Friends, I suggest this topic. We replenish with photos and interesting information.
The theme of the Navy is close to me. For 4 years he studied as a schoolboy at KYUMRP (Club of Young Sailors, Rechnikov and Polar workers). Fate did not connect with the fleet, but I remember these years. And the father-in-law turned out to be quite by accident a submariner. I'll start, and you help.

On March 9, 1906, a decree was issued "On the classification of military ships of the Russian Imperial Navy." It was by this decree that the submarine forces of the Baltic Sea were created with the basing of the first submarine formation at the Libava naval base (Latvia).

Emperor Nicholas II "deigned to command the highest order" to include "messenger ships" and "submarines" in the classification. The text of the decree listed 20 names of submarines built by that time.

By order of the Russian Naval Department, submarines were declared an independent class of ships in the fleet. They were called "hidden ships".

In the domestic submarine shipbuilding, non-nuclear and nuclear submarines are conventionally divided into four generations:

First generation submarines for their time were an absolute breakthrough. However, they retained the solutions for electric power supply, general ship systems, traditional for the diesel-electric fleet. It was on these projects that hydrodynamics was worked out.

Second generation endowed with new types of nuclear reactors and electronic equipment. Also characteristic feature the optimization of the shape of the hull for the underwater course, which led to an increase in the standard speeds of the underwater course up to 25-30 knots (two projects even have more than 40 knots).

Third generation has become more perfect in terms of both speed and stealth. The submarines were distinguished by a large displacement, more advanced weapons and better habitability. For the first time, equipment for electronic warfare was installed on them.

Fourth generation significantly increased the strike capabilities of submarines, and increased their stealth. In addition, electronic weapons systems are being introduced, which will allow our submarines to detect the enemy earlier.

Now design bureaus are developing fifth generations submarines.

On the example of various projects - "champions", marked with the epithet "the most", one can trace the features of the main stages of development of the Russian submarine fleet.

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Heroic "Pikes" during the Great Patriotic War

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The nuclear submarine missile cruiser K-410 "Smolensk" is the fifth ship of project 949A, code "Antey", (according to NATO classification - Oscar-II) in a series of Soviet and Russian nuclear submarine missile cruisers (APRK) armed with cruise missiles P-700 Granit and designed to destroy aircraft carrier strike formations. The project is a modification of 949 "Granite".
In 1982-1996, 11 ships were built out of 18 planned, one K-141 Kursk was lost, the construction of two (K-139 and K-135) was mothballed, the rest canceled.
The cruising submarine "Smolensk" under the name K-410 was laid down on December 9, 1986 at the Sevmash plant in the city of Severodvinsk under the serial number 637. Launched on January 20, 1990. Commissioned on December 22, 1990. On March 14, 1991 it entered the Northern Fleet. Has board number 816 (1999). Home port Zaozersk, Russia.
Main characteristics: Displacement above water 14700 tons, underwater 23860 tons. The longest length at design waterline is 154 meters, the width of the hull is 18.2 meters, the average draft at design waterline is 9.2 meters. Surface speed 15 knots, underwater speed 32 knots. The working depth of immersion is 520 meters, the maximum immersion depth is 600 meters. The sailing endurance is 120 days. The crew is 130 people.

Powerplant: 2 nuclear reactors OK-650V with a capacity of 190 MW each.

Armament:

Torpedo-mine armament: 2x650-mm and 4x533-mm TA, 24 torpedoes.

Missile armament: anti-ship missile complex P-700 "Granit", 24 missiles ZM-45.

In December 1992, she received the Navy Commander's Prize for firing long-range cruise missiles.

On April 6, 1993, it was renamed "Smolensk" in connection with the establishment of patronage over the submarine by the administration of Smolensk.

In 1993, 1994, 1998 he won the Navy Commander's Prize for missile firing at sea targets.

