- SS Stalingrad
The SS "Stalingrad" was a steamship of the
Soviet Union , named after the Soviet city ofStalingrad , itself named afterJoseph Stalin . She was built at Zavod No 189 (Ordzhonikidze) inLeningrad and operated by Glavnoe Upravlenie Severnogo Morskogo Puti (GUSMP), who homeported her inVladivostok . She had entered service in 1933.Career and sinking
"Stalingrad" was one of ten "Anadyr"-class cargo-passenger ships built for ice navigation in the Far East, around the port of Vladivostok. They had the unofficial name of "far-easterners". They were initially designed to be powered by
diesel but were redesigned as coal powered steamers for economic reasons. Vladivostok did not have large oil stores and had to import most of its supplies, but coal was cheap and widely available in the region.During the
Second World War "Stalingrad" was used in the Atlantic andArctic Ocean s to transport supplies from the United Kingdom to Russia. In September 1942, she was part ofConvoy PQ-18 , which left theTyne on2 September bound for North Russia viaReykjavik . The "Stalingrad" was one of six Soviet merchants, and was carrying a cargo ofmunitions .The convoy came under attack from the
Luftwaffe andU-boats . At 09.52 hours on13 September , with the convoy 100 miles south west ofSpitsbergen , it was sighted by U-408, which fired a spread of threetorpedo es at it. The "Stalingrad" was hit by one torpedo and then suffered a boiler explosion. The other two torpedoes missed, but one of them hit another ship of the convoy, the "Oliver Ellsworth", which had to steer hard left to avoid the torpedoed "Stalingrad".The "Stalingrad" had been hit
amidships on herstarboard side on one of her coal bunkers. She sank in just three minutes and 48 seconds. [ [http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/2159.html SS "Stalingrad" at Uboat.net] ] The crew members and passengers had to abandon ship in the port lifeboats because the starboard ones had been destroyed by the explosion. Further losses occurred when one of the boats capsized when it reached the water. Out of a complement of 87, 21 were killed, with 66 survivors being picked up by other ships of the convoy.References
External links
* [http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/russian/index.html Convoy web]
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