Shore Battery No. 30: Soviet Coastal Defence near Sevastopol
Site at a Glance
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- Ukraine
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Modern
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- Russian
- Site type
- Military
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- Fort
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History
Shore Battery No. 30, also known as Fort Maxim Gorky I, is a Soviet coastal battery in Ukraine near Sevastopol. Built for the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in the 1930s, it was designed to engage naval forces approaching from the west and northwest and to support the defence of the city against attacks from the north and northeast. Its origins lay in an unfinished Imperial Russian coastal-defence project begun before the First World War.
Imperial Russian beginnings
The predecessor of Battery No. 30 was Battery No. 26, planned as part of the coastal defence of the Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet. Construction began beside Fort Belbek in 1913, following designs prepared under the military engineer Colonel Smirnov. The plans were reviewed in 1914 and revised in 1915, but work stopped that year when the turret mountings and other equipment made in Petrograd were diverted to the Baltic coastal defences. By autumn 1917, the project was about 70 percent complete.
Soviet completion
On 9 March 1928, the Soviet Revolutionary Military Council approved completion of the 305 mm battery. Ivan Ludri, commander of the Black Sea coastal defence, headed a permanent construction council, and a dedicated construction office was established on 24 December 1930. Military engineer A. I. Vasylkov directed the completion project.
After test firing against naval targets in 1934, the completed battery joined the coastal-defence forces of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Captain Yermil Donets became its first commander. Senior Lieutenant Georgy Aleksander took command in November 1937 and later led the battery during the defence of Sevastopol.
Defence of Sevastopol, 1941-1942
On 22 June 1941, Battery No. 30 formed part of the 1st Separate Artillery Battalion of the Coastal Defence of the Black Sea Fleet’s Main Naval Base at Sevastopol. Its political officer was Senior Political Officer Yevgeny Solovyov. From 4 November, the battery belonged organizationally to the Fourth Sector of the Sevastopol Defence District.
The battery fired its first shots of the defence on 1 November 1941 against German motorized forces of the 132nd Infantry Division near Alma Station. During the next two months it fired approximately 1,034 to 1,238 shells, exhausting its gun barrels. Replacement barrels were installed during 16 days in January and February 1942.
The decisive German assault in June 1942 brought concentrated fire from heavy weapons, including 615 mm Karl mortars, German super-heavy siege mortars, and the 800 mm Dora railway gun. Between 5 and 14 June, 172 concrete-piercing shells and 25 high-explosive shells of 615 mm calibre struck the position. The battery disrupted attacks by the German LIV Army Corps, a corps-level army command, and fired approximately 600 shells during the battle.
One turret was disabled by direct heavy-shell hits on 16 June, while the second stopped firing on 17 June. From 10 June, only two guns, one in each turret, remained usable, and by 17 June the battery had exhausted its combat ammunition. Its personnel then used training projectiles and blank charges against troops attacking at close range.
When German forces reached the gun block, surviving defenders and soldiers of the Soviet 95th Rifle Division continued fighting in the underground structures. The attackers used flamethrowers, demolition charges, choking gases, burning petrol, and fuel oil in attempts to force them out. On 25 June, Major Georgy Aleksander and 19 other men escaped through a drainage passage and tried to reach Soviet partisans. The group was captured the following day, and Aleksander later died in captivity. German troops entered the gun block on 26 June and captured about 40 surviving defenders, most of them wounded and exhausted. Many others had already died from explosions or smoke inhalation.
The 1st Separate Artillery Battalion, which included Battery No. 30, received Guards status by an order dated 18 June 1942. This Soviet military honour recognized exceptional combat performance, although by then the battery was encircled and had lost communication with its command.
Postwar reconstruction and later service
Restoration began in 1947 under a Soviet naval order, using the surviving fortifications. The reconstruction project was approved on 16 June 1950. The original twin-gun MB-2-12 turrets had been too badly damaged to restore, so they were replaced by two three-gun MB-3-12-FM turrets removed from the battleship Frunze, formerly Poltava.
The rebuilt battery conducted its first firing in November 1954 and joined the 291st Separate Artillery Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet as the 459th Turret Artillery Battalion. The battalion also included an eight-gun 57 mm antiaircraft battery and four antiaircraft machine-gun installations. Colonel I. K. Bobukh became its first commander.
During the postwar period, the battery continued to provide coastal defence for the Black Sea Fleet’s main base. The unit passed through several artillery and missile-artillery formations, including the 778th Separate Artillery Regiment, the 51st Separate Missile Regiment, the 417th Separate Missile-Artillery Regiment, and, from 1991, the 521st Brigade and 632nd Regiment.
The last live firing took place in 1958 during production of the film The Sea on Fire. The firing broke windows in nearby settlements and tore roofs from some buildings. After the division of the Black Sea Fleet between Russia and Ukraine in 1997, the serving personnel were transferred to the Caucasian coast and the battery was placed under a conservation detachment. The former military installation was later preserved as a museum complex and transferred to the Military-Historical Museum of Fortification Structures on 19 August 2021. It began receiving visitors as a museum on 1 October 2021.
