Big Tyuters Island. War Reserve: Journey to Tyuters Island. Travel to the island

Complex expedition "Gogland" for the exploration of the Outer Islands Gulf of Finland, a truly historic event took place. The three-year search for the plane shot down during the Great Patriotic War was crowned with success: at the end of May, the wreckage of the Soviet Pe-2 dive bomber and the remains of the pilots were found, and their names were soon established. This is the crew commander, 19-year-old junior lieutenant Mikhail Kazakov, 23-year-old gunner-radio operator Arseny Tyshchuk and navigator Mikhail Tkachenko. The Gogland team even managed to contact the relatives of the fallen heroes.

Pe-2 dive bomber shot down on the island Big Tyuters on the night of September 8-9, 1943.

The Island of Death, as Bolshoi Tyuters was called during the war, was a well-fortified granite citadel, stuffed with ammunition and military equipment. In September 1944, the three-thousand-strong German garrison hastily left the island, having previously mined it. Since then, Bolshoi Tyuters has been cleared of mines several times, but even now, after several operations and after the titanic work of sappers, ammunition is still being found left on the island. Perhaps that is why the Gogland team managed to get to the crash site only now, after three years of searching and painstaking work in Russian and German archives.

The search team of the Russian Geographical Society managed to discover the first wreckage of the plane on May 25, on the first day of the search, during a repeated combing of the supposed square, located almost in the very center of Bolshoi Tyuters. Under the shallow soil layer and intertwined tree roots, license plate engine parts, pieces of burnt aluminum casing, a center section wing, an unopened burnt parachute and a large number of fragments were found. Almost everything around them was strewn with them, since the impact of the downed 7-ton bomber was so strong that it split a granite boulder, pressing the fragments into a shallow layer of rocky ground.

There are plenty of versions about the exact cause of death: but it is absolutely clear that the heroic Pe-2 completed its task and fell into an impenetrable forest thicket with empty ammunition. “Most likely, the plane was shot down by German anti-aircraft artillery, but it is likely that the enemy was not immediately able to detect this, since there are no messages about this in the combat log for September 8 and 9, 1943,” says a member of the search party of the Russian Geographical society Sergei Karpinsky.

“This is the first combat aircraft found by the search team of the Russian Geographical Society,” emphasizes Artem Khutorskoy, head of the expedition, deputy executive director of the expedition center of the Russian Geographical Society. “In the second shift of the expedition’s work on Bolshoy Tyuters, the searchers need to once again, layer by layer, examine the crash site for objects discovery of the tail section and the remains of the crew in order to bury them in the military cemetery in Leningrad region".

The environmental watch continues...

The second shift of the environmental watch on the Outer Islands of the Gulf of Finland - Gogland and Bolshoi Tyuters - began on June 2, 2016. Long road along a busy sea route was filled with conversations and anticipation of meeting with mysterious islands, because getting to them is a dream come true for three dozen volunteers who came from the most remote corners of our country.

Evgeny Selivanov from Chelyabinsk is a professional traveler. Having received a diploma in tourism 4 years ago, the graduate decided to experience first-hand what it means to be a traveler in the 21st century. Since then, he has traveled all over Russia and visited many countries. Before participating in the change of the Russian Geographical Society, he built ecological trails in Kenozersky national park Arkhangelsk region, after Gogland he is going to the Arctic shift of the Youth Forum "Morning" in Khanty-Mansiysk.

Artem Zaguraev graduated from the Faculty of Geography of St. Petersburg state university, has 10 years of field life behind him, participation in the Russian Geographical Society project "Kyzyl - Kuragino" in 2012. Since then, he has been following the projects of the Russian Geographical Society, and here is his luck - in February, when he went to the Society’s website, he saw an advertisement for volunteers and applied, planning his vacation in advance. Artem’s energy showed up on the very first day. Early in the morning, after a long trek, Artyom was already busy washing the dishes and putting things in order in the forest kitchen of the volunteer camp.

Sargey Vaganov is a professional diver, diving and organizing expeditions to the Barents Sea. I learned about the expedition by chance from social networks, but, like many St. Petersburg residents, I heard a lot about the islands and always dreamed of going to them. For the sake of this chance, I put aside all my personal and professional affairs for a while and went on an expedition.

