An amazing discovery in the Arkhangelsk forests (deep in the rear of the Second World War) was made by local residents 43 years after the end of the Great Patriotic War. They found the wreckage of a Soviet heavy fighter Pe-3.
But this was not what struck the experts who studied the lost car on the spot. She, which flew around the deep rear in 1942, was shot down, and clearly by someone else's plane, as evidenced by the size of the holes.
Not far from Arkhangelsk in the 90s, search engines found the already shot down German plane "Junkers-88". Having raised its remains from the swamp, historians began to study the surroundings more closely, and soon found in one of the remote areas in the north of the Pinezhsky region the inventory of the Hitlerite army. The canisters with World War II markings suggested that a secret Luftwaffe airfield was located on the shores of a relatively small, unnamed lake.
The fascist airfield was discovered on an unnamed forest lake just 150 kilometers from Arkhangelsk. The dugouts, gasoline tanks and household items of German soldiers found by the search engines caused a flurry of questions: when, who and why built this airfield, what unknown page of the history of the Arkhangelsk land is revealed by such an incredible find?
Subsequently, they still found out that the Wehrmacht command intended to turn this and other airfields into a springboard for a "radical turn" in the Great Patriotic War. The "jump" airfields hidden in the taiga were supposed to become a base for the Luftwaffe for strikes against large industrial regions of the USSR and, first of all, Moscow and the Urals.
Airplanes arriving here from Finland or Norway, having refueled, had the opportunity to reach the Urals, where at that time the industry evacuated by the Russians was actively developing. The Germans prepared for the operation with special diligence. Hitler personally watched the actions of the military, pinning great hopes on the result of the work of German saboteurs in the Arkhangelsk forests.
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GERMANY WAS ALWAYS INTERESTED IN THE RUSSIAN NORTH
Of course, with the outbreak of World War II, interest in the Arctic acquired a strategic character. First of all, military control over the Russian North interrupted the shortest supply line for the Red Army by the allies. Secondly, it made it possible in the future to establish the transfer of warships and boats to the Pacific Ocean and turn the military alliance with Japan from ephemeral to quite real. That is why, even despite the approaching end of the war, the battle for the Arctic continued until April 1945.
Of all the tasks that Hitler set in the Arctic, the first priority was the interception and destruction of the allied polar convoys, which regularly went to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. To do this, the Nazis attracted almost all the battleships and heavy cruisers, destroyers, submarines and aircraft that remained in the ranks. However, despite certain successes, it was not possible to completely disrupt the delivery of goods to the USSR. If the Kriegsmarines and the Luftwaffe could still reach the front-line Murmansk, then with the rear Arkhangelsk, where more than two-thirds of the cargo traffic was directed, everything was much more complicated.
That forced the German command to look for extraordinary solutions to the problem. Taking into account the vast and sparsely populated areas of the Russian North, the Germans had a completely logical idea to try to create a network of runways, the so-called jump airfields, using which the German aviation could significantly increase the radius of its flights.
Operation Taiga included the construction of several jump airfields in the forests of the eastern part of the Arkhangelsk region and their further use for bombing the Ural industrial zone. Hitler liked the plan, the operation was instantly approved, and the relevant organizations received orders. In concentration camps, agents of the Gestapo and "Abwehr" sought out and interrogated the natives of Pinezhie, Mezen, Pechora. Using the information obtained under torture from the Russian prisoners, the staff officers conjured over the maps, choosing the optimal places for the secret location of airfields.
But in the course of the preparatory work, it became clear that secretly placing and making airfields in the Arkhangelsk forests work is possible only in winter, when rivers and lakes are covered with a solid shell of ice. In another season, the arrangement of airfields will require cutting down and uprooting glades for runways, which is not only very laborious, but also unmasks objects.
Jaeger was delivered on hydroplanes
In Norway, the Nazis pulled together huge material and manpower to fight the convoys of the allies, it was decided to send part of these forces to the implementation of the "Taiga" plan. The priceless brainchild of the German military machine, the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer, was sent to the region of the Kara Sea.
"Admiral Scheer", or rather, the seaplanes "Arado-196" on board, were to begin the practical implementation of Operation Taiga.
