifferent to alcohol and women.

His first testimonial from 1935 stated: “Not disciplined enough. He knows his specialty well. Can manage personnel under constant supervision. Conclusions: pay attention to increasing discipline.

After the introduction of the ranks in the navy in 1936, Alexander received the shoulder straps of a lieutenant, and 2 years later, a senior lieutenant and the post of commander of the M-96 "Baby" submarine. Despite the fact that Marinesko gained fame as a drunkard and a buzzer, his M-96 broke the record of the Baltic Fleet, sinking in 19.5 seconds against the standard of 35 seconds. Therefore, the authorities looked through their fingers at the shortcomings of the captain.

The war found Marinesko at the naval base in Paldiski, from where he was sent to Tallinn to guard the Gulf of Riga. However, in naval battles in those days, Marinesco did not participate. In August 1941, news came that the Malyutka was being sent by rail to the Caspian Sea, where it was to become a training boat. But when the Germans closed the ring around Leningrad, these plans had to be abandoned. In agonizing expectation, and also because of depressing reports, Marinesko began to drink again. He was expelled from the list of candidates for the party and penalties were regularly announced, however, these measures turned out to be powerless.

Marinesko went on his first military campaign in August 1942. His "Baby" attacked 3 German transport ships, but the results of the attack remained unknown. Returning to the base, Marinesko forgot to warn his superiors. Patrol boats, seeing a submarine floating up without a flag, mistook it for a German submarine and began shelling. Marinesko gave the command to dive and surfaced clearly between the boats for the second time. So much so that they could not shoot at the boat without damaging each other. Finally, the captain's face appeared from the hatch, and his colorful Odessa speech made it clear whose ship it was.

In November of the same year, Marinesko was awarded the Order of Lenin for the successful landing, and in December he was awarded the rank of captain of the III rank and again enrolled as a candidate for the CPSU (b). True, in his description, the division commander wrote: "On the shore, he is prone to frequent drinking." The following spring, Marinesko received a new S-13 submarine. However, its entry into hostilities was postponed due to the captain's old "disease" - drunkenness.

So, the captain once refused to go to sea because he could not find his hat. It turned out that the sailor threw the greasy thing in the trash. The hat was found, but for disrupting the exit, Marinesko went to the punishment cell. The offending captain could have ended up in the Gulag at all, so he accepted the order to go on a campaign in October 1944 with joy. On the very first day, Marinesko met the huge ship Siegfried. The torpedo salvo was unsuccessful. Then the submarine surfaced and fired at the enemy from gun mounts. In his report, the submariner indicated that the ship had sunk. In reality, the Germans towed the battered ship to Danzig, and by the spring of 1945, it was put back into operation.

When Marinesko returned to the base, he saw that, contrary to tradition, he was met without an orchestra. Hurt by this, he ordered the crew to batten down the hatches and mark the return home with alcohol. Only a day later the team left the boat. However, for this campaign, Marinesko received not a penalty, but the Order of the Red Banner.

On the night of January 1, 1945, in Helsinki, Marinesko and his deputy, contrary to the charter, left the boat and went to celebrate the New Year to the owner of a local hotel. After many toasts, the captain took the Finn to bed, where he indulged in pleasures with her all night. And in the morning her fiancé came to the hotel. Getting into a fight with Russian sailors was fraught with unpleasant consequences, so the Finn complained to the Soviet commandant's office. The headquarters immediately understood who it could be, and Marinesko himself did not deny the fact of leaving the ship. The commander of the Baltic Fleet ordered that the officers be brought to the tribunal, but, having cooled down, decided to give them the opportunity to make amends in battle. And on her fifth campaign, the Marinesko submarine left in the status of a floating penal battalion - the only one in the Soviet fleet.