In 1995 he made an autonomous military service to the shores of Cuba. During autonomy, in the Sargasso Sea area, an accident occurred in the main power plant, the consequences were eliminated by the crew without losing secrecy and using security measures in two days. All the assigned tasks of the combat service were completed successfully.

1996 - autonomous combat service.

In June 1999 he took part in the West-99 exercise.

In September 2011, he arrived at Zvezdochka CS to restore technical readiness.

In August 2012, the building berth stage of repairs was completed at the APRK: on August 5, 2012, a dock operation was carried out to launch the ship. The final stage of work was carried out afloat at the outfitting embankment.

On September 02, 2013, at the Zvezdochka dock, during pressure testing of the main ballast tank of the boat, the pressure cap of the Kingston was torn off. No harm done. On December 23, after the completed repair, the APRK went to sea to fulfill the program of factory sea trials. During the repair on the cruiser, the technical readiness of all the ship's systems was restored, including the mechanical part, electronic weapons, hull structures and the main power plant. The submarine's reactors were recharged and the weapons complex was repaired. The service life of the submarine missile carrier was extended by 3.5 years, after which it is planned to begin work on a deep modernization of the ship. According to a report dated December 30, he returned to the main base of Zaozersk (Murmansk region), having made a transition to his home base from the city of Severodvinsk (Arkhangelsk region), where he underwent repairs and modernization at the Zvezdochka defense shipyard.

In June 2014, in the White Sea, APRK, together with the rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, took part in the rescue of the boat "Barents". In September, the cruiser took part in tactical exercises of the diverse forces of the Northern Fleet.

Favorite of the nation

The Third Reich knew how to create idols. One of these poster idols created by propaganda was undoubtedly the hero-submariner Gunther Prin. He had the perfect biography of a popular guy who made a career out of the new government. At the age of 15, he was hired as a cabin boy on a merchant ship. He achieved a captain's diploma solely thanks to his hard work and natural intelligence. During the Great Depression, Prien was unemployed. After the Nazis came to power, the young man voluntarily entered the reviving Navy as an ordinary sailor and rather quickly managed to prove himself with the best side... Then there were studies at a privileged school for submariners and the war in Spain, in which Prien already participated as a submarine captain. In the first months of World War II, he immediately managed to achieve good results, sinking several English and French ships in the Bay of Biscay, for which he was awarded the 2nd degree Iron Cross from the commander of the naval forces, Admiral Erich Raeder. And then there was a fantastically audacious attack on the largest British battleship Royal Oak in the main base of the British Navy, Scapa Flow.

For the accomplished feat, the Fuhrer awarded the entire U-47 crew with the Iron Cross of the 2nd degree, and the commander himself was honored to receive the Knight's Cross from Hitler's hands. However, according to the recollections of people who knew him at that time, the glory did not spoil Pryn. In communicating with his subordinates and acquaintances, he remained the same caring commander and charming guy. For a little more than a year, the underwater ace continued to create his own legend: cheerful reports about the exploits of U-47 appeared almost weekly in the film releases of Dr. Goebbels' favorite brainchild, Die Deutsche Wochenchau. Ordinary Germans really had something to admire: in June 1940, German boats sank 140 ships from Allied convoys in the Atlantic with a total displacement of 585,496 tons, of which about 10% were by Prine and his crew! And then suddenly everything quieted down at once, as if there was no hero. For quite a long time, official sources did not report anything at all about Germany's most famous submariner, but it was impossible to hush up the truth: on May 23, 1941, the naval command officially recognized the loss of the U-47. She was sunk on March 7, 1941 on the way to Iceland by the British destroyer Wolverine ("Wolverine"). The submarine, waiting for the convoy, surfaced next to the guard destroyer and was immediately attacked by it. Having received minor damage, U-47 lay on the ground, hoping to lie down and escape unnoticed, but due to the damage to the propeller, the boat, trying to sail, created a terrible noise, hearing which the Wolverine hydroacoustics initiated a second attack, as a result of which the submarine was finally sunk, thrown with depth charges ... However, the most incredible rumors about Prine and his sailors spread for a long time in the Reich. In particular, it was rumored that he did not die at all, but that he had raised a riot on his boat, for which he ended up either in a penal battalion on the Eastern Front, or in a concentration camp.