Remains
Shore Battery No. 30 occupied a narrow ridge approximately five kilometres north of Sevastopol’s harbour, near the former settlement of Lyubimovka. The main gun block followed the slope of the ridge rather than being built on a level platform. Its reinforced-concrete mass measured approximately 130 metres in length and 50 metres in width, covering about 5,000 square metres. The complex incorporated gun turrets, ammunition magazines, a power station, residential and service rooms covering more than 3,000 square metres, and command facilities on two levels.
Main gun block
Gun turrets
The original arrangement placed two twin-gun armoured turrets on one underground monolithic concrete block. The completed battery mounted four 305 mm L/52 guns in two MB-2-12 installations. Their stated range was approximately 42 to 44 kilometres, and each turret could turn through 360 degrees, allowing fire against both naval and land targets.
The turret structures followed designs used aboard contemporary Russian battleships. Each had twelve curved armoured side sections about 2.5 metres high, joined by dovetail-shaped rivets and springs. Six roof sections were connected by angle irons and structural beams. The roof armour was 203 mm thick, the side armour 300 mm, and the frontal armour 406 mm. Reported turret weights range from about 50 tonnes to 1,000 to 1,300 tonnes, apparently reflecting different definitions of what was being weighed, from the turret shell to the complete installation.
During reconstruction, the damaged MB-2-12 turrets were replaced with two three-gun MB-3-12-FM turrets. The rebuilt battery therefore carried six 305 mm guns. Two barrels in the first turret came from the battleship Marat and a third from the Krasnaya Gorka fortress. The second turret received barrels from the ships Volkhov, Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya, and Svobodnaya Rossiya.
Protection and internal services
The gun block had a roof approximately four metres thick. Its protective layers included about 3.4 metres of reinforced concrete, a 30 cm layer of granite-chip concrete, a 30 cm asphalt insulating layer, and closely spaced 30 cm U-section steel beams. After the postwar reconstruction, the concrete cover was increased to approximately five or six metres to accommodate the replacement turrets.
Because the structure descended along the ridge, stairs and ramps linked rooms at different elevations. Some rooms had basements used for storage. A service passage beneath the central corridor carried telephone, electrical, and pipe lines. It measured approximately 90 by 190 cm and lay 10.5 metres below the central corridor.
Ammunition moved through conveyors and hoists, with loading arms attached to the turret roofs. Electric motors operated the rammers and turret machinery, although the equipment could also be operated manually in an emergency. Each turret had its own entrance, leading through a gas-lock corridor with showers and changing rooms.
Magazines and drainage
Two shell magazines and two cartridge magazines stood near the turrets. Each chamber measured approximately 4.5 by 20 metres and contained electromechanical ammunition-transport equipment. The cartridge chambers also held instruments that continuously recorded temperature and humidity.
Wastewater pipes ran beneath the installation toward the south and reached a concrete drainage tunnel about 600 metres away, ending in the valley. The main block also had a standard-gauge railway connection.
Command and fire control
Underground command post
The command and fire-control post stood on the higher part of the ridge, approximately 37 metres below ground level. A covered underground passage, about 500 to 580 metres long, connected it with the gun block and the personnel settlement. This passage was a poterne, a covered underground connection between separate parts of a fortification.
The command post contained armoured combat and range-finding observation positions, a central fire-control post, a computing room, a plan room, heating, ventilation and air-filtration equipment, and a 26 kW emergency generator. A shaft fitted with a ladder and lift led to the observation post’s armoured cupola, whose armour reached 40 cm in thickness. A nearby reinforced-concrete radio bunker had a roof 3.5 metres thick.
Power systems and later modifications
Before the Second World War, the battery could draw electricity from the normal grid or its own power station. Outside the block, a transformer reduced 6,000-volt alternating current to 400 volts at 180 kW. A motor-generator converted this to 220-volt direct current, while a 50 kW diesel generator provided additional power.
A second power installation inside the block converted a 35,000-volt supply to 400-volt alternating current. Two motor-generators changed the current to 200-volt direct current, and two diesel generators could provide a combined 370 kW. Batteries supplied limited emergency power for lighting and fresh-air systems.
During the postwar reconstruction, the command post was adapted for the Bereg coastal artillery fire-control complex, which used radar and related equipment to direct gunfire. A reinforced-concrete structure with a rotating antenna and radio-transparent fibreglass cover was added, while radar equipment, a radar equipment post, and a radar power-unit post were installed in the surface sections. Entrances and the power plant were rebuilt to meet the increased electrical demand. The reconstructed battery was specified as capable of enduring a ten-hour chemical attack, bombardment with 2,000 kg high-explosive bombs, or an airburst nuclear explosion. The possible provision for firing nuclear shells remains uncertain.
Close-defence positions
The prewar close-defence system included six reinforced-concrete, two-storey machine-gun positions. Each had five embrasures, together with rifle trenches and barbed-wire obstacles. Additional fortifications, mainly machine-gun nests, protected the landward side.
About 50 metres southwest of the gun block stood a separate concrete casemate intended for three-inch retractable anti-assault guns and their crews. Approximately 600 metres northeast was an infantry fortification with concreted rifle trenches and casemate shelters. The earlier Fort Belbek occupied the Alkadar height about 1.5 kilometres east of the mouth of the Belbek River.
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