Pavel Chukmeev represents the easternmost region of the country - Khabarovsk region. An ecologist by profession, Pavel took part in expeditions to Sakhalin and the island of Kunashir, where he studied the biodiversity of the soil inhabitants of these islands. In 2015, he spent a shift in the Ermak camp of the Kyzyl-Kuragino archaeological and geographical project. Having learned about the expedition from social networks, he sent an application, and when it was approved, he took a vacation and came to St. Petersburg.

22-year-old lawyer Dmitry Anatsky from Moscow decided to go on the expedition after his girlfriend worked on a three-month expedition in Antarctica. He considers himself lucky that he will work on Bolshoi Tyuters - literally only a few have managed to visit this island, Dmitry notes with enthusiasm.

Igor Zelkin studies at the Faculty of Geography of Krymsky federal university, a member of the Crimean branch of the Russian Geographical Society, last year spent a month in Kyzyl-Kuragino, after which, like many of his expedition comrades, he began to regularly follow the Society’s projects.

The first thing the volunteers of the second shift of the complex expedition “Gogland” saw on Bolshoi Tyuters were two huge piles of rusted metal standing on the pier, like a giant gate, conveying a symbolic greeting from the pioneers of the ecological landing.

Perhaps, if not for these trophies, it would be difficult to imagine that this peaceful island, fragrant with lilacs and blossoming apple trees, once wore such scary name- Island of Death. Volunteers will have to cleanse this unique corner of nature and history from the legacy of war and later traces of human activity that disfigure the island in the next two weeks.

Text and photo: Tatyana Nikolaeva, Andrey Strelnikov

Bolshoi Tyuters Island in post-war times, especially in the seventies, was called nothing more than “the island of death.” He received such a terrible nickname thanks to the active work of the Germans - they completely mined his territory. A lot of time has passed since the end of the war, but peaceful sappers and researchers are dying due to the diligent work of the Nazis. The island has such conditions and nature that it’s time to build sanatoriums and recreation centers, but the war still throws up its terrible “gifts.”

Role

Islands around the world are numerous. Everyone has their own purpose. One of them - paradises for recreation, others are trading harbors or pirate havens. Likewise, the island of Bolshoy Tyuters has its own destiny. His destiny was defense against enemies from the sea. The war sprinkled the island with blood - fierce battles were fought here. Over the course of several centuries, it passed from one hand to another every now and then. Most often they were Russians. Everything passes by it - ships, people, it seems that time stopped here 60 years ago. Very few people visited it during this period - mostly these were expeditions.

Characteristics of the island

Bolshoi Tyuters Island in the Gulf of Finland is a granite rock with an area of ​​just over 8 square meters. km. There are two capes on it - Tuomarinem and Teiloniemi, an indicator highest point- 56 meters. The soil on it is diverse, this is due to many geological and morphological conditions. In addition to bare granite rocks, here you can find places with Unique glacial wells were also discovered on the island - they are also called boilers.

The east coast is characterized by dunes and sparse groups of plants. Also here you can find a place where about 300 species of flora exist on just one square meter. The central part is occupied by forests; 10% are swamps. Among them are very interesting phenomenon are considered small hanging swamps; they are most often located in rock cracks. On the island you can see forests, rocks, swamps, coastal shallows, meadows, beaches, and dune fauna. In places of villages that were once inhabited, individual vegetation is also present.

Island inhabitants. Lighthouse

The island of Bolshoi Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland has, in addition to interesting landscapes and vegetation, an equally fascinating fauna. A rare species of mollusk - the predatory black slug - has found its habitat here. Particularly many of them can be found at the foot of the cliffs. Among the inhabitants of the island there are raccoon dogs, at least their traces have been discovered many times. In addition, a wild ram runs around the island; it escaped from the previous lighthouse several years ago.

By the way, about the lighthouse. It is the only habitat on the island. Its height is 21 meters, the focal plane is located at 75 meters. Two people live on the island - the caretaker and his wife.

Bolshoy Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland has never had a significant population. For some time there was a village of Finnish fishermen on it. However, the war swept her away from the face of the island.

