Big tyuters island in the Gulf of Finland. Big tyuters reveals its secrets

Last week, the Gogland search expedition, sent by the Russian Ministry of Defense to Bolshoi Tyuters Island in the Gulf of Finland, loaded dozens of units of German military equipment and weapons from the Second World War (this is reported by the Internet portal of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). At the end of the war, the Germans, hastily leaving Bolshoy Tyuters, were forced to leave a large amount of heavy weapons, military equipment, ammunition and other property on the island. Among the finds discovered by the expedition are the legendary German FlaK 18/36 anti-aircraft guns of 88 mm caliber, the Swedish Bofors L60 anti-aircraft gun and rare models of German artillery trailers.

The island is located to the west of the Baltic coast of Russia, so for an observer from St. Petersburg, the sun sets behind Bolshoi Tyuters
hodar.ru

The expedition has been working on the island since July 15: it includes representatives of the All-Russian public organization "Russian Geographical Society", the All-Russian social movement to perpetuate the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland and the Search Movement of Russia. The total number of the expedition is more than 80 people.

There are many large and small islands in the Gulf of Finland. The fact that on some of them the ruins of fortifications and the remains of broken military equipment have been preserved has long been known. Scientific expedition The "Russian Geographical Society" (RGO) in 2013 examined a group of the Outer Islands and confirmed these facts in their reports. Such islands as Gogland, Maly Tyuters, Bolshoy Tyuters, Sommers and Seskar, which have a strategically significant location, served as important strongholds for the Germans during the war years.

Bolshoi Tyuters Island (marked in red)
navytech.ru

Bolshoy Tyuters Island is located 180 km west of St. Petersburg, has a diameter of about 2.5 km, and its area is approximately 8.3 square meters. km. Big Tyuters is located south of the island Gogland, forming together with it a kind of gate through which the main sea route passes, leading to the ports of St. Petersburg and Vyborg. It was this location of the island that determined its role as a place for placing coastal batteries. Currently, of the existing buildings on the island, there is only a lighthouse with a height of 21 m.

The lighthouse of Bolshoy Tyuters Island is served by a caretaker who does not risk going far from it, fearing deadly "surprises" of wartime
smolbattle. en

Over the years, garrisons were placed on the islands, fortifications with minefields were built, and coastal batteries were installed to keep sea routes at gunpoint. Some islands changed their owners, alternately being Swedish, Finnish, Russian, and during the Great Patriotic War, some of them were occupied by German troops (Bolshoy Tyuters was held by the Germans almost until the end of 1944). Fierce battles in the Gulf of Finland cost the belligerents thousands of victims, and the exact number of Soviet soldiers and officers who died here has not yet been established.

The plot of Channel One about the search expedition to Bolshoy Tyuters

Not all islands were completely cleared of mines and shells after the end of the war, especially those that were located in border areas closed to the public. There is reason to believe that, in addition to old military equipment, the remains of soldiers who died in the battles for their liberation can be found on the islands.

At the end of the war, the Germans, hastily leaving Bolshoi Tyuters, were forced to leave a large amount of heavy weapons, military equipment and ammunition on it. In addition, minefields and barriers remained here, and in such in large numbers that Bolshoy Tyuters earned a reputation as an "island of death", since servicemen continued to die on it for many years after the war. In the post-war period, sapper units arrived on the island several times (seven such landings are known), which carried out work to clear the territory. In particular, in 2005, a joint expedition of Russian and Swedish sappers worked here, neutralizing more than 30,000 explosive objects.

Despite all the efforts to clear the island, Bolshoy Tyuters still poses a great danger to people.
posleduvremeni.ru

Preparations for the expedition of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to the islands of the Gulf of Finland began in the spring of this year. The Hogland reconnaissance expedition, which consisted of representatives of the RF Ministry of Defense, the Russian Geographical Society and participants in the search movement, visited the Outer Islands at the end of May and completed a large amount of work: studied the terrain, outlined search areas, laid routes, carried out engineering markings, prepared berths and sites, compiled inventory of the remains of weapons and military equipment.