But it was this campaign that immortalized the name of Marinesko. On January 30, submariners spotted the Wilhelm Gustloff ship off Danzig Bay. The ship was carrying 70 crews of German submariners, a women's division, a thousand wounded and 9 thousand civilians - women and children. Three torpedo salvos turned the Gustloff into the biggest casualty of the Soviet Navy. Historians estimate that the death toll was 9,000, including 5,000 children. It was rumored that Hitler even declared Marinesco a personal enemy. But attempts to present the captain as an executioner turned out to be untenable, because the Gustloff had weapons and military markings.

After 2 weeks, the Marinesko submarine sent the General Steubelen ship to the bottom along with 3,700 people on board. After this, the captain was entitled to the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. However, due to the tribunal, he received only the second Order of the Red Banner.

With the end of the war, Marinesco, accustomed to making amends in battles, was deprived of this opportunity. In September, he was demoted to senior lieutenant and transferred to the commander of a minesweeper, and in November he was decommissioned. After working for 3 years in the Baltic Shipping Company, he was fired for drunkenness, and in 1949 he was sentenced to 3 years for squandering social property.

Returning to Leningrad, Marinesko got a job as a supplier at the plant, and in 1962 he was diagnosed with cancer. Friends made sure that Alexander Ivanovich was returned to his former rank, which gave him the right to a good pension, and also put him in the clinic of the Military Medical Academy. But it was no longer possible to defeat the disease, and on November 25, 1963, Marinesko died. The Star of the Hero found him only posthumously.

Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko was born on January 15, 1913 in the city, as he said, of warmth, beauty and fun - Odessa.

His father, Ion Marinescu, was a native of the port city of Galati and served in the Romanian Royal Navy. Unable to bear the humiliation of the officer, he hit him, for which he was sentenced to death. On the night before the execution, he escaped from the punishment cell, swam across the Danube and moved to Odessa, where he married a Ukrainian woman and changed the last letter in his surname. Insane courage, self-confidence and unbending determination Alexander inherited from his father.

The future hero studied at the Odessa Labor School No. 36, graduating from it only six classes, after which, for diligence and patience, he was transferred to a cabin boy and at the age of 13 began to go to sea on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet as a sailor of the 1st class.

At school, young Alexander showed such brilliant results that he was shortened the period of study, and without exams he was enrolled in the Odessa Nautical College, which after 40 years became the Maritime School named after A.I. Marinesko.

After graduating from a technical school, Marinesko went on the ships "Ilyich" and "Red Fleet". First as a third mate, then as a second. History has preserved for us the memories of his comrades from that period, they all speak of Alexander Marinesko as a principled and demanding leader, and at the same time as a joker and "the soul of the company."

Perhaps, if Marinesko's fate had turned out differently, today we would remember him as a famous sea captain, but in November 1933, at the age of 20, Alexander Marinesko was drafted into the Red Army.

The revolutionary proletarian origin and the navigator's diploma played their fateful role, and instead of a soldier's overcoat, Alexander Ivanovich immediately puts on an officer's tunic and enters the higher courses of the command staff of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Fleet (RKKF). There, as an external student, in a year from a young assistant captain they make a navigation officer and are assigned to serve in the submarine fleet.

The archives conveyed to us the service record of a graduate of the RKKF command staff courses, “assistant watch commander” (such a title was awarded to him after graduation) Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko:

“He knows his specialty well. Not disciplined enough. Can manage personnel under constant supervision. Conclusion: pay attention to increasing discipline.

Probably, the formation of the freedom-loving character of Alexander Ivanovich on the "war footing" was quite difficult. According to the recollections of colleagues of that period, he did not even strive to become a real professional military man, military service weighed on him, all Alexander Ivanovich's dreams were about the bridge of a merchant ship.

In November 1934, immediately after graduation, Marinesko was appointed navigator on the submarine Shch-306 (Haddock) of the Baltic Fleet. Since 1936, Alexander Ivanovich was promoted, went first on the Leninets L-1 boat, and then as the commander of the Malyutka M-96 boat.