First blood

The first victim of a submarine in World War II is considered to be the British passenger liner "Athenia", torpedoed on September 3, 1939, 200 miles from the Hebrides. As a result of the U-30 attack, 128 crew members and passengers of the liner, including many children, were killed. And yet, for the sake of objectivity, it should be admitted that this barbaric episode is not very typical for the first months of the war. At the initial stage, many commanders of German submarines tried to comply with the terms of the 1936 London Protocol on the rules of conducting submarine warfare: first, on the surface, stop a merchant ship and disembark a search team on board for a search. If, according to the terms of the prize law (a set of international legal norms regulating the seizure of merchant ships and cargo at sea by the belligerent countries), the sinking of a ship was allowed due to its apparent belonging to the enemy's fleet, the submarine's team waited for the sailors from the transport to transfer to lifeboats and go to a safe distance from the doomed ship.

However, very soon the warring parties stopped playing gentlemen: the commanders of the submarines began to report that the single ships they encountered were actively using the artillery pieces installed on their decks or immediately broadcast a special signal about the detection of the submarine - SSS. And the Germans themselves were less and less eager to breed politeness with the enemy, trying to end the war that had begun favorably for them as soon as possible.
Submarine U-29 (Captain Schuhard) achieved great success on September 17, 1939, attacking the aircraft carrier Koreyges with a three-torpedo salvo. For the British Admiralty, the loss of a ship of this class and 500 crew members was a big blow. So the debut of German submarines as a whole turned out to be very impressive, but it could have become even more painful for the enemy, if not for the constant failures when using torpedoes with magnetic fuses. By the way, practically all the participants experienced technical problems at the initial stage of the war.

Breakthrough in Scapa Flow

If the loss of an aircraft carrier in the very first month of the war was a very sensitive blow for the British, then the event that occurred on the night of October 13-14, 1939, was already a knockdown. The planning of the operation was personally supervised by Admiral Karl Doenitz. At first glance, the anchorage of the Royal Navy ships in Scapa Flow seemed completely impregnable, at least from the sea. There were strong and treacherous currents here. And the approaches to the base were guarded around the clock by patrolmen, covered with special anti-submarine nets, boom barriers, and flooded ships. And nevertheless, thanks to detailed aerial photographs of the area and data obtained from other submarines, the Germans still managed to find one loophole.

A responsible mission was assigned to the U-47 and its successful commander Gunther Prien. On the night of October 14, this boat, having passed a narrow strait, crept through an accidentally left open boom barrier and thus ended up in the main roadstead of the enemy base. Prien made two surface torpedo attacks against two English ships at anchor. The battleship Royal Oak, a modernized WWI veteran with a displacement of 27,500 tons, exploded and sank with 833 crew members, and Admiral Blangrove on board was also killed. The British were taken by surprise, they decided that the base was attacked by German bombers, and opened fire in the air, so that U-47 safely escaped retaliation. Returning to Germany, Prin was greeted as a hero and awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves. After his death, his personal emblem "Scapa Flow Bull" became the emblem of the 7th Flotilla.

Loyal Lion

The successes achieved during the Second World War, the German submarine fleet owes much to Karl Doenitz. Himself a former commander of a submarine, he perfectly understood the needs of his subordinates. The admiral personally met each submarine returning from a military campaign, organized special sanatoriums for crews exhausted by many months at sea, and attended the graduations of the submariners' school. The sailors behind the backs called their commander "daddy Karl" or "Lion". In fact, Doenitz was the engine of the revival of the Third Reich's submarine fleet. Soon after the signing of the Anglo-German agreement, which lifted the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, he was appointed by Hitler "Fuehrer of submarines" and led the 1st submarine flotilla. In his new position, he had to face active opposition from the supporters of large ships from the leadership of the Navy. However, the talent of a brilliant administrator and political strategist has always allowed the chief of submariners to lobby the interests of his department in the highest state spheres. Doenitz was one of the few staunch National Socialists among the senior naval officers. The admiral used every opportunity presented to him to publicly praise the Fuhrer.

