Submarine S-56

On the S-56 submarine standing here, on May seventeenth, nineteen forty-three, Captain-Lieutenant Grigory Shchedrin saw a tanker, a transport vessel, and eight escort ships through the periscope. Three planes were flying above the convoy. Shchedrin needed to get within torpedo firing range and bring his crew out from under the counterattack.

Before his military service, Shchedrin worked as a navigator aboard merchant ships. Now the familiar task of determining a ship’s course and speed would decide whether the torpedoes could cross its path in time. The commander raised the periscope for only a few seconds: the submarine could be spotted by its tube protruding above the water. The escort ships were already dropping depth charges, but Shchedrin led S-56 into the convoy, diving beneath the patrol vessels.

He selected two targets at once and ordered four torpedoes fired from the bow tubes. The submariners heard three explosions. Checking the result was almost impossible: after the salvo, the submarine dived and the escorts began pursuit. The combat report credited the crew with sinking two ships. Later, Shchedrin wrote that photographs from a Soviet reconnaissance plane had confirmed this.

A postwar comparison of documents clarified the outcome. The tanker Eurostadt, carrying fuel, did indeed sink. A second torpedo embedded itself in the side of the transport Wartheland but did not explode; the vessel suffered only minor damage and continued in service. The other two torpedoes either missed or detonated prematurely. At that time, the crew of S-56 was escaping the escort ships as they dropped depth charges.

This patrol was one of the submarine’s eight combat sorties in the Barents Sea. In nineteen forty-four, S-56 was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and Shchedrin received the title Hero of the Soviet Union. In February of the following year, the crew received a Guards flag. The number ten in the red star on the conning tower preserves the tally of sunken ships accepted at the time. Four are confirmed today by enemy records; S-56 nevertheless remained the most successful Soviet submarine of that war by the number of targets reliably sunk by torpedoes.

It returned to Vladivostok because its service had begun here. The letter “S” denoted the Srednyaya, or “Medium,” type, and fifty-six was its fleet number. The hull was manufactured in sections in Leningrad, transported by rail, and assembled at Dalzavod. In the autumn of nineteen forty-two, Shchedrin led the submarine from Vladivostok to the Northern Fleet via the Pacific Ocean and the Panama Canal. Its return voyage in nineteen fifty-four followed the Northern Sea Route.

For installation on Korabelnaya Embankment, the hull was cut into sections again, delivered on pontoons, lifted ashore, and welded together. The four stern compartments now hold a museum exhibition. The three bow compartments retain their machinery, control room, berths, and torpedo tubes. Shchedrin ordered four of these tubes opened on that May day: one torpedo sent Eurostadt to the bottom, while another remained unexploded in the side of Wartheland.