Sources: Extracted and compiled by translator from S.S. Berezhnoy, Flot SSSR: Korabli i Suda Lendliza: Spravochnik (Soviet Navy:
Vessels and Ships of Lend-Lease: Handbook (Sankt Peterburg: “Belen”, 1994), pp. 120–152. Additional clarification and amplification of ship building firm identifications and locations were taken from the website http://shipbuildinghistory.com/
How to read this table:
First column (un-numbered) is for reference only
Column 1: Numerator – Soviet Navy BO (bolshoy okhotnik za podvodnikh lodakh) [large hunter for submarines] hull #;denominator–
USN SC (submarine chaser) hull #.
Column 2: Shipyard:
EC – Elizabeth City, NC
FB – Fisher Boat Works, Detroit, MI HP – Harris & Parsons, Greenwich, RI QA – Quincy Adams, Quincy, MA
RB – Rice Brothers, East Boothby, ME
TK – Thomas Knutson Shipbuilding, Halesite, NY VY – Vinyard Shipyard, Milford, DE
Column 3: Date accepted by Soviet crew, place (if known)36
Column 4: Soviet port to which delivered: P – Polyarnoye (Northern Fleet main base north and across Kola Bay from Murmansk); A–
Arkhangelsk, V–Vladivostok, PP-K–Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka
Column 5: Date of arrival in Soviet port (if known) Column 6: Date of acceptance to VMF ship list
Column 7: Fleet or flotilla of both first employment and final destination: SF – Northern Fleet; KBF – Red Banner Baltic Fleet; ChF –
Black Sea Fleet; TOF – Pacific Fleet; KF – Kamchatka Flotilla; STF – Northern Pacific Flotilla (the latter two flotillas were subsets of the Pacific Fleet)
36 Berezhnoy is not always clear here. From a linguistic perspective, it appears that for many vessels, the Soviet crew was brought to the United States to accept
their delivery. This has significant logistic implications for transporting the crews, providing adequate quarters, messing, familiarization training, and then planning for the return voyage to the USSR, within regularly scheduled convoys or in relatively small packages of submarine chasers from various ports on both East and West coasts of the USA. On the US side, given the geographical dispersion of the ship builders shown, how were these vessels moved from shipyard to port? Contract crews? US Navy crews? Rail and internal waterways? There is much yet to be researched in regard to these and other issues of Lend Lease, of this and several other classes of vessels. Translator
©2020 English Translation James F. Gebhardt 164
Column 8: Participation in Petsamo–Kirkenes Operation (PK=yes) Column 9: Notes (loss, victories, transfer means, etc.)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 212/721 FB 27.09.43 18.08.43 SF,
ChF PK 05.10.43, moved from Leningrad to Polyarnoye (SF), arriving 24.11.43, where it defended internal and external lines of communication in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas from 12.43–05.45.
2 213/1484 EC 05.07.43 P 05.07.43 25.08.44 SF PK 05.07.43, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL)37, arriving in Polyarnoye
25.08.43. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 14 months; conducted sweeping operations in Varnager Fjord from autumn 1944–spring 1945.
3 214/1480 RB 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 05.07.44 SF PK 05.07.43, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL), arriving in Polyarnoye 25.08.43. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months; conducted sweeping operations in Varnager Fjord from autumn 1944–spring 1945.
4 215/1496 VY 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 05.07.44 SF PK 05.07.43, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL), arriving in Polyarnoye 25.08.43. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months; conducted sweeping operations in Varnager Fjord from autumn 1944–spring 1945.
5 216/1488 RB 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 05.07.44 SF PK 05.07.43, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL), arriving in Polyarnoye 25.08.43. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months; conducted sweeping operations in Varnager Fjord from autumn 1944–spring 1945.
6 217/1489 EC 05.07.44 P 23.09.44 05.07.44 SF PK 05.07.43, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL), arriving in Polyarnoye 25.08.43. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 14 months; conducted sweeping operations in Varnager Fjord from autumn 1944–spring 1945.
7 218/1492 SB 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 05.07.44 SF PK 05.07.43, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL), arriving in Polyarnoye 25.08.43. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months; conducted sweeping operations in Varnager Fjord from autumn 1944–spring 1945.
8 219/1475 QA 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 SF,
KBF PK 05.07.44, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL), arriving in Polyarnoye 25.08.44. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months. Moved by White Sea – Baltic Canal to Pillau (Baltiysk) on
37 Naval Station Mayport, located along the Atlantic coast just east of Jacksonville, Florida. This entry lends credence to supposition that in this case, as well as in
others, Soviet Navy crews were being brought to the United States for some minimal period of on-vessel familiarization, then sailing some or all of these subchasers back to Soviet ports.
©2020 English Translation James F. Gebhardt 165 23.05.45.
9 220/1490 EC 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 18.07.44 SF PK 05.07.43, departed Mayport [Jacksonville, FL), arriving in Polyarnoye 25.08.43. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 5 months, after which it was used for training purposes. Moved by White Sea – Baltic Canal to Pillau on 23.05.45.