Once, speaking in front of Berliners, he was so carried away that he began to assure the audience that Hitler foresaw a great future for Germany and therefore could not be mistaken:

"We are worms by comparison!"

In the first years of the war, when the actions of his submariners were extremely successful, Doenitz enjoyed the full confidence of Hitler. And soon his finest hour came. This take-off was preceded by very tragic events for the German fleet. By the middle of the war, the pride of the German fleet - heavy ships such as "Tirpitz" and "Scharnhost" - actually turned out to be neutralized by the enemy. The situation demanded a radical change of landmarks in the war at sea: to replace the "batch of battleships" a new team was to come, professing the philosophy of large-scale submarine warfare. After the retirement of Erich Raeder on January 30, 1943, Doenitz was appointed as his successor as Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy with the title of "Grand Admiral". And two months later, the German submariners achieved record figures, sending 120 Allied ships with a total tonnage of 623,000 tons to the bottom during March, for which their chief was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves. However, the period of great victories was drawing to a close.

Already in May 1943, Doenitz was forced to withdraw his boats from the Atlantic, fearing that soon he would have nothing to command. (By the end of this month, the grand admiral could have summed up terrible results for himself: 41 boats and more than 1,000 submariners were lost, among whom was the youngest son of Doenitz, Peter.) This decision infuriated Hitler, and he demanded that Doenitz cancel the order while declaring: “There can be no question of ending the participation of submarines in the war. The Atlantic is my first line of defense in the west. " By the fall of 1943, the Germans had to pay with one of their own boats for every sunken Allied ship. In the last months of the war, the admiral was forced to send his people to almost certain death. And yet he remained loyal to his Fuehrer to the very end. Before taking his own life, Hitler appointed Doenitz as his successor. On May 23, 1945, the new head of state was captured by the Allies. At the Nuremberg trials, the organizer of the German submarine fleet managed to escape responsibility on charges of issuing orders according to which his subordinates shot sailors who escaped from torpedo ships. The admiral received his ten-year term for fulfilling Hitler's orders, according to which the captured crews of British torpedo boats were transferred for execution by the SS. After his release from West Berlin's Spandau prison in October 1956, Doenitz began writing his memoirs. The admiral died in December 1980 at the age of 90. According to the testimony of people who knew him closely, he always kept a folder with letters from officers of the Allied fleets, in which former opponents expressed their respect to him.

Drown everyone!

“It is forbidden to make any attempt to rescue the crews of sunken ships and vessels, transfer them to lifeboats, return inverted boats to their normal position, supply the injured with provisions and water. Rescue contradicts the very first rule of warfare at sea, requiring the destruction of enemy ships and their teams, ”- this order from Doenitz was received by the commanders of German submarines on September 17, 1942. Later, the grand admiral motivated this decision by the fact that any generosity shown to the enemy is too expensive for his people. He referred to the Laconia incident five days before the order was issued, that is, on 12 September. Having sunk this British transport, the commander of the German submarine U-156 raised the Red Cross flag on his bridge and began to rescue the sailors in the water. A message was broadcast from U-156 on the international wave several times that the German submarine was carrying out rescue operations and guaranteed complete safety to any vessel ready to take on board sailors from the sunken steamer. Nevertheless, after some time, U-156 attacked the American Liberator.
Then air attacks began to follow one after another. The boat miraculously managed to avoid death. Hot on the heels of this incident, the German command of the submarine forces has developed extremely tough instructions, the essence of which can be expressed in a laconic order: "Take no prisoners!" However, it cannot be argued that it was after this incident that the Germans were forced to "take off their white gloves" - cruelty and even atrocities have long become commonplace in this war.

