The most famous of all the secret Nazi bases in the Soviet sector of the Arctic is considered the secret stronghold of the meteorological expedition "Treasure Hunter. It existed in 1943-1944 (there is evidence that Soviet pilots observed the base warehouses as early as 1942) on the westernmost island of the Franz Josef Land archipelago - Alexandra Land Island. The meteorological detachment under the leadership of Lieutenant A. Makus and scientific leader V. Dress was brought to the island from Tromsø aboard the steamer "Kedingen". Part of the squadron's equipment was delivered by plane. The expedition began its work on October 15, 1943. In the spring and summer of next year, the personnel were poisoned by bear meat, and the German polar explorers were hastily evacuated by plane.
For the first time, our historians managed to find out about this secret base in September 1951, when the structures of the "treasure hunters" were accidentally discovered by a Soviet prospecting party led by Toporkov from the "Arcticproject".
And this phenomenon is difficult to explain even today. Indeed, for the first time, a fascist aircraft of the Do-215 type circling over the archipelago was noticed by Soviet pilots of the Polar Aviation in March 1941. During the war, our polar explorers observed here signs of a clear Nazi presence. And the crew of Ilya Mazuruk - also the work of an unknown radio station, red rockets, someone else's food warehouse, covered with a metal mesh from bears. And yet, only on September 12, 1951, when the icebreaker "Semyon Dezhnev" came to the Cambridge Strait, separating the islands of Georg Land and Alexandra Land, Soviet specialists examined the island. Here, not far from the edge of the eastern glacier, at a point with coordinates 80 degrees 50 minutes north and 47 degrees 04 minutes east, a fascist weather station was found: five dugouts of about three dozen people,meteorological site and antenna mast. The weather station was located half a kilometer from the shore, at an altitude of thirty meters above sea level and was invisible from the shore.
The residential log bunker consisted of seven control rooms, a bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, and storage rooms. A quarter of the structure was buried in the ground, and its upper part was painted with white oil paint for camouflage purposes. The dwelling bunker was surrounded by trenches with machine-gun nests, in which two company mortars, several light machine guns, a large amount of ammunition and a powerful radio station were found. Secret charters and meteorological observation logs were thrown into the soldier's dugout. Nearby, on a coastal drainage area, lay a small motor boat, and five kilometers away under an awning was thrown a compact but powerful radio station, the antenna rack of which was an easy-to-remove likeness of a well crane.
Later it was found out that on the approaches to the meteorological station a minefield of a dozen galvanic mines with a centralized control system was set.
It was evident that the secret base was abandoned with great haste. At the same time, the food warehouse and important base mechanisms were not destroyed. After getting acquainted with the abandoned documents, it was established that Soviet hydrologists had found the base of the naval meteorological and re- lengatory service Kriegsmarine No. 24, created by the German meteorological expedition “Treasure Hunt”. The same papers made it possible to establish why she was hastily abandoned.
The meteobaza successfully operated until the end of May 1944. When another group of observers left for Cape Nimrod, after a successful hunt, the polar explorers who remained in the main camp were poisoned by bear meat and fell ill with trichinosis. But only a month later, when the group from Nimrod returned back, Tromsø learned about the incident.
To the aid of the sick German polar explorers from the Norwegian Banak airbase, an FW-200 "Courier" aircraft (3rd detachment of the 1st air group of the 40th bomber squadron) arrived, from which a medical brigade was parachuted and medical equipment was dropped. For some unknown reason, the "Courier" circled over the territory of the weather station for almost six hours, but was unable to land. Perhaps this is due to some kind of flight incident, since Soviet polar explorers found a landing gear wheel of a Condor (Courier) type aircraft on the nearest coastal spit. The expedition evacuated only on July 7, 1944, when the BY-138 took out all the "treasure hunters".
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After the war, it was possible to find out that at the end of the summer navigation of 1944, U-387 arrived in the Cambridge Strait (commander - Chief Lieutenant Rudolf Buchler). She removed all the most valuable equipment and meteorological equipment here and delivered them to Narvik on October 9. Then she went out to sea again and took off the meteorological equipment of the expeditions working on the shores of the Novaya Zemlya Bay of Inostrantsev and on the Bear Island.
