Soviet submarine K-23
K-23 was one of a dozen double-hulled K-class submarine cruisers built for the Soviet Navy during the late 1930s. Commissioned in 1940 into the Baltic Fleet, she did not make any war patrols after the Axis powers invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. The boat had already departed Leningrad before the invasion and was transferred to the Northern Fleet in September. K-23 made five war patrols, including three minelaying missions, before she was sunk by German submarine chasers in 1942.
Design and description
Despite the unsuccessful built in the early 1930s, the Soviet Navy still dreamed of cruiser submarines capable of attacking enemy ships far from Soviet territory. In 1936 it received approval to build them with the addition of minelaying capability. The boats displaced surfaced and submerged. They had an overall length of, a beam of, and a draft of at full load. The boats had a diving depth of. Their crew numbered 66 officers and crewmen.For surface running, the K-class boats were powered by a pair of 9DKR diesel engines, one per propeller shaft. The engines produced a total of, enough to give them a speed of. When submerged each shaft was driven by a PG11 electric motor for. The boats had a surface endurance of at and at submerged.
They were armed with six torpedo tubes in the bow and four were in the stern, two internal and two external. They carried a dozen reloads. A dual-purpose minelaying/ballast tank was located under the conning tower that housed 20 chutes for EP-36 mines which also served as outlets for the ballast tank's Kingston valves. This arrangement proved problematic as this was the location of the greatest structural loads in the hull and the mines were sometimes pinched in the chutes as the hull flexed. Another issue was that the chutes would sometimes jam when debris was drawn in with ballast water. The boats were also equipped with a pair of B-24PL deck guns fore and aft on the conning tower and a pair of 21-K guns above them.
Construction and career
K-23 was laid down on 5 February 1938 by Zavod No. 190 in Leningrad, launched on 28 April 1938, and completed on 25 September 1940. She was commissioned into the Baltic Fleet on 25 October. The boat had departed Leningrad on 13 June 1941 and was enroute to Molotovsk, now Severodvinsk, in the White Sea–Baltic Canal when the Axis Powers invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June. K-22 arrived at her destination on 12 July and was commissioned into the Northern Fleet on 17 September.The submarine's first patrol involved laying a minefield off Kirkenes, Norway, on 29 October that damaged a minesweeper and sank a steamship. The next had her lay four small minefields off Kvænangen on 19–20 November. K-23 laid a pair of minefields on 6–7 January 1942 off Porsangerfjorden that sank a small coaster. She was part of a group of six submarines that were tasked to screen the southern flank of Convoy PQ 12 and Convoy QP 8 in March, but her patrol was uneventful. The submarine is assigned similar duties for Convoy QP 11 in April–May. After the convoy had departed the area, the Soviet submarines proceeded to the Norwegian coast where K-23 unsuccessfully attacked a small convoy off Cape Nordkinn on 12 May. She attempted to evade the defending escorts with her superior speed on the surface, but she was forced to dive by an aircraft summoned by the escorts and was sunk by depth charges from the German submarine chasers UJ-1101, UJ-1108 and UJ-1110 The boat was under command of Captain Magomet Gadzhiyev for her entire career; he was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.