Island today

Bolshoi Tyuters Island in the Gulf of Finland is one of those places where time has stood still. The buildings and structures are overgrown, even the lighthouse keeper does not risk straying far from his workplace, since the island can present an unpleasant surprise, which the Germans generously bestowed upon him. Since the latter left it in a hurry, they left behind not only but also a lot of equipment, ammunition, and heavy weapons. But at the same time, the nature here is simply indescribably beautiful, which, unfortunately, only a few can see. For neutralization dangerous island Sapper landings are regularly sent to it. In addition, they are often joint; for example, the work of Russian and Swedish sappers in 2005 made it possible to detect and neutralize more than 30 thousand objects that could explode at any moment. There were seven similar landings in the post-war years. However, even half of the island cannot be called safe.

Forgotten technology

The island of Bolshoy Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland, a photo of which can be seen in the review, is real. Considering that its specimens are present in abundance on the island, among them there are unique ones. Such as, say, the 40-caliber Boforos automatic anti-aircraft gun. The amount of equipment that the Germans left behind could fill a large museum. Expeditions that explore its territory discover many specimens, some of which can be restored. To date, the units of equipment that have been moved to mainland, about two hundred. There are also 6 in-depth fortifications on the island.

Expeditions

The expedition is sent to Bolshoi Tyuters Island to study the “white spots” on the map of Europe. Due to dense mining, even decades after the end of the war, military personnel died there. It is to neutralize the territory that such studies are carried out. One of the latest was the Gogland expedition, which, in addition to Bolshoi Tyuters, covered some of the outer islands of the Gulf of Finland. Before the landing of the main landing force, piers and platforms for helicopters were arranged. Among its achievements, one can note the discovery of about 200 units of military equipment and weapons. Most of them are unique. After examining it for the presence of equipment, representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Geographical Society followed the searchers. On this moment a search is underway for the remains of soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War.

Travel to the island

Going to the island on your own is very dangerous. Of course it is historical place, where unique examples of equipment and weapons are located, but there are significantly more mines on it. Its nature is amazing; it is very quiet and peaceful here. The only thing that gives the island is that it works to avoid shipwrecks. Ships have been passing by for over 60 years. This is the peculiarity that Bolshoi Tyuters Island has. How to get to it is immediately visible on the map. The main routes are by water or by helicopter. If you still have a great desire to touch this part of history, you can go to the neighboring one, and from there you can also explore Bolshoi Tyuters from afar by water.

Ghosts of the Island

This is what they call the equipment that “rests” on the territory. Big Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland, if it had not been mined, could be called a museum of military equipment under open air. It seems that anti-aircraft guns have become part of nature; sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them from tree trunks or a fallen branch. It can bury itself in the dunes and reveal only a third of itself from under the sands. On the coastal slopes in the trees you can see defensive weapons of 37 caliber. There are pieces of equipment scattered everywhere, including engines. In the forests you can even find a gas generator station and a cable laying machine. Fuel barrels are scattered here and there. You can also find personal flasks of the Germans. All the equipment simply merged with nature, trees sprouted in the car bodies, some tools were covered with moss and grass. If it were not for the danger that lurks around every corner, fascinating excursions could be held here.

conclusions

The island has long been considered a restricted area. There have been successful attempts to clear it, but it is not yet possible to completely ensure safety. Far-reaching plans include making an open-air museum on the territory of Bolshoi Tyuters. But it all comes down to the financial part of the issue. It takes a lot of money to create minimal infrastructure. In addition, the path to the island is very difficult and expensive. That is why it remains completely unexplored and almost deserted.

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

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

Despite the fact that seven mine clearance operations have already been carried out here, volunteers find another cache of ammunition. Sappers who recently worked in Palmyra, Syria, discovered hundreds of German anti-personnel mines on the island - so-called “frogs” without detonators.

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

Bolshoi Tyuters, Gogland and neighboring islands literally blocking the exit to the Baltic from the Gulf of Finland. From 1941 to 1944, it was from here that the Germans fired at Soviet ships and aircraft.

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

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

There is a German military cemetery on the island. Now servicemen of a separate search battalion of the Western Military District, at the request of the People's Union of Germany, are carrying out work to exhume the remains of German soldiers.

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

Participants in a joint expedition of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Geographical Society hope to find the remains of Soviet soldiers who took part in several landings. Hundreds of soldiers and sailors went missing in these places.

“It seemed that after the last expedition, well, everyone had already moved this island far and wide, everything interesting was evacuated from here. And we seem to know everything, but it turned out that a lot of interesting things remained,” notes the head of the International Complex Expedition “Gogland” Valery Kudinsky.