The island, closed to the public, has become a kind of nature reserve, preserving weapons and equipment from the Second World War in its forests.
poludurkoff.net

After a reconnaissance expedition, in the first days of July, a landing of sappers from the naval engineering regiment of the Baltic Fleet was landed on the islands. Naval sappers, working on maps prepared by the reconnaissance expedition, conducted a study of a number of areas, freeing them from explosive objects. For a week of work, sappers found more than seven hundred mines, shells and other ammunition, which were destroyed by detonation. In this case, anti-personnel mines posed a particular danger, the fuses of which had been in an activated state for several decades and could detonate at any moment.

Among the found military equipment there are many valuable samples. In the photo - presumably, a Bofors L60 automatic anti-aircraft gun of 40 mm caliber
posleduvremeni.ru

Specialists of the Russian Ministry of Defense working on the islands report that about two hundred samples of German weapons and military equipment have already been assembled and shipped. After delivery to mainland those found samples that are subject to restoration will be restored and become exhibits of Russian military history museums and memorial parks. As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a recent interview, the restored weapons and equipment will become exhibits of the Patriot military-patriotic park, where it is planned to transfer the expositions of some military museums.

Loading the finds on the ships of the Baltic Fleet
military.rf

The expedition also reportedly unearthed the remains of a Red Army soldier whose name has yet to be established. Work on the island will last until August 14.

The complex expedition of the Russian Geographical Society with the support of the Russian Ministry of Defense continues to survey the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The group went to Big Tyuters and Gogland to study their geography, geology, biology and historical and cultural heritage.

The "Island of Death" is parting with the legacy of the war - volunteers from all over the country are preparing hundreds of tons of rusty military iron for removal from Bolshoi Tyuters. Shell casings, fragments of ammunition will soon be disposed of. But this land is still fraught with danger.

Despite the fact that seven demining operations have already been carried out here, volunteers find another cache of ammunition. Sappers, who until recently worked in Syrian Palmyra, discovered on the island a hundred German anti-personnel mines - the so-called "frogs" without detonators.

“When the Germans left here, they didn’t have time to take everything with them - and they buried and hid something. Look, they are in excellent condition, even the paint has not peeled off, ”Ilya Shcherbakov, commander of the demining group of the 30th engineering regiment, shows the mine.

Big Tyuters, Gogland and neighboring islands literally block the exit to the Baltic from the Gulf of Finland. From 1941 to 1944, it was from here that the Germans fired on Soviet ships and airplanes.

The area of ​​Bolshoi Tyuters is only eight square kilometers. But during the war years, the Germans made it absolutely impregnable: rows of barbed wire surrounded the entire island, machine-gun nests were located every 50-100 meters. Everything was done so that the Soviet troops could not take it.

Tyuters was defended by a three thousandth garrison, while combat losses for almost three years of the war amounted to only 30 people.

There is a German military cemetery on the island. Now the military personnel of a separate search battalion of the Western Military District, at the request of the People's Union of Germany, are exhuming the remains of German soldiers.

“Since this is a forested, wild place, even last year there were attempts by marauders to enter the island, despite the remoteness. Therefore, if you imagine the idea of ​​leaving and not touching anything, unfortunately, this will not work out, ”explains Dmitry Volkov, an employee of the People’s Union of Germany.

Members of the joint expedition of the Russian Defense Ministry and the Russian Geographical Society hope to find the remains of Soviet soldiers - participants in several landings. Hundreds of soldiers and sailors went missing in these places.

“It seemed that after the last expedition, well, everything was already - this island came up and down, everything interesting was evacuated from here. And it seems that we all know, but it turned out that a lot of interesting things remained,” said Valery Kudinsky, head of the International Complex Expedition “Gogland”.

On Bolshoi Tyuters, several more bunkers were found, equipped by the Germans in granite rocks. Their goals are still unknown. Geophysicists are now trying to unravel this mystery of the island.

Here, presumably, there may be grottoes, the entrances to which were blocked by the Germans during the retreat. Anything could be hidden in them - from stocks of weapons and food to valuables and art objects looted by the Nazis near Leningrad.

For 70 years, Tyuters, mined far and wide, remained a reserve of war at the end, and only now has it finally begun to reveal its secrets.