After the surveyors of Toporkov visited the island not far from the runway of the German airfield, where the fascist "Courier" could not land, Soviet military builders built an airfield for polar aviation (right on the Peninsula of Polar Pilots).
For some unknown reason, it was built away from the runway of base 24, which the Germans had been operating for four years. At the same time, Soviet pilots and the airfield service suffered for many years with maintaining the new runway in proper condition, trying not to notice that the German runway dried out the very first on the island in summer, and in winter it required minimal effort for its maintenance, since it was blown through by the Arctic winds from all directions. And what is especially interesting!
None of the Soviet people - neither topographers, nor builders, nor pilots - ever mentioned the most important find on Alexandra Land, that is, the sub-rocky parking of fascist submarines. The commander of the T-116 minesweeper, Lieutenant-Commander V. Babanov, was the first of the North Sea men to see it with his own eyes. It is worth noting that he found her two weeks after the sinking of the Nazi submarine U-362. And this clarification is not accidental at all!
The fact is that, most likely, the crew of the T-116 near the Mona Islands managed to sink one of the “ghost” submarines that were carrying some bulk cargo to Liinakhamari from Biruli Bay (Khariton Laptev Coast). More will be said about this inconspicuous bay on the Soviet Arctic coast.
But, interestingly, in the area where the fascist submarine was sunk, the Severomorians fished out some documents that indicated the exact location of the secret Nazi base on Alexandra Land. Not surprisingly, two weeks later, Lieutenant Commander V. Babanov was waiting for a risky but legitimate success here. But why didn't our historians find out about this? Or border guards who have been serving at an outpost in the nearby bay of Nagursky for so many years?
Unfortunately, the commander of the 116th minesweeper did not leave written memoirs, but, to our luck, his story has survived to our time. To simulate what Lieutenant-Commander Babanov saw on Alexandra Land, and to show it to you, we will take as a basis the external and internal views of the underwater "garages" in French and Norwegian ports. Of course, we will take into account that the size of the island shelter for the fascist submarines was much smaller than the "garages" built on the mainland.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, submarines were most often moored next to the floating base of their flotilla or right at the pier of their base. However, the constant presence of the obvious danger of an air attack forced Grand Admiral Raeder to think about creating special shelters - concrete bunkers at the German naval bases in Helgoland, Hamburg and Kiel. The basis was taken from concrete bunkers in the Beliysk port of Bruges, which successfully defended and provided the basing of submarines in the First World War. They fulfilled their mission no less successfully with the outbreak of World War II. In the summer of 1940, after the fall of Norway, France and the Benelux countries, quite a few similar military bases were built in their ports, and then - the same construction began on remote islands and archipelagos. Often the Germans simply reoccupied the former submarine bases, like, for example, everything in the same Bruges. In a short time, massive concrete bunkers were built in Norway (in the ports of Bergen and Trondheim) and in France (in the ports of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallis and Bordeaux).
The protected bunkers of Brest, where the author of this book managed to visit in person, once represented a real construction miracle, and today they amaze with their size and structure. They have fifteen boxes, where they could freely accommodate two or four submarines going through various stages of preparation for sailing. The "garages" are separated from each other by reinforced concrete walls of many meters thick, and from above they are covered with eight-meter reinforced ceilings. Even with a direct hit in such an overlap, aerial bombs (including the British five-ton "Tallboys") could not penetrate them. From the sea side, each box was reliably protected by powerful steel shutter shields.
Under the rock, which adjoined the bunker, there were warehouses with all sorts of supplies (fuel, food, weapons, clothing), main and backup power generators, pumping stations, ventilation and heating systems. For the delivery of heavy equipment and torpedoes from warehouses and storage facilities, a narrow-gauge railway was laid directly to the berths of submarines. Here, under the cliff, there were quite comfortable living and educational premises for rest and study of underwater crews. The construction of the submarine bunkers was entrusted to the paramilitary Todt Organization (OT). The responsibility for providing the defensive structures with everything necessary was assigned to the Kriegsmarine Construction Department.
On the French and Norwegian coasts, submarine shelters have never been built as independent objects, but have always been an integral part of the German program, which involved the creation of a system of defensive structures for this port. gateways, because if they were damaged, the port could be blocked. It is known that the construction of the bunker in Brest took up to five hundred thousand cubic meters of concrete and up to thirty thousand tons of steel. But on the other hand, under their protection, Nazi submarines were preparing to go to sea even during the most brutal bombing raids by British and American aircraft.