Camouflage and markings adopted by the Soviet Air Force were applied to the Arado seaplanes; on white polar nights, they rose from the lead waters of the Kara Sea and at a minimum height went south to pre-selected rivers and lakes in the depths of the Pinezhsky region. In the northern forests deserted by the war, "Arado" landed special forces of rangers, fuel tanks, radio stations and weapons, food and medicine for those soldiers who would remain for the next months away from Vaterland to serve the arriving planes and guard airfields from uninvited hunters. The planes from the Scheer had only to start preparing the landing sites, since keeping the cruiser at sea for a long time would be too wasteful for Germany, limited in all its resources.
"PESHKA" KILLED TO THE REAR
It is possible that we would never have learned about this secret project, if not for some circumstances in 1942 and 1988. Starting in the summer of 1942, our command began to receive information about the appearance of enemy aircraft in the sky over the Arkhangelsk forests. At the same time, in the northern waters, the Germans completely defeated the allied convoy PQ-17, their "pocket" battleship "Admiral Scheer" attacked the polar Dikson, which was believed to be deep in the rear, enemy submarines began to surface at Novaya Zemlya. In addition, we also lost several ships in the waters, which only yesterday seemed inaccessible to the enemy. The strategic situation in the Arctic began to develop not in our favor.
On the morning of November 5, 1942, two Pe-3 fighters took off from the Yagodnik airfield near Arkhangelsk. However, soon after takeoff, communication with the fighters disappeared and they did not return to the airfield.
46 years passed, and in the summer of 1988, in the area of Lake Okulova, local residents found the wreckage of one of the missing Pe-3. When the deceased plane was dragged to a dry place, according to documents found on the remains of two dead pilots, it was possible to establish that it was the missing crew. The most surprising thing was that the sides of the plane were literally excised by large-caliber cannon shells. This meant that the plane was simply shot down. Initially, it was assumed that the plane could be accidentally hit by a second fighter. But experts immediately rejected this version, since the Pe-3 was armed with a 20-mm ShVAK aircraft cannon, and the size of the holes indicated that the plane was shot from a 30-mm cannon.
But who then could shoot down our plane, because the flight was carried out in the deep rear and for many hundreds of kilometers around an impenetrable forest? Inspection of the wreckage of the aircraft was carried out by the pilots of the Northern Fleet Air Force, who could hardly be mistaken in the caliber of the shells. There could be only one conclusion: our aircraft was attacked and destroyed not by a serial, but by some specialized aircraft with a very long flight range. Or the Germans had the opportunity for a long time to wait for the appearance of Soviet planes in the controlled area and suddenly attack them. That is, during the war in the deep Soviet rear, in the Arkhangelsk region, they had their own airfield!
To test this version, in July 1989, the pilots of the Northern Fleet Air Force made aerial photography of one of the suspicious areas and, near Lake Okulovo, unexpectedly found an abandoned elongated platform, very reminiscent of a runway. A ground survey confirmed that this is indeed a runway, and it is precisely German, since it was covered with plates with Luftwaffe stamps. Near the runway they found dilapidated residential and technical buildings, in the residential block was found a once elegant cap - "Fliegermütze" and a flight jacket stained with paint, And in the repair - parts from machine tools with German symbols and spare parts for the FUG-10 radio station. Barrels of aviation gasoline with German marking were also stored nearby.
The sensational findings did not end there. Today it is already quite clear that a network of secret airfields covered our entire North up to the Kara Sea, and maybe even further. Already discovered a German jump airfield in the rear of our troops on Lake Lacha, where seaplanes were landing. Similar sites were found near the villages of Megra, the throat of the White Sea, and Pogorelets, Mezensky Bay, as well as in the Leshukonsky district. The German airfield on the Kanin Peninsula is also known, which was even equipped with airfield plates. There is information about at least two airstrips on Novaya Zemlya, Cape Constantine and Cape Pinegin, and even about German aircraft flights to Franz Josef Land.
There is no doubt that all these airfields did not operate on their own, but were elements of a single, well-thought-out and long-term system. In addition to airfields, this structure included meteorological stations and even temporary basing points for submarines. Today, at least two such sites are known: in the Lena River delta and in the Ice Harbor Bay on Novaya Zemlya.
Well, what tasks could the runway at Lake Okulova perform? It is known that in the period from August 24 to September 29, 1942, Ju-88 bombers from KG30 "Adler" made six massive raids on Arkhangelsk. As a result, businesses and residential areas suffered a lot of damage, and port facilities were practically destroyed. This made it difficult to unload ships with American equipment and its further dispatch.