In January 1942, German submarines began to be supplied with fuel and supplies from special cargo underwater tankers, the so-called "milk cows", which, among other things, were carrying a repair team and a naval hospital. This made it possible to transfer active hostilities to the very coast of the United States. The Americans turned out to be completely unprepared for the war to come to their shores: for almost six months, Hitler's submarine aces hunted with impunity for single ships in the coastal zone, shooting brightly lit cities and factories from artillery guns at night. Here is what one American intellectual, whose house overlooked the ocean, wrote about this: “The view of the boundless sea space, which used to be so inspiring for life and creativity, now makes me sad and terrified. Fear penetrates me especially strongly at night, when it is impossible to think about anything more than about these calculating Germans choosing where to send a shell or a torpedo ... "

Only by the summer of 1942, the US Air Force and Navy managed to jointly organize a reliable defense of their coast: now dozens of aircraft, ships, airships and private speed boats were constantly monitoring the enemy. The US 10th Fleet organized special "assassin groups", each of which included a small aircraft carrier, equipped with attack aircraft, and several destroyers. Patrolling by long-range aircraft equipped with radars capable of detecting antennas and snorkels of submarines, as well as the use of new destroyers and Hedgehog naval bombers with powerful depth charges, changed the balance of forces.

In 1942, German submarines began to appear in polar waters off the coast of the USSR. With their active participation, the Murmansk convoy PQ-17 was destroyed. Of its 36 transports, 23 were killed, while 16 sank submarines. And on April 30, 1942, the U-456 submarine knocked out the English cruiser Edinburgh with two torpedoes, sailing from Murmansk to England with several tons of Russian gold to pay for Lend-Lease deliveries. The cargo lay at the bottom for 40 years and was lifted only in the 80s.

The first thing that the submariners who had just put out to sea faced was the terrible cramped conditions. Especially this suffered the crews of the series VII submarines, which, being already cramped in design, were, in addition, packed to capacity with everything necessary for long voyages. The crew's berths and all the free corners were used to store food crates, so the crew had to rest and eat wherever they could. To take additional tons of fuel, it was pumped into tanks designed for fresh water(drinking and hygienic), thus drastically reducing her diet.

For the same reason, German submariners never rescued their victims, desperately floundering in the middle of the ocean.
After all, there was simply nowhere to place them - except to shove them into the freed torpedo tube. Hence the reputation of inhuman monsters entrenched in the submariners.
The feeling of mercy was also dulled by constant fear for his own life. During the campaign, one had to constantly be wary of minefields or enemy aircraft. But the most terrible were enemy destroyers and anti-submarine ships, or rather, their depth charges, a close explosion of which could destroy the hull of the boat. At the same time, one could only hope for a quick death. It was much more terrible to receive heavy damage and irrevocably fall into the abyss, listening in horror as the compressible hull of the boat crackles, ready to break through in streams of water under a pressure of several tens of atmospheres. Or worse, forever go aground and slowly suffocate, realizing that there will be no help ...

Wolf hunt

By the end of 1944, the Germans had already finally lost the "Battle of the Atlantic". Even the latest XXI series boats, equipped with a snorkel, a device that allows a significant amount of time not to float to recharge batteries, discharges exhaust gases and replenishes oxygen, could no longer change anything (the snorkel was also used on submarines of earlier series, but not very successfully). The Germans managed to make only two such boats, having a speed of 18 knots and diving to a depth of 260 m, and while they were on alert duty, the Second World War ended.

