Soviet submarine Shch-213
Shch-213
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| History | |
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 Soviet Union
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| Name: | Shch-213 |
| Builder: | Sudostroytelnyi zavod imeny 61 kommunara, Mykolaiv, USSR |
| Yard number: | 1037 |
| Laid down: | 4 December 1934 |
| Launched: | 13 April 1937 |
| Commissioned: | 31 October 1938 |
| Out of service: | 14 October 1942 |
| Fate: | sunk by sea mine |
| Status: | wreck |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Shchuka-class submarine, Type X |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 57.00 m (187 ft 0 in) |
| Beam: | 6.20 m (20 ft 4 in) |
| Draught: | 3.78 m (12 ft 5 in) |
| Propulsion: | 2 shaft diesel electric, 1,020 kW (1,370 bhp) diesel, 600 kilowatts (800 bhp) electric |
| Speed: |
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| Range: | 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph) |
| Test depth: | 91 m (300 ft) |
| Complement: | 38 |
| Armament: |
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Щ-213 (transliterated as Shch-213 or sometimes SC-213) was a Soviet Navy Shchuka-class submarine, Type X. She was built at the Sudostroytelnyi zavod imeny 61 kommunara in Mykolaiv, Ukrainian SSR, and entered service in October 1938 with the Soviet Black Sea fleet.
In October 1942, Shch-213 struck a sea mine and sank with all hands.
Shch-213 had secret orders to sink all neutral and enemy shipping entering the Black Sea, to reduce the flow of strategic materials to Nazi Germany. On 23 February 1942 she had sunk the 464 GRT Turkish schooner Çankaya west-north-west of the Bosphorus with gunfire.
Struma had left the Romanian port of Constanța in December 1941 carrying an estimated 781 Jewish refugees in an attempt to reach Mandatory Palestine. Turkish authorities had detained Struma and her passengers in Istanbul for 10 weeks because hardly any of them had obtained visas to enter Palestine, and the British authorities insisted that under their policy for Jewish immigration to Palestine they would not permit the remainder to do so. Struma’s engine had failed when leaving Romania and again when approaching Turkey, and despite attempted repairs in Istanbul it was still inoperable.
On 23 February 1942 a Turkish tug towed Struma back out into the Black Sea and cast her adrift about 10 miles (16 km) off the Turkish coast. Early on the morning of 24 February Shch-213, commanded by DM Denezhko, fired a single torpedo which quickly sank Struma. Many passengers were trapped below decks and drowned. Many others aboard survived the sinking and clung to pieces of wreckage, but for hours no rescue came and all but one of them died from drowning or hypothermia. The only survivor was a 19-year-old refugee called David Stoliar, who was rescued the next day by the crew of a Turkish rowing boat.
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Wikipedia