An expedition to Bolshoy Tyuters is a journey through time, not space. Since September 18, 1944, when the Germans gave up their positions and fled, the island has stood untouched - completely covered with gunpowder, spent cartridges and cocked mines

On September 1, 1943, a German patrol found a gap in the wire fence. There was also a rubber boat nearby. It was clear that at night a Soviet reconnaissance group had infiltrated Bolshoy Tyuters Island, where Wehrmacht artillery had settled. The entire garrison was put on alert. 800 people combed a modest 8 sq. km of the island in search of several saboteurs. Soon their hiding place was found: beds, a supply of food and medicine, cartridges, parts from the radio station.

The Germans never managed to catch our soldiers. I had to hastily change defensive positions and build new ones. fortifications. However, according to logbook of the Soviet submarine M-96, from which the landing force landed on Tyuters, the fighters also did not return aboard. Their fate remained a mystery.

Today Bolshoi Tyuters is crowded and noisy. Sappers, geologists, volunteers and journalists work here, they busily gas up trucks and pickups, a helicopter takes off and lands. But in the evening, when the work subsides and dusk falls on the island, it seems as if the Soviet intelligence officers are still hiding somewhere nearby, in the forest thickets or behind the nearest stone. Just about from behind the hill, rattling their weapons, a German search party will appear. Time on Bolshoi Tyuters seemed to have stopped. The island looks like the war on it ended just yesterday.

ISLANDS OF THE GULF OF FINNISH

Big Tyuters was not always uninhabited. The first archaeological finds on the island date back to the 6th century. Since the 16th century, the island has been inhabited by the peoples of the Finno-Ugric group. The path "from the Varangians to the Greeks" passed by the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The waters near Bolshoy Tyuters had a bad reputation: piracy flourished here, ships died. Shortly before the start of World War II, a Finnish village with a population of more than 400 inhabitants was located on the island.

brown dunes

Big Tyuters - small desert island, only 2.5 km across. On the western side, sharp rocks bristled in Karelian style. Spread out in the east sand dunes. The landscape here resembles the Curonian Spit, chosen by photographers. From the crest of the dune opens scenic view especially at dawn. But here scraps of barbed wire come across. You begin to notice the pillars along which the barrier was stretched. Looking down, you understand: the sand is literally mixed with "straws" of artillery gunpowder and hundreds of shells.

On the same dune, until last year, there was a kind of business card Bolshoi Tyuters - 88 mm anti-aircraft gun FlaK aiming at the sky. It was covered with a two-meter layer of sand, one trunk stuck out. Last year, the gun was dug up, transported by tractor to the bay, and from there it was sent by boat to the mainland.

If not for this anti-aircraft gun and its 15 twin sisters, the war could have ended much faster. The fairway of the Gulf of Finland runs exactly in the middle between Gogland, largest island archipelago, and Big Tyuters. In March 1942, after almost three months of the heroic defense of Gogland, a detachment of Red Army soldiers, having not received reinforcements from the mainland in time, was forced to retreat. Gogland was occupied by the Finns, Big Tyuters - by the Germans. Attempts to return the islands were unsuccessful, and the sea exit from the besieged Leningrad was closed. Coastal artillery kept surface ships from leaving the bay, and tight nets and minefields kept submarines out.

In 1944, when Finland signed a peace treaty with the USSR, Bolshoi Tyuters was hastily abandoned by the Germans. Leaving, they mined the island and blew up almost everything that could be of any value.

What is there to say! Everything that the Nazis managed to get to was spoiled, - the volunteers sigh, showing a shot through bucket, - and you haven’t seen the boilers of field kitchens yet. We will take them out with the garbage. The Germans threw grenades inside. Nothing left.

"Gifts" underfoot

Weapons, ammunition, ammunition parts, household items and personal belongings of soldiers - all this usually becomes the prey of "black diggers". The islands of the Gulf of Finland are practically inaccessible for amateur searchers. We got to Bolshoi Tyuters by helicopter. Of course, there is no landing site on the island, but this is not a problem for the military Mi-8: it sits on a cleared patch right next to the army tents. A little further is the camp. The tents of the Russian Geographical Society are bright, touristy, not as big as those of the military. There is nothing like a road here either. Soldiers and volunteers are transported to work points by army trucks. As a rapid transit superior comfort- pickups Volkswagen Amarok.

A pontoon berth for a landing craft is equipped on a sloping sandy shore. Not far from it rises a mountain of rusty cylinders. In Germany, each artillery shell was stored and transported in a separate metal tube (the Red Army carried ammunition in wooden boxes). There are several hundred of these tubes here, and in total there are tens of thousands of them on the island. In the same pile are curls of barbed wire, fragments of equipment beyond repair.