According to eyewitnesses, German planes entered the city and the port from the east. Then they counted - in order to mislead the local air defense. However, it is quite possible that these planes took off from the airfield near Lake Okulov. However, more raids on Arkhangelsk did not happen. In view of the strategic importance of the city, the 104th Air Division, the 95th Fighter Aviation Regiment equipped with long-range Pe-3 fighters, and the squadron of the 78th Aviation Regiment were allocated for its cover. And the Germans, apparently, did not want to risk the disclosure of their hard-built forest airfields either.
FRITSEV DISCOVERED … DEASTER
In the early fall of 1942, German plans nearly collapsed. A native of Pinega, Nikolai Porokhin, hiding from being sent to the front, took a shotgun, a supply of crackers and went to be buried in the woods. Having reached a pre-selected lake in a remote tract, he unexpectedly bumped into the Germans who were building an airfield.
The Nazis noticed the deserter, but he managed to escape, since the huntsmen, fearing getting lost, did not pursue him for a long time. Porokhin had to return from the forest to the nearest village, where he told the local authorities about what he had seen. Employees of SMERSH, into whose hands Nikolai soon fell, did not believe him and sent him to the GULAG. where he died.
After this incident, the Germans had to think long and painfully: why not curtail the operation? We decided to take the risk and evacuate only one airfield discovered by the Pinezhan.
By November 1942, the forest airfields were ready, but the battle for Stalingrad again changed Hitler's plans. The project was temporarily closed.
The Taiga was remembered only at the end of 1944. The Fuhrer ordered to restore airfields on the Arkhangelsk land. And now the huntsmen are back in their dens, waiting when it will be necessary to justify the Fuhrer's hopes. However, they no longer had to save the Reich …
SEARCH CONTINUES
In September 1944, Finland withdrew from the war, surrendering to the allies and the USSR, and all air bases in Finland were lost to the Germans. In October 1944, as a result of the Petsamo-Kirkenes operation, northern Norway was also liberated from the Germans. Airfields near Arkhangelsk were out of reach for the Germans.
The Hitlerites who were on them barely managed to take out. The epic of Plan Taiga is over.
Thoroughly hidden behind the impassable swamps in summer, dugouts dug into the ground and covered with snow in winter, stocks of weapons and fuel tanks are still waiting for their search engines. The exact number of runways built by the Germans has not yet been established. Let's hope that historians and local historians will get to them before the "black diggers".
In addition to secret airfields, the Germans created a whole network of secret naval bases in the Soviet Arctic. For a long time it was believed that German submarines came to rob our Arctic for a month and a half, then leaving for their bases in Norway. But after the war, unexpected discoveries followed one after another, and by the 70s a depressing picture gradually emerged: our Arctic waters were teeming with them, they scurried under our noses! Receiving a tip, the "polar wolves" littered the fairways with mines brought from Norway, loaded new ammunition at secret bases and mined them for the second time, after which they began the usual "hunt" with torpedoes.
Meetings with them became not only more frequent, they already brazenly walked here even on the surface, trashing everyone and everything. For example: on 07/27/42, the U-601 boat entered Malye Karmakuly and, by cannon fire, smashed 2 seaplanes, 3 houses and 2 wintering warehouses; 08/01/42, she sank the steamer "Krestyanin", which was sailing without security; 08/17/42 U-209 sank an unarmed caravan (3 tugs and 2 barges with workers from the port of Naryan-Mar), 305 people died; 08/19/42, 2 boats demonstratively on the surface entered Belushya Bay (Novaya Zemlya); U-? 209 entered the Kostin Shar Strait and began a firefight with our minesweepers, after which, without diving, went into the sea; 08.21.42 U-456 attacked 2 of our patrol boats in the Matochkin Shar Strait.
In 1943, 13 boats of the Viking group were already operating in the Kara Sea.
A large Kriegsmarine base also existed in the Lena River delta. It was there that in 1963, among the rocks of the talus, the remains of a German submarine non-commissioned officer were found. And in 1975, thirty years after the end of the war, not far away, on one of the islands called Pillar, the base itself was discovered. The Germans built a two-hundred-meter-high concrete berth with a height of five to six meters and a fuel depot there, connecting them with a narrow-gauge railway. The base was hidden from the wind by a hundred-meter rock, behind which there was a platform where about 600 barrels of diesel fuel and kerosene, 300 liters each, were stored.
What were the goals of its construction, is still a mystery. The size of the base suggests that it was intended not only for submarines, but also for large surface warships such as the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. But the most mysterious thing is how a considerable amount of building materials were delivered to the Laptev Sea coast, which were required for its construction?