The Epic of Krasnovodsk Port
Picturesque view of the port of Krasnovodsk, now Turkmenbashi
В stories The Great Patriotic War still has enough pages that are unique and phenomenal in their own way, but at the same time very little known. These include the epic of the Krasnovodsk port on the Caspian Sea, which during the war years unexpectedly became a strategically important object, on which the fate of major operations and battles depended.
As far as I know, almost nothing has been written about this. I myself almost accidentally found this story in a small-circulation work devoted to the history of the economy of the Turkmen SSR during the war. And it was astonishing.
But we must understand that the history of the Krasnovodsk port is not here on its own, but in close connection with the ports of Baku and Makhachkala, through which a large cargo flow passed during the war years. In general, it would be necessary to write a history of the entire Caspian transport hub, but for now we will focus on one port.
Port Krasnovodsk
Krasnovodsk, now Turkmenbashi, was founded in 1868 as a military fortification, from where campaigns against Bukhara and Khiva were launched. Then, in 1880, General M. D. Skobelev organized a military campaign against the Turkmen-Tekins and the siege of the Geok-Tepe fortress, for which they began to build the Trans-Caspian Railway, first on a narrow gauge, and then on a normal one - 1524 mm. Here, engineer I. N. Livchak applied the method of mechanized laying of the railway track that he had developed.
In 1885, a port was built for the development of the railway, but in Uzun-Ada Bay. However, the choice was unsuccessful, the bay became shallow, and therefore a suitable bay was found 48 km away from it, right next to Fort Krasnovodsk. In 1896, they began to build a port and in 1899 a railway was brought to it.
As soon as the railway from Vladikavkaz to the port of Petrovsk (since 1894 Makhachkala) was built in 1921, the ports found something to do – transshipment of Central Asian cotton, which was exported to the European part of Russia to spinning and textile factories. A stream of grain went back to the region. Then Krasnovodsk began to transship oil and oil products from Baku. This is how its profile developed: receiving oil and grain, shipping cotton.
Krasnovodsk and its port at the beginning of the 20th century
This is a brief essay that allows us to understand the place of Krasnovodsk port in the communications system.
In 1940, the port had a cargo turnover of 2,4 million tons. The port had Embankment No. 12, where ships could moor, nine pile piers and six temporary berths on the dry land between the piers. All of them were numbered for the needs of managing the movement of ships in the port waters.
The modern view of the port area of Turkmenbashi. In 2013-2018, the port was reconstructed and now bears little resemblance to the port that was there during the war years.
The port is located in the depths of Krasnovodsk Bay, from the east it is limited by the Darja Peninsula, and from the west it is limited by the long Krasnovodsk Spit - a natural breakwater. In the middle of the spit there is a channel for the passage of ships and an approach channel to the port, since the bay is shallow. By the way, during the war years the problem of shallow water was serious, since from 1929 to 1941 the level of the Caspian Sea fell from -25,88 meters to -27,84 meters, plus annual fluctuations in sea level were 30-40 cm. During the war, Krasnovodsk Bay was approximately 30 cm shallower than indicated on maps published in the 1980s.
The port is located on the northern side of the bay, between the peninsula on which the city of Krasnovodsk is built and the rocky Ufra peninsula, formed by the Karadag ridge up to 165 meters high. Behind it there is a fairly wide plain on which the settlement of Ufra is located, its oil fields located to the south, as well as oil loading piers No. 1-5.
Between Krasnovodsk and Ufra, 5,5 km, the coast is flat and low for about 500 meters from the water's edge, and further up the rocky massifs of the highlands rise, more than 200 meters high. A railway runs here, which runs from Krasnovodsk through Ufra and further east in the direction of Nebit-Dag and Ashgabat.
Satellite image with a modern port. But some of the old infrastructure remains. On the left is Krasnovodsk, on the right is Ufra
Sea, rocks, salt marshes and killer sun almost all year round.
The remaining piers were on the eastern side of Krasnovodsk, starting with passenger pier No. 6 with the station and ending with the embankment named No. 12. These were cargo piers, some of which had mechanization - belt conveyors, bucket elevators (bucket elevators for bulk cargo), and various cranes. Pier No. 11 was the best - in 1940, a conveyor for loading cotton fiber and seeds onto ships was built there.
Loading cotton onto ships in the port of Krasnovodsk before the war: a conveyor delivered bales of cotton to the pier, and from there a crane delivered them to the ship
First tasks, first difficulties
The difficulties for the Krasnovodsk port began in August 1941. An order was received to accept grain that was coming from Ukraine via Poti, Baku and Makhachkala to Krasnovodsk. Why such a route? Because the other railway routes were already tightly packed with military trains and evacuation cargo. There was no heavy traffic on this southern route yet, and the grain exported from Ukraine was sent to Central Asia.
This, by the way, is one of the few confirmations that grain was evacuated from Ukraine in 1941.
The port was given the task of ensuring the acceptance of 3 thousand tons per day, while the existing grain barn with two elevators could accept no more than 1,5 thousand tons. The port, of course, was given a motley assortment of mechanization: 200 meters of conveyors from the Zagotzern warehouses, 16 mobile belt conveyors, 12 self-feeding conveyors, 6 elevators from the port of Azov, and a floating elevator was also transferred from Baku. But the engineers had to design the system.
Port engineer F. I. Lyalin decided to re-equip the cotton conveyor of berth No. 11. He moved it to reverse direction, from the pier to the warehouse. An overpass with a belt conveyor and a self-dumping trolley was built for it, which passed over the railroad tracks and ended on a large asphalt platform. Grain went along the conveyor from the ships to the warehouse, but the grain flow could be turned through the bunker onto the overpass and loaded into cars or onto the platform. In the barn, Lyalin made trays that allowed 5-6 cars to be loaded simultaneously.