On July 16, 1938, in the midst of “spy mania” and the fight against “enemies of the people,” counterintelligence recalls the Romanian relatives of Alexander Marinesko, and he was fired from military service on the same day. The NKVD did not manage to make him a “Romanian spy”, since Marinesko had not been in Romania since birth, he did not correspond with his relatives. Most likely, the hand of the punitive machine of the NKVD from Alexander Ivanovich was taken away by the old blow of Iona Marinescu in the face of an unknown Romanian officer, because the death sentence in Romania to the father of Alexander Ivanovich was not canceled. It was not possible for the NKVD specialists to make a spy from Marinesko, but just in case, he was fired from the Navy.

Today we do not know how Alexander Ivanovich himself reacted then to such a turn, he did not leave memoirs after himself, and the writer Alexander Kron, who recorded his conversations with Marinesko after the war, did not ask him about it. However, the fact that Marinesko, after the NKVD changed its mind about appointing him a "Romanian spy", did not himself ask the command to reinstate him in the service, suggests that Alexander Ivanovich did not seek to return to the navy. By the way, one of Marinesko's sailors, Gennady Zelentsov, described in his memoirs his confidential conversation with the commander, which they had in a fishing boat two miles from Kronstadt, when the submarine was resting after a trip to the roadstead, and Marinesko went fishing.

« I never wanted to be in the military, - Marinesko Zelentsov said then. - The sea, peaceful ships, that's my love. I became a military man on duty«.

If Marinesko did not hesitate to say such words to his colleagues in 1944, when the war was in full swing, then, probably, in peaceful 1938, he definitely did not make plans to continue his military career.

On August 7, 1938, less than a month after being transferred to the reserve, as it is fashionable to say today, “according to a discrediting article,” an order from the fleet commander to reinstate Lieutenant Marinesko in active service suddenly appears, and in November an order to award him the rank of senior lieutenant. Political vigilance gave way to harsh necessity.

New submarines left the stocks several times a year, and there were fewer and fewer competent naval officers every day, the number of "Trotskyists" and "pests" in the fleet turned out to be too large. And rehabilitated for the first time, Alexander Marinesko again climbed into the cabin of the submarine.

The career of a young submarine officer Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko in the pre-war period proceeded as standard for his time. Assistant commander on the submarine L-1, six months later already the commander of the M-96, a small submarine of series 6, called the "Baby" submariners.

With a surface displacement of 200 tons, a length of about 40 meters and a width of 3.5 meters, the "baby" consisted of 36 crew members. It was this crew, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Alexander Marinesko, who in 1940 became the best submarine crew in the Baltic Fleet based on the results of combat and political training.

Marinesko received a gold watch from the commander of the Baltic Fleet Tributs and an entry in the personal file from the division commander Yunakov:

“Disciplined, but demanding of himself is not enough. Decisive but not proactive. He takes care of his subordinates, but is often rude and unrestrained.

The subordinates, unlike the divisional commander, understood that it was better to run into rudeness and stay alive than to die stupidly in an atmosphere of "courtly" treatment, and appreciated their commander.

Aleksey Tikhonovich Astakhov, one of Alexander Marinesko's wartime colleagues, characterizes his commander as a complex person:

“Well, of course, everything happened. He made a lot of noise, if something was not for him. He demanded instructions and discipline at sea. God forbid, whoever oversleep on watch, immediately planted on his lip, for the second time out of the crew. But everyone understood that it was war. He always stood for his own, therefore, they say, he also had problems with his superiors, that he defended violators. He especially quarreled with the commissars. After all, it was customary for us in the crew. The sea is hard - you can relax on the shore. Therefore, many of ours ended up in the commandant's office on a drunken basis.

M-96 died in 1944 in the Narva Bay, mistakenly blown up by her own minefields, but that was later. And in July 1941, Marinesko went on her first military campaign.

In the early days of the Great Patriotic War, the M-96 submarine under the command of Marinesko was relocated to Paldiski, then to Tallinn, stood in a position in the Gulf of Riga, and had no collisions with the enemy.

M-96 under the command of Marinesko fought cautiously. Alexander Ivanovich did not climb on the rampage, took care of the ship and people, thought out, as they say, retreat and maneuver, studied himself and taught his people to act in a combat situation.