Countless Allied aircraft equipped with radars were constantly on duty in the Bay of Biscay, which became a veritable graveyard of German submarines leaving their French bases. Reinforced concrete shelters, which became vulnerable after the British developed the 5-ton Tallboy concrete-piercing bombs, turned into traps for submarines, from which only a few managed to escape. In the ocean, submarine crews were often pursued for days by air and sea hunters. Now the "Doenitz wolves" were less and less likely to attack well-protected convoys and were increasingly concerned with the problem of their own survival under the maddening impulses of search sonars, methodically "probing" the water column. Often, the Anglo-American destroyers did not have enough casualties, and they pounced on any submarine they found with a pack of hounds, literally bombarding it with depth charges. Such, for example, was the fate of U-546, which was simultaneously bombed by eight American destroyers! Until recently, the formidable German submarine fleet was not rescued by either perfect radars or enhanced booking, and new homing acoustic torpedoes and anti-aircraft weapons did not help. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the enemy had been able to read German ciphers for a long time. But the German command until the very end of the war was fully confident that the codes of the Enigma encryption machine could not be broken! Nevertheless, the British, having obtained the first sample of this machine from the Poles in 1939, by the middle of the war created an effective system for decrypting enemy messages under the code name "Ultra", including the world's first electronic computing machine "Colossus". And the most important "gift" the British received on May 8, 1941 during the capture of the German submarine U-111 - they got into their hands not only a serviceable car, but also the entire set of documents of covert communication. From that time on, for German submariners, going on the air for the purpose of transmitting data was often tantamount to a death sentence. Apparently, at the end of the war, Doenitz guessed about this, as he once wrote in his diary lines full of helpless despair: “The enemy holds a trump card, covers all areas with long-range aviation and uses detection methods for which we are not ready. The enemy knows all our secrets, but we know nothing about their secrets! "

According to official German statistics, out of 40 thousand German submariners, about 32 thousand people died. That is, many more than every second!
After Germany's surrender, most of the submarines captured by the Allies were sunk during Operation Lethal Fire.

Imperial Japanese Navy Submarine Carriers

During World War II, the Japanese navy had large submarines capable of transporting up to several light seaplanes (similar submarines were also built in France).
The aircraft were kept folded in a special hangar inside the submarine. Takeoff was carried out on the surface of the boat, after the aircraft was removed from the hangar and assembled. On the deck in the bow of the submarine there were special short-launch catapult runners, from which the plane rose into the sky. After the completion of the flight, the aircraft splashed down and was removed back to the boat's hangar.

In September 1942, a Yokosuka E14Y aircraft, taking off from an I-25 boat, raided Oregon (USA), dropping two 76-kg incendiary bombs, which were supposed to cause extensive fires in the forest, which, however did not happen and the effect was negligible. But the attack had a great psychological effect, since the method of attack was not known.
This was the only case of a bombing of the continental United States in the entire war.

The I-400 type submarines (伊 四 〇〇 型 潜水 艦), also known as the Sentoku or STo type, are a series of Japanese diesel-electric submarines from the Second World War. Designed in 1942-1943 for the role of ultra-long-range submarine aircraft carriers for operations anywhere in the world, including off the coast of the United States. The submarines of the I-400 type were the largest among those built during the Second World War and remained so until the appearance of the nuclear submarine.

Initially, it was planned to build 18 submarines of this type, but in 1943 this number was reduced to 9 ships, of which only six were started, and only three were completed, in 1944-1945.
Due to the late construction, submarines of the I-400 type were never used in combat. After the surrender of Japan, all three submarines were transferred to the United States, and in 1946 they were sunk by them.
The history of the I-400 began shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when, at the direction of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the development of the concept of a submarine aircraft carrier for strikes along the US coast began. The Japanese shipbuilders already had experience of deploying one reconnaissance seaplane on several classes of submarines, but the I-400 had to be equipped with a large number of heavier aircraft to fulfill the tasks assigned to them.

On January 13, 1942, Yamamoto sent the I-400 project to the naval command. It formulated the requirements for the type: the submarine was supposed to have a cruising range of 40,000 nautical miles (74,000 km) and have on board more than two aircraft capable of carrying an aviation torpedo or an 800-kg aerial bomb.
The first project of submarines of the I-400 type was presented in March 1942 and, after modifications, was finally approved on May 17 of the same year. On January 18, 1943, the construction of the lead ship of the series, I-400, began at the Kure shipyards. The original construction plan, adopted in June 1942, called for the construction of 18 boats of this type, but after the death of Yamamoto in April 1943, this number was halved.
By 1943, Japan was beginning to experience serious difficulties in supplying materials, and plans for the construction of the I-400 type were reduced, at first to six boats, and then to three.