The capacity of the barn and the site was limited, so there was nowhere to accumulate grain and it had to be immediately loaded into wagons and sent off.
The grain was growing in quantity. It began to be transported on hastily adapted oil tankers. During the second ten days of November 1941, the port received and transshipped 60 thousand tons of grain. This was in addition to the usual cargo turnover of the port, which was also growing.
The grain problem had barely been resolved when a stream of evacuees began to flow. They arrived in Makhachkala, loaded onto tankers there, 4-5 thousand people at a time, and ended up in Krasnovodsk. Every day, 10-12 thousand people arrived in the city, and Krasnovodsk quickly turned into a huge camp. People were everywhere: in the port, at the seaport, on the streets. And all this under the scorching sun, with a shortage of water and basic conditions. The railway could not send them further. It took a long time to distribute this stream of people among the trains and take them away.
Those arrested were also sent there. In September 1942, the former Prime Minister and President of Latvia Karlis Ulmanis, who ruled the republic at the time of the Soviet troops' entry and annexation to the USSR, died in the Krasnovodsk prison hospital. He wanted to retire to Switzerland, but ended up in Krasnovodsk.
Participation in the decisive battle of the world war
The port's problems only grew. Large evacuation cargoes began to arrive. Equipment from Rostselmash, the Kharkov Tractor Plant, and the Kramatorsk Heavy Machinery Plant passed through the port. Then came rolling stock. In 1942-1943, the port received 225 E-series steam locomotives, 304 4-axle wagons, 145 2-axle wagons, and 382 4-axle platforms. But this turned out to be only a warm-up before the Battle of the Caucasus in 1942.
In August 1942, the Krasnovodsk port unexpectedly turned out to be the only transport hub connecting the Caucasus with the rest of the country. Yes, there was also land communication through the occupied territory of Iran, but in terms of transport it was very weak. The entire burden fell on the port.
On September 1, 1942, Krasnovodsk and the region were placed on martial law. The port was in full swing. The Transcaucasian Front of the second formation on May 15, 1942 included 11 combined arms armies, an engineer army and two air armies. The front's strength increased from 112 thousand people in July 1942 to 1 million people in January 1943. There were 121 танк — there were 1300 tanks, there were 2,1 guns — there were 11,3 guns, there were 230 aircraft — there were 900 aircraft. All of this passed through Krasnovodsk. And all the ammunition, supplies and property they were supposed to carry. The port did not let us down — it fulfilled the task of the Transcaucasian Front command by 150%.
It should be said here that a very large contribution to the Victory was made by: the Caspian Shipping Company, the ports of Baku, Makhachkala and Krasnovodsk. They are quite worthy of a very large monument and a separate celebration. Because if they had not delivered everything necessary to the Transcaucasian Front, the Germans would have collapsed the front, captured the Caucasus with oil, and then broken into Iran and Iraq, as they had expected. This would have been a defeat not even for the USSR alone, but for the anti-Hitler coalition as a whole, since Great Britain would not have been able to survive without Iranian oil. Because the Krasnovodsk, Baku and Makhachkala port workers worked illegally, this did not happen.
The Krasnovodsk dockers had a hard time, despite the reinforcement of mobilized labor loaders. The entire port, stations, and even the city were littered with a variety of cargo, which lay on the streets, roads, and in the city baths. There were not enough cranes to load equipment. The port, as they say, adapted in 1943 to loading tractors sent to help the areas liberated from occupation, on a temporary pier between piers No. 7 and No. 8, and the tractors drove onto the ship under their own power along the gangways. Apparently, tanks were loaded in the same way, artillery and trucks.
In addition, the port received and transshipped oil and oil products from Baku, as well as manganese from Georgia. Finally, in February 1943, the port was instructed to receive 50 thousand tons of imported cargo from Iran. In 1942, the USSR received 705 thousand tons of Lend-Lease cargo delivered via Iran, or 28,8% of their total. But in 1943, cargo flow in this direction more than doubled - to 1,6 million tons or 33,5% of the total volume for the year, and from March to October 1943, from 34 to 49% of Lend-Lease cargo went via the Iranian route. The rest at that time was the Far East.
In order to receive and send cargo by rail, it was necessary to build a third railway station to unload the port station Krasnovodsk-I, and also to repair and strengthen the track and switches, and in short intervals between trains. In 1942, on average, per day, stations around the port loaded 82 dry cargo cars and 395 oil tankers for shipment, not counting the received cargo and other traffic. It is difficult to imagine how the railway workers were able to do this.
The intense work of transshipping Lend-Lease cargo at the Krasnovodsk port continued until approximately October 1944, when the monthly volume of shipments along the Iranian route amounted to 156,2 thousand tons or 28,6% of the total. Then it began to decline rapidly, as the possibility of delivering cargo through the ports of the Black and Barents Seas opened up.
In general, at a critical moment, the Krasnovodsk port had to work, despite the fact that a significant part of the imported cargo was dangerous. It was not surprising for the port workers to handle aviation gasoline, but they had to work with gunpowder for the first time and with all the precautions. Since the flow of grain to Krasnovodsk stopped, the best piers were given over to ammunition and gunpowder: No. 10, No. 11 and No. 12, which were equipped with belt conveyors and cranes.
The port operated with overload during the most difficult period, from November 1941 to approximately July 1943, when the load on it began to decrease. In 1943, the port handled 2,9 million tons of cargo, while in 1942 it handled about 3,68 million tons, that is, 53% more than the pre-war cargo turnover.
If a monument to port workers is erected, these figures of cargo turnover during the war years should be placed on the monument cast in gilded bronze. It is in these tons that the strategic, decisive and historical contribution of Caspian port workers, including the port of Krasnovodsk, to the victory in the Great Patriotic War is contained.
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