Interestingly, after the end of World War II, the entrances to some of these bunkers, for example, the Fink II bunker in Hamburg, were blown up by Allied sappers, while the fact that German submarines remained here were simply forgotten. But, this is on the continent, and what can we expect in the Arctic?
On the island of Alexandra Land, unlike the French bunkers, the Nazis did not need to fear the Tallboys, but even here they had everything for normal life and preparation for sea campaigns. For example - two well-camouflaged, but quite comfortable barracks, spacious food and fuel depots, a weapons depot for submarines and even a small repair shop. All of them were nearby - a stone's throw from the berths of German submarines. Two sub-rock piers were also built here, one of which was intended for loading mine and torpedo ammunition, the other for repair work and charging batteries. Moreover, already in the process of preparing the book, it turned out that the repair shop was not so small - here, in the Severnaya Bay, the Nazis created a whole plant to repair heavy raiders.
The island's Arctic base fully met all the requirements that the commander of the Kriegsmarine submarine forces, Rear Admiral Karl Dennitz, required from bases outside the Reich. She was able to:
1. Provide incoming submarines with fuel, food and fresh water, as well as inter-voyage rest for underwater crews.
2. To ensure the smooth conduct of the necessary repairs and inter-voyage operation of weapons, weapons and mechanisms in coastal conditions.
3. Ensure reliable communication with the command of the submarine forces in Norway, as well as with the rest of the group's submarines. Let me emphasize that the main submariner of the Kriegsmarine made exactly the same requirements to the bases on the coast of France, which he personally checked in the summer of 1940. Of course, we learned about this much later.
The next Soviet people who saw with their own eyes the rocky base for the "polar wolves" on Alexandra Land was the crew of I. Mazuruk. In the early 50s, one of his pilots, who came to inspect the German runway, accidentally stumbled upon ventilation shafts extending into the rock. True, he managed to inspect only the outer part of the grotto and everything that was near the local entrance, but our pilot did not have time to go down inside the structure, as the tide began and the entrance to the rocky base began to go under the water. Judging by the memoirs of V. Babanov and I. Mazuruk, the entrance to the rocky base is located somewhere in the area between Lake Pinegina and Dachnaya Bay or not far from the eastern glacier. Perhaps here we are talking about several entrance grottoes. Finishing the story about the real Kriegsmarine logistics base,created for the "polar wolves" Doenitz, I would like to highlight several very interesting facts for military historians, which, as you understand, could only be seen and retelled by their eyewitnesses:
1. In the vicinity of the entrance signs of the Severnaya Bay, powerful mooring rings are embedded in the rock, which outwardly look like the same rings, embedded in the rock in the Bolshaya Zapadnaya Litsa Bay ("Basis Nord") in 1940, 2. It was to this area that unidentified nuclear submarines came in the 1970s and summer 2000, the first was on the surface for some time, and its officers, pouring out onto the deck, were looking at something on our shore with binoculars. In the second case, “someone” conducted a detailed study of the rocks through the periscope.
3. During helicopter flights over Alexandra Land in approximately the same area, the flight participants examined a huge dark square under the ice of the Polyarnikov Peninsula.
4. The plant for the repair of fascist raiders is still not inspected by anyone.
Now, more than 65 years have passed since the end of the war, the number of people from the North Sea and polar explorers who have seen all the German structures on Alexandra Land is decreasing every year. And the Russian border guards who are here for some unknown reason do not go to the Polyarnikov Peninsula. Another secret point of the presence of Nazi "explorers" on Franz Josef Land today can be considered spacious buildings, but rather, warehouses on the islands of Rudolf and Nordbruck, which were seen from afar by Soviet polar sailors many times. However, what kind of structures they are is still a mystery. Meanwhile, a well-prepared expedition can still answer the questions that arise while reading these lines. May be,will it solve all the mysteries of the "wolf" fuel bases and food depots in our Arctic? But will we be able to get answers to them, or at least find out what is hidden under the rocks of Alexandra Land in ten years? Most likely - no longer. But they still hide many secrets.
From the book: "Swastika over Taimyr" Author: Sergey Kovalev