Big Tyuters Island of Death. Bolshoi Tyuters Island. Key to the Gulf of Finland

Big 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. Part of the Kingisepp district Leningrad region. The area of ​​the island is 8.3 sq. km.

Bolshoy Tyuters Island in Gulf of Finland, after the war it was also called the “island of death.” 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.

A truly historical event took place during the complex expedition "Gogland" to explore the Outer Islands of the Gulf of Finland. 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.

A Pe-2 dive bomber was shot down on Bolshoi Tyuters Island 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 Sergey 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 Bolshoi 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 a military cemetery in the 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 Kunashir Island, 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

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 - hundreds of tons of rusty military iron are being prepared by volunteers from all over the country 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.

In the Baltic, on the island of Bolshoi Tyuters, the interim results of the expedition to search for and remove equipment from the Great Patriotic War are being summed up

The event, organized by the Russian Geographical Society together with the Ministry of Defense, started in early May and will end on August 14. In less than four months, search engines must comb the island, collect German military equipment, which it is full of, and take it to the mainland. This is the first such expedition: before that only sappers worked here. According to experts, the island can be called unique: wild, almost uninhabited (only two people at the lighthouse), crammed like a museum under open air, artifacts abandoned 70 years ago.

Eight square kilometers of taiga and stone

We depart from Levashovsky military airfield. The weather is flyable, despite the low purple sky. Several officers of different branches of the military are loaded on board. And two soldiers with a can for berries.

“We asked, they took us,” they share, informing along the way that they still have a whopping 4 months left until the end of their service. - Interesting! There will be something to tell at home...

Bolshoi Tyuters, which, if you look at the map, lies near Estonia and Finland, is about an hour’s flight, 180 kilometers. The island came under the jurisdiction of our country back in 1721, when Peter I defeated the Swedes in the Northern War. In 1920 it unexpectedly became part of independent Finland. After 20 years he returned to us again. After three years the Finns and Germans ruled there. Since 1944 he has been Russian again.

Throughout the post-war period, these eight square kilometers of stone and taiga have been empty: unnecessarily. Yes, and dangerous. Until 2005, when sappers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations came to the island, it was filled with shells and mines.

From the porthole, Tyuters looks like a cozy green fluffy hat in the middle of the water. When lowered, extensive sand dunes on the banks, stepped rock formations. On the western shore there is a lighthouse match. A thread of forest road stretches through the island. And the expedition camp: white military tents, cargo equipment.

Key to the Gulf of Finland

Let's unload. The strong smell of pine hits your nose. There is an unusual silence in my ears.

We change into a UAZ and, using the cab to pick up tree branches along the winding path, we drive to the site of one of the finds. A month ago, there, in the windfalls, they discovered a curious specimen - a Wehrmacht anti-aircraft gun.

The island, I must say, looks truly wild. But in past centuries there was a large Finnish fishing village here, there was a wooden church, a school, and later a narrow-gauge railway.

During World War II, the garrison of German troops on Tyuters amounted to 2 thousand soldiers: one person per four square meters! And it is no coincidence - together with neighboring Gogland and a couple of smaller islands, this ridge played a strategic role - the key to the Gulf of Finland. Whoever owned the archipelago controlled the entrance to the bay. Between the islands, the Germans stretched anti-submarine nets and laid mine chains. Gogland was controlled by the Finns, Bolshoi Tyuters by the Germans. Ours made attempts to return them, but to no avail. That is why our Baltic Fleet stood, not entering into major battles until 1944, locked in Kronstadt and Leningrad...

Each field kitchen tank contains a grenade

On one of the hills across the road there is a Ural tractor and a truck crane. Nearby is the same gun - an 88-mm Bofors cannon.

“It was made in Sweden,” the expedition leader, General Valery Kudinsky, explains. — One of the best examples of anti-aircraft weapons of that time: automatic, reliable. Her condition is this moment satisfactory. Clean, restore - and almost like new. They also found ammunition in the ground nearby: 80 shells in oiled paper. They used these very guns to hit our planes.