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

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

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

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

The island of Bolshoi Tyuters in the Gulf of Finland was also called the “island of death” after the war. People continued to die there into the 1950s and 1960s.

The Finns and Germans captured the archipelago, located in the very center of the Gulf of Finland, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The islands of Gogland and Bolshoi Tyuters were of exceptional importance. After all, they are located right on the fairway, along which both military and civilian ships sailed in those years, and even now. The Finns then occupied the island of Gogland, and a German headquarters group and a large garrison were located on Bolshoi Tyuters. A powerful battery appeared there to fight the Soviet fleet. It is quite clear that the Nazis, who were preparing for a serious battle in the Baltic, brought to the island great amount ammunition. In addition, for some time shells were produced right there. In their haste to leave the island, the Germans were unable to remove the accumulated arsenal. They acted insidiously - they mined the territory of the island, essentially turning it into one large mine. The Soviet paratroopers who landed on Tyuters in the summer of 1944 fell into this terrible trap.

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

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

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

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


In ancient times, Tyuters was a haven for Vikings, then a haven for smugglers. Here, Polish and Swedish privateers robbed merchants going to Narva, and here, it happened, they hid the loot. Northern granites, plowed by an ancient glacier, conceal many secluded places.

All Russian tsars, starting with Peter, attached great importance to protecting the capital of the empire from attack from the sea. The most important and most fortified defense centers were the islands of the Gulf of Finland. And the first to stand in the way of the enemy were two rocks: Gogland and Bolshoi Tyuters. During the war, fierce battles were fought for the islands. Our landing forces went on the assault. And the Germans and Finns held the defense.

The only possible channel for heavy ships and submarines is exactly within firing range of their artillery guns from the island. This means whoever owned Tyuters owned the entire Gulf of Finland.

Over the past three centuries the island has been Swedish, Russian, Finnish, Russian again, German and Russian again. But there has never been a large population here. From the 18th century until 1940, it was only a village of Finnish fishermen. After the Winter War, little remained of it. There was also a Lutheran church, but it burned down relatively recently.

Thousands and thousands of ships pass by Tyuters every year. But for recent years 60 almost no human foot has ever stepped on it.

Tyuters is amazingly beautiful. It’s so quiet that your ears are ringing. Mushrooms, fish, berries, rocks, forest, clear water. Here we could build sanatoriums, breathe the healing pine air and watch the sun set in the cool waters of the Baltic. But the war made its own adjustments to this picture.

The only intact structure on Tyuters is the lighthouse. There is no way without it, the fairway in these places is very difficult. So Big Tyuters shines at night: 1 second on, 1 second off, then 3 seconds on, 9 seconds off. Although the lighthouse is the most high building on the island - 21 m, it’s impossible to see anything below from it. There were no people here for 70 years, the roads and buildings were overgrown, nature took its toll. Even traces railway- and here she was - covered by the crowns of silent Karelian pines.

In October-November 1939, more than 2,000 aerial bombs were dropped on Tyuters and 4,500 shells were fired. But it was, so to speak, just a shooting.

In October 1941, under German pressure, the island was abandoned by the Red Army, but the Soviet command quickly realized their mistake. The narrowness of the bay turned it into a trap - passage along the fairway became deadly dangerous for our ships. The fleet was locked in Kronstadt, as if in a mousetrap. IN New Year's Eve In 1942, the Red Army and Marine Corps landed on Tyuters, but did not last long. There was no supply of food and ammunition, the reinforcements sent simply did not arrive: the ice on the Gulf of Finland was not yet strong, there were ice holes under it, and half a meter of icy water above it. The soldiers froze to death on the way, and few managed to return to the mainland.

Subsequently, it became increasingly difficult to take Bolshoi Tyuters. The Germans transferred so many forces and resources here that it became the largest stronghold among the islands of the Gulf of Finland; they installed batteries of large-caliber guns, anti-aircraft guns and naval guns on the island.

The Nazis, preparing for a serious battle in the Baltic, brought a fantastic amount of ammunition to the island. And the remaining part cannot be counted, but how many were fired at our ships? By our landings? After all, there was still a second landing. And the third. And the fourth. No one can say how many of our soldiers lie here.