Today it is no secret to anyone that in 1941 the Baltic Fleet irretrievably lost 27 submarines, largely due to the capricious mood of the command. M-96, thanks to Marinesko, was not included in this number. Yes, the M-96 did not achieve combat victories in 1941, but the crew gained the necessary combat experience.

Here is a record of Marinesko's memories of those days, made by Alexander Kron:

“There is nothing more painful than walking through a minefield. Mina does not impersonate anything, one can only guess about their location, relying on their own instincts and the stories of their comrades. Got into a minefield - crawl. Walk without wagging, the smallest. When touching the side of the minrep - do not shy away, but carefully work back. Quietly, so that the minrep does not break, divert the stern. It stretches like a string, but should slide off gently. Nerves must be kept in check. I really want to get out of a dangerous place as soon as possible - you can’t. You hear the rattle of a stretched cable, everyone hears it, and it is necessary for the team to know that the commander’s hand lying on the machine telegraph will not falter, he will not succumb to panic.

In October 1941, Marinesko distinguished himself, but not at sea, but on the shore. “For systematic drunkenness and organization of gambling in the division,” he is expelled from the candidates for party membership, but is left in office - a trained commander, as you know, is a “piece of goods”. Less fortunate was the commissar of the division, who, for the collapse of political work, was demoted and sent to the penal battalion to the front. It can be assumed that it was this fact that determined the special attitude of political bodies towards Commander Marinesko.

From the memoirs of Alexei Tikhonovich Astakhov:

“Alexander Ivanovich was not engaged in drill in vain. If you don’t need to go on a hike, then you don’t drive people. There were times when I took a big risk. When repairing or preparing, he let the sailors go on short vacations to their families, did business trips, ostensibly on business. And then sailors were forbidden to leave Kronstadt.

In February 1942, the M-96, wintering near the embankment of Leningrad, receives a direct hit from an artillery shell. The 4th and 5th compartments are flooded, but the crew manages to save the ship.

Another black streak ends for Marinesko in the second half of 1942, when the M-96, after repairs, again begins to perform combat missions.

On August 14, 1942, the M-96 sinks the Finnish Helen transport with a displacement of about 2 thousand tons, and in November successfully lands a sabotage group on the coast of the Narva Bay - this was an operation to search for the German Enigma cryptographic machine at the headquarters of the fascist regiment. Enigma itself could not be obtained, but the actions of Captain Marinesco were noted by the authorities. Alexander Ivanovich is awarded the Order of Lenin, reinstated as a candidate for the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, given the rank of captain of the 3rd rank and sent for retraining to Samarkand, where the Naval Academy was evacuated.

Upon returning from his studies, Marinesko takes command of the S-13 submarine, a modern ship with a displacement of almost a thousand tons, twice the size of the former "baby". Under the leadership of Alexander Ivanovich, there were already 50 crew members, he joins the party. The tone of the service description given to him by the division commander Orel also changes somewhat: “A fighting and brave commander, he knows underwater business perfectly. Disciplined, but Everyday life needs control." Apparently, Marinesko did not become a fully military man by that time, but most likely he did not want to.

The boat begins to prepare for a combat exit with a new commander and work out the tasks of the training course. Unsuccessful attempts to break through the German anti-submarine defense in the Gulf of Finland, during which four were killed Soviet boats, suspended the preparation of the S-13 for a military campaign.

Marinesko's crew went to sea only in October 1944, when Finland withdrew from the war and the blockade was lifted. And for the very first combat campaign on this boat, Alexander Marinesko, like his team, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of War - they managed to inflict critical damage on the Siegfried enemy combat transport and successfully escape from their pursuers.

Inspired by success, Marinesko allowed himself to go AWOL, which, given the conditions of hostilities, resulted in major trouble. There was a threat to remove the commander from command of the submarine. They say that division commander A.E. Orel stood up for a talented sailor, there was a rumor that the team even refused to go to sea with another commander. One way or another, after this difficult disciplinary collision, the submarine under the command of Marinesco carried out the so-called “Attack of the Century”.

