Return to the base of the Soviet submarine L-23 from the Red Army Navy from the second military campaign. Eastern Front, World War II.
L-23 is a Soviet diesel-electric mine-torpedo submarine of the Black Sea Fleet during World War II, the fourth ship of the XIII-1938 series of the Leninets type.
The construction of the boat began on October 17, 1938 at plant No. 198 in Nikolaev, serial number 353. On April 29, 1940, it was launched, completed by the beginning of the war, and on July 27-28 moved from Nikolaev to Sevastopol under its own power. On board was the commissioning team headed by the senior builder D. V. Staloverov. The boat was tested off the Caucasian coast. October 31, 1941 entered service and became part of the Black Sea Fleet.
Submarine “L-23” broke into the besieged Sevastopol seven times. On the last flight in June 1942, senior officials of the city party committee headed by the first secretary B. A. Borisov, chairman of the city Defense Committee, a group of fleet commanders and among them Rear Admiral V. G. Fadeev, captain 1st rank A. G. Vasilyev, commander of the 7th marine brigade, Colonel E. I. Zhidilov, head of the political department of the Primorye Army, brigade commissar L. P. Bocharov.
In total, during the war years she made 15 military campaigns, a total of 256 days. She made 3 torpedo attacks with the release of 11 torpedoes, as a result of one of them the German tanker Ossag (2793 brt) was damaged, and the attack took place at a wave of 5 points, and the hit torpedo jumped out of the water and exploded from hitting the freeboard. Completed 4 mine setting, set 80 minutes. On the mines of L-23, the landing ship F121 was allegedly blown up, which sank during towing. L-23 also made 7 flights to the besieged Sevastopol, delivering 363.3 tons of ammunition, 263.5 tons of food, 73.6 tons of gasoline and nine people, evacuating 165 people.
On January 1, 1944, the L-23 went on a campaign, on January 18 it was discovered by the German landing barge F-539, which fired at the periscope from a 20-mm gun and dropped one depth charge. Whether this was the cause of the death of the boat, or not, has not been established. There is no recent news about the fate of the L-23.
Location: Poti, Georgia, USSR
Photo date: January 28, 1942