The data given in the table are largely arbitrary, in the sense that they cannot be taken as absolute numbers. This is primarily due to the fact that it is rather difficult to accurately calculate the number of submarines of foreign states participating in hostilities.
There are still discrepancies in the number of targets sunk. However, the given values ​​give a general idea of ​​the order of the numbers and their relationship to each other.
This means that we can draw some conclusions.
Firstly, Soviet submariners have the smallest number of sunk targets for each submarine participating in hostilities (the effectiveness of submarines is often assessed by the sunk tonnage. However, this indicator largely depends on the quality of potential targets, and in this sense, for the Soviet fleet it is Indeed, in the North the bulk of the enemy's transports consisted of small and medium tonnage vessels, and in the Black Sea such targets could be counted on one hand.
For this reason, in the future, we will mainly talk simply about sunken targets, only highlighting among them warships). The next in terms of this indicator is the United States, but the real figure there will be much higher than the indicated one, since in fact only about 50% of submarines of the total number of submarines in the theater of operations took part in combat operations on communications, the rest performed various special tasks.

Secondly, the percentage of submarines lost from the number of those who participated in hostilities Soviet Union almost twice as high as in other winning countries (Britain - 28%, USA - 21%).

Thirdly, in terms of the number of sunk targets for each lost submarine, we surpass only Japan, and are close to Italy. The rest of the countries in this indicator surpass the USSR by several times. As for Japan, at the end of the war there was a real beating of its fleet, including the submarine, so its comparison with the victorious country is generally not correct.

Considering the effectiveness of the actions of Soviet submarines, one cannot but touch upon one more aspect of the problem. Namely, the ratio of this efficiency to the funds that were invested in the submarines and the hopes that were placed on them. It is very difficult to assess the damage inflicted on the enemy in rubles, on the other hand, and the real labor and material costs for the creation of any product in the USSR, as a rule, did not reflect its formal cost. However, this issue can be considered indirectly. In the pre-war years, the industry handed over to the Navy 4 cruisers, 35 destroyers and leaders, 22 patrol ships and more than 200 (!) Submarines. And in monetary terms the construction of submarines was clearly a priority. Until the third five-year plan, the lion's share of appropriations for military shipbuilding went to the creation of submarines, and only with the laying of battleships and cruisers in 1939, the picture began to change. Such dynamics of financing fully reflects the views on the use of naval forces that existed in those years. Until the very end of the thirties, submarines and heavy aircraft were considered the main striking force of the fleet. In the third five-year plan, priority was given to large surface ships, but by the beginning of the war, it was submarines that remained the most massive class of ships, and if the main stake was not made on them, then great hopes were pinned.

Summing up a small express analysis, it must be admitted that, firstly, the effectiveness of the actions of Soviet submarines during the Second World War was one of the lowest among the belligerent states, and even more so such as Great Britain, the USA, and Germany.

Secondly, Soviet submarines clearly did not live up to the hopes and investments placed on them. As one example from a number of similar ones, we can consider the contribution of submarines to disrupting the evacuation of Nazi troops from the Crimea on April 9-May 12, 1944. In total, during this period, 11 submarines damaged one (!) Transport in 20 military campaigns.
According to the reports of the commanders, several targets were allegedly sunk, but there was no confirmation of this. And it’s not very important. Indeed, in April and twenty days of May, the enemy led 251 convoys! And these are many hundreds of targets and with very weak anti-submarine security. A similar picture developed in the Baltic in the last months of the war during the mass evacuation of troops and civilians from the Courland Peninsula and from the Danzig Bay area. In the presence of hundreds of targets, including large-tonnage, often with completely conditional anti-submarine security in April-May 1945, 11 submarines in 11 military campaigns sank only one transport, a floating base and a floating battery.