All this volunteers collected during the day of their stay on the island. They have to stay here for a whole month. And this is just one of the stages of the complex expedition "Gogland", which has been going on for the fifth year.

With the exception of the enclave Kaliningrad, the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland are the westernmost point of our country. You can say, the threshold, - says Major General Valery Kudinsky. This is our home and we want to keep it clean. And look at nature. Rusty pieces of iron in this landscape are superfluous.

Clearing the island is not mechanical gathering at all. Here you have to work with your head more than with your hands, and you can make a mistake only once.

Quite often, "gifts" of those times crawl out of the ground, - one of the sappers complains, - mostly shells. Sometimes mines. You'd better not go behind this ribbon yet.

One morning we were informed about a new find, put in pickup trucks and brought to the place. The search engines found a surviving armory with mines. We kept a respectful distance while the sappers did their job. A few minutes later we were invited to come closer. Since the mines were in storage, they did not have a fuse. Armed explosive devices are destroyed on the spot, and outsiders are not allowed there.

As it turned out, the warehouse kept S- mines, also known as "frogs". Before exploding, such a mine jumps out of the ground to a height of about a meter, after which 350 metal balls destroy all life within a radius of tens of meters. Somehow, without agreeing, we all decided not to leave the fully explored paths.

Field work

EXPEDITION "GOGLAND"

The complex expedition "Gogland" began work in the fall of 2012. The region of the expedition - 14 outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. The largest of them is Gogland with an area of ​​21 sq. km, located 180 km west of St. Petersburg. The second largest island is Bolshoi Tyuters, and the main work will be carried out on it this season. It is also planned to explore the islands of Sescar and Sommers. The team has over a hundred members. Among them are servicemen of the 90th separate special search battalion and experts Russian Geographical Society: archeologists, historians, geologists, ecologists. Separately, it is worth mentioning the volunteers, each of whom passed the difficult competition of the Russian Geographical Society. It is they who will have to carry out work on the search, identification and restoration of military weapons, the identification of the soldiers buried here, as well as cleaning the island of debris.

Dissolved names

Arriving at another site cleared of mines, we saw the remains of three German soldiers. They were raised to the surface to be reburied in a more accessible place, at a military cemetery near the village of Sologubovka. Leningrad region. As part of a joint program with the People's Union of Germany for the care of war graves, they have already found their last resort about 55 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers.

Judging by the surviving fragments of uniforms, we were faced with fighters from the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe and the ground forces. An anchor is depicted on the buttons of the sailors, the abbreviation for the pilots LW, the infantry has smooth buttons. The discovery of a well-preserved personal badge of a serviceman is considered a great success: for 70 years, many of them have gone too deep into the soil.

Hastily leaving Bolshoi Tyuters, the Germans blew up most of the guns. However, a significant part of the weapons was preserved in excellent condition. During previous expeditions, restorers took out 88-mm anti-aircraft guns FlaK, 20-mm Swiss "Oerlikons", as well as the rarest small-caliber anti-aircraft gun "Bofors" made in Switzerland.

Most of the equipment was taken from the island last year, but something else remains. The rusty skeleton of a large-caliber cannon has grown into the very edge of the picturesque cliff. Massive and unshakable, but devoid of a trunk, it resembles a huge padlock without a key. Castle from besieged Leningrad.

Echoes of war

On paper, the war ends with the signing of a surrender treaty. In fact, everything is much more complicated. It is necessary to bury the dead, to collect the debris throughout the vast country, to remove the burden from nature. You need to answer questions.

For example, the head of the Gogland expedition, Artem Khutorskoy, told us about a Red Army plane that, according to archival sources, was shot down over the island. They've been trying to find him for years. In 2015, duralumin fragments of the fuselage skin were found. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine from them what kind of aircraft it was and how it ended up over Bolshoi Tyuters.

Artem told this story to us before leaving. A couple of weeks later, news agencies reported that the wreckage of a Soviet Pe-2 bomber was found on Bolshoy Tyuters Island and the names of the crew members were established. Commander Mikhail Kazakov, gunner-radio operator Arseniy Tyshchuk and navigator Mikhail Tkachenko flew to the island on the night of September 8-9, 1943. Eight days after the landing of a secret reconnaissance group from the M-96 submarine.