German liner "Wilhelm Gustloff"

And on January 11, 1945, Marinesko went on his second military campaign on this boat, which brought him worldwide fame. The sinking of the Gustloff and Steuben made Alexander Marinesko the most productive commander of the Soviet Navy and, as numerous historians write, saved him from the tribunal. Alexander Ivanovich is presented to the Hero of the Soviet Union, but is not awarded. It is believed that his legendary adventures with Swedes and captured cars are to blame, but, most likely, the higher command did not find any reason to give the highest award for not the most difficult military operation.

Estimates of "Attack of the Century" today are radically different. From heroically enthusiastic to extremely negative. Someone writes that Marinesko, having broken through a powerful anti-submarine defense, inflicted significant damage on the enemy, destroying dozens of crews of German submariners, someone calls Marinesko a war criminal who cold-bloodedly shot defenseless transports with women and children.

The least biased sources today give a cautious assessment of this S-13 victory. Yes, the Gustloff was a legitimate military target, because in addition to refugees, there were military and artillery on board, and it was listed not as an ambulance, but as a military floating base. But he walked quietly, without maneuvering, with practically no guards. For some time, "Gustloff" went with the running lights on, and, most likely, it was then that the crew of the 13th discovered it. In 1945, an attack on such a target did not require the use of complex tactics and was an ordinary event for submariners of all countries.

Marinesko destroyed the transport, continued the mission, destroyed another one, the Steuben, and returned safely to the base. A campaign worthy of a military award, but no more.

Unfortunately, later Alexander Ivanovich became a hostage of someone else's PR. First, a negative one, when the big naval commanders did not want to make a hero out of an ordinary and not very disciplined commander, then a positive one, which continues to this day.

On January 30, 1945, near the Danzig Bay, in the Stolpmünde area, the C-13 boat, choosing the best position for the attack, pursued the largest German ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, with a displacement of 25,484 (!) tons for two hours.

The Gustloff was a large German liner built in Hamburg in the mid-1930s on the personal orders of Hitler. He was supposed to serve for "classless" cruise travel - even an ordinary worker could afford to rest on the Gustloff. The ship was promoted as "a symbol of the authorities' personal concern for the common people of Germany." The last peaceful exit of this ship was on August 25, 1939, on the eve of the war. It was later converted into a military transport vessel.

"Wilhelm Gustloff" turned out to be the ship of the largest displacement, which the Soviet Navy managed to destroy during the Great Patriotic War

On January 30, 1945, there was a strong storm in the Baltic, visibility was zero. The S-13 submarine entered from the coast and from a distance of less than a kilometer successfully fired three torpedoes - “For the Motherland!”, “For the Soviet people!” and "For Leningrad!". The fourth jammed, but managed to neutralize it and successfully evade the pursuit of enemy guard ships.

According to various estimates, from 7 to 10 thousand people were on board the German liner, less than a thousand were saved. According to Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, who headed the USSR Navy in the Great Patriotic War, "half of the passengers of the liner were highly qualified specialists - the color of the fascist submarine fleet." The German Navy suffered serious damage. According to the Marine magazine (1975, Nos. 2-5, 7-11, Germany), 406 submariners died with the ship. In addition, on board the Wilhelm Gustloff were a female naval battalion, a unit of the 88th anti-aircraft regiment, several detachments of Croatian volunteers, about two dozen Nazi leaders, SS and Gestapo officers. The rest are civilian refugees, including women and children.

In the same very successful C-13 campaign under the command of Marinesko, the General von Steuben transport with a displacement of 14,600 tons, carrying 3,600 tankers, was sunk. " For this one military campaign, - wrote in the article "Combat activity of submarines of the KBF in 1944-1945." Candidate of Naval Sciences V.A. Poleshchuk, - Marinesko, in essence, sent an entire division to the bottom!»

After the sinking of the Steuben, Marinesko became the record holder among Soviet submariners in terms of the total tonnage of enemy ships sunk.