It is believed that the Germans mined the area before fleeing the island in 1944. This is wrong. Studying German maps and documents, examining former minefields, you see that the most powerful fortifications of Tyuters did not appear suddenly. All three years that the Germans were on the island, they meticulously built up its defense. Others were added to one row of thorns, new mines were placed both between old ones and in new places, until the quantity and density of all this iron amounted to some fantastic value.

When the Germans left the island, it had no longer played the same strategic importance for them for several months - in September 1944, the Red Army was already very far to the west. It seems that this is another example of Hitler’s stubbornness, clinging to such pieces of land even when there was no longer not only a strategic, but even a tactical need for them. And then they themselves and their garrisons turned into a burden that could no longer be taken care of and was not worth evacuating. Tyuters, obviously, also turned into such a burden - the thrifty Germans were unable, as usual, to take the equipment with them and limited themselves to damaging it.

And no matter how saturated Tyuters was with ammunition, there were even more of them in the strait between Tyuters and the island of Gogland. During the war in these waters, the Germans placed a total of several tens of thousands of mines at the Zeigl (Sea Urchin) minefield, almost half of them in the 9 and a half nautical miles between Gogland and Tyuters.

Under enemy fire, our minesweepers made passages in the minefields, and the Germans methodically dumped new mines into the strait - thousand after thousand.

During the war, only a few submarines of the Baltic Fleet crossed this deadly channel. The power of the fleet was not fully used, and the war left here only in 1944. And she didn't go far. How much explosive metal is at the bottom: lost submarines and boats with torpedoes, downed bombers with full ammunition, dozens of sunken transports with ammunition, several artillery ships with full magazines. These waters will remain unsafe for a long time. Such a concentration of combat losses in one place indicates the enormous importance the warring parties attached to the island.

Today the island is the farthest part of Russia in the northwest. On the northern coast is Finland, on the southern coast is Estonia. Special border zone, special access regime. But thanks to the assistance of border guards and a specially organized expedition of the Russian Geographical Society, we had the opportunity to find out what Bolshoy Tyuters, the most mysterious island Gulf of Finland, and answer the question of what exceptional significance it had for German forces in the Baltic. It’s not easy to talk about this, but perhaps it was this small battle for Tyuters, lost by Soviet troops at the very beginning of the war, that made it possible for the Germans not only to maintain a long blockade of Leningrad, but also delayed our victory.

The first shelters and burial places were dug here back in the time of the Varangians. In tsarist times, artillery positions and gun magazines were built. The Finnish army, having received Tyuters from Russia, started a large construction of fortifications. Before the great war, Soviet troops also built their own fortifications - aboveground and underground. On German map from the Abwehr archives - there is an interesting inscription. It states that there should be 15 underground structures on the island. The last joint Soviet-Swedish mission to clear mines on the island discovered six bunkers on it. The remaining nine were never found. Maybe they didn’t search carefully, or maybe they hid these bunkers with skill? For how long?

There are many versions about the purpose of the mysterious bunkers. The most interesting thing is, of course, that the valuables looted by the Nazis were kept here. After all, Army Group “North”, to which the Tyuters garrison belonged, marauded in these parts with all the breadth of its Teutonic soul. Pskov and Novgorod, Oranienbaum and Peterhof, Tsarskoe Selo, Gatchina and Strelna - many treasures and art objects were never found after the war either in Germany or anywhere else. Why don't the Germans store them here, under the protection of granite dungeons and the most powerful fortifications of Tyuters?

During the war, the perimeter of the island was braided with several rows of barbed wire. And mines - tens of thousands. And then - guns and machine guns point blank. Our troops landed here. It seems to me that I should step on here open place, under dagger fire, through a minefield - impossible, hopeless. If the cruisers and battleships of the Baltic Fleet had approached and mixed up the German defense with the fire of their twelve-inch guns, the landing would have succeeded. But the tragedy was that the ships of the fleet could navigate these waters only if the island was occupied by ours.

Another version: in these dungeons the Germans had a factory for the production and supply of ammunition. This, of course, is not the Amber Room, although there would be little left of amber in the dampness here.

In general, some kind of shelters or caches are often found here. And almost everywhere there are traces of human presence. But they are clearly not up to anything serious. For weapons production, larger sizes are needed, and for storing valuables - paintings, sculptures - special conditions are needed.

 

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