The big find will give historians new data to work with the archive. Perhaps they will help shed light on the fate of Soviet intelligence officers. Then this question will be answered.

Technics

Pe-2

The most massive dive bomber produced in the USSR. According to Soviet tradition, it was named after the designer Vladimir Petlyakov, but in the army he received the playful nickname "Pawn". In Finland, it was called "Pekka-Emelya", and according to NATO classification, the aircraft is called "deer" - Buck.

FlaK

88 mm anti-aircraft gun, also known as "eight-eight". Due to the high muzzle velocity of the projectile, it was used not only to fight aircraft, but also as an anti-tank and anti-ship weapon. It is considered the most famous weapon of the Second World War.

"Oerlikon"

20 mm anti-aircraft gun with a rate of fire of 450 rounds per minute(for comparison: FlaK- up to 20 shots per minute). It was designed by the German engineer Reinhold Becker, but was produced in Switzerland: in Germany, the production of many types of weapons was prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles.

S- mine

Pop-up anti-personnel mine was developed on the basis Schrapnell Mine during the First World War, hence the name - S mine. If a old model jumped out of the ground at the command from the remote control, then the new one worked automatically. The Americans nicknamed her "Bouncing Betty" and the Russians called her "Frog".

Photo: Alamy / Legion-media, Grigory Polyakovsky (x4), RIA Novosti, Legion-media (x2), MKFI, Evgeny Odinokov / RIA Novosti

The editors would like to thank Volkswagen for organizing the trip. Amarok is an iron car that is tough for Big Tyuters.

Big Tyuters (Finnish Tytärsaari; Swedish Tyterskär; Estonian Tütarsaar - a daughter island) - Russian island in the central part of the Gulf of Finland, located 75 km from the coast of Finland and southeast of Gogland. It is part of the Kingiseppsky district of the Leningrad region. The area of ​​the island is 8.3 sq. km.

The island of Bolshoy Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland, after the war, was also called the "island of death." People continued to die there in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Finns and Germans captured the archipelago, located in the very center of the Gulf of Finland, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The islands of Gogland and Bolshoy Tyuters were of exceptional importance. After all, they are right on the fairway, along which both military and civilian ships go in those years, and even now. The Finns then occupied Gogland Island, and the headquarters group of the Germans and a large garrison were located on Bolshoi Tyuters. A powerful battery appeared there to fight the Soviet fleet. It is quite clear that the Nazis, who were preparing for a serious battle in the Baltic, brought a huge amount of ammunition to the island. In addition, for some time shells were produced right there. Leaving the island in a hurry, the Germans could not take out the accumulated arsenal. They acted insidiously - they mined the territory of the island, turning it into one big mine. The Soviet paratroopers who landed on Tyuters in the summer of 1944 fell into this terrible trap.

They tried repeatedly to clear the fortifications and the territory of the mined island, immediately after the war, and then, in the 1950s. At the same time, many sappers died. In order not to destroy people in vain, they decided not to touch the island. At the same time, a lighthouse appeared on Tyuters, which is still working. The population of the mined island still consists of one person - the hermit Leonid Kudinov, who serves this very lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper lives on a small plot of land, gets everything he needs from big land and does not risk going far from home. After all, any careless step can be the last ...

It is quite clear that ammunition was found on the ill-fated island. You don't even need to look for them. In dugouts, in warehouses, in open areas and underground, there are thousands of shells, mines, and heavy bombs. Next to them you can see German guns that have stood for 60 years. All this is mined and can fly into the air even with a light impact.

In 2005, sappers from the Russian Emergencies Ministry, together with specialists from the Swedish Rescue Services Agency (SHASS), completed the demining of Bolshoy Tyuters Island in the Gulf of Finland.
Sappers discovered and destroyed 30,339 explosive objects on the island during the Great Patriotic War.

The expedition, which began on August 10, together with sappers from Sweden, was attended by employees of the 294th Center for Rescue Operations of Special Risk "Leader", the 179th Rescue Center and the North-West Regional Center of the Russian Emergencies Ministry.
In addition to numerous mines, shells and aerial bombs, sappers of the two countries discovered six buried fortifications on the island.