L-55 - a training manual for shipbuilders
The sinking of the British submarine L-55 by the destroyers Azard and Gavriil in Koporsky Bay. N. V. Bublikov.
During the Civil War, an undeclared Russian-English war was waged in the Baltic. Despite the absence of an official state of war, military actions were carried out: English torpedo boats raided Kronstadt, Soviet destroyers sank English submarines, etc., etc.
But any civil war eventually ends, and the people who came to power on its crest begin to restore what was destroyed during this event. Including - fleet, it is a fragile thing, and in the case of revolutions it ends very quickly. Russia was no exception to the rule and after the Civil War began to put the remaining naval department in order.
Ivan Bubnov, the father of Russian submarines.
Big problems arose with relatively modern projects of ships and submarines. Especially submarines! If the old-fashioned "Noviki" and "Svetlanas" looked pretty good even in World War II, then the "Bars" type submarines could no longer be considered modern, and their creator, the leading specialist in submarine shipbuilding Ivan Bubnov, died of typhus in Petrograd on March 13, 1919. Another specialist of the same level, Stepan Dzhevetsky, emigrated to Paris and did not plan to return. Some of the engineers did not survive the Civil War, some retired... But the Red Navy was lucky, the British submarine L-1919 had been lying at the bottom of Koporye Bay since 55.
L-55 in England
The fact is that the L-55 was the newest: the first submarine of the L type entered service in 1917 (the boats were built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company), and its design absorbed the British combat experience of the First World War. After the war, reducing the ship composition, the British Admiralty kept all the L-type boats in service, which speaks to the perfection of their design. In the autumn of 1926, the boat was hit by the trawl of one of the Soviet minesweepers clearing mines from Koporskaya Bay: the sighting frame from the bow 102-mm gun of the L-55 remained in the trawl.
Minesweeper "Zmey", formerly the yacht "Zarnitsa".
The minesweepers Klyuz and Zmey were tasked with finding the submarine. The search was led by Zmey commander K. L. Nikandrov. Later, the minesweepers found the submarine itself on the bottom in square No. 18 and called in EPRON divers. EPRON diving instructor Khrulenko boarded the submarine and found that it was lying, submerged in the silt up to the rubble rails, with a list to starboard and a trim to the stern, the conning tower hatch was closed. On the starboard side, the diver found a hole measuring 0,6 x 0,6-0,8 meters. After finding an English minesweeper nearby, it became clear that the submarine commander had not taken into account the strong current in Koporskaya Bay, and he had been carried away to the English minefield. Apparently, when attempting to submerge, the boat's left fender hit the mine rigging and pulled a mine that exploded in the area of the bridge. A decision was made: raise it!
The head of the lifting operations was appointed the chief ship engineer of the Southern District of EPRON Timofey Bobritsky. On July 21, 1928, after two months of work, L-55 was raised to the surface from a depth of 32 meters by the rescue vessel Kommuna (the same one that still serves in the Black Sea Fleet) using four steel towels placed under the boat. The boat was towed to Kronstadt, where it was put into dock. Inside the pressure hull, the skeletons of 38 (according to other sources, 34, but there is also information about 42...) submariners were found, and the engineer-mechanic in the diesel compartment was completely preserved - the body was mummified by diesel fuel. The remains, along with three baskets of personal belongings, were sent by the merchant ship Truro (the USSR refused to allow a foreign military ship into its territorial waters), after which they were transferred to the light cruiser Champion at sea and delivered to England.
Transfer of remains to merchant ship Truro.
The L-55 itself was restored and put into service by the Red Navy under the name L-55. The boat took part in the Navy Day parade in 1940 in the Neva on Stalin's personal order - the best friend of Soviet athletes was good at PR! But the most important thing is that it was studied literally screw by screw by Soviet engineers from Boris Malinin's Technical Bureau No. 4. Before the revolution, Boris Mikhailovich participated in the design of "leopards", but then changed the subject matter and by the time the English submarine was raised, he had not been involved in submarine design for 10 years. At the Baltic Shipyard, the drawings were "taken from life" with the L-55. It was a great success that technical descriptions and operating instructions for the machines and mechanisms were found on board. It is interesting that the Baltic Shipyard tried to disown the restoration of the submarine in every possible way - the enterprise had a terrible shortage of qualified personnel. But the matter was declared politically important, and the “Baltics” had to undertake work to restore the submarine, which cost the treasury a tidy sum – 1300000 rubles.
Rally in honor of raising the Soviet naval flag over the L-55
On July 27, 1931, the L-55 was assigned to the Baltic Fleet. In 1934, the "native" Vickers diesel engines were replaced with domestic 42BM6 from the Kolomna Plant. In 1940, the boat was reclassified as an experimental vessel, but during the war it was transferred to the training ship division. From 1943, it was a floating charging station, and in 1944 it was transferred to Hanko, where it provided basing for the Baltic Fleet submarines. But the most interesting thing is that the submarines whose combat work the L-55 provided were its relatives! The solutions spied on the English submarine were used in the design of Soviet submarines of the Shch and L series.
The raised "Englishwoman" in the dock.
For example, the Shchukas received a widened bow copied from the English submarine, which allowed sailors to work with torpedo tubes more conveniently. The torpedo loading device, also copied by Soviet shipbuilders, turned out to be very successful. The Leninets received a Boolean shape of the light hull, which increased the stability and technology of Soviet underwater minelayers. The non-hermetic battery pits, which increased the volume of the bow compartments, were considered interesting. A booster was added to the power supply circuit of Soviet submarines, which ensured voltage stabilization in the circuit.
The fencing of the L-55 wheelhouse (or rather, what remains of it).
But, in addition to what was adopted by the Soviet engineering school, there were also unsuccessful technical solutions on the L-55, the refusal to use which was also useful for the development of submarine shipbuilding in the USSR. For example, the absence of stern torpedo tubes, a high and bulky fencing of the wheelhouse, ship pipelines made of simple iron and subject to corrosion.
Submarine after restoration
At the same time, it cannot be said, as English-language sources sometimes do, that the L-55 became the prototype of some types of Soviet submarines (there are claims that the Shchuka is a 20-meter-shortened L-55, and the Leninets project was also based on it). Individual technical solutions were used, but submarines in the image and likeness of the "Englishwoman" were not built in the USSR.
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