The most probable reason for the low efficiency of the actions of domestic submarines may lie in their very quality. However, in the domestic literature, this factor is swept aside immediately. You can find a lot of statements that Soviet submarines, especially type "C" and "K" were the best in the world. Indeed, if we compare the most common performance characteristics of domestic and foreign submarines, then such statements seem to be quite reasonable. The Soviet submarine of the "K" type surpasses foreign classmates in speed, in the range of navigation on the surface it is second only to the German submarine and has the most powerful weapons.

But even when analyzing the most common elements, a lag is noticeable in the submerged cruising range, in the depth of immersion and in the speed of immersion. If you start to understand further, it turns out that the quality of submarines a huge impact It is not the elements that are recorded in our reference books that are usually subject to comparison (by the way, the depth of immersion and the speed of immersion are also not indicated here, as a rule), but others, directly related to new technologies. These include noise, shock resistance of devices and mechanisms, the ability to detect and attack the enemy in conditions of poor visibility and at night, stealth and accuracy of the use of torpedo weapons, and a number of others.

Unfortunately, by the beginning of the war, domestic submarines did not have modern electronic detection equipment, torpedo automatic firing devices, bubbleless firing devices, depth stabilizers, radio direction finders, shock absorbers of devices and mechanisms, but they were distinguished by a high noise level of mechanisms and devices.

The issue of communication with the submarine, which is in a submerged position, has not been resolved. Practically the only source of information about the surface situation of a submerged submarine was a periscope with very unimportant optics. The "Mars" type noise direction finders that were in service made it possible by ear to determine the direction to the noise source with an accuracy of plus or minus 2 degrees.
The range of the equipment with good hydrology did not exceed 40 kb.
The commanders of the German, British, American submarines had sonar stations at their disposal. They worked in the direction finding mode or in active mode, when the hydroacoustician could determine not only the direction to the target, but also the distance to it. German submariners, with good hydrology, detected a single transport in the noise direction finding mode at a distance of up to 100 kb, and already from a distance of 20 kb they could get a range to it in the "Echo" mode. Similar opportunities were available to our allies.

And this is not all that directly influenced the effectiveness of the use of domestic submarines. In these conditions, the lack of technical characteristics and support for combat operations could be partially compensated for only by the human factor.
Here, probably, lies the main determinant of the effectiveness of the domestic submarine fleet - Man!
But the submariners, like no one else, objectively have a certain main person, a kind of God in a separately taken confined space. In this sense, a submarine is similar to an airplane: the entire crew may consist of highly qualified professionals and work exceptionally competently, but the commander has the helm and it will be him who will land the plane. Pilots, like submariners, usually either all come out victorious, or all die. Thus, the personality of the commander and the fate of the submarine are something whole.

In total, over the years of the war, 358 people in the operating fleets acted as commanders of submarines, 229 of them participated in this position in military campaigns, 99 - died (43%).

Having examined the list of commanders of Soviet submarines during the war, it can be stated that most of them had a rank corresponding to their position or one level lower, which is normal cadre practice.

Consequently, the statement that by the beginning of the war, our submarines were commanded by inexperienced novices who took up positions thanks to the political repression, unreasonably. Another thing is that the rapid growth of the submarine fleet in the pre-war period demanded more officers than they graduated from schools. For this reason, a crisis of commanders arose, and it was decided to overcome it by drafting civilian sailors into the fleet. Moreover, it was believed that it was advisable to send them to submarines, since they know the psychology of the captain of a civil ship (transport) best, and this should facilitate their actions to combat shipping. This is how many sea captains, that is, people, in fact, not military, became commanders of submarines. True, they all studied at the appropriate courses, but if it is so easy to make submarine commanders, then why do we need schools and long-term studies?
In other words, an element of serious disadvantage has already been incorporated into future performance.

List of the most successful Russian submariners: