No. 12 and No. 13.

In the summer of 2004, the legendary 30th Battery celebrated 70 years since its inclusion in the Main Base of the Black Sea Fleet - Sevastopol. Started by construction before the First World War and completed under Soviet rule, throughout the heroic defense of Sevastopol in 1941–1942, together with tower battery No. 35, it was a kind of “backbone” of the artillery defense system of the fortress and inflicted serious damage to the enemy in manpower and equipment.

Part I
Design, construction and device of the battery

Design and construction

The experience of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, one of the central episodes of which was the struggle for the Russian seaside fortress and the naval base of Port Arthur, showed the need to have modern long-range artillery in service with naval fortresses to protect naval bases from shelling from seas.

After the Russo-Japanese War Russian empire had 11 sea fortresses - 5 on the Baltic coast (Kronstadt, Libava, Ust-Dvinsk, Sveaborg and Vyborg), 4 - on the Black Sea (Sevastopol, Kerch, Batumi and Nikolaev) and 2 - on the Pacific (Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk-on-Amur) . The strategic purpose of the fortresses was to provide their own army and navy with freedom of action and make it difficult for the same enemy, while the fortresses had to fulfill their task with possible savings in the expenditure of manpower.

The biggest and, moreover, a common shortcoming of domestic sea fortresses was the imperfection of their structure and the moral obsolescence of weapons. In addition, due to the insufficient location of coastal batteries, due to the superior range of artillery weapons of the enemy fleet, there was an insecurity from the bombardment of raids and port facilities from the sea.

By 1906, the most powerful artillery mounts of the Sevastopol fortress were 11-inch guns of 35 calibers, the length of the 1887 model. In terms of projectile weight - 344 kg and firing range - 13.8 km, they were only slightly inferior to the 12-inch guns Mk IX (mod. 1898) of British battleships (projectile weight - 386 kg, firing range - 14.2 km), but they lost very much in terms of rate of fire (1 shot in 2 minutes versus 4 shots in the same time for English guns). However, there were only 8 such guns in Sevastopol. The rest were completely obsolete 11-inch and 9-inch guns and mortars of the 1867 and 1877 models.

In addition, unlike battleships, where large-caliber guns were placed in armored turrets with electric or hydraulic guidance drives, coastal battery guns were located openly (at best, with light anti-fragmentation shields to protect servants), and all operations for loading and guiding them were made by hand. As a result, in terms of rate of fire, large-caliber coastal guns were several times inferior to ship-based ones. True, this drawback was somewhat offset by the use of rangefinders with an external base of the Petrushevsky and Launitz systems and group fire control systems of the De Charrière system on coastal batteries, which made it possible to simultaneously focus the fire of several batteries on one target at once.

The disadvantage in the location of the coastal batteries of Sevastopol was that they were all grouped in a rather narrow area from Tolstoy Cape to Karantinnaya Bay. This created a high density of fire in the outer roadstead and in front of the entrance to the Sevastopol Bay, however, it allowed enemy ships to freely fire at the fortress and the city with throwing fire from Cape Fiolent and Balaklava.

In April 1906, a special meeting chaired by the Minister of the Navy, Admiral A.A. Birileva decided that the armament of the main caliber of the new battleships planned for construction should consist of 12-inch guns with a barrel length of at least 50 calibers. By 1908, the Obukhov Steel Plant (OSZ) had developed and tested such a 52-caliber gun. She fired a projectile mod. 1911 weighing 470.9 kg with an initial speed of 762 m / s at a range of 28.5 km and in its caliber was one of the most powerful artillery pieces in the world. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Main Artillery Directorate (GAU) of the Ministry of War, when choosing a new large-caliber artillery system for coastal defense, settled on the Obukhov twelve-inch gun.

In 1911, the head of the GAU, General D.D. Kuzmin-Karavaev ordered to order OSZ for coastal defense 12-inch guns in 52 calibers of the Naval drawing with an elongated chamber and a constant steepness rifling. Compared to the guns of the Naval Department (denoted by the letters "MA"), the guns of the War Department (denoted by the letters "CA") had an elongated charging chamber by 9 inches (229 mm), which, according to the GAU Artillery Committee, should have contributed to less wear of the rifled parts of the barrels when firing.

By a resolution of the meeting of the military and naval ministers and chiefs of the General Staff of August 15, 1909, Sevastopol retained the importance of an operational base for an active linear fleet, and the only one in the Black Sea, since Nikolaev was recognized only as a rear base and a shelter for ships of the fleet.

In the "Report of the General Staff of the Military Department on the release of 715 million rubles for the implementation of certain measures for the Military Department to strengthen the defense of the state", compiled in March 1910 and approved by the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Gerngros noted:

“In the Black Sea, the program for the development of the naval armed forces provides for the reorganization of the main operational base of the fleet of Sevastopol. The improvement of Sevastopol embraces the development of artillery means with powerful models of guns, to protect the port from fire from the sea, to supply the fortress with certain means of technology and to protect it from land from mastering open force. Protection from fire from a dry path must be achieved by good artillery and the assistance of ground forces.

At the same time, first of all, it is planned to strengthen the coastal front by installing strong batteries on the flanks, armed with the largest modern cannons, as well as by installing batteries designed to remove the enemy with their fire, who would try to bombard the ports from the sea through the heights south of the city. These works will require an amount of 8,000,000 rubles. In the second place, the creation of land-based short-range defense is assigned, and part of this work had to be attributed to the second decade.

The fortress commission under the Main Directorate of the General Staff (GUGSH), chaired by Major General Danilov, at meetings in early 1911, first of all put forward a demand for strengthening coastal defense, which was planned to be brought to a significant degree of readiness in the next five years.

The main seaside position of the fortress was supposed to be expanded to the north - to the mouth of the Belbek River and to the south-west - to Streletskaya Bay, installing four 12-inch guns in armored towers and twelve 10-inch guns on its flanks. In addition, in order to prevent the enemy from bombarding the fortress from the south, through the heights of the Chersonesos (Herakleysky) peninsula, it was supposed to create and arm an Additional coastal front between Cape Chersonesos and Balaklava Bay, using forty 9-inch mortars for this, removed due to their short range from the armament of the Main Primorsky front.

The basis for the development of land defenses was the decision to confine ourselves to urgently needed installations, providing protection from long-range bombardment from a dry path and from gradual attack by field forces located on the peninsula.

The grouping of land fortifications, in addition to protecting coastal batteries from an attack from the rear by closing their gorges and organizing anti-assault defense, was tasked with securing the flanks of the Primorsky Front, because. in the event of a sudden attack by an enemy landing force, it is difficult to expect that the enemy, armed with light field artillery, will significantly break away from sea ​​route and ship fire support.

On June 18, 1910, the draft ideas of the Main Directorate of the General Staff were transferred to the Commander of the Troops of the Odessa Military District for the formation of a local commission for the detailed and complete development of the initial project of the fortress within the specified appropriations.

Based on these considerations, the local Sevastopol commission developed an appropriate project for arming the fortress, which was received by the Main Directorate of the General Staff on October 14, 1910.

For the new 12-inch guns, open mounts were offered as cheaper. The armament of the Additional Front was to be twelve 152-mm guns of the Kane system and sixteen (instead of forty) 9-inch mortars.

The serf commission of the GUGSH noted that “When modern conditions it is difficult to assume that more than 24 combat ships could appear on the Black Sea. The appearance of the Austro-Turkish fleet is most likely, which would have amounted to 19 ships of the line with the force of artillery fire on one side of about 150 guns with a caliber of at least 152 mm. Assuming the strengthening of these fleets by ships of the fleets of other states, the commission recognized the possibility of action against Sevastopol by 24 ships. On 24 battleships, 180-200 guns can operate simultaneously.

But under such assumptions, the armament of the coastal batteries of the Sevastopol fortress seems to be sufficient, significantly exceeding the ratio of guns on the coast and in the fleet, which, with various methods of counting the number of guns on the coast.

However, not all coastal defense guns have sufficient range and power, and batteries are not far from the port, so the enemy fleet, having guns of greater reach than coastal weapons, can bombard port facilities with impunity. Therefore, for the success of the struggle, as well as the removal of the position of the bombarding fleet, it is absolutely necessary to assign 12-inch guns to the Main position, placing them on the flanks of the existing batteries. Considering it sufficient to have four 12-inch guns in service with the Sevastopol fortress, the commission spoke in favor of 8 guns, because. two-gun batteries present certain difficulties for firing, and the 11-inch guns prevailing in the Sevastopol fortress do not have a very long combat range.

The fortress commission of the GUGSH decided "to assign eight 12-inch guns to the Main Battle Position, to remove the position of the bombarding fleet and at the same time replenish the power of existing weapons, place them in two batteries, and install the first four guns on the South side, where the firing sector is larger."

The cost of supplying the Sevastopol fortress for the artillery unit was determined at 11,322,000 rubles and was divided into two stages, with the funds of the first stage allocated for the first five years amounting to 3,280,000 rubles.

The location for the installation of 12-inch batteries was determined by the southern flank of the Main Combat Position in the area of ​​​​Streletskaya Bay (a group of batteries based on battery No. 15 for four 12-inch, eight 10-inch, four 48-linear (122-mm) and four 3-inch guns ) and the northern flank of the Primorskaya position at the mouth of the Belbek River (a group of batteries based on battery No. 16 for four 12-inch, four 10-inch, four 6-inch and four 3-inch guns), where the long range could be most advantageously used firing to push back the bombarding enemy fleet.

In view of the location of the three batteries of the Northern Group on the open flank of the Primorsky Fortress Front, the commission proposed that the batteries be combined into one fortification with a common gorge. To build land fortifications on the heights of Belbek with the front to the north in the form of several long-term strongholds, which, together with battery No. 16 and the already built semi-durable redoubt, form one common defensive site. (In the final version of the project, it was decided to build the 12-inch battery of the Southern Group not at Streletskaya Bay, but at Cape Khersones, which gave a larger sector of firing at sea targets.)

On all three batteries of one group, it was supposed to build casemated ammunition cellars (for one ammunition load for each gun), rooms for gun servants, fire control devices and power plants (dynamos). The thickness of the vaults of the casemates to protect against medium-caliber naval shells was to be 6-7 feet of concrete.

The journal of the meeting of the GUGSH Fortress Commission was approved by the tsar on May 21, 1911, where the 48-line guns were replaced with 120-mm Vickers systems, which were ordered by the Obukhov steel plant.

In 1913, when the 10-inch (No. 16) and 120-mm (No. 24) batteries of the Northern Group were already completed, on the Alkadar hill (one of the western spurs of the Mekenziev mountains), about 1.5 km east of the mouth of the river Belbek, construction of a 12-inch tower battery №26.

The project of the battery was developed under the guidance of the builder of the battery, military engineer Colonel Smirnov. The project was considered at a meeting of the Engineering Committee of the Main Military Technical Directorate (GVTU) on August 28, 1914 and again, taking into account the comments of the GVTU, on June 26, 1915. The advisory member reported technical committee GVTU Major General Malkov-Panin. The cost of building a battery was estimated at 850 thousand rubles.

The location of the battery on a narrow, tongue-shaped hill (altitude about 60 m above sea level) with a slope of up to 45 degrees determined the architecture of its structures. In contrast to the 12-inch battery No. 25 of the Southern group, which had two separate concrete blocks (one for each tower) connected by a wall, it was decided to place both towers on the 26th in a common block elongated along the front (as in the Kronstadt forts Krasnaya Gorka ” and “Ino”). For close defense purposes, a separate casemated building was built 50 m southwest of the gun block - a concrete shelter for 3-inch roll-out anti-assault guns and their servants, and 600 m northeast - an infantry fortification with concrete rifle trenches and casemated shelters.

The design of the concrete block (battery array) was designed on the basis of the "Temporary Instructions for the Construction of Ceilings and Walls of Casemated Fortress Premises". The instruction was developed in 1912 on the basis of experiments on testing new structures of casemate coatings on the island of Berezan by shelling and revised on the basis of Warsaw experiments in the direction of strengthening the structures in 1913 and 1914.

The floor walls of the block were designed for two hits in one place by 12-inch naval artillery shells at angles of impact of 20 degrees and had a layered structure - 2.4 m of concrete, 2.1 m of sand layer and 2.1 m of concrete. The vaulted cover of the casemates with anti-spall metal clothing designed by Colonel Savrimovich (a continuous layer of bent steel channels No. 30 and a 30-cm layer of asphalt concrete above it) were designed from monolithic unreinforced concrete with a thickness of 2.4 m. Such a coating was calculated on hitting one 12-inch projectile.

The construction of the battery proceeded at a rapid pace, but in 1915, work on the construction of the battery was suspended, since the tower installations and equipment manufactured for it in Petrograd were used to urgently strengthen the coastal defense in the Baltic (sea fortress of Emperor Peter the Great).

However, work on the construction of the battery was not completely stopped, and by the fall of 1917, the construction of the concrete mass was completed by 70%. The front part of the floor walls of the layered structure was made up to the upper plane of the coating, and the side, rear and inner walls were made up to the heels of the vaults. Above all the casemates, steel channels No. 30 were laid and a layer of asphalt concrete was filled. The rigid drums of the towers were delivered and concreted around the perimeter, 40% of the armored doors were hung, the rest of the doors were available at the construction site in full. For the delivery of heavy parts of the tower installations from the Mekenzievy Gory station, a normal gauge railway line was brought up. The water supply of the battery was provided by two artesian wells. To store water under the floor of the gun block, concrete tanks were arranged with a total capacity of 500 m 3. The Petrograd Metal Plant was finishing the production of a 100-ton electric crane. There, work continued on the manufacture of new tower installations.

At the tower battery No. 25 of the Southern Group, by this time all concrete work had been completed and the installation of the metal structures of the first tower had begun.

The October Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent foreign intervention and the Civil War interrupted the construction of the 26th and 25th batteries for 11 years.

In 1925, the Armament Commission of the Main Artillery Directorate of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Fleet (GAU RKKF) recognized the need to "install a 4-gun 2-turret battery with 12-inch / 52 cal. guns on battery 26 of the Sevastopol fortress. However, it was impossible to immediately start implementing this decision. At that time, work was in full swing in Sevastopol to complete the construction of tower battery No. 8 (the former 25th), 95% ready for tower installations of which were located at the Leningrad Metal Plant. I had to wait another three years, especially since the tower installations intended for the 26th battery were in a low degree of readiness. The military-industrial complex of the USSR, which was just beginning to emerge from the post-revolutionary devastation, could not yet master the finishing of two more tower installations.

March 9, 1928 at a meeting of the Revolutionary Military Council (RVS) of the USSR, chaired by K.E. Voroshilov, it was decided:
“Recognize it as necessary, complete the construction of a 305 mm tower battery in Sevastopol
1. Start construction this year within the funds allocated for coastal defense in 1927-28.
2. Approve the estimate for completion in the total amount of 3,843,000 rubles.
3. Construction to be completed within 3 years.”

The Revolutionary Military Council of the Black Sea Naval Forces (MSChM), by order of August 21, 1928, created a Permanent Conference on the construction of a battery (by that time it had received a new number - 30) chaired by the commander of the Black Sea Coastal Defense I.M. Ludry and as a member of: Head of the Department of Coastal Construction of Glavvoenport I.M. Tsalkovich, Chief of Artillery of the Coastal Defense of the Black Sea G. Chetverukhin and Chief of the Observation and Communications Service of the MSChM Yermakov.

Despite the fact that the concrete array of the battery was very far from completion, the installation of gun turrets, internal equipment and engineering communications had not begun at all, and the command post did not exist even in the project, the Revolutionary Military Council set the deadline for putting the object into operation on January 1, 1932.

The battery completion project was developed by the defensive construction department of the Coastal Construction Department of the Sevastopol Glavvoenport under the leadership of military engineer A.I. Vasilkov. In contrast to the 35th battery, where the coatings of gun blocks built before the revolution were made of unreinforced concrete (with the exception of anti-spall clothing), the cover of a single gun block of the 30th battery was designed from reinforced concrete with a reinforcement consumption of up to 100 kg / m 3. The absence of vibrators and the high saturation with reinforcement did not allow the use of rigid concrete, so it was proposed to use semi-plastic concrete using cement grade "250" (consumption - 400 kg / m 3) and diorite crushed stone filler with the addition of up to 30% local gravel. It was planned to build a stone crushing and concrete plant, a bremsberg to supply sand and gravel from Lyubimovsky Beach and to restore a railway line from the Mekenzievy Gory station to deliver cement, crushed diorite stone from the Kurtsevsky quarry near Simferopol, metal structures of anchors, spall-resistant coating beams, and later - guns and parts of towers, combat and rangefinder cabins of the command post.

By September 1, 1930, it was possible to complete the restoration of railway and crane tracks. All armored doors were installed in the gun block of the battery and the sandy layer of the floor wall was filled up. We started construction of a concrete plant for concreting the block pavement. The readiness of tower artillery installations at the Leningrad Metal Plant by that time was 30%. The Izhora plant made the roofs of the towers and the conning tower of the command post.

By December 24, 1930, I.M. Tsalkovich ordered the formation of the "Office of a Separate Producer of Works on the Construction of Battery No. 30 (Lyubimovskaya KOPR BS MSCM)". Engineer Mitrofanov was appointed its head, and military engineer Kolokoltsev was appointed assistant for the technical part.

In the autumn of 1931, the construction of the battery was visited by the Deputy People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs S.S. Kamenev.

In the preparatory period of construction (1929-1930), in addition to restoring the railway track, they designed and built a battery barracks camp for 500 people with apartments for command and enlisted barracks, a club, a bathhouse, etc., a highway to the construction sites of a firing position and a command post as well as workshops. To provide the construction with electricity, a transformer substation was equipped, which received current from the power plant of the Northern Dock of Sevastopol.

Exceptional difficulty was caused by the concreting of the cover of the gun block, located on a hill, the small area of ​​​​which did not allow the placement of a conventional concrete plant and the necessary reserves of cement, sand and gravel. In this regard, they accepted the proposal of the military engineer A.I. Vasilkov to supply concrete from below using a concrete mast. According to this system, several thousand cubic meters of concrete were filled to enable mounting of rigid drums and fixed armor (cuirass) of gun turrets. At the same time, under the leadership of military engineer B.K. Sokolov was designing and building a powerful concrete plant of the original - vertical type.

Built in 1931, the plant was a complex multi-storey structure, the foundation of which was a concrete shelter for anti-assault guns built by 1917 near the gun block (it was equipped with an electrical substation). On the top floor of the plant, in special bunkers, there was a four-hour supply of cement, sand, gravel, fed along an inclined 60-meter overpass using electric winches. Below, in six-meter shafts, four Smith-type concrete mixers with a capacity of 1 m 3 each were installed. The supply of materials inside the plant was carried out by elevator hoists to the upper bunkers, and from there by gravity through pipes to concrete mixers. From each concrete mixer, concrete, using a vertical shaft lift, was fed to a height of 15 m into loading bins, from where it was transported in trolleys with a capacity of 0.5 m 3 along an annular overpass laid around the battery gun block to the places of laying. The productivity of the plant reached 45 m 3 per hour.

To ensure the solidity of the erected walls and ceilings, they were divided into separate blocks (stones) with a volume of 800 to 2200 m 3, each of which was concreted in layers 20 cm thick with an interval of no more than two hours. The first pavement block was concreted by February 27, 1932, and by May 1 of the same year, the concreting of the main array of the battery was completed. In total, about 22,000 m 3 of concrete and 2,000 tons of steel reinforcement were laid.

Simultaneously with the laying of new concrete, new doorways, channels for ventilation pipelines, electrical cables, etc. were made in the already existing walls and ceilings of the casemates.

In parallel with the completion of the gun unit, work was underway to build a command post (CP). Initially, it was supposed to be equipped in the gun block itself, on its left flank. This was the cheapest option, since a ready-made structure was used, on which only a conning tower had to be installed. In addition, there was no need for a connecting patch for laying fire control and communication cables. However, the rangefinder cabin and radio communication antennas would have to be taken aside, since placing them directly on the combat surface of the block was impossible due to the danger of damage by muzzle gases when firing their own guns. The work of observers in the conning tower of the command post would also have been hampered by the flashes of shots and the dust raised by them. In addition, the combination of the command post with the firing position in the general array lowered the survivability of the battery as a whole, and such a solution no longer met the requirements of the time.

Therefore, in the final version (March 1930), they decided to place the command post on the top of a height of 39.8, approximately 650 m northeast of the gun block (where until 1917 the construction of a ground defense stronghold was underway). At the same time, only a block with an observation armored cap and a rangefinder tower was located on the surface of the mountain, and all other premises of the command post were arranged in a tunnel type at a depth of 37 m. The cost of work increased by 600 thousand rubles. (due to the need to rebuild all the fortifications, as well as the large length of the postern connecting the command post with the firing position), however, the survivability of the command post increased and visibility improved.

Decree of the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) of the USSR No. 128/55 of February 22, 1932 "On the construction of the Navy of the Red Army for 1932" it was supposed to “Completely complete the construction of battery No. 30 (305 mm x 4) in Sevastopol by December 1, 1933,” but already by resolution STO No. 34 of May 27, 1933 “On the state and development of the country’s coastal defense” battery was moved to 1 July of that year.

By that time, the work had made significant progress, although with a large delay from the calendar plans. In the gun unit, the installation of turret mounts and ammunition cellar equipment was underway, however, it was delayed due to untimely and incomplete deliveries of parts and assemblies by manufacturers.

On June 26, 1933, N.N. Petin issued the following order:

“I conducted, together with a group of workers of the UNI RKKA, an examination of the progress of work on battery No. 30, it was established:

The work plan for the battery, which was supposed to come into operation last year, as of June 1, 1933, was only 22.8% completed. I explain such pace of work, completely unacceptable at a military construction site, not only by the delay in obtaining military and technical equipment for the battery from the Center, but also by the completely unsatisfactory management of the work by the Fortress UNR and the insufficiency and pressure from the UNI MSChF.

Scheduled work plans were repeatedly violated at all levels of management, starting with UNIMS, UNR, the site and ending with the work brigade. The command did not mobilize forces to fulfill, by all means, the work plan within the time period set by the Government; insufficient efforts were also made on the part of party and professional organizations to ensure the successful fulfillment of this task.

The delay in sending equipment from the Center (sanitary, technical, electromechanical, artillery and projects of the electrization post and control post) cannot serve as an excuse for the completely insufficient pace of work, since even work not dependent on the receipt of equipment was not forced, drainage work, finishing the openings of the casemates, laying the curtains, building the compost [command post] - all this could be completed by July 1.

The extremely disdainful attitude of the technical management of the site to the mechanization of the most labor-intensive work is striking: for example, out of 7 available hammer drills, only 2 are in operation, the rest are inactive pending repairs and spare parts, 2 concrete mixers in stock have been unused and not repaired for more than a year.

Maintenance is poor. Machines and aggregates are not lubricated, scheduled preventive maintenance of tractors is not carried out.

The technical management of the work is completely inadequate. The work is carried out without proper technical inspection. Night shifts by technical management are very frequent, not provided at all, tk. in most cases, engineering and technical personnel are not present at night work. Technical acceptance of completed works is not carried out, acts are not drawn up, technical staff and workers are not instructed.

There is no work organization project. The layout of the concrete compost plant is not well thought out; the rail track was laid in such a way that moving trolleys with crushed stone, sand and cement, colliding, delayed the pace of concrete work.

The quality of work is not given due attention. Due to the untimely clearing of expansion joints, water is leaking inside the massif. Works in the potter are carried out without a mobile template, which causes unnecessary excavation of the rock and laying of excess concrete. The reinforcement mesh, instead of the lower part, is placed in some places in the upper part of the vault. Crushed stone prepared for compost concreting is contaminated, washing and screening was not organized in advance. Mistakes were made in the reinforcement of the compost walls: the clamps were not connected to each other, the outer vertical mesh lies on the formwork in some places, the ends were not left in the vertical rods to link with the reinforcement of the coating.

Due to the careless development of the working drawings of the foundation for the transformers, there were major alterations in casemate No. 12.

The command, the party political and trade union leadership do not use all the levers of mass political work and have not yet mobilized the activity of the working masses to fight for the fulfillment of the plan within the set deadlines; Socialist competition and shock work around the main issues of the struggle for real self-financing, for high quality and labor productivity, for the Bolshevik pace of work.

The shortcomings revealed by the survey testify to a deep breakthrough in the production, economic and financial work of the section of the serf U HP, the almost complete absence of live concrete instruction in the sections from the side of the U HP, to which I draw the attention of the Chief of Engineers of the Black Sea comrade. Weinger and put on the mind of the former Head of the Directorate Comrade. Tsigurov, as well as the Head of the Department, comrade. Kosovich.

In view of the obvious impossibility of completing the construction of battery No. 30 within the period specified by the Government - July 1, 1933, I am forced to urgently file a petition with the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs - to establish new, in my opinion, quite realistic, deadlines for completing the work, namely:

1. By tower array: finish to
A) The main construction work - 07/20/1933
B) Installation work LMZ - 08/15/1933
C) EMC installation work - 08/15/1933
D) Installation work STS - 11/01/1933
E) Completion of the array and commissioning - 09/15/1933

2. By compost (aerial part).
A) Main construction work - 09/10/1933 B) EMC installation work - 10/01/1933
C) Installation work STS - 01.10.1933
D) Finishing the compost and commissioning - 01.10.1933

3. Potterns and the underground part of the compost.
A) The main construction work - 10/15/1933
B) Equipment - 01.10.1933
C) Finishing the compost and commissioning - 11/10/1933

At the same time, I am taking measures to speed up the delivery of the missing artillery and technical equipment from the Center ... ".

By the middle of 1934, the installation of internal equipment, engineering communications was completed and a test firing of both gun turrets and the first stage of the Barricade fire control system was carried out. The battery was nominally put into operation, although various improvements and corrections were carried out on it for another six years.

In 1936, the installation of the second stage of the fire control system began at the battery command post. Its main element was a horizontal base rangefinder - an electromechanical tablet-builder designed to determine the coordinates of the target. The complexity of the installation was that the central post was located at a depth of 37 meters underground, and the dimensions of the existing shaft and the surface entrance to the control room were too small. To lower the instruments, it was necessary to break through an additional vertical pit in the rocky soil and connect it with the premises of the underground part of the control room by a horizontal working. After the completion of the installation, the working was laid with concrete blocks, and the pit was covered with soil. The battery was fully commissioned in 1940.

Battery device

Tower coastal battery No. 30 consisted of the following main structures:
- a gun unit with two turrets;
- a command post with a conning tower, an armored rangefinder cabin, a central post and a radio cabin;
- a separate unit of an electrical transformer substation.

The battery was armed with four 305-mm guns, 52 calibers long. Of these, three (No. 142, 145 and 158) had an elongated chamber of the Military Department (gun brand "CA"). The fourth gun (No. 149), despite the marking "SA", had a chamber shortened by 220 mm, like the guns of the Naval Department (mark "MA"). The last misunderstanding was revealed only during test firing in 1934. In view of the fact that the diversity of guns did not have a special effect on dispersion during salvo firing, the commission for accepting the battery decided to leave the gun in place, but use charges specially selected for it by weight.

The information repeatedly indicated in the works of various authors that the 30th battery was allegedly armed with guns from the battleship Empress Maria, which died in 1916, is not true.

The turret artillery mounts of the 30th battery "MB-2-12" were almost identical in their design to the turret artillery mounts of the forts "Krasnaya Gorka" and "Ino" of the Kronstadt fortress and the towers of the 35th battery, with the exception of the system for supplying ammunition from cellars to reloading departments. On the 35th battery, shells and charges were pushed out of the cellars through special pipes, and on the 30th they rolled out along a roller conveyor (roller table). In addition, in the transfer compartments themselves, instead of manually moving charging carts, a rotating platform driven by an electric motor was installed.

The storage of shells in the cellars was carried out in stacks, and their supply to the conveyors of the reloading compartments was carried out using ratchet carts on monorails. Semi-charges were stored in cellars in regular metal cases on honeycomb-type racks.

To carry out work on the replacement of gun barrels and repair of towers, the battery had a regular 75-ton railway crane. To ensure camouflage and protection of the crane during shelling from the sea, a special shelter was built for it in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe battery town.

The one-story gun block of the battery, about 130 m long and 50 m wide, had two entrances in the rear with armored doors and tambour locks, protected by cranked drafts. For communications between 72 rooms of the block, a longitudinal corridor about 100 m long and 3 m wide passed inside it. pumping station, filter-ventilation equipment, residential and service premises for personnel. Under the floor of the premises there were tanks for fuel, oil and water supplies and engineering communications passed. The total area of ​​​​the premises of the gun battery block was about 3000 m 2.

All casemates of the gun block had vaulted roofs made of monolithic reinforced concrete with a thickness of 3 to 4 m with a rigid spall-proof layer of steel channels No. 30 and an insulating layer of asphalt concrete.

The command post of the battery, located on a hill 650 m north-east of the gun block, was connected to the last deep-lying loss made in the rocky ground at a depth of up to 38 m. 5 m. Inside the block were a radio room with a room for batteries and a crew quarters. The entrance to the block was supplied with a tambour-lock, closed with an armored door and an elbowed draft. An armored cabin "KB-16" (wall armor thickness - 406 mm, roofs - 305 mm) with four viewing slots and an optical sight of the PKB-type battery commander (subsequently replaced by "VBK-1") was mounted in the reinforced concrete coating of the block.

50 m from the block, connected to it by a covered passageway, on a concrete base there was a rotating rangefinder cabin "B-19" with a 10-meter Zeiss stereoscopic rangefinder and a stereoscopic tube "ST-5" of a 5-meter base, protected by 30- mm armor.

In the underground part of the command post, located at a depth of 37 m in the form of a concrete-lined tunnel 53 m long and 5.5 m wide, there were: the main central post of the battery, an autonomous power plant and a boiler room with fuel reserves, a filtering unit and premises for personnel.

The main central post housed the main group of the fire control system (PUS) of the Barricade system, consisting of a horizontal base range finder (HBD) builder, an azimuth and distance transformer (TAD), a direct course machine (APK) and a number of other devices.

The GBD builder received target designation from six remote observation posts located on Cape Kermenchik, near the village of Mamashai, on the former coastal battery No. 7 (Northern side of Sevastopol), on the former Liter-A fort (Streletskaya Bay area), Cape Fiolent and Mount Kaya -Bash. Each post was a reinforced concrete structure. light type which housed the optical stereo range finder of the 6-meter base "DM-6" and the sight of the end of the base of the "GO" type. Night shooting was provided by two mobile searchlight stations of the 3-15-4 type, for which reinforced concrete shelters were built on the shore.

The ground and underground parts of the control room were interconnected by a vertical shaft with an electric elevator and stairs.

The 650-meter deep stern, connecting the command post with the gun block, had a slight slope towards the middle, from where there was a perpendicular branch that served as a drain. Sewer and drainage pipes, laid under the floor of the postern, went out into it. In the area between the drain and the gun block, the postern had one more branch that went to the daylight surface, which served as an emergency exit. The shelter of the guardhouse located nearby was attached to it.

The transformer substation, designed to supply the battery with electricity from the city's high-voltage network, was located in a separate concrete block located 50 m southwest of the gun block (a former shelter for guns). The substation had an entrance with an elbow draft and five rooms connected by a corridor. They housed: a 180 kVA step-down transformer for converting a three-phase alternating current 6000 V to 400 V current, 400 V AC to 220 V DC electric machine converter and 50 kW diesel generator. Some rooms had windows for natural light and ventilation. The substation block was made similarly to the gun block (vaulted coverings 2-2.5 m thick on bent steel channels). In the upper part of the block there was an input of a high-voltage overhead power transmission line conducted to the battery from the North side of Sevastopol.

Inside the gun block there was another transformer substation with two transformers with a capacity of 320 kVA each. She received power from the city's high-voltage network through two independent underground cable lines.

To autonomously provide electricity to battery consumers, a power station was equipped in its gun block, consisting of two 6BK-43 diesel generators with a capacity of 370 kW each and two electric machine converters. The command post had its own diesel generator. Stocks of fuel and oil for diesel engines were stored in underground tanks. Emergency power for lighting, communications and signaling networks was provided by a high-capacity storage battery.

The battery was supplied with water from two independent sources - an unprotected mine well in the Belbek River valley and a protected artesian well in the gun block. Due to the great depth of the latter (120 m), the rise of water from it was carried out using an airlift. There were three reservoirs to store the water supply under the premises of the block. To provide water for the irrigation system of the charging cellars, pneumatic tanks (hydrophores) were installed.

To provide battery consumers (tower installations, power station, airlift) with compressed air, two compressor stations were equipped in the gun block.

The collective anti-chemical protection of the battery (including gun turrets, combat and rangefinder cabins) was provided by filter-ventilation units with 8 groups of FP-100 carbon filters located in the gun block and gearbox. Air was supplied to each group of filters from the surface through two independent lines. To protect them from the action of the blast wave, the so-called "labyrinths" were installed, consisting of packages of steel I-beams arranged in a checkerboard pattern.

To maintain the temperature and humidity conditions in the premises, there was a system of steam-air calorific heating (steam was produced by two underground boilers). The power station of the gun unit had an air-cooling unit.

The air defense of the battery consisted of four anti-aircraft machine gun installations (one "DShK" and three "M-4"). In the rear of the gun unit, two stationary positions were built (reinforced concrete casemates with winches) for lifting barrage balloons.

The ground defense consisted of six reinforced concrete five-hole two-story machine-gun firing points (OT) (a 7.62-mm machine gun "Maxim" was installed on a rotary machine in the upper floor, a shelter and an ammunition depot were located in the lower floor), rifle trenches and wire barriers. The highway, which ran in the gorge part of the battery, had a stone retaining wall, which simultaneously served as a rifle parapet.

Turret installations, entrances to the gun unit and command post did not have special devices and loopholes for self-defense. The gun turrets also did not have external doors. The entrance to them was carried out only from the turret compartments.

For communication with other batteries of the Main Base of the Black Sea Fleet and the higher command, the battery had a transmitting and receiving radio station (with the Shkval, Bukhta, Raid, 5AK-1 and 6PK radio equipment) and a telephone exchange with three switches. Internal communication was provided by a ship-type telephone network. Electric howlers were used for signaling. The communication of combat posts inside the tower installations was carried out with the help of voice tubes.

The personnel of the battery in peacetime was located in its town, where they built residential buildings for the command and barracks for the rank and file. In a combat situation, to ensure a long stay of personnel in the gun block and in the command post, cabins and cockpits of personnel, latrines, washbasins, and showers were equipped. For cooking there was a galley with a provisional pantry. For the command staff, a wardroom was equipped. Health care wounded and affected by toxic substances could be in the first-aid post, which consisted of an operating room, an examination room with an X-ray machine, an isolation ward and a pharmacy.

When the battery came into operation in 1934, the naval officer D. Pannikov was appointed its commander. Then the battery was commanded by E.P. Donets (later - Colonel, Deputy Head of the Artillery Department of the Black Sea Fleet). In November 1937, Senior Lieutenant G.A. took command of the battery. Alexander.

Thus, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War On June 22, 1941, battery No. 30 was a powerful fortification with high survivability and impressive combat strength.

Part II
DEFENSE OF SEVASTOPOL AND POST-WAR RESTORATION

Participation of the battery in hostilities

As of June 22, 1941, battery No. 30 was part of the 1st separate artillery battalion of the Coastal Defense of the Main Naval Base of the Black Sea Fleet "Sevastopol". The division also included a 305-mm tower battery No. 35, a 203-mm open battery No. 10 and a 102-mm battery No. 54 built for mobilization. The battery was commanded by Captain G.A. Alexander and senior political instructor E.K. Solovyov. Organizationally, it was part of the 4th sector of the Sevastopol Defensive Region (SOR), created on November 4, 1941 and which included units of the Coastal Defense, as well as units of the Separate Primorsky Army retreating to the city.

The land defense of coastal batteries was equipped in the form of rifle trenches and barbed wire in three rows. There was no depth of defense. On tower batteries, in addition to trenches, 6-8 light-type reinforced concrete pillboxes were built.

By the end of October 1941, the mobile units of the 11th German Army reached the approaches to Sevastopol and began to storm it. When repulsing the first assault (from October 30 to November 21, 1941) before the main units of the Primorsky Army approached, the main burden of the fight against the enemy fell on the coastal batteries and a few units of the Sevastopol garrison. Already on November 1, at 12:40, battery No. 30 opened fire on the accumulation of motorized units of the 132nd infantry division of the enemy in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe Alma station and the village of Bazarchik to support the 8th Marine Brigade. Five shootings were carried out and 68 shells were fired. The enemy suffered heavy losses.

On November 2, battery No. 30 fired at the enemy’s motorized units in the Bakhchisaray area and at the concentration of troops in the area of ​​the village of Alma-Tarkhan. The fire was corrected by Lieutenant S.A. Adamov. Although the shooting was carried out at the maximum distance, it was very effective. The enemy column of vehicles, tanks and armored vehicles stopped in a hollow. The enemy did not imagine that our artillery could reach her. The first two heavy shells exploded in the thick of the column. Cars caught fire, tank trucks began to explode. The flames engulfed dozens of vehicles. The battery increased the fire, and the shells began to burst more and more often. According to the calculations of the correction post, up to 100 vehicles, about 30 guns, six tanks, about 15 armored vehicles and several hundred Nazis were destroyed.

On the same day, the enemy, with the support of tanks, intense artillery and aviation fire, launched an offensive in the Duvankoy area with the aim of breaking through the highway to the Belbek valley. Marine battalions (the 17th, the remnants of the 16th and the battalion of the Coastal Defense School) were supported by the fire of battery No. 30, which was corrected by Major Cherenok. As a result, an enemy battery in the Bakhchisaray area and several tanks were destroyed, the rest of the tanks turned back. Six shootings were carried out, 42 shells were fired.

Since November 1, enemy aviation has sharply increased its activity in the Sevastopol direction. She struck at the military facilities of the Main Base, including coastal batteries No. 30, 10 and others, as well as at the ships that were in the base. For cover Soviet troops in the Kacha-Belbek area, 76-mm 214, 215, 218 and 219 anti-aircraft batteries operated.

On November 4, enemy troops made several attacks in the area of ​​​​the village of Mamashai - the village of Aranchi. On the site of the 8th Marine Brigade, the enemy tried to capture Hill 158.7. All attacks were repulsed with the support of batteries No. 10, 30 and 724 and two anti-aircraft batteries.

At 2:30 p.m., the enemy, up to a regiment, attacked in the sector of the 3rd Marine Regiment, Air Force Battalion, 19th Marine Battalion, as well as the right flank of the 8th Brigade, trying to break into the Duvankoy stronghold. At 1436 hours battery #30 opened fire on the attacking enemy. The fire was corrected by Lieutenant L.G. Repkov. The fire with large-caliber shrapnel shells was exceptionally effective and accurate. The Nazis lost two guns with vehicles, a mortar battery, about 15 machine guns and up to two infantry battalions. On this day, the battery fired nine shots and fired the largest number of shells during the first assault - 75.

On November 6, the Local Coastal Defense Rifle Regiment, with fire support from batteries No. 10, 30 and others, repelled an attempt by the Nazis to go on the offensive in the Northern Sector in the Aranci-Mamashai area.

On November 8, it was decided to support the counterattack of the 7th Marine Brigade on the Mekenzievy Mountains with the fire of battery No. 30, and to use powerful fire with shrapnel, despite the danger of hitting friendly ones. For artillery preparation, coastal batteries No. 2 and 35 were also involved. The leadership and control over the provision of artillery preparation by coastal batteries during the offensive of the brigade was entrusted to the chief of coastal defense artillery, Lieutenant Colonel B.E. Fine. Lieutenant Colonel B.E. Fine personally went to Battery 30 to instruct its commander, Alexander, that only his battery was to fire the shrapnel. The calculations were made in such a way that the first salvo was a migratory one.

In three days of fighting, battery No. 30 destroyed the enemy’s three-gun battery, several mortar batteries, up to twelve machine-gun points, a military echelon was broken, up to two battalions were destroyed and dispersed, direct hits on the column of enemy armored vehicles and tanks were recorded.

In the period from November 1 to 7, 1941, battery No. 30 fired very intensively, conducting from five to eleven firings per day and firing from 20 to 75 shells. Between November 11 and 16, the intensity of firing decreased to one to four.

The use of coastal artillery during the first enemy assault was not entirely rational, which was caused by the special circumstances of the initial period of the defense of Sevastopol. Coastal artillery had to be used on targets that field artillery could fire well at, only because of its almost complete absence before the artillery of the Primorsky Army approached, and then because of its lack of ammunition.

In total, the artillerymen of the Coastal Defense had 20 corrective posts located at the forefront in all defense sectors. Each post could correct the fire of any battery, which ensured, if necessary, the concentration of fire in any sector. Corrective posts had radio and linear communication. Sometimes it was practiced to throw corrective posts behind enemy lines, which ensured greater fire efficiency. In total, during the first assault, battery No. 30 fired 77 rounds and fired 517 shells.

After the end of the first offensive of the Nazis, all coastal defense artillery was reduced to a separate independent group headed by Lieutenant Colonel B.E. Fine. This made it possible to use it more rationally and centrally. A reservation was made in the order on the use of artillery: "In view of the low survivability of the guns, coastal and naval artillery for firing should be involved each time with the special permission of the artillery headquarters of the Sevastopol defensive region at the request of the sector artillery chiefs."

On November 16, during live firing in the first turret on the left gun, the gun ring was torn out at the receiver attachment point and the receiver rod was torn off. The forces of Artremzavod eliminated the accident within seven days, the gun ring and the receiver rod were replaced with new ones taken in classroom Sevastopol School of Coastal Defense named after LKSMU.

On December 8, 1941, the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet awarded a number of fighters and commanders of battery No. 30: battery commander Captain Alexander Georgy Alexandrovich with the Order of the Red Banner, Lieutenant Adamov Sarkis Oganezovich with the medal "For Courage"; medal "For Military Merit"; senior sergeant Lysenko Ivan Sergeyevich and sailor Tsapodoy Onufry Nikiforovich.

On December 17, the second assault on Sevastopol began. During the second assault, battery No. 30 fired as intensely as during the first. From four to fourteen firings were carried out per day and from 8 to 96 shells were fired.

The German troops dealt the main blow with the forces of the 22nd and 132nd infantry divisions along the Belbek river valley and on Kamyshly. The 22nd infantry division and the Romanian motorized rifle regiment acted against the 4th sector. The 4th sector and battery No. 30 were defended by the 90th Infantry Regiment and the 8th Marine Brigade. On this day, December 17, the battery fired 14 rounds and fired 96 shells. As a result of the withdrawal of the 8th Marine Brigade and the left-flank units of the 3rd sector, there was a threat of a breakthrough of enemy units along the Belbek river valley, including to battery No. 30. The counterattack, organized on December 18 by the command of the Sevastopol defensive region, did not produce any results. To support the counterattack on December 18 and 19, Battery No. 30 conducted twelve firings and fired 68 shells. In two days, more than 200 shells were fired by the enemy at battery No. 30, only with a caliber of 203 mm and above.

To eliminate the enemy breakthrough, on December 19, an order was signed on the allocation of personnel to strengthen the front and create a reserve, according to which, by 6 o’clock on December 20, it was necessary to form two companies of 150 people from coastal batteries No. 10 and 30, which were sent to the disposal of the command Maritime army.

December 22 plight For the units of the 4th sector, located north of the Belbek River: the 90th Infantry Regiment, the 40th Cavalry Division and the 8th Marine Brigade fought off the enemy’s stubborn attacks all day and by the evening of December 22, they hardly held their positions. The enemy, having pulled up reserves, created a threat along the Belbek valley to cut off the road to Kacha. The weakened units of the 151st Cavalry Regiment under the blows of tanks were forced to withdraw to the area of ​​the Sofya Perovskaya state farm, and the remnants of the 773rd Infantry Regiment to Lyubimovka. In view of the obvious threat of an enemy breakthrough along the Belbek river valley and the Kara-Tau hill to the sea, which could lead to the encirclement of Soviet troops, it was decided to withdraw troops to the line of the Belbek river and take up defense in a sector 1 km east of the village of Belbek - Lyubimovka, and battery No. 10 and blow up all artillery pillboxes. By 10 o'clock on December 23, parts of the 4th sector were withdrawn. This line of defense was very close to Sevastopol and passed at a distance of only 7-8 km from the Northern Bay on the same line with the command post of battery No. 30. At 15:40, the enemy, with a force up to the regiment, went on the offensive in the direction of battery No. 30 and the state farm. Sofia Perovskoy. The offensive was carried out from the village of Belbek to the sea by the 22nd German Infantry Division and a Romanian motorized regiment.

On the morning of December 26, the enemy, with a force of up to one and a half regiments brought in from the reserve of the 132nd Infantry Division, resumed the offensive with tanks. Parts of the Sevastopol defensive region, which occupied the defense from the Mekenzievy Gory station to the seashore, were in a difficult situation. The 90th Infantry Regiment could hardly hold back the onslaught of the enemy, who came close to Battery No. 30. The enemy was stopped and he failed to cut the railway line from the Mekenzievy Gory station to battery No. 30. Our infantry was greatly assisted by the Zheleznyakov armored train, which went to the Mekenzievy Gory station, 265, 905 and 397 artillery regiments and coastal batteries No. 2 (4x100 / 50), 12 (4x152 / 45), 14 (3x13 / 50), 704 (2x130/55), 705 (2x130/55), as well as the 365th (4x76) anti-aircraft battery. It is interesting that, giving conditional names to the defensive objects of Sevastopol, the Germans called the firing position of the 30th battery "Fort Maxim Gorky I", and its command post was named "Schutzpunkt Bastion".

On the morning of December 28, the enemy opened fire along the entire front of the 4th sector, especially intensive in the area from Kamyshly to battery No. 30 and the Sofya Perovskaya state farm. At 08:25, four enemy battalions, supported by 12 tanks, attacked in the direction of cordon No. 1 - the Mekenzievy Gory station and the Sofya Perovskaya state farm in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bbattery No. 30. By the end of the day, the Soviet troops could not hold the line, and were forced to withdraw.

The 30th battery found itself in a very difficult situation, since its right flank was not covered, and the enemy created a real opportunity to undermine it. The battery commander allocated up to two companies from the battery personnel to defend his right flank. The plight of the battery was reported to the head of the sector, who immediately formed a battalion from special units and sent it into the gap. Despite the difficult situation, the artillerymen continued to fire at the enemy, firing 61 shells.

By 12 o'clock on December 29, a difficult situation had again arisen in the battery area, the enemy, having captured the battery town, began to advance towards the command post. To eliminate the danger of destruction that threatened the battery, the battery commander, Captain Alexander, was ordered to turn the towers towards the enemy and use one tower to fire shrapnel. At 1330 hours, fire was opened on the enemy, who was in the area of ​​​​the battery town and command post, from other batteries of the Coastal Defense and an assault strike was delivered by aircraft. The enemy was repulsed by the subsequent strike of the Marine Corps, and the threat of destroying Battery No. 30 was over.

With the beginning of the Kerch-Feodosiya landing operation, the command of the 11th German army was forced to transfer the 170th, 132nd and part of the 50th infantry divisions to the Kerch direction and withdraw the remaining troops near Sevastopol 1-2 km from the Soviet defensive line.

During January 6-8, the troops of the 4th sector went on the offensive in order to improve their positions around battery No. 30 in the area of ​​the Belbek river valley and the village of Lyubimovka.

During the fighting, battery No. 30 fired at the enemy, according to various sources, from 1034 (Journal of Combat Operations of the 1st OAD) to 1234 shells and completely shot their trunks. It was necessary to urgently replace the trunks, and do it secretly from the enemy. The difficulty of replacing the barrels was that the battery was only 1.5 km from the front line and was perfectly visible from the enemy. A detailed work plan was developed, which was based on the idea of ​​the commander of the BCH-5 of the 35th battery of military equipment of the 2nd rank Lobanov to change barrels without using a crane manually using jacks and hoists. Great help in the development of this plan was provided by master S.I. Prokuda, and military engineer 3rd rank Mendeleev, who proposed to replace the guns without removing the horizontal armor from the turret, but only by raising it and inserting new gun bodies, which made it possible to significantly reduce the time of work. This proposal was supported by representatives of the Artillery Department of the Black Sea Fleet, military engineer 1st rank A.A. Alekseev and Colonel E.P. Donets, and also approved by the Coastal Defense Command. It was decided that master S.I. would supervise the work in one tower. Prokuda with his brigade (Bolshevik plant), and in the other - master I. Sechko with his brigade (Leningrad Metal Works). Huge work was done by the personnel of the towers, headed by the commanders of the towers V.M. Field and A.V. Telechko, where there were many good specialists among the fighters and junior commanders.

Work began on January 25th. It was impossible to use the 100-ton crane available on the battery, because, firstly, it was badly damaged, and secondly, its use would lead to a violation of the secrecy of the work. It was decided to change barrels only at night or in conditions of poor visibility. On the night of January 30, the first gun was pulled up to the towers by a steam locomotive. When the locomotive, pushing the platform with the body of the gun in front of it, reached the hill where the towers were located, which were viewed by the enemy, the tender of the locomotive drove into the filled shell funnel, derailed and began to sink into the rain-soaked soil. The personnel of the battery manually pulled the platform with the gun to the tower and unloaded it. At this time, under enemy fire, a brigade led by an engineer of the division I.V. Andriyenko put the tender on the rails by dawn and restored the track. In the morning, still in the dark, the locomotive left for Sevastopol for another gun, which was never found by the enemy. On February 11, the battery was in full combat readiness.

After the commissioning of battery No. 30, a rally was held at which the commander of the Black Sea Fleet and the Sevastopol defensive region, Vice Admiral Oktyabrsky, a member of the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet, divisional commissar Kulakov, and the commander of the Primorsky Army, Lieutenant General Petrov, spoke. The personnel were awarded orders and medals. The Order of the Red Banner was received by the battery commander, Captain G.A. Alexander.

In the document compiled by the Combat Training Department of the Headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet "Brief results of combat firing of coastal batteries of the CB GB Black Sea Fleet for 7 months of the defense of Sevastopol 10/30/1941 - 05/31/1942." it was noted: “Battery No. 30 conducted 161 firing, of which: 18 for tanks, 12 for vehicles, 34 for batteries, 22 for infantry, 16 for settlements, 59 for other targets. 1034 shots were used, the maximum consumption of ammunition for one shooting was 41 (for shooting at Bakhchisaray), the minimum was 1.

Most of the shootings were made at a distance of 60–80 cabs, 22% at a distance of more than 100 cabs. 3 firings were carried out by direct fire, 71 firings were corrected, 87 firings or 54% were not corrected.

The results of the fire: 17 tanks, 1 locomotive, 2 wagons, about 300 vehicles with troops and cargo were broken and damaged, 8 mortar and artillery batteries, up to 15 individual guns, 7 firing points, up to 3,000 infantry were destroyed. In addition, the fire of such a battery had a huge moral effect on the enemy.

The big disadvantage is that 54% of all shootings were made without adjustment, their result is unknown. (Certainly not very effective.)

By the beginning of the third assault, the 305-mm batteries of Sevastopol were provided with an average of 1.35 rounds of ammunition, or 270 shells per gun. As of May 20, there were 1,695 shells for eight 305-mm guns of batteries No. 30 and 35 in Sevastopol. For batteries, this number of shells was the limit, since after the specified number of shells was used up, the bodies of the guns wore out and required replacement.

As of May 30, 1942, the personnel of the 30th battery consisted of 22 commanders and 342 sailors.

In the afternoon of June 6, 1942, the enemy used heavy-duty artillery to shell battery No. 30 - two 600-mm Karl mortars. He managed to put out of action the second tower, in which the armor was pierced and the gun was damaged. In addition, enemy aircraft dropped 1000-kg bombs on the battery position. On the night of June 7, the tower was put into operation by the efforts of a team of workers under the leadership of foreman S.I. Prokuda and the battery personnel, but could only operate with one gun.

On June 7, a 600-mm shell hit the first turret. The second hit was in the concrete mass of the battery, the projectile pierced three meters of reinforced concrete and damaged the chemical filter compartment of the battery.

During June 9 and 10, the artillery of the Primorsky Army and the Coastal Defense fired at the battle formations of the advancing infantry, tanks and artillery positions of the enemy, who wedged into the battle formations of the defending Soviet troops in the sector 4 sector and created a threat of a breakthrough in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bbattery No. 30. Especially effective was the fire of battery No. 30 and the batteries of the 18th Guards Artillery Regiment.

By 10 June, battery #30 could fire only two guns, one gun in each turret. The engineering structures of the land defense were completely destroyed and overwhelmed. The parapet was a shapeless mass of stones, fragments of metal and funnels, pillboxes - destroyed.

During June 11, the troops of the Sevastopol defensive region fought to improve the position of battery No. 30 and eliminate the enemy's breakthrough.

The commander of the Primorsky Army, General Petrov, proposed to counterattack the enemy that had penetrated from two directions: from the 3rd sector and the area of ​​\u200b\u200bbattery No. 30. To support the actions of the infantry, the head of the Coastal Defense, General Morgunov, ordered the allocation of the required ammunition rate and indicated that more ammunition was spent on battery No. 30, which was continuously under air strikes and shelling of 600-mm mortars, as well as under the constant threat of encirclement.

In total, during the third assault, the battery used up 656 shells.

The enemy did his best to destroy the 30th battery and bombarded it daily with heavy guns. On June 14 alone, the enemy fired over 700 shells at the battery. German aviation fiercely bombed it, but had no success; on June 15, up to 600 air raids were made on the battery.

On June 15-17, 1942, the enemy, with forces from two to four regiments with tanks of the 132nd Infantry Division, launched an offensive (the forces of the opposing Soviet troops amounted to no more than one and a half to two regiments), hoping to capture the village of Budenovka and surround Battery No. 30. At the same time, a group of German submachine gunners, who had infiltrated the area of ​​the Sofya Perovskaya state farm on June 15, cut the air and underground communication lines of battery No. 30 with the city. On June 16, radio communications also ceased to operate, since all antennas were destroyed, and attempts to contact using an underground antenna were unsuccessful.

On June 17, Battery No. 30 was finally blocked by the enemy. About 250 personnel and soldiers of the 95th Infantry Division and Marines remained in the premises of the surrounded battery. In accordance with the instructions of the coastal defense command, in the event of blocking the battery by the enemy, the personnel of the battery had to break out of the encirclement in three groups, and the last group was to blow up the battery. The first group of 76 fighters, led by the instructor of the political department of coastal defense Kalinkin, left, but was partly killed by the Germans, part of the group managed to break through and report to the command of the Coastal Defense on the situation on the battery. The rest of the personnel delayed the exit, while the enemy, having discovered the exit of the first group, increased his fire on the exits from the battery array and made a further breakthrough impossible.

At a meeting with Vice-Admiral Oktyabrsky, a proposal was made to try to break through the battery blockade line, free its garrison and blow up the battery. On June 18, an attempt to break through to the positions of battery No. 30 with the support of Coastal Defense artillery was unsuccessful due to intense opposition from enemy aircraft and artillery, while the enemy resumed the offensive.

The siege and assault of the battery began.

Translated from the German edition of "Supplements to the memorandum on foreign fortifications", published in 1943 in Berlin by the Naval Engineering Directorate, in the chapter "Fight for Sevastopol" it was said:

“In the preparation of the assault, batteries of medium, large and extra-large calibers took part, firing from June 6 to June 17, 1942 (the day of the assault) about 750 shots, half of them before noon on June 17. At half past one on 17.06, 20 bombs were dropped on field installations by dive bombers.

Concentrated artillery fire broke through the barbed wire and filled the minefields.

The craters formed as a result of explosions of bombs and mines facilitated the advance of the attacking troops. The garrison of the outer defensive belt was mostly destroyed, and the light defenses included in its structure were defeated.

The western armored tower received a side hit, due to which one gun was completely disabled, and the other was partially disabled, the eastern tower received a direct hit in the embrasure, which disabled both guns. The underground passage to the rangefinder installation was filled in, all entrances and the reinforced concrete cover of the casemate remained almost untouched. The shelling (according to their testimony) did not make any impression on the defenders of the battery.

The 213th regiment, the 1st and 2nd battalions, the 132nd engineer regiment and the 1st battalion of the 173rd engineer regiment were assigned to storm the battery.

Early in the morning and before noon on 06/17/42, an assault was made in the direction of an anti-tank ditch dug east of the battery across the watershed. The enemy put up stubborn resistance. The emplacements firing on the front and flanks were silenced by infantry and artillery fire.

The 1st and 2nd battalions of the 132nd engineer regiment attacked the fortifications located in front of the battery. The 122nd Infantry Regiment attacked the installations located on the southern and western slopes of the mountain. The advance of the attacking units was greatly hampered by heavy artillery and mortar fire from the enemy from the Belbek River valley and the slopes located to the south, as well as sniper fire and counterattacks.

About half past three in the afternoon, as a result of a second attack, the western slope of the mountain was occupied. The approach to the command post at the eastern end of the underground passage was also busy.

At 2:45 a.m., the second battalion of the 213th regiment launched an attack on the eastern slope and at 3:15 a.m. reached the destroyed fortification at around +400 m, east of the first armored turret, and the first battalion of the 173rd engineer regiment, under the protection of the infantry fire attacked the tower installation. At 03:45, six sappers with bundles of hand grenades entered the installation and destroyed its garrison. The garrison of the second installation furiously fired back with rifle fire from embrasure holes pierced by artillery shells in the armor plates of the tower. The attack of the sappers was successful only thanks to the flank shelling of the installation by infantry units. The enemy was destroyed by hand grenades. At this time, the infantry advancing along the northern slope was able to establish control over western slope. At 0430, the sappers, as a result of several repeated attempts, reached the heavily defended main entrances, machine guns were installed to block the entrances. As a result of these actions, the garrison was locked up in blocks.

In the following days, the enemy tried to smoke the defenders of the battery out of the premises with the help of explosive charges, gasoline and combustible oils. As a result of explosions in tower installations, strong fires occurred and the rooms were filled with smoke. On June 22, the 6th Battalion of the 173rd Engineer Regiment was replaced by the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Engineer Regiment.

On June 25, 1942, the commander of the battery, Major G.A. Alexander went out through the drain and the next day was captured and then shot. On June 26, the enemy strike group broke into the block and captured 40 prisoners. Most of the garrison died from the explosions or suffocated in the smoke.

The 30th battery played an important role in the heroic defense of Sevastopol in 1941–1942. In total, during the war, battery No. 30 fired about 2,000 shells, a more accurate number cannot be calculated due to the lack of documents. As part of the 1st Separate Artillery Battalion of the Main Base of the Black Sea Fleet, together with the turret battery No. 35, it was a kind of “backbone” of the artillery defense system of the fortress and inflicted serious damage to the enemy in manpower and equipment. On June 18, 1942, by order of the People's Commissar of the Navy of the USSR No. 136, the 1st OAD was transformed into a Guards.

Recovery and post-war service

After the liberation of Sevastopol in 1944, the restoration of coastal defense facilities of the Main Base of the Black Sea Fleet began. On the railway line leading to battery position No. 30, permanent positions were equipped for railway battery No. 16. This battery was armed with four 180-mm railway artillery mounts TM-1-180. However, for a more reliable defense of the sea approaches to Sevastopol, on January 13, 1947, the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy adopted decision No. 0010 on the restoration of tower battery No. 30 using existing fortifications.

The project for the restoration and reconstruction of the battery was developed by the Mosvoenmorproekt of the Main Engineering Directorate of the Navy under the leadership of Major Engineers Maev and Nazarenko and approved by the Minister of the Navy on June 16, 1950.

In view of the impossibility of restoring the MB-2-12 305-mm two-gun turret mounts, badly damaged in 1942, it was decided to dismantle them and replace them with two three-gun turret mounts of the same caliber removed from the Frunze battleship (former Poltava).

Two towers (second and third) from this ship in the early 1930s. were installed on the battery No. 981 named after. Voroshilov in Vladivostok. The remaining towers (first and fourth) in 1940 were planned to be installed on the island of Russare (the naval base of Hanko of the Baltic Fleet), but the outbreak of war prevented this. In 1941, the rotating armor of one of the towers that lay dismantled on the territory of the Leningrad Metal Plant named after. Stalin, was used in the construction of firing points for the land defense of Leningrad.

On July 3, 1948, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted Decree No. 2417-1009ss on the completion of the manufacture of these tower installations at the Leningrad Metal Plant.

The towers have been significantly upgraded. By changing the design of the loading mechanisms and switching to a constant loading angle of 6 degrees (the piercers were removed from the swinging parts of the guns and installed permanently on the turret combat table), it was possible to increase the rate of fire to 2.25 rounds per minute. The elevation angle of the guns was increased from 25 to 40 degrees by increasing the lifting sectors, which made it possible to increase the firing range of these artillery installations from 127 to 156 cables (projectile of the 1911 model).

The recoil devices have also been upgraded. Instead of a non-vacuum-type recoil brake, vacuum-type recoil brakes and an independent pneumatic knurler with a floating piston were installed. At the end of 1952 - beginning of 1953. swinging parts have been factory tested and tested by shooting at the range.

Another six guns were brought to Sevastopol and deposited in the artillery arsenal of the Black Sea Fleet as spares.

The armor of the towers has also undergone some changes. In 1952, the Izhora plant manufactured the rotating armor of the 2nd installation, which was lost during the war. For the 1st, new horizontal armor (turret roof) was made, the thickness of which was increased from the previous 76 to 175 mm. The vertical armor on it remained the same - "Poltava". In connection with the installation of lined guns in the tower, for a quick change of liners, hatches were made in the rear walls of the towers, closed with armored covers. The thickness of the fixed armor (cuirass) was increased from 254 to 330 mm.

The relatively shallow depth of the wells in the concrete massif of the battery, designed for the coastal tower installations "MB-2-12" (with the location of shell and charge magazines on the same level), did not allow the installation of former ship installations in them without fundamental alterations of their lower parts, which significantly changed the device of the mechanisms for supplying ammunition to the guns. The conical part of the supply pipes of the ship's turrets had to be cut off along with the equipment for lifting the lower chargers, and the former reloading compartment was redone so that ammunition could be loaded directly into the upper chargers.

The shells of each tower were stored in two shell magazines, stacked in five rows on the shelves of mechanized racks. The left cellar "feeded" the left gun of the tower, and the right - the middle and right. In each cellar there were six such racks, each of which had its own lifting tray with a manual drive. With the help of these trays, the shells were lowered from the shelves, and then fed through the conveyor system into the reloading compartment on an annular rotating chute. The chute was a rigid steel ring rotating inside the transfer compartment (independently of it) around three charger shafts. Semi-charges were fed from powder magazines through three special locks (fire-retardant turnstiles) and placed on the chute by hand. From the chute, the shells were fed to the receiving tables of the reloading compartment and then, with the help of a system of rotary and longitudinal trays, they moved to the feeders of the chargers and were dropped into them. To load the half-charges into the charger, there were rotary bunk trays and mechanical rammers. All mechanisms worked both on the electric drive (17 engines per tower) and manually.

Thus, the ship's artillery mounts became two whole "floors" lower, corresponding to the location of the ship's charging and shell magazines. Such radically altered artillery systems received a new designation MB-3-12FM.

Since the new artillery installations had three guns each, instead of the previous two, for the convenience of supplying ammunition, it was necessary to equip additional lines for transporting shells and charges. To do this, the internal premises were re-planned inside the concrete mass, taking advantage of the presence of two casemates adjacent to the right and left of each tower well and which initially could only be accessed from the gallery that went around the rigid drum (initially, these casemates contained pantries of tower spare parts and tools) . In one of these casemates for the transportation of charges, a passage was cut into the powder magazine, and a gateway with a fireproof turnstile was equipped at the site of the former entrance. To speed up the supply, an additional rack was also placed in this casemate, where a certain number of charges were stored. In another casemate, a hole was cut into the shell cellar and the original entrance was expanded, and then two horizontal conveyors were installed, connected by a rotary tray, forming a transport line along which the shell fell into the reloading compartment. To accommodate the increased amount of ammunition (1080 rounds per battery instead of the previous 800) in the shell cellars, it was necessary to change the storage system (instead of the previous stacks, install racks), and increase the number of charging cellars by equipping three more additional cellars from the former crew quarters and other auxiliary casemates ( one for the 1st tower and two for the 2nd). The passage connecting one of the original cellars with the shell cellar had to be walled up and a doorway cut through next to the former cockpits, which became powder magazines. You can imagine how much hard work such a redevelopment cost.

The command post of the battery underwent a significant reconstruction. The installation of a gun-guided radar station on it required the construction of a special reinforced concrete cabin to accommodate a rotating antenna device, covered from above with a radio-transparent fiberglass cap. In the premises of the ground part of the control room, it was additionally necessary to place the hardware and aggregate posts of the radar, which led to the alteration of the entrance (part of the old cranked draft was used to install the equipment, and a new direct draft with a light well was attached to the rest).

Construction and installation work on the restoration and reconstruction of the gun unit and the battery command post was carried out by Construction No. 74 of the Sevastopol Military Sea Fleet (headed by engineer-colonel Baburin).

Instead of the previous Barricade-type fire control system (whose devices and cable routes were dismantled by the Germans during the occupation of Sevastopol), the battery received a prototype of the latest Bereg-30 system. Its main differences were the absence of a horizontal base rangefinder operating from a network of target designation posts (after the advent of radar facilities, the need for it disappeared) and the presence of more advanced central automatic firing (device "1-B") and an azimuth and distance transformer (device "77"). In addition, there was a reserve firing machine (device "1-P"). Target designation in the system came from the VBK-2 sighting device located in the conning tower (experimental model) with three independent optical systems for the battery commander and gunners in terms of target azimuth and splash, armored rangefinder cabin "RD-2-8" with two 8-meter stereo rangefinders "DMS-8" and radar station for gun guidance "Zalp-B" and detection station "Shkot". For night shooting, two heat direction finding stations were used, located north and south of the firing position of the battery in special reinforced concrete casemates, operating in conjunction with searchlights located nearby. For remote control of the searchlights, a special device was installed in the central post of the battery - a “transformer for the azimuth of searchlights” (device “98”). It also provided for the possibility of using target designation from a spotter aircraft (for this, there was a special indicator in the central firing machine) and command posts of neighboring batteries. The capabilities of the fire control system allowed the battery to confidently hit visible and invisible targets moving at speeds up to 60 knots.

The increased energy consumption of the battery compared to the pre-war one forced the reconstruction of its power equipment. In the power station of the gun unit, three new diesel engines "6Ch23 / 30" of the Gorky plant "Engine of the Revolution" with a capacity of 450 hp were installed. with generators of three-phase alternating current with a power of 320 kW. (to control diesel engines, ship-type machine telegraphs were even provided). Tower electric drives operating on direct current were supplied with energy from three electric machine converters with a capacity of 160 kW each. Separate converters generated energy for fire control devices and communications equipment.

The battery conducted its first firing after being restored in November 1954 and entered service as the 459th turret artillery battalion and by order of the General Staff Navy USSR No. 00747 of November 13, 1954. By the same order, the battery was included in the 291st separate artillery brigade of the Black Sea Fleet. The first division commander was Colonel I.K. Bobukh. In addition to two 305-mm towers, the division included an 8-gun anti-aircraft battery (57-mm guns of the S-60 type) and four anti-aircraft machine gun installations.

On June 27, 1956, the division was included in the combat strength of the 1st stage. Over the next two years, he made practical and competitive shooting with the main caliber. Later, firing was carried out only from 45-mm training barrels.

On April 10, 1960, the division was transferred to the 778th separate artillery regiment. On July 1, 1961, this regiment was disbanded, and the division was reorganized into the 459th separate artillery battery (cadre staff) and reassigned to the head of the missile units of the fleet.

On September 8, 1961, the battery was transferred to a peacetime state and returned to the restored 778th separate artillery regiment. On December 20 of the same year, the battery was again transferred to the staff of the frame. Subsequently, it was again reorganized into a division, retaining the same number.

On January 15, 1966, in connection with the second and now final disbandment of the 778th Artillery Regiment, the 459th Turret Artillery Battalion was transferred to the 51st Separate Coastal missile regiment Coastal Rocket and Artillery Troops of the Black Sea Fleet.

Since April 1974, the division was part of the 417th separate coastal missile and artillery regiment. In June 1991, this regiment was reorganized into the 521st Separate Rocket and Artillery Brigade of the Coastal Troops of the Black Sea Fleet, and in November, into the 632nd Separate Rocket and Artillery Regiment.

In the summer of 1997, according to an agreement between Russian Federation and Ukraine about the division of the Black Sea Fleet, the personnel of the 632nd regiment and the 459th tower division, which was part of it, departed for the Caucasian coast. The territory of the former battery town and the technical position of the regiment were transferred to the Naval Forces of Ukraine. For the maintenance of weapons and fortifications of the former 30th battery, which remained in the Black Sea Fleet, the 267th conservation platoon of the Coastal Troops of the Black Sea Fleet was formed in the same year.

In the summer of 2004, the 30th Battery celebrated its 70th anniversary as part of the Black Sea Fleet.

Unfortunately, the further fate of the battery remains uncertain, since its transfer to the jurisdiction of Ukraine may lead to the looting of the battery and the subsequent cutting of the unique turret 305-mm installations for scrap, as already happened in Sevastopol with the 180-mm turret and 130-mm open mounts transferred to Ukraine batteries.

APPS

Comparative characteristics
tower artillery mounts MB-2-12 and MB-3-12FM
305-mm turret coastal artillery battery No. 30, Sevastopol

Comparative characteristics artillery turrets		MB-2-12 1934	MB-3-12FM 1954
Caliber	mm	305	305
Number of guns in the turret		2	3
Projectile weight arr. 1911	kg	471	471
payload weight	kg	132	132
Initial projectile speed	m/s	762	762
Maximum range firing projectile mod. 1911	cab. m	153 27980	156 28528
Shells for 1 gun	PCS.	200	180
Shells in the cellar of the tower	PCS.	400	540
Semi-charges in the cellar of the tower	PCS.	1200	1125
Elevation angle	hail	35	40
Descent angle	hail	1	3
Horizontal firing angle	hail	360	±185
Loading angle	hail	0 – 14,5	6
End plate thickness	mm	305	203
Side plate thickness	mm	305	203
Back plate and door thickness	mm	305	305
roof thickness	mm	203	175
Thickness of longitudinal bulkheads	mm	25	18
Cuirass thickness	mm	front - 254 behind - 102	330
Rate of fire maximum	v / min	2,1	2,25
Elevation speed under electrical action	deg/s	0,012 – 5	1 – 6
- with manual action	deg/s	0,8 – 1	0,4
Horizontal guidance speed under electrical action	deg/s	0,012 – 5	0,5 – 3
- with manual action	deg/s	0,375 – 0,43	0,3
Lock opening time	With	7,2	7,34
Maintenance staff in the tower when working on electricity	people	54	71
Sighting devices		LMZ	PMA

Firing table for Russian 305-mm cannons, 52 calibers long

projectile	Initial speed	Charge	Corner elevation, deg. and min	Range shooting, cab.	Range shooting, m
arr. 1928 explosive, long-range 314 kg	950 m/s	combat 140 kg	15,05	137	25057
			20,05	163	29813
			24,59	187	34202
			29,55	207	37494
			40,09	241	44079
			50	251,4	45981
arr. 1911 explosive 470.9 kg	762 m/s	combat 132 kg	19,52	112	20485
			25	127	23228
			27	132	24143
			30	139	25423
			47,59	160,4	29338
			50,1	160,2	29301
	655 m/s	low- combat 100 kg	20,13	91	16644
			25,09	103	18839
			27,03	107	19570
			30,03	113	20668
			39,59	130	23777

Explication of the premises to the drawing of 1932

A. Left tower, B. Right tower, 1. Filter chamber, 2. Filter chamber, 3. Nachkhim post, 4. Passage to the power station, 5. Caboose, 6. Lavatory, 7. Gateway, 8. Passage, 9. Battery Commander's Room, 10. Exhaust Fans, 11. Boiler Room, 12. Transformers, 13. Red Navy's Room, 14. Power Station, 15. Casemate Exhaust Fans, 16. Passage, 17. 1st Vestibule, 18. 2nd Vestibule , 19. Lavatory, 20. Kubrick command staff for 8 people, 21. Entrance to the port to the command post, 22. Dressing station, 23. Pharmacy, 24. Room for 22 sailors, 25. Water-bearing station, 26. Blower fans, 27. Local the central post of the PUAO, 28. Room for the commander on duty, 29. Blower fans, 30. Telephone exchange, 31. Battery, 32. Workshop, 33. Tool storeroom, 34. Room for the Red Navy, 35. Pantry, 36. Pantry of communications and instruments, 37. Electrical pantry, 38. Blower fans, 39. Officers' latrine, 40. Washbasin, 41. Blower fans, 42. P room for command personnel for 6 people, 43. Room for 22 sailors, 44. Room for 38 sailors, 45. [?], 46. Food pantry and glacier, 47. Shell cellar, 48. Shell cellar, 49. Charging cellar, 50 Charging cellar, 51. Hand grenades, 52. Pantry of rifle cartridges, 53. Tower pantry, 54. Tower pantry, 55. Passage, 56. Battery telephone exchange, 57. Premises for 34 sailors, 58. Premises for 34 sailors, 59 Saloon, 60. Shell cellar, 61. Shell cellar, 62. Charge cellar, 63. Charge cellar, 64. Tower storeroom, 65. Tower storeroom, 66. Tower storeroom, 67. Tower storeroom, 68. Passage, 69. Skvoznik , 70. Skvoznik, 71. Main corridor, 72. Central corridor, 73. Smoke chamber

Sources and literature

1. RGVIA. f. 504. op. 9. file 1014
2. RGVIA. f. 2000. op. 1. file 170.
3. RGVIA. f. 802. op. 2. file 855.
4. RGAVMF. f. 609. op. 3. file 72.
5. OCVMA. f. 155. file 9332.
6. OCVMA. f. 136. file 5091.
7. OCVMA. f. 24. dd. 22630, 22631, 22620, 22621, 22622.
8. OCVMA. f. 109. d. 24009.
9. RGA of the Navy. f. R-910. op. 1. file 78.
10. RGA of the Navy. f. R-891. op. 3. file 5394.
11. Khmelkov S.A., Ungerman N.I. Fundamentals and forms of long-term fortification, M., 1931.
12. Handbook of artillery of the USSR Navy. M.–L., 1944.
13. Morgunov P.A. Heroic Sevastopol. M., 1979.
14. Dukelsky A.G. Historical sketch of the development of design and manufacture of tower installations in Russia 1886–1917. M., 1931.

The city of military glory - this is how most people perceive Sevastopol. 30 battery is one of the components of its appearance. It is important that even now it is ready for battle - this is not a museum, but an active military facility, albeit mothballed. If necessary, it can again become a formidable fort in three days.

Where is the 30th coastal battery located on the map?

The complex is located in the northern part of Sevastopol, near the Kachinsky highway. Nearby you can find the Church of St. Nicholas, the Great Patriotic War Memorial and the House-Museum of the Perovsky family, flows.

History of two wars

The 30th battery in Sevastopol owes its fame to two world wars. The first contributed to its construction, the second became the arena of its glory. Now let's try to figure out why this happened.

The negative experience of the Russian-Japanese conflict back in 1905 prompted the Russian command to think that an armored coastal battery was needed. General and composer Ts.A. Cui developed a project and picked up a place near the village of Lyubimovka, based on the times. Construction began in 1912, when the powder fumes of the First World War were already in the air.

However, the defensive complex was not completed. It turned out that on the Black Sea it is not so necessary. The Russian fleet absolutely dominated its waters and there were no such "reckless" enemy naval commanders that they would dare to poke their nose at the formidable Sevastopol. As a result, 305 mm cannons intended for the Lyubimovka battery were sent to Petrograd in 1915.

For its time, the battery was technically perfect - fully electrified, protected by reinforced concrete, with the ability to rotate the towers 360 degrees. In 1928, it was decided to finish building it. Work continued until 1934, resulting in a powerful fort capable of controlling not only coastal waters, but also land. It was built at the same time - almost a complete analogue of the 30th.

The ability of large-caliber ship guns to fire on land played a big role during the Great Patriotic War. The second defense of Sevastopol required battles not so much on the water as on solid ground.

Justification for Manstein

Hitler was very dissatisfied with the duration of the defense of Sevastopol. Commander Erich Manstein, in his defense, gave the Fuhrer data on the combat capability of the 30th battery, called by the Germans "Fort Maxim Gorky I." The excuses were considered convincing - Manstein remained one of the top commanders of the Nazi Wehrmacht. The 35th battery was located inconveniently for firing at the advancing German units, so the "thirty" took the brunt of it. It became the main caliber of artillery for the defenders.

In December 1941, Manstein's tankers were positively horrified, admiring the fact that
what 305 mm shells did with their machines. In January 1942, the battery garrison manually, without special cranes, replaced the 50-ton cannon barrels worn out from intensive use. Soviet soldiers spent 16 days on this procedure instead of the 60 days required by the standard. At the end of May of the same year, the Germans put up against the “thirty” two heavy 600-mm mortars “Karl” and a grandiose “Dora” with a caliber of 800 mm. On June 5, these monsters opened fire. From the hits of the shells of "Karl" ("Dora" turned out to be that warrior), the concrete cracked, but the bastion held on.

June 17, 1942 "thirty" was completely blocked, on the same day it went out of ammunition. Then the crews opened fire with metal ingots for practice shooting. When such a "fool" German tank was torn off the tower, the offensive again slowed down. Then the battery fought off the advancing enemy infantry with blank charges - jets of powder gases with a temperature of +300 degrees worked perfectly.

When the enemy broke through into position, the last defenders destroyed the power stops and the latest guidance devices. Behind them was a real hunt in the passages of underground fortifications with flamethrowers, explosives and toxic substances. The 30th battery of Sevastopol was completely captured by the enemy only on June 26, a few days before the fall of the city. It is noteworthy that all this time it was commanded by a German. Major Grigory Alexander came from a family of German settlers. He was captured and shot in .

What is interesting about the armored turret battery today?

There are photos from the Second World War, depicting the degree of destruction on the 30th battery. She was almost wiped off the face of the earth. But after the war, it was restored, having already installed six guns (instead of the previous four), the latest guidance systems and a radar station appeared.
But gradually, coastal artillery lost its significance - other types of weapons appeared. The post-war history of the present ended in 1997, when an agreement was signed on its conservation.

Now there is a museum of its history on the territory, but tourists do not leave reviews about it - you need a special invitation to visit. Unlike the 35th, the 30th coastal battery in Sevastopol is still active today. military unit. Its armament has been mothballed, but can be put back into service.

The military, representatives of the press and the public are allowed in here. Ordinary people are more likely to get acquainted with his exposition through reports. Among other things, there are huge fragments of Karl shells and numerous fragments of other ammunition - according to employees, after the war, the battery territory was literally littered with them.

There are other interesting items here, among which are topographic maps and household items, both of the Soviet defenders and German soldiers. The battery management especially notes the Soviet instructions for officers, marked with the German "eagle" - the fascist command tried to use instructions for high-quality Russian weapons to train their people. Parts of the guns are also museum samples, on some you can see the factory stamp of 1914-1917, it all works!

How to get (get) from the center of Sevastopol?

You can get here by public transport only from the Northern bus station or. Choose minibuses No. 36, 42, 45, 47 and 51. Get off either at the stops "Vodokanal" or "Sovkhoz im. Perovskaya.

By car, you can get to the battery by car yourself like this:

Contacts and excursions

• Address: Battery Street, North Side, Sevastopol, Crimea, Russia.
• GPS coordinates: 44.663792, 33.559225.
• Excursions: in agreement with the administration.

Crimea has always been an important point on the map of Russia and the Black Sea. The heavy ship guns of the 30th battery are still watching the shore near Lyubimovka, discouraging uninvited guests from visiting Sevastopol. In conclusion, we offer a video tour of this glorious place - Fort Maxim Gorky, enjoy your viewing!

Coastal Battery (BB) No. 30 or Fort "Maxim Gorky-1"- the largest fortification in Sevastopol. She played an important role in the Defense of Sevastopol in 1941-1942, which lasted 256 days. The legendary battery is located in the Crimea on the outskirts of Sevastopol, in the village of Lyubimovka. Now the Museum of Coastal Troops of the Black Sea Fleet of Russia is open here.

It was, without exaggeration, a brilliant project. Dominance over the surrounding area provided two two-gun 305-millimeter installations, turning 360 degrees, circular fire.

Experts called the 30th battery a masterpiece of Soviet fortification art. The batterymen themselves called it an artillery fire factory and an underground battleship.

Description

The guns of the battery had a "royal" caliber - twelve inches 305 mm, the ability to fire on enemy ships and its ground units, projectile weight - 471 kg, firing range - up to 42 km. In other words, the battery reached Nikolaevka or Pochtovoe, and Bakhchisarai could be covered with any projectile. "Thirty" kept under control an area of ​​over 5 thousand square kilometers.

According to its structure, the battery consisted of a gun block (reinforced concrete array 130 long and 50 wide m), in which 2 gun turrets were installed. Each of the towers weighed 1360 tons and is able to withstand a direct hit from an average air bomb. Inside the block, on two floors, there were ammunition cellars, a power station, residential and service premises with a total area of ​​over 3,000 m² and a command post with armored combat and rangefinder cabins and located at a depth of 37 m underground central post with fire control devices. The gun block, command post and camp for personnel were interconnected by a 580-meter line. A special town was built for the residence of the battery personnel in peacetime.

At the same time, an associated surveillance system was created to correct firing at sea targets. Such posts, equipped at Cape Lukull, at the mouths of the Alma and Kacha rivers, at the Kherson lighthouse, at Cape Fiolent and on Mount Kaya-Bash (west of Balaklava), had rangefinders and sights installed in reinforced concrete courtyards, shelters for personnel and living quarters .

The Great Patriotic War

First combat shots "Fort "Maxim Gorky-1""(the German name for the battery, under the second number was battery No. 35) during the defense of Sevastopol, they were carried out on November 1, 1941 by the grouping of German troops in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bAlma station (now Postal). During the two months of hostilities, the BB-30 fired 1238 shots, and this led to the complete wear of the gun barrels.

In January February 1942, within 16 days, in front of the advancing fascists, the specialists of the Black Sea Fleet artillery repair plant replaced the gun barrels. Given that the weight of each barrel was 50 tons, such an operation without special crane equipment was unique in the world practice.

The Germans in the spring of 1942, preparing for the decisive assault on Sevastopol, concentrated a powerful group of heavy artillery to fight the BB-30, including the 600-mm Thor and Odin mortars specially delivered from Germany and the 800-mm Dora railway gun . On June 7, 1942, after a direct hit by several heavy shells, the 1st battery turret was disabled. The remaining 2nd tower over the next 10 days fired about 600 shots. Only after it was out of action on the morning of June 17 did the Germans capture the battery.

Story

The construction of a coastal defense battery began in 1913 on the Alkadar hill (near the present village of Lyubimovka). The battery project was developed by military engineer General N. A. Buinitsky, taking into account the recommendations of the famous Russian fortifier (also a famous composer) General Caesar Antonovich Cui, who proposed the most advantageous position for the battery.

Almost 100 years ago, the battery was already planned to be fully electrified. All operations for loading and pointing the gun were performed by 17 electric motors. Only gun turrets with 200 mm armor were to be on the surface.

Work was carried out until 1914. To this day, intercoms from the beginning of the last century have been preserved on the battery. Battery construction resumed in 1928. 305-mm guns of the 1913 model of the year (battleship caliber) were installed in the battery towers.

In 1934, after trial artillery firing at sea targets, the battery became part of the coastal defense units of the Black Sea Fleet with the assignment No. 30. Capital Yermil Donets was the first commander of the thirtieth battery.

In 1937, Captain Georgy Alexandrovich Alexander took command of the 30th battery.

By the beginning of World War II, there were two batteries of this caliber in Sevastopol. In addition to the “thirty” located in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe village of Lyubimovka, the base of the fleet was covered by battery No. 35 at Cape Khersones. Both of them were part of the 1st Separate Coastal Defense Artillery Battalion of the Main Base of the Black Sea Fleet. Both batteries were originally built as coastal batteries, that is, they were intended to fight enemy ships: the 30th battery covered the area north of Cape Lukull, the 35th battery was supposed to fire at the sector from Cape Khersones to Cape Fiolent. But when German troops broke into the Crimea in October 1941, the coastal batteries, designed to protect Sevastopol from the sea, became the main caliber of the city's defense from land.

It should be noted that the 35-battery was located too far from the German offensive area and only reached the Mekenzievy Gory station, and therefore it was the “thirty” that was destined to play a prominent role in the defense of Sevastopol.

After the war, by 1954, the BB-30 was restored, instead of the old two-gun turret installations, the three-gun MB-3-12-FM, taken from the battleship of the Baltic Fleet Frunze, were installed. At the same time, power equipment was also replaced, a new, most advanced for that time, Bereg fire control system with a radar station and heat direction finders was installed.

The last time the battery fired was in 1958 during the filming of The Sea on Fire. As a result, windows were blown out in many houses in nearby villages, and roofs were even blown off some houses.

In 1997, by decision of the command of the Black Sea Fleet, the BB-30 was mothballed. At present, a museum of the Black Sea Fleet coastal troops has been opened on the former BB-30.

How to get there?

The 30th battery is in Lyubimovka. It is easy to find it by car - it is clearly visible from the highway leading from Sevastopol to Lyubimovka. Hikers need to take a ferry and cross to the North Side from Artillery Bay, then 5–7 minutes by taxi.

The defense of Sevastopol, which lasted 250 days, from October 30, 1941 to July 4, 1942, became one of the brightest pages of the entire Second World War. A significant contribution to the defense of the city was made by the 30th and 35th armored turret coastal batteries, which became the basis of the artillery power of the defenders of the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy advancing on the city and chaining huge enemy forces to themselves. The 30th armored turret battery continued to fight until June 26, 1942, when the Germans were able to capture it, completely blocked.

The armored turret battery was a long-term defensive structure armed with turret artillery. Such batteries were used from the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th century, acting as an element of coastal defense or fortifications. In the Soviet Union, armored turret batteries were part of the defense system of the Sevastopol fortified region and the coastal defense system of Vladivostok.

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, this battery was restored, unlike the 35th battery, which was abandoned for many years and only in the 21st century, thanks to the efforts of patrons, was turned into a museum. The armament of the 30th battery after the war was strengthened, new life support and fire control systems were installed on it. To re-equip this battery in the USSR, two 305-mm three-gun turret mounts of the battleship Frunze (former battleship Poltava) were used. Two other towers from this battleship were installed on Russky Island near Vladivostok in the 1930s on the Voroshilov battery. Currently, the 30th armored turret battery is under conservation, but within 72 hours it can be put on alert.

30th coastal battery today

Battery construction history

Back in 1905, immediately after the end of the war with Japan, the Russian government decided to strengthen the defense of its naval base in Sevastopol. On the outskirts of the city, it was planned to build two large-caliber coastal batteries. In 1913, the construction of a coastal defense battery began on the Alkadar hill (in the area of ​​\u200b\u200btoday's village of Lyubimovka). The project of the armored turret battery was developed by a military engineer, General N. A. Buinitsky, who took into account the recommendations of the famous Russian fortifier (as well as the famous composer) General Caesar Antonovich Cui. It is worth noting that Cui, in his special work, studied the features of the defense of Sevastopol in 1854-1855 and proposed the most advantageous position for battery equipment. It was, without any exaggeration, a brilliant project, which was proved during the Great Patriotic War. The dominance of the battery over the surrounding area provided two twin-gun 305-mm turret mounts, rotating 360 degrees, with a circular fire.

More than 100 years ago, the coastal battery was already planned to be built fully electrified. All operations for aiming and loading the guns were to be provided by 17 electric motors. Only gun turrets with 200-300 mm armor were placed on the surface. The rest of the premises were placed in a reinforced concrete array 130 meters long and 50 meters wide. Inside this block there was a power station, residential and service premises, ammunition cellars. In the turret room there was a railroad with hand trucks, in which ammunition was to be delivered to the charger. It was planned to combine the battery with the command post using an underground corridor 600 meters long.

Construction work on the battery went quite quickly, but in 1915 the towers, guns and mechanisms that were intended to equip the Sevastopol battery were sent to Petrograd, where a new coastal battery was being built in the sea fortress of Peter the Great. In 1918, at the height civil war construction at the facility was completely stopped, by that time the battery was already 70% ready. They returned to the construction of a coastal armored turret battery only in 1928. For this, a 6.5-km railway line was laid from the Mekenzievy Gory station to the construction site. The massive parts of the battery were unloaded from railway platforms and mounted in their places using a special crane.

Tower MB-2-12 under construction

In 1934 interior work were completed and the gun turrets were installed in their places. A test firing was made from the guns, and was also tested new system shooting control. In 1936, the main command post of the battery was completely completed, and the system of fire adjustment posts was also ready. They were located on Cape Lukull, at the mouths of the Alma and Kacha rivers, as well as on Capes Fiolent and Khersones and over the western shore of Balaklava Bay. Such an extensive network of observation posts was necessary due to the long firing range of the battery - the maximum firing range of a 305-mm projectile of the 1911 model was 27,980 meters. Minor improvements on the 30th battery were carried out until 1940.

Coastal battery device

Coastal armored turret battery No. 30 consisted of the following objects:

A monolithic reinforced concrete block with two towers, which contained almost all the conning towers, utility and storage rooms, communication rooms, corridors, etc.;

Two MB-2-12 turrets (4x305 mm guns in total);

Command and rangefinder post (KDP) with a conning tower, a central post, an armored rangefinder cabin with a 10-meter Zeiss rangefinder and a radio room;

Block of electrical transformer substation.

The main armament of the 30th battery was two MB-2-12 twin-turret mounts, which were produced by the Leningrad Metallurgical Plant. The towers were located 305-mm guns with a barrel length of 52 caliber. The maximum firing range was 27,980 meters. The maximum elevation angle of the guns is 35 degrees. The maximum rate of fire is 2.1 rounds per minute. Four such guns of the 30th armored turret coastal battery (from the north) and its twin, the 35th battery (from the south), were supposed to reliably cover the base of the Black Sea Fleet from shelling enemy battleships from the sea with large-caliber artillery. The weight of 305-mm shells ranged from 314 to 470 kg, the weight of a powder cap was 71 kg.

Tower MB-2-12 in section

When making a full shot, two caps were used, with a half-shot - one cap. The caps were placed in special metal cases and lay in honeycomb racks. In the cellars, shells were stored in stacks. Unlike the 35th battery, in which the charges and shells were pushed out of the cellars through special pipes, on the 30th battery they rolled out along a special roller conveyor (roller table). In the reloading compartments, in which shells and charges were prepared for loading, a rotating electric drive platform was mounted.

BM-2-12 towers had the following parameters: diameter - 10.8 m; height - 2.25 m; gun barrel length - 16 m; gun barrel weight - 50 tons; weight of the entire tower (without guns) - 300 tons; gross weight - 1000 tons; the thickness of the front and side plates, as well as the rear plate and door - 305 mm, the thickness of the roof - 203 mm. The cellar of the tower stored 400 shells (200 per barrel) and 1200 semi-charges. To replace the gun barrels and repair the turrets, a special 75-ton railway crane was provided on the battery. A special shelter was even erected for him to disguise him and protect him from possible shelling from the sea.

The one-story gun block of the 30th coastal battery with a total length of about 130 meters and a width of 50 meters had two entrances with armored doors and tambour locks in its rear part. For communication between themselves, 72 rooms of the gun block had inside a longitudinal corridor about 100 meters long and 3 meters wide. This block housed wells for gun mounts, charging and projectile cellars, a local central post with a backup group of fire control devices, a boiler room, a power station, pumping and compressor stations, filtering equipment, service and living quarters for battery personnel. Tanks for water, oil and fuel reserves were placed under the floor of the premises, and engineering communications passed there. All casemates of the gun block had a vaulted coating made of monolithic reinforced concrete with a thickness of 3 to 4 meters with a rigid spall-proof layer of steel channels No. 30, as well as an insulating layer of asphalt concrete. The total area of ​​various rooms in a one-story gun block exceeded 3,000 square meters.

Scheme of the premises of the gun block

Specifically for storing water supplies under the floor of the gun block, concrete tanks were organized with a capacity of 500 cubic meters of water. To maintain the required humidity and temperature in the premises, a system of steam-air calorific heating was installed (steam was produced by two underground boilers). The power station of the gun block received an air cooling unit.

The underground battery command post was a concrete tunnel 53 meters long and 5.5 meters wide. It was located on a hill northeast of the gun block. It housed the central post of the coastal battery, a filtering unit, a boiler room, a power plant, a fuel tank and a barracks. In the direction of the command post, located at a depth of 37 meters, from the artillery block there was a deep-lying concrete expanse 650 meters long. To the side of the curtain there was a branch, which was used to take in air and remove drains from the casemates (the drains were discharged through pipes that were laid directly under the floor of the curtain). At the fork of the drain and the postern, another emergency underground passage was dug with a small room - the barracks.

From the underground part of the control room to the surface, a shaft equipped with an elevator led to the ground part. The ground part of the command post was a reinforced concrete block measuring 15x16 meters, in which an armored cabin was mounted. The thickness of the vertical armor was 406 mm, horizontal armor - 305 mm. Inside this block there was a room for personnel with four viewing slots and an optical sight, as well as a radio station.

305 mm coastal battery shells

To protect the 30th coastal battery from the air, it was armed with 4 anti-aircraft machine guns. From the rear of the gun unit, 2 casemates with winches were attached, which were designed to lift barrage balloons. From the land, the battery was covered by 6 reinforced concrete five-hole two-story machine-gun pillboxes with walls up to half a meter thick. These pillboxes were armed with 7.62 mm Maxim machine guns. A system of barbed wire and trenches was organized directly around the battery. The road that approached the positions of the battery had a special stone retaining wall, which also served as a shooting parapet for its defenders.

Powder semi-charge and banner

Defense of Sevastopol

As of June 22, 1941, both the 30th and 35th armored turret coastal batteries were part of the 1st separate coastal defense artillery battalion of the Main Base of the Black Sea Fleet, along with an open 203-mm battery No. 10 and a 102-mm battery No. 54 . The 30th battery was directly commanded by Grigory Alexandrovich Alexander, a hereditary military man who came from a family of Russified German settlers. Both batteries (both the 30th and 35th) were built as coastal batteries, but fate had a different role in store for them. Instead of ships, they fought the advancing enemy infantry and armored vehicles, defending the fleet base from land. They became the main artillery caliber of the city's defenders. At the same time, it must be emphasized that the 35th coastal battery was located far from the area of ​​​​the offensive of the German units and reached with its fire only as far as the Mekenzievy Gory station. For this reason, it was the Thirty that was destined to play the most striking role in the defense of the city.

The 11th German Army began its attack on Sevastopol on October 30, 1941. The artillerymen of the 54th coastal battery, which was located 40 kilometers from Sevastopol near the village of Nikolaevka, were the first to enter the battle. The 30th battery opened fire on enemy motorized infantry on November 1, 1941. She carried out her first live firing on parts of the Ziegler mobile group, which were concentrated in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bAlma station (today Pochtovoe). The significance of the “thirty” is evidenced by the fact that the Germans delivered one of the main blows of their already December offensive on the city in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe station of the Mekenziev mountains and the Belbek river precisely with the aim of completely destroying the 30th armored coastal battery.

It got to the point that on the morning of December 28, 12 German tanks, with the support of infantry units, were able to break through almost to the ground part of the battery command post. The tanks lined up and opened fire on the command post. It was on that day that for the first time in history a case of firing a large-caliber coastal battery with direct fire at advancing armored vehicles was noted. The sight of the tanks, which literally disappeared from direct hits of 305-mm shells, shocked the Germans so much that they retreated in panic and no longer tried to send tanks into a frontal attack on the battery. The German command gave the 30th battery its designation - Fort "Maxim Gorky I" (35th battery - "Maxim Gorky II"). At the same time, Erich Manstein, who commanded the 11th German Army, justified his failures in the storming of Sevastopol to Hitler precisely by the fighting qualities of the 30th battery.

For two months of active fighting, the “thirty” fired 1238 shells at the Germans. When using a full charge of gun barrels, it should have been enough for 300 shots, after which they had to be changed. For this reason, the battery command fired with half charges. However, by the beginning of 1942, the gun barrels were completely worn out. In this regard, spare 50-ton barrels were removed from the secret storage in Sevastopol. On a January night they were taken to the battery and carefully disguised. According to the instructions, in peacetime, the barrels of guns with the help of a 75-ton crane had to be changed in 60 days. However, the personnel of the battery, together with specialists from the Artillery Repair Plant of the Black Sea Fleet No. 1127 and the Leningrad Bolshevik Plant, were able to replace the barrels in 16 days almost manually using a small crane and jacks. And this despite the fact that the front line at that time was already passing 1.5 kilometers from the positions of the battery.

According to the document "Brief results of combat firing of coastal batteries of the CB GB Black Sea Fleet for 7 months of the defense of Sevastopol 10/30/1941 - 05/31/1942", which was compiled by the Combat Training Department of the Black Sea Fleet Headquarters. As a result of the fire of the 30th coastal battery, 17 tanks, 1 locomotive, 2 wagons, about 300 different vehicles with troops and cargo were broken and damaged, 8 artillery and mortar batteries were destroyed, up to 15 separate guns, 7 firing points, up to 3 thousand soldiers and officers of the enemy. It was also noted that the fire of the battery had a huge moral effect on the enemy.

Taking into account the failures during the storming of the city in 1941, the German command planned a new attack on Sevastopol, which was called "Störfang" (Sturgeon Fishing). Realizing the importance of the “thirty” in the defense system of the fleet base, the Germans transferred a huge amount of heavy artillery here. At the same time, the matter was not limited to 240-mm and 280-mm heavy howitzers and 305-mm mortars. The Germans deployed two special 600-mm Karl self-propelled mortars and an 810-mm Dora supergun near Sevastopol. The concrete-piercing shells of the Karl mortar weighed more than two tons, and the weight of the Dora concrete-piercing shells exceeded seven tons.

On June 5, 1942, at 5:35 am, the first concrete-piercing projectile from the Dora cannon was fired at the northern part of the city of Sevastopol. The next 8 shells were fired into the area of ​​​​the coastal battery No. 30. The columns of smoke from the explosions rose to a height of more than 160 meters, but there was not a single hit on the towers, the accuracy of the supergun firing from a distance of almost 30 kilometers turned out to be very low. Not Dora, but two Karl mortars turned out to be the most dangerous enemy for the 30th armored turret battery.

From June 5 to June 14, 1942, Karl mortars fired a total of 172 concrete-piercing and another 25 high-explosive 600-mm projectiles at thirty, severely damaging the battery fortifications. The Germans managed to achieve direct hits on both towers of the battery. Already on June 6, armor was pierced in the second gun turret and the gun was damaged. Also on June 6, German aircraft bombarded battery positions with 1000-kg bombs. The damage in the second turret was repaired on the night of June 7, but now the turret could fire only one gun. However, already on June 7, a 600-mm projectile hit the first turret of the battery. The second hit occurred in the concrete mass of the battery, a powerful projectile pierced a three-meter layer of reinforced concrete, incapacitating the chemical filter compartment.

By 10 June 1942, the battery could only fire two guns (one in each turret). At the same time, the "Thirty" was under constant artillery fire and enemy bombing. The Germans' approach is evidenced by dry statistics, only from June 6 to 17 the enemy fired about 750 shells of medium, large and extra-large caliber at the battery. German aircraft also bombed the positions of the battery with fierceness, but had no success. At the same time, by June 12, less than a company remained in service from the marine battalion that covered the battery. By June 16, the Germans managed to cut off all external telephone communications of the "Thirty" and shoot down all the installed radio antennas - the connection between the coastal battery and the city defense command was interrupted. By this time, up to 250 people remained on the battery, including artillerymen, marines and soldiers of the 95th Infantry Division.

Positions of the destroyed 30th battery, aerial view

By June 17, the battery was finally blocked by enemy forces, at that time all available machine-gun pillboxes had already been destroyed. Defensive positions turned into a solid pile of rubble. Understanding perfectly well the importance of the 30th coastal battery in the defense of the city, the Germans did not stop their attacks on its positions with infantry and tanks. By June 17, the battery also ran out of live ammunition. During the repulsion of one of the attacks, the batteries were already repulsed by training metal blanks. The turret was torn off by a hit by one of these blanks on a German tank, which was trying to fire at battery positions from the area of ​​​​the estate of the state farm plant named after Sofya Perovskaya. Despite the fact that the Germans surrounded the battery from all sides, its defenders did not give up. When the German infantrymen and sappers leaked close to the gun turrets, the defenders opened fire on them with blank shots, using only powder charges - a jet of powder gases with a temperature of about 3000 ° C literally wiped the enemy infantry off the face of the earth.

But the forces were too unequal. The Germans broke into the position of the battery. Enemy sappers used flamethrowers, demolition charges and poured gasoline into the cracks in the fortifications. Alexander decided to blow up the gun turrets, power plant and all diesel engines, destroy the latest firing devices, which was done by June 21st. By that time, water and food had run out on the battery, the wounded defenders were dying from the smoke injected into the premises. Trying to break the resistance of the Soviet soldiers, the German sappers fired several powerful explosions inside the already destroyed towers. After that, a fire started in the gun block. The last decision of the battery command was the decision to break through, but not towards the city, but into the mountains to the partisans. On June 25, the battery commander, Major G. A. Alexander, with several sailors, escaped from the concrete block, using the drain. However, the next day the group was found near the village of Duvankoy (now Verkhnesadovoye) and captured. Then, on June 26, the German strike group broke into the gun block, where they captured 40 prisoners, many of whom were wounded and exhausted. By that time, most of the garrison had already died, suffocated in smoke or from explosions.

The Germans sent Alexander to a prison located in Simferopol, where they then shot him. Possibly for refusing to disclose details of the 30th Coastal Battery. The banner of the battery also did not go to the enemy. Most likely, it was destroyed by the defenders of the battery themselves, but there is a legend that the banner was immured into one of the walls of the underground complex. But, on the other hand, the lack of a banner may have been the reason that the battery commander Alexander was not posthumously presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Sources of information:
http://flot2017.com/item/history/19376
http://warspot.ru/1805-geroicheskaya-30-ya
http://www.bellabs.ru/30-35/30.html
http://wiki.wargaming.net/ru/Navy:305-mm_gun_of_the_Obukhov_plant_sample_1907_year
Materials from open sources

The 256-day defense of Sevastopol in 1941-1942 will remain one of the brightest pages. According to Hitler's plan, his troops were to capture the city in a matter of days. However, the Fuhrer's dreams of a swift victory were shattered against the walls of the Russian fortress. The legendary "thirty" - the 30th armored battery of the coastal defense of the Black Sea Fleet - played its role in the defense of Sevastopol. How the defenders of Sevastopol managed to hold the city for so long, Ararat Keshchyan found out in the program on the Zvezda TV channel. For six months, from October 30, 1941 to June 26, 1942, the 30th battery did not allow the Wehrmacht troops to take Sevastopol. To break through this line of defense, Hitler deployed the elite forces of the Third Reich to the Crimea. But even this was not enough. Even with all the might of the 11th German army, which amounted to more than 200 thousand soldiers, 1060 aircraft, 150 tanks, 670 field and siege guns, the Nazis could not quickly break into the Crimean peninsula.
With the loss of the Crimea, Soviet aviation would have lost the possibility of raids on the oil fields of Hitler's allied Romania. The leadership of the USSR understood the importance of holding the peninsula and concentrated all efforts on this. The "buried battleship" - this is how the defenders of Sevastopol called the 30th armored turret battery. Indeed, only two gun turrets are visible from the outside. The battery itself is hidden deep underground. In fact, this is a concrete bag, up to 40 meters deep. It took three thousand tons of reinforced steel and 22 thousand cubic meters of concrete to build it. The legendary "thirty" is not without reason called the most powerful defensive structure in Europe. Wehrmacht marshals admitted that if it were not for the 30th battery, the Nazis would have captured the Crimean peninsula in a matter of days. The legendary “Obukhov twelve-inch guns” played their role - ship guns cast in Leningrad at the Obukhov plant weighed 50 tons each. Firing range - 44 kilometers. On the morning of November 1, 1941, the advanced units of the 20th division of the Wehrmacht concentrated in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bAlma station. According to German intelligence, there were no Red Army forces in the area; suddenly, one after the other, two powerful explosions thundered. It was the 30th coastal battery that opened fire on the Nazis. The shock wave after the fall of only one 305-mm projectile destroyed manpower within a kilometer radius. The enemy was defeated and confused. Competent camouflage made the 30th coastal battery practically invulnerable. The location of the battery could only be visually determined from the air. But even from above, the German pilots did not see anything, because a whole grove of metal trees was planted around the towers. The metal grove hid a real underground city. The battery was a monolithic reinforced concrete block 130 meters long, 50 meters wide and 40 meters deep. On a vast territory of three thousand square meters, there are conning towers, utility and storage rooms, living rooms for personnel, kitchens, power stations and much more.
Under the surface there was half a meter of soil, then two and a half meters of reinforced concrete, another two meters of sand, again two and a half meters of reinforced concrete, then 30 centimeters of asphalt concrete, and at the very bottom the whole structure was reinforced with arched steel channels. For six months of defense, not a single German shell penetrated such protection, and the battery was built at the very beginning of the 20th century. The decision to build the battery was taken by Emperor Nicholas II after the Russo-Japanese War. On May 21, 1911, a gigantic amount of eight million rubles was allocated for the development and implementation of a defensive facility. The emperor entrusted the design of the building to the famous professor of fortification Caesar Cui. He was the first military engineer to propose the use of armored turrets in land fortresses. According to his idea, the battery had to equally successfully bombard both the sea and the land. Most people know Caesar Cui thanks to his operas and romances. A successful composer and music critic, he was also a talented general engineer. Caesar Cui was able to look far into the future and actually predicted the appearance of modern weapons. Indeed, at the time of the construction of the battery, no one could have imagined that bombs weighing over a ton would fall on it from above. Even colleagues in the fortification business urged Cui not to waste time and money, but he firmly stood his ground. And the puff-pie principle used in the construction of the battery helped it withstand even two-ton shells. The 30th battery was built last in a row in the coastal defense line of Sevastopol. Therefore, by the start of construction, all the mistakes and shortcomings made during the construction of other coastal batteries were taken into account. In the mini-command post, the required power was calculated, the trajectory was calculated, and the wind was corrected. Then they moved on to the next stage - they passed the commands upstairs by phone. If the telephones failed, they resorted to the help of the ship's telegraph. Already at the development stage, the "thirty" was designed to be fully electrified. Nevertheless, absolutely all the work of the 30th battery could, if necessary, be transferred to manual mode in a few minutes. Each projectile weighed 471 kilograms. Flight speed - 762 meters per second. When it hit the tank, it shattered into pieces. The arsenal of the 30th battery consisted of 200 shells for each barrel and three powder semi-charges of different capacities for firing at different distances. During the 16 days of the first German assault, the 30th battery fired 517 shells. These shells cost the Nazis 60% of the personnel. General Manstein's hopes for a quick capture of Sevastopol did not come true. "Thirty" in the literal sense, tightly froze the offensive of the Germans.
On December 17, 1941, the Nazis began a powerful artillery preparation. Over 200 enemy batteries were deployed against the fortress city. The second assault on Sevastopol began. Enormous forces were sent to destroy the 30th battery - five enemy divisions went on the attack at once. Aviation processed the position of the "thirty" with super-heavy bombs. But the Buried Battleship held out. On the morning of December 28, a dozen German tanks, supported by infantry, came dangerously close to the command post. The tanks lined up and prepared for a swift attack, then a large-caliber coastal battery opened direct fire on armored vehicles for the first time. Looking out of the trench, I saw that there was nothing left where the tank had just stood! Only clods of earth and some debris fell, "- this is how one of the defenders of Sevastopol described those events.
Giant tanks literally disappeared from direct hits. The Germans were so shocked that they retreated in panic. Moreover, since then they have not even tried to go to the battery in a frontal tank attack.
The 30th battery was worn out. According to technical standards, only 250 shots could be fired from one barrel. However, the norm was exceeded five times. Large-caliber guns have reached the limit of survivability. The guns had to be urgently changed. In peacetime, the barrels on armored turret guns had to be changed using a 75-ton crane. According to the instructions, two months were allotted for this. But during the war there was nowhere to take such a crane. Moreover, it was necessary to install new barrels under the bombing. On January 30, 1942, spare 50-ton barrels were removed from the secret storage in Sevastopol. They were taken to the battery and carefully disguised. With the onset of darkness, they began to dismantle the failed guns. At the same time, the removed trunks were replaced with logs of the required size. The Germans were not allowed to get close, and from afar these logs were no different from real trunks. The battery defenders were able to replace the trunks in just 12 days with virtually no tools. All they had at their disposal was a small crane and a couple of jacks. And this is under the very nose of the enemy. The front line at that time passed one and a half kilometers from the positions of the battery. And already on February 11, 1942, the Buried Battleship was again in full combat readiness. During the third operation to storm Sevastopol, the Germans made the main calculation for a super-heavy railway artillery gun called Dora. The barrel diameter is 800 millimeters. The weight of the projectile is seven tons. "Dora" could penetrate one meter of steel armor, or seven meters of concrete, or 30 meters of dense soil from a distance of 40 kilometers. The colossal dimensions of the "Dora" seemed to the Fuhrer a guarantee of an early victory. To install this fifty-meter monster in the Bakhchisarai region, it was even necessary to cut down rocks and lay a railway. And on June 5, 1942, at 5.35 am, the Dora gun fired the first concrete-piercing projectile. The explosion thundered in the northern part of Sevastopol. The column of smoke rose more than 160 meters. The next eight shells were fired at the area of ​​the 30th coastal battery. It turned out that the super-gun of the Third Reich was not very accurate. Of the 48 rounds, only one hit the target. Perhaps the point was that for the "Dora" Sevastopol was the first battle. The Germans did not really have time to test the miracle unit. In Sevastopol, the gun did not justify itself, and the Germans had to hastily evacuate the most formidable barrel of the Second World War. Hitler was angry. Five months after the start of the assault, Sevastopol did not give up. The Fuhrer chastised his generals for the fact that just one Russian city lasts longer than half of Europe. Germany occupied Norway in 63 days, France in 44, Poland in 35, Belgium in 19, Holland in five, and Denmark in one day. To replace the Dore, the Nazis brought Thor and Odin - self-propelled mortars with a gun diameter of 600 millimeters. June 7, 1942 at 5 o'clock in the morning, together with enemy aircraft, "Thor" and "Odin" began to strike at Sevastopol and the 30th battery. Three infantry regiments of the Germans moved to a new assault on the fortress city. Soviet troops fought off attack after attack. In just four days, the army of General Manstein lost almost 20 thousand soldiers. However, the forces were still unequal. On June 17, the Buried Battleship was surrounded. The shells in the battery are over. It seemed that the defenders had no more chances. German sappers got close to the towers, hoping to blow them up. But at that moment another shot rang out - the gunners fired a blank powder charge. For three days the Red Navy did not let the enemy near the battery, but by June 20 there were not even powder charges left. Soon, both towers were blown up by the Germans, and the war went underground. When the Germans crouched inside the Buried Battleship, the battery soldiers opened the doors in a hundred-meter corridor that stretches along the entire structure, in a checkerboard pattern. This technique did not allow to shoot through the corridor through. The defenders of the "Buried Battleship" had no food or water left. To smoke exhausted fighters, the Nazis used poison gas. However, the fighters fought for another nine days in underground casemates. Many of them died a terrible death - suffocated or burned alive. Only the commander of the 30th battery, Georgy Alexander, and three sailors managed to escape. They dug a tunnel with bayonets and climbed to the surface. During the day they hid in the ravines. At night they crawled towards the forest. But the fugitives were discovered by a German patrol. The commander was immediately taken to Simferopol to the Gestapo department. Three Red Navy men who were caught that night miraculously managed to escape. One of them, named Sharinov, spoke about the last heroic days of the 30th battery. In June 1942, Sevastopol was practically wiped off the face of the earth. . Sevastopol was recaptured from the enemy in May 1944, and the 30th battery became the only coast guard structure that they decided to return to service. During the fighting, only the ground part of the Buried Battleship was seriously damaged. The interiors were amenable to reconstruction and modernization. As a result, the new towers were already equipped with three guns, reinforced armor, and, according to the specification, today the 30th battery can even withstand a nuclear air strike.