The fate of the northern convoy BD-5 during the Great Patriotic War through the prism of one photograph

Vladimir Pushkarev’s photograph Chapel on Bely Island (Kara Sea) (2013), provided by the press service of the Governor of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, has been published on the Presidential Library's portal in Video Tours and Exhibitions section. It is attached with the audio file Point on the map - Bely Island; it was recorded at the Presidential Library. In the audio recording Pavel Yegorov, Candidate of Geological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Geology and Geoecology of the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia says that the chapel in memory of the BD-5 convoy died in the Kara Sea was built in 2012 on the initiative of one of the search expeditions.

Through the photo and commentary on it one of the war dramas of the Great Patriotic War is refracted through the decades.

A carved wooden lighthouse tower and a small chapel with frosty log walls, a frost-whitened roof, and eternal Arctic silence located at its foot ... The edge of the earth, abundantly populated by polar bears, seems so far from the events of the Great Patriotic War, but it is there, in the Kara Sea, one of the most terrible sea tragedies of the times of the passage of the Allied cargo caravans under the cover of our convoys took place.

The thousand-year history of the development of the Arctic (Russian sailors began to explore the coast of the Arctic Ocean as early as the 11th century, which is recorded in the Nikon Chronicle under 1032) during the Great Patriotic War was supplemented by the tragic episode of the death of the convoy BD- 5 (White Sea - Dikson No. 5), which left Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk) on August 8, 1944. The cargo steamer Marina Raskova carried more than 300 passengers (including women and children - families of winterers and military personnel) and more than 6 thousand tons of various cargoes for delivery to Dikson. The steamer was heading to the polar stations to change the winterers and supply them with fuel, equipment and food. The escort of the convoy consisted of three minesweepers - T-114, T-116, T-118.

The ship, attacked by a torpedo from a German submarine, sank, with people remained on boats and rafts in the stormy Kara Sea...

“We returned with a damaged engine from another sortie”, - recalled the polar pilot Matvey Kozlov, the commander of the Catalina seaplane, “and learned that our help was urgently needed in the area of ​​Bely Island. The flight mechanics quickly fixed the engine, and we went to the area of ​​the death of Marina Raskova".

In the meantime, more than 180 people were raised from the water and from life rafts to the last surviving minesweeper T-116. More than 150 people were left to wait for help on three whaleboats, a kungas and several boats in the open sea.

“…The storm intensified, a solid gray shroud hung over the sea, and there was no way to search. Only on August 23, on the eleventh day after the sinking of the ship, the weather improved, we took off and went to sea.

At 8:15 the kungas was discovered, but it was impossible to sit on the three-meter wave. The radio operator contacted the headquarters and asked to send a ship. The headquarters replied that there was no other way to save people - the decision must be made by the aircraft commander.

For nine hours we patrolled the raging sea. The wind did not subside, the people on board showed no signs of life. We saved 14 people, the rest of us no longer needed our help...”, - writes Matvey Kozlov.

They saved the people, but there was no way to take off - the seaplane was heavily overloaded and the wave was three meters long. Because of the storm, the overweight Catalina could not take off. And Matvey Kozlov makes a non-standard decision: to take the seaplane through the storm in the steering on the water. For twelve hours he taxied him to the shore along the raging waves ... “We sat down at Dixon's, and there was nothing to steer. Everything. Empty tanks..."

The photograph posted on the Presidential Library’s portal allows viewing the history of our fatherland through the prism of artifacts, which are, in particular, photographs. And visitors to the library, passing by its exhibition hall, will certainly pay attention to the magnificent tapestry of the Vyritsa tapestry factory of Uzor, to which, by order of the Presidential Library, the transferred plot of the above photograph of Bely Island, entered the library’s collections.