German transport "General von Steuben"

Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko became the most successful submariner in the entire war, his two largest attacks were made with a breakthrough of outposts, pursuit of the enemy at maximum surface speed and reaching the minimum distance of a torpedo salvo.

Dozens of pages have been written today about how the fate of Alexander Marinesko developed after the war. Removed from office and demoted by People's Commissar of the Navy Kuznetsov "For negligence in official duties and domestic promiscuity", in 1946 he was transferred to the reserve. Work on the ships of the Baltic Shipping Company, which was probably the happiest period in his life, then his health deteriorated and he was decommissioned from the crew. Work on the shore, a criminal record and a camp, returning to Leningrad and work again.

In the late 1950s, with the growing momentum of the Cold War and the beginning of a discussion about the role of the countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition in the defeat of fascism, the “submariner No. 1” was again remembered. Defense Minister Malinovsky in 1960 cancels the order of the People's Commissar Kuznetsov, reinstates him in rank and returns his pension. Soviet propagandists coin the term "attack of the century", and Kuznetsov himself, in his memoirs, already recalls the S-13 crew and Marinesko as heroes.

A.I. Marinesko - submariner number 1 of the twentieth century

Alexander Ivanovich managed to wait for rehabilitation during his lifetime. The legendary commander of the Red Banner submarine S-13 of the Red Banner submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, after a serious and prolonged illness, died on November 25, 1963 in Leningrad, at the age of fifty, having died prematurely. He was buried at the Theological Cemetery.

November 25, 1963 in Leningrad, after a serious and prolonged illness, the legendary commander of the S-13 submarine, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, died. He was dying painfully - cancer of the esophagus - but still did not lose his presence of mind. And only his third, last beloved wife Valya was always there. She inherited from the entire 50-year life of the great submariner - a year of cloudless happiness and two years of serious illness ...


Attitudes towards Marinesco have never been unambiguous. The official authorities, represented by the commanders of the Twice Red Banner Baltic Fleet, did not dislike it, but rather envied its glory. The commander of the submarine division Alexander Orel (later the commander of the DKBF) presented Marinesko to the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union for the destruction of two German ships "Wilhelm Gustloff" and "General Steuben", but the award was reduced to the Order of the Battle Red Banner. They explained, they say, the Hero should be a textbook: a staunch Leninist, not have any disciplinary action, be a role model for others.

Inconvenient Commander

Yes, Marinesko had a ruffy character, he always cut the truth in the eyes, he was principled and uncomfortable when someone wanted to say something. But one little known fact: after the incident in the Finnish city of Turku, in January 1945, they wanted to remove Marinesko from command of the S-13 submarine and generally send the boat on a combat campaign with another crew. But the crew of the submarine "revolted", refused to go to sea with another commander, and the command was forced to give in: by that time, only the S-13 was combat-ready in the Baltic Fleet. Marinesko went on a campaign, to which an additional "special officer" was assigned.


Submarine S-13

Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko was born on January 15, 1913 in Odessa. His father, the son of the blacksmith Ion Marinescu, a Romanian by nationality, was a sailor of a battle cruiser, but one day he could not stand the abuse from the officer and with a mighty blow he bloodied the nose of the offender. Jonah was sentenced to death, but it turned out that the punishment cell that night (the execution was supposed to take place at dawn) was guarded by a fellow countryman of Jonah, with whom they grew up in the same village. So the compatriot opened the cell, led Marinescu into the common corridor and pushed him to the window. Below, the restless Danube seethed, in order to survive it, it was necessary to swim across, which was not given to everyone. But it was the only way not to bring trouble on the guard's head. Like, they didn’t shoot, so he drowned ...

Jonah swam out, but left Romania forever, hiding first in Bessarabia, then moved to Odessa, where it was easier to dissolve in a crowded crowd. They searched for him for some time, but then they stopped, thinking that he really drowned.

From the age of 13 at sea ...

Marinesko Jr. grew up very restless, it was very difficult to keep him at home, all with the boys, either at sea or in the port. But secretly, Jonah hoped that his son would follow in his footsteps, connect his life with the sea. And so it happened. Already from the age of 13 he studied at the jung school, then in a sailor. Went on civilian ships, one of the captain's assistants. Once, in stormy weather, he showed courage, high skill and saved a cargo ship from certain death. He was awarded a valuable gift, which Iona Marinesko was very proud of (he, in the end, transferred the Romanian ending of the surname to “u” to the Ukrainian “o”).

The decision to connect his life with the army was given to Alexander Ivanovich not immediately. And even at the courses of the commanding staff, far from everything went well with him, but Marinesko "took up his mind in time" and avoided expulsion ...

He started the war on the "baby", as small submarines were called. In addition, the M-96 was also slow-moving, it was very difficult to attack large surface targets with it. Firstly, it was not possible to catch up with something fast, and, secondly, after the attack, it was far from always possible to escape from the enemy. But Marinesko was a very risky person. Alexander Ivanovich "sank" his first ship - a heavy floating battery - in August 1942, in any case, he reported to his superiors. But four years later, when the Germans transferred the surviving ships to the Baltic Fleet, this floating base was among the trophies, which in 1942 was towed and then repaired.

But Marinesko earned his first order - the Order of Lenin - in November 1942, when he landed scouts to capture a German cipher machine. And even though there was no encryption machine (the Germans changed the route at the last moment), the submarine commander himself acted flawlessly...

In October 1944 (by that time Marinesko was in command of the S-13 boat) in a military campaign, the Siegfried transport was seriously damaged, as it turned out later, the “sunk” transport, as in the first case, never went to the bottom. And Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of War.

Three components of the "attack of the century"

Now directly about the events of January 30, 1945. The "attack of the century" could not have taken place for three reasons. Firstly, if Marinesko had not changed the “hunting area”. German intelligence worked very well, and, obviously, the subordinates of Admiral Doenitz knew where the sea hunter in the face of the S-13 boat was waiting for them. How else can one explain the fact that the transports diligently bypassed the traps. All this seemed suspicious to Marinesko and he changed the area without informing the command about it.


Transport ship "Wilhelm Gustloff", sunk by the submarine "S-13"

Secondly, if so much perseverance and patience had not been shown. The speed of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" was more than that of the "S-13" and our submarine worked for several minutes at the limit, for wear and tear. If the pursuit had continued for another five minutes, the boat would have simply failed.

Thirdly, few people know that Marinesko committed another act that can hardly be called disciplined. Knowing that the "special officer" is unlikely to allow him to attack as he pleases, the submarine commander locked him in the hold. And it was not at all "old sins" that were the reason that Alexander Ivanovich was not given the Hero. He grappled with powerful "bodies", which ensured that in the same victorious 1945, Marinesko was demoted in military rank from captain III rank to senior lieutenant. Reverse example: Yuri Gagarin was awarded the military rank of "major" after a space flight, also bypassing the title of "captain".

There is another little-known fact: one of the torpedoes that was fired at the Wilhelm Gustloff got stuck in the same way as 55 years later, on the Kursk submarine. But "S-13" was more fortunate. Her torpedo was removed, it did not explode ... Marinesko left the German hunters in shallow water, along the coast. Between 150 and 200 depth charges were dropped by the Germans. Some of them exploded in the immediate vicinity of the submarine. But the solid casing of the hull withstood ...

Hitler and Marinesco

There is a beautiful myth that Hitler personally declared Marinesko his enemy No. civilians). In fact, all this did not happen: it is unlikely that a message about this would raise the morale of the Germans, who are suffering one defeat after another. And although this myth is beautiful, it is still a myth ...

Every year on January 30, submariners gather at the Museum of the World Ocean. A roasted pig is obligatory on the table (after each victory at the base of the submarine, this is how they meet). We remember Alexander Ivanovich, his military service. Heroes don't die...

Board aircraft EI-DJR, named after Alexander Marinesko