10 221/1481 RB 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 25.08.44 SF PK 18.07.44, departed Mayport, arriving in Polyarnoye on 25.08.44. There it operated in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months. Moved by White – Sea Baltic Canal to Pillau on 23.05.45.
11 222/1498 TK 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 SF PK 18.07.44, departed Mayport, arriving in Polyarnoye on 25.08.44. There it defended internal and external lines of communication in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months, after which it was used for training purposes from 15.01.45–12.03.45.
12 223/1476 QA 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 SF PK 18.07.44, departed Mayport, arriving in Polyarnoye on 25.08.44. There it defended internal and external lines of communication in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for 9 months.
13 224/1507 HP 05.07.44 P 25.08.44 SF PK 18.07.44, departed Mayport, arriving in Polyarnoye on 25.08.44. There it defended internal and external lines of communication in the Barents, Karsk, and White Seas for from 08.44 – 01.45, after which it was used for training purposes. 02.03.45, torpedoed and sunk by U-995 while
conducting combat training with SF submarine M-200.
Basic Data: Full displacement – 126.4t,; length – 34.2m; beam – 5.47m; draught – 1.87m; propulsion – 2x980 h.p. diesels; maximum
speed – 17 kts., economic – 12 kts. Economic range – 1,450 mi. Armament: 1x40mm and 3x20mm guns; 2x.50cal machine guns; four depth-charge dispensers and 10 “Hedgehog” or Mark-20 “Mousetrap” launchers.38 Crew – 32. The sketch on p. 152 of the Berezhnoy
text shows an SC-497 class submarine chaser, which has a wooden hull.
38 The Russian terms used here are bombomyot and bombosbrasyvatel respectively. Descriptions and photographs of this vessel class (SC-497), show it with
depth charge launchers on both sides of the stern and either a British-designed “Hedgehog” or a US Navy Mark-20 “Mousetrap” system at the bow, both of which launched mortar-like projectiles forward of the vessel in a patterned salvo. The depth charges were launched individually and triggered barometrically at a pre-set depth, while the projectiles launched from the bow-mounted spigots detonated upon contact with the enemy submarine’s hull.
©2020 English Translation James F. Gebhardt 166
About the Translator
James Gebhardt began his formal language study with four semesters of Latin in a North Dakota public high school (1964–66). His first exposure to Russian came during four semesters of study in his undergraduate education (BA, Political Science, University of Idaho, 1974), with continued graduate-level study during four semesters at the University of Washington, Seattle (MA,
History, 1976). After designation as a Soviet Foreign Area Officer in 1983, he completed the 47- week Basic Russian Course at the Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, followed by two additional years of immersion study in language and an additional broad Soviet studies curriculum at the US Army Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany (1984–86).
His military experience includes three years (1966–69) as an enlisted infantryman, which included a Vietnam tour; commissioning as a second lieutenant, Armor Branch, through the ROTC program; several years of duty at Fort Benning and in Mainz, Germany, culminating in command of a tank company (1976–83); history instructor and unclassified sources military analyst at Fort Leavenworth (1986–90); and one year as the deputy field office chief, San Francisco (Travis AFB), for the On-Site Inspection Agency, escorting Soviet military and scientific personnel throughout the western United States in the implementation of several disarmament treaties (1991).
His seminal historical work, Leavenworth Papers No. 17, The Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation:
Soviet Breakthrough and Pursuit in the Arctic, October 1944, published in 1990 under the
auspices of the Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff College, continues to be recognized internationally as authoritative 30 years later. This monograph has been translated and published in derivative form in both Sweden (2001, again in 2020) and Norway (2016), and the Swedish version translated into Polish (2011). His subsequent works have been published by the Naval Institute Press (two titles); University of Nebraska Press (two titles); University Press of Kansas (one title); Paladin Press (11 titles – translations of Soviet Army small arms technical manuals); the National Park Service in Anchorage (two titles); and publishers in Canada and Australia (one title each). His primary fields of study have been Lend- Lease to the USSR and Soviet Navy special operations force structure and combat experience.
His most recent efforts have been to translate from German a large collection of documents (89 in all, comprising 238 pages of text) from the XIX Mountain Corps and subordinate units which describe the detection, apprehension, and elimination of small Soviet–Norwegian covert agent teams inserted into German-occupied northern Norway from September 1941–December 1943. He also recently translated three significant Soviet Navy doctrinal documents, promulgated by the Soviet Main Naval Staff in 1937, 1940, and 1945. This “trifecta” totals almost 400 pages in English of the pre-war, early-war, and post-war doctrine which guided the actions of the Soviet Navy in those critical time periods and beyond.
Over the past two decades, he has translated nine of the 10 studies currently available in this collection, and will continue to work in that capacity while also serving as the coordinating editor for a small team working to complete the remaining 29 studies.