The search work, the general explains, has now been completed. From May to June, the expedition members combed the island length and breadth: they walked in chains, 20 - 30 meters from each other. Now the task is to deliver what was found to the pier. A total of 207 objects were discovered. 137 of them need to be pulled out using heavy equipment - these same tractors and cranes. Half are already on the shore, half in the forest. Among the finds are anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft fire control posts, field kitchens, searchlights, trailers of various capacities, and fuel barrels.

All without exception, it must be said, are out of order. The Germans left the island hastily. They abandoned everything and left this land on September 18, 1944. Guns and trailers were blown up. There is a grenade in each field kitchen tank. There are several through shots into each barrel...

All-terrain vehicles and helicopters

It takes about half an hour to load the cannon. Despite its seemingly compact size, it does not fit entirely onto the tractor. During transportation, on one of the hills it falls creakingly onto the stones. Again we have to adjust the crane, hook the cable...

At the pier we are met by the deputy head of the director of the expedition center of the Russian Geographical Society and the main inspirer of the entire process, Artem Khutorskoy.

“You have to tinker with almost every object like this,” he says. — But some things cannot be removed with wheeled vehicles at all - rocks, windbreaks. We will try by air, using a helicopter.

And he adds that, despite the difficulties, all the work is a joy. They dreamed of this project for many years and studied archives, including German ones. But it was impossible to just pick up and go here—considerable funds were needed. Last December, the project was presented to the President of the Russian Geographical Society Sergei Shoigu, and the Minister of Defense gave the go-ahead: go ahead.

Three-inch gun, unfound aircraft

The result of the work of the military and geographers is obvious: there is a picturesque pile of metal near the pier. For specialists, all of these are valuable exhibits, which in the near future will probably take their place in various military museums across the country.

“Here are the fuel barrels, standard, two-hundred-liter,” says Khutorskoy. — From several countries at once. German, Finnish, Latvian, French. Look at their round timbers - you can make a whole collection here! Or even very interesting object: three-inch gun, manufactured in 1917 at the Putilov plant. It went to independent Finland. And she fought against us during the Great Patriotic War...

- What about the people who died? - I’m interested.

— As for the Germans, from 1941 to 1944, about 20 soldiers died on Bolshoi Tyuters for various reasons. We found the site of a possible cemetery - eight name tags were found there, which were attached to grave crosses. But the Nazis suffered the main losses in neighboring Gogland. In 1944, when Finland had already withdrawn from the war, the Germans decided to intercept Gogland - it could have gone to us! At first they tried to negotiate peacefully, then they began to intimidate, and in the end they sent their troops there. And the Finns - yesterday's German allies - gave them a serious rebuff. Moreover: they requested air assistance from the Soviet troops - this was the only such case during the Great Patriotic War. Then ours and the Finns completely defeated the Nazis: up to 700 Germans died, went missing, and were wounded.

- And ours are here, on Bolshoi Tyuters?..

— There were losses. And when we left in '41. And when in 1942 they tried to storm it twice. It is known that later two of our scouts landed here. But they went missing. There are Soviet planes lying in the swamps - one or two. The lighthouse says that as a boy he remembers the tail of a plane in one of the swamps. But where is unclear. We found parts of the fuselage skin. Nothing else…

Delivery of equipment to the pier will continue in the next two weeks. Then - sending on landing boats to Kronstadt, placement at one of the military arsenals of the Leningrad region. It is likely that in the coming years, teams will begin work on this patch in the middle of the Gulf of Finland to search for dead soldiers.

By the way

As part of the expedition of the Russian Geographical Society and the Ministry of Defense, search activities are also carried out on the island of Gogland in late July - early August. Unlike Bolshoi Tyuters, only search engines work on Gogland, who are engaged in discovering the graves of our soldiers (military equipment was removed from here almost immediately after the war). According to preliminary data, about 500 Red Army soldiers died and were buried here. Work on the island is carried out by a search group of the North-West association of 16 people (including various detachments of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region). This is the first such large-scale event. Currently, many household items and weapons of both Soviet and Finnish soldiers have been discovered - grenades, shells, rifle shields, communication coils, flasks, mugs, spoons, teapots, sanitary stretchers. And the remains of one Red Army soldier: on a cigarette case found nearby, the surname is Sapozhnikov. The search is complicated by the rocky nature of the soil. The island's landing areas are